Free Defending Irene by Kristin Wolden; Nitz

asked.
    â€œNo!”
    â€œOnly joking. Well done. And grazie , eh?” He retreated to the goal.
    When our opponents moved the ball back down the field toward Luigi, I backed into the penalty area. But then I saw Number 44 again, Mendichela. He was standing alone on my side of the field. Danger.
    I pelted back toward him. His teammate passed him the ball. He must not have seen me coming. Or if he did, he must have assumed I wouldn’t be a problem. He was wrong. I intercepted the ball and sent it spinning to the sidelines. Since none of my teammates were there, I chased after it. A pass isn’t complete until it reaches a target.
    Players converged on me, cutting off the pass to the center, so I dribbled the ball down the field instead, protecting it as best I could. A player caught up to me and knocked the ball out of bounds.
    I glanced back at the mister . He pointed his linesman flag in my direction—the direction of our opponent’s goal. Our ball. I picked it up for the throw-in.
    â€œNo, Irene!” the mister shouted.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Matteo asked. He did not add the word idiota , but I could still hear it in his tone.
    â€œHave you forgotten your place, Irene?” asked a third voice I barely recognized. It was snotty with distinct overtones of Matteo. Not Federico? But it was, and he wasn’t joking.
    My face burned. Yes, I had forgotten my place. Or at least I hadn’t realized I was twenty feet over the centerline. No one could criticize me for bringing the ball down the field and staying with it. But picking up the ball for a throw-in? A definite mistake.
    I jogged backwards to my spot, so I could keep an eye on the action. When I arrived, Werner smiled at me. “I would prefer to play midfielder too, you know,” he said.
    â€œMe too,” Manuel added. “But we are on defense. We are the brutes.”
    â€œWe do not score. We only stop the enemy before he can do so,” Werner went on.
    â€œHey, sometimes we score. I had one goal last year,” Manuel interrupted.
    â€œAnd I had two. All right then. Sometimes we—”
    â€œPay attention, defense!” the mister shouted. “Don’t chatter!”
    My neck muscles tightened. People seemed to talk on the field when I was around. The mister would not consider that a good thing. No coach would.
    I was still thankful to Werner and Manuel. They knew how it felt to be back on defense instead of getting the chance to score. A brute, huh? I rather liked the idea.
    We, the brutes, worked together well. We stopped Number 44, Mendichela, like a pride of lions taking down a lone antelope.
    Time ticked away. We kept a narrow 1–0 lead into the third and final period. For five tense minutes, Luigi, Manuel, Werner, and I had more action that we would have liked as the other team controlled the ball on our half of the field. We barely managed to get the ball to the centerline before they forced it back in the direction of Luigi and the goal.
    In what must have been the fifth or sixth attack, Mendichela swept past Manuel with another of his convincing fakes. Instead of dribbling closer to the goal, he decided to shoot the ball. It rocketed into the air. If I hadn’t been directly in the ball’s path, I could have done nothing to stop it. But since I was, it slammed into the bottom of my ribcage, forcing the breath out of my body.
    My mind urged me to stay with the ball—to pass it to safety. My lungs said no. I dropped to my knees. If the ball had hit an inch or two lower, I would have been flat on my back.
    Whump!
    It was not the sound of someone taking a shot. More like a high pass spinning twenty feet above the field. I glanced up. Manuel? I wanted to cheer, but only a choked squeak came out.
    A hand touched my shoulder. “Irene. Irene? You have hurt yourself?” Luigi asked.
    â€œNo. Mendichela has done it,” I whispered.
    Luigi snorted. “Do we need to call