A heavy hand on my shoulder jostled me out of the darkness, the movement far too sharp and unpredictable for my liking.

My eyes fluttered open, stinging against the sudden harsh blue light cast from the projector screen. Above me, the familiar face of my mother blurred into focus. Her dark brows were pulled tight together, deep vertical creases carving into the bridge of her nose. Her lips were pressed into a paper-thin line, her eyes wide, glossy, and scanning every inch of my face with a rapid, frantic urgency. 

I leaned back from my position of being draped on top of the chair, my nose stinging and chest heavy. My thighs were burning from my awkward position; my kneecaps, I knew for a fact, were bruised. 

Mum dropped to her knees on the thin carpet beside my colour-coded folders, her hands immediately moving in swift, emphatic motions.

ARE YOU OKAY? Her fingers spelled out, slicing through the air with rigid intensity. WHY ARE YOU HERE? IN THE DARK? ALONE?

I blinked, my brain struggling to process the rapid-fire Sign. Everything around me was muffled, swallowed in a heavy, underwater silence. It was suffocating, and her fast moving hands were compounding the prickling under my skin. 

 I reached instinctively for my ears, but my fingers hit bare skin- the hearing aids must have stumbled off when I slouched. My stomach turned uncomfortably. I did not like the heavy silence pressing against my eardrums, even if only white noise was the alternative.

Seeing me grope uselessly at my neck, my mother frantically clicked on her phone's flashlight, sweeping the white beam across the carpet. The bright glare cut through the dark, catching the tiny metallic shells tucked near the leg of the chair. She scrambled across the floor, scooped them up with trembling hands. She stretched out a hand to presumably try and place them into my ear, but I shook my head once, slotting them quickly into place myself. The dull hum of the projector fan instantly sharpened into a high-pitched whir. I took a sharp breath, feeling the burn increasing behind my eyes. 

Behind her stood Coach Vance, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, his jaw set in a hard, unreadable line as he looked down at me. Next to him, Bishop stood in his crisp black driver's uniform, holding my raincoat over one arm, his face rigid with his usual quiet vigilance, though his eyes darted quickly between my mother and me.

I sat up, clearing my throat, and glanced past my mother toward the wall.

The projector was paused. The screen was frozen mid-frame on a grainy digital render of a pitch- the 2006 World Cup penalty shootout. David Trezeguet's shadow was suspended forever in front of the crossbar, the ball forever caught two inches above the white line. The hall had emptied out completely. 

I craned my neck to look at the seats at the very back, expecting Luca to have also fallen asleep somewhere after returning from the restroom. My breathing, however, seemed to become shallow when I saw no sign of him. The harsh air conditioner had made my sinuses flare up, making it harder to breathe as I sniffled. 

I turned back to my phone resting on the floor. The screen lit up: 6:42 PM.

Luca had been gone for two hours and thirty-two minutes.

My mother's hands flew again, cutting off my internal calculation. EXPLAIN. NOW.

"I was conducting a tactical review," I said, my voice sounding flat and slightly gravelly from sleep. I pointed a finger toward the paused screen. "Luca Moretti left to use the restroom during the transition to the 2006 penalties. He has not yet returned. I stayed to preserve the queue so we could resume without losing temporal context, but I appear to have micro-napped."

Coach Vance let out a low, heavy exhale, rubbing the back of his neck. He said something, but under the low lights of the theatre I couldn't make out his lip movement. I glanced at my Mum. She raised her hands again, signing, "TEAM. GO HOME." The words formed silently on her lips at the same time. "

The team's gone home.

I frowned, looking between Coach Vance and the screen. "That is statistically illogical. He explicitly stated he had an urgent obligation regarding a neighbour's feline, but he assured me he would return within five minutes after using the sanitary facilities."

Bishop made a subtle, almost imperceptible adjustment to the coat on his arm, looking down at his shoes. My mother didn't need the audio translation. She read my facial expression and signed a sharp "HOME, NOW", and took my elbow, pulling me firmly upward from the floor. 

She turned to say something rapidly to Bishop, who nodded once and gestured for me to follow him. I stumbled after him, my legs aching from the odd, cramped position I had been in for the last couple of hours. I turned back to see Mum talking animatedly to Coach Vance, whose eyes were downcast. 

She returned to the car about ten minutes later and slid into the seat beside me, her shoulders shaking.

"Mum," I began, tapping her shoulder. "Are you okay?" 

She turned to face me, her eyes glistening. She shook her head and pulled me into a hug, muttering into my hair. Her pulse was erratic, her breath hot. She may have been... angry. Or sad. Perhaps. I wasn't sure. 

"We go back to Hertfordshire once the shooting is over," she said when she finally leaned back. "Coach Hart was asking about you," she gave a watery laugh. "Apparently he's been taking signage lessons." 

My eyes widened as I recalled his crude reenactments. 

"Eli," she shook her head with a half smile. "It's the thought that counts." She leaned back into her seat as we turned around a corner. "Speaking of which, who did you say you were waiting for?"

 "Luca Moretti," I stated. "He is our striker, and our strongest offense." 

"I see. He told you he was returning?" she continued. 

"Yes," I nodded. "He said he needed to use the restroom." 

"Love," she said, leaning closer to me. "He was lying to you." 

"Lying... to me," I echoed. "Incorrect. He said page seventeen was his favourite." 

"Page... seventeen?" she knotted her eyebrows. 

I nodded. "Of my notes. Page seventeen. The one about—" 

"Maradona's second goal against England in '86," she nodded. "Yes, honey, you've told me a couple of times." 

"Well, yes," I slumped back into the car seat. "You must be mistaken." 

She didn't respond, reaching to bury her face in her phone instead.

*

Something was off.

I wasn't sure what. But something was odd.

The team was not sniggering and exchanging glances like they usually would in the locker room. On the grounds, no matter how hard I tried to speak to them to remind them about the notes I had provided them, they seemed like they were the ones in need of a hearing aid.

By breakfast, I found a few of the manila folders crumpled and thrown into the trash can. I stared at them for a few seconds. Perhaps these were extra copies?

I reached into the trash can and pulled them out to make sure someone hadn't lost them. The pages inside, however, were pristine, highlighted exactly the way I had left them. Only the pens had disappeared.

I heard a rustle behind me and turned to see Santoro, Fernandez, and Luca in the corridor, towering over me.

"Moretti—" I began, waving the folder at him. "What—"

Before the words fully left my mouth, Santoro's hand shoved my shoulder—hard. My spine slammed into the tiled wall, knocking the wind out of my lungs, and the stack of folders flew out of my grip, scattering across the dirty floor. My smartwatch immediately vibrated against my wrist with an intensity that made me clasp my hand over it. I stared up at their red faces and ugly scowls etched on their mouths. 

"You fucking little prince," Santoro spat, stepping directly into my space. His face was blotchy, his chest heaving. "You had to run to your mummy and drop names, didn't you? Tell on us like a little bitch?"

I gulped and glanced once at Luca, who seemed to be trembling, his fists balled. I looked at Santoro again as I spoke, "I did not contact my mother regarding—"

"Shut your mouth!" Fernandez lunged forward, grabbing a fistful of my collar and yanking me down until his teeth were practically bared in my face. "Vance tore up the starting lineup! Luca is benched for the Lombardi match! Benched! Because you couldn't handle sitting in the dark like a big boy?"

"Oh." 

My hearing aids picked up the harsh, distorted treble of his yelling, buzzing uncomfortably against my ear canal. The sound was sharp, clipping past acceptable decibel thresholds and flattening into a wall of static.

I glanced at Luca again, realising what my Mum had been talking to Coach Vance about yesterday. My stomach tightened. He worked so hard. Too hard. 

I had no baseline for this.

In my fourteen years, no one had ever raised their voice at me. People spoke to me softly, cautiously, with a slow, deliberate enunciation. I had catalogued anger only once as an external observer: four years ago, on a set in London, when Mum had discovered a director filming past her contractual hours. She had shouted until the crew went rigid, her face flushed red, her voice piercing the soundstage. I had watched from behind the monitor, insulated and untouched, taking mental note of her raised shoulders and flared nostrils as an isolated social phenomenon.

"Say something you little-" Santoro grabbed the front of my sweatshirt again, snarling in my face as my legs suddenly felt weak, possibly due to the rising asphyxia. 

I had not catalogued what it felt like to be the target. I had no data for the sudden, violent compression in my chest, or the terrifying speed at which my brain was failing to translate their mouth movements into syntax.

"I did not report anything to anyone," I said as I tried to pull back from his grip. "I was, in fact, wa-"

"It's no wonder Kingsley FC kicked you out," Luca snapped, stepping out from between the other two. "Who the fuck would ever want to be around a spoiled prince like you?" Luca's voice trembled. "It's a team, Elliot. You think getting me benched is going to help us become a team? Is that your grand strategy?"

His lips were twisted in a sneer, his eyes flashing with what I now realised was anger, perhaps laced with something more. And somehow, even though he hadn't roughed me up like Santoro, his words made my blood run cold in a way the former's hadn't. 

"Luca," he needed to understand. He, out of all people, had to understand. "The squad is misinterpreting the administrative outcome—"

"You don't want teammates," Luca yelled, and the only reason I could tell he yelled was the sudden sharp ringing in my ears that made my words die in my throat. He grabbed the front of my sweatshirt and shoved me backward into the wall again. The back of my head clipped the tile, sending a sharp spark of pain down my neck. His grip loosened instantly before he stepped back, his eyes wide and breathing ragged. 

"I...I did...n-not-" I gulped, an odd buzzing in my ears. "You have to believe me. I...I did not tell the coach to do anything. I...I would never...do that to you."

They exchanged glances I couldn't place, all my systems running into an unprepared overload. 

"You don't know how to have teammates. You just want subjects!" Luca said, seemingly having found his voice. "You want a bunch of servants to hand your fucking colour-coded papers to and sit there while you talk at us!"

Luca continued, his breath hot and ragged against my face as he leaned in close, his knuckles white where he grabbed my clothes again. I didn't look at him; I didn't want to look at him. I couldn't make out his words fast enough anyway. It was wrong. He wasn't supposed to be so angry. He wasn't supposed to be benched. My heart wasn't supposed to be twisting uneasily in my throat. But I had to, so I could read his lips again. 

 "-And now Vance put me on the bench because you specifically gave my name to your famous, rich-as-fuck mother!"

"I did not request—" I tried again.

"I don't give a shit!" Luca shoved me hard enough that my feet slipped on the slick floor, and I stumbled, falling awkwardly onto one knee right over my scattered diagrams.

A sudden, sharp heat flared behind my eyes. The sensory input—the distorted screeching in my receiver, the pain in my scalp, the terrifying, unpredictable volume of Luca's voice—overloaded my system all at once. I blinked rapidly, but the corridor blurred. My throat felt thick, clamped shut by a sudden, uncontrollable surge of panic. I swallowed hard, trying to force the lump down, my chest heaving as I stared up at them.

Santoro let out a sharp laugh that seemed wrongly placed considering the situation. I couldn't see his mouth clearly enough, couldn't get my brain to decode his words. Fernandez sneered, leaning down to get in my face. He said something. I didn't know what. I caught the word 'mommy' just because of how hard he enunciated that. 

Luca was muttering something. I glanced up once, catching "real stakes" and then a bunch of garbled mess as I fixed my blurry vision back to the scattered pages. 

Ricci came around the corner, stopping dead when he saw me on the floor, surrounded by shredded papers, clutching my knee with tears threatening to spill down my face. He looked at Luca, then at me, his mouth opening slightly.

Luca knelt in front of me, and I blinked back the tears, trying to return his glare. His mouth was twisted in a scowl that did not suit him. "We are not your butlers or your servants," he said. "You don't get to punish us because we won't do your bidding."

"I...did not complain," I managed. "I was merely-"

"Stay away from me," Luca hissed, stepping back and glaring down at me with something I couldn't fathom. "Don't look at me, don't talk to me, and don't ever hand me one of your fucking folders again."

Santoro deliberately stamped his muddy boot right onto the center of my 2006 penalty diagram before turning to follow Luca. Fernandez spat on the floor next to my shoe and walked off.

I remained on the cold floor for a long time, the hum of the fluorescent lights buzzing violently through my hearing aids. My eyes stung as I reached out with a trembling hand, trying to smooth out the torn, boot-printed paper against my leg, but the ink was smeared, and the page was ruined beyond repair. I placed it on top of my How To Act Friendly list, reaching for a pen with a trembling hand as I updated it.