Krillo stared at the ball, which bounced a couple of times inside the goal net, next to the first one. He turned around again.
The redhead was sitting in the grass, blowing on the toe of his hand-stitched boot.
“Well?” MacKaroni said. “Look like a player you could use, eh?”
“How much?” Krillo asked.
“What can you offer?” the player’s strange Scottish agent asked.
“Forty-eight pounds and a pair of almost-free cleats.”
“As you see, the boy already has his own cleats.”
“All righty. Forty-eight pounds plus shoe polish, then.”
“You can have them both for that price.”
“Both?” Krillo asked, confused.
“Yup.” MacKaroni pointed to the girl with the braids. “Sherl and Ockolmes.”
“A little girl? Can she play?”
“Not at all,” the girl said. “I can’t stand the game.”
“Shh, Lisa!” the MacKaroni fellow said, and then adjusted his swim goggles. “If I sell Sherl, the girl has to be allowed to sit on the reserve bench during the cup finale on Saturday. Sherl gets hot flashes, epilepsy, and bandicoot carbuncles if she and I aren’t close by.”
“You’re going to sit on the bench too?”
“Do you have a ball boy?” MacKaroni asked.
“Rotten Ham can’t afford things like that,” Krillo said with a laugh.
“No problem. I’ll be your ball boy,” the guy calling himself MacKaroni said, and then pulled a rolled-up sheet of paper out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “Here’s our contract.”
Krillo put on the glasses that were hanging around his neck on a string and read it.
“Well, what do you say?” MacKaroni asked.
“I don’t really know . . . ,” Krillo said hesitantly.
“What’s there to think about?” the little redhead yelled. “Not only do you get three people for the price of one, but also an extra set of tent poles and a bag of charcoal! And that’s not all. Since it’s such a nice day today, I just decided that I’ll throw in a pack—no, not one, two packs—of hot chocolate! Now what do you say?”
Krillo stared at the boy. “I say . . . all righty!”
“Yippee!” yelled the normal-looking little girl.
“Yippee!” yelled the abnormal-looking player’s agent, Rotten Ham’s new ball boy.
“Yippee!” yelled the redheaded Boot of Norway with the baby face.
“No reason to celebrate yet,” Krillo said. “Go get your practice gear on, because we’re down to the wire now. There’s not much time. Saturday is . . . well, now.”
The Big Finale
IT WAS A beautiful Saturday in May, and the time was exactly 6:28 in the morning. According to all the approved, government-sanctioned almanacs, that was when the sun was supposed to rise and shine on the Greenwich Observatory and London. But the sun was already a fair ways up into the sky. Because it knew, as all of London’s inhabitants did, that today was the day of the final World Cup game, which meant you had to be early to make sure you got a good seat.
So by the time people were pouring into the enormous Wobbley Stadium, the sun had positioned itself so that it could see both goals, and it had no intention of moving until the game was over. Both the long sides and almost both of the short sides were filled with people in blue shirts, blue hats, and blue scarves, and carrying blue banners. They were eating hot dogs and drinking beer and singing songs about how good Chelchester City was. The only place that wasn’t completely blue was the very bottom of the stands, behind the one goal. There was a small group wearing white there. Those were the people singing about how Rotten Ham wasn’t actually so bad. At least not on a good day. A guy named Tony was leading their singing. He was not wearing a shirt. He was the local tattoo artist on Rotten Ham Road and had the team’s club logo—a piece of rotten ham—tattooed across his whole chest, along with the team’s name: ROTTEN HAM FOREVER. Unfortunately, the letters were left-right reversed, since Tony had tattooed them on himself using a mirror.
Tony and the others sang:
“Toes, my Toes, you’re not exactly England’s rose
But the game hasn’t started yet, and who knows
We may not lose this time, let’s see how it goes
So don’t give up, cheer up, my mighty Toes!”
Krillo was sitting in front of his players in the locker room under the stands, listening to the song. They could hear all the blue-clad fans laughing themselves silly at the fairly uninspired lyrics. The Rotten Ham players were sitting with their heads in their hands, staring at the floor. Some of them were quaking like aspen leaves, because they’d never played in front of such a large audience before. And the game was going to be broadcast live on TV around the world! Yikes!
“All righty,” Krillo said, adjusting his sou’wester and rubbing his hands together. “It’s almost time for the kickoff. Are we ready, Toes?”
No response.
“Are we ready, Toes?” Krillo repeated. “Nero? Answer me!”
“Uh . . . ,” Nero began, pushing up his captain’s armband, which had slid down his long, skinny arm yet again. “Very ready. I think.”
“That’s how it should be!” Krillo yelled. “That’s the attitude I want to see! Any of you not looking forward to this, anyone scared to go out onto that crummy little field?”
All the players—except the tiny redheaded one— nodded.
“I think you guys misunderstood my question,” Krillo said. “Let me put it more clearly. Do any of you wish we hadn’t made it this far, to the finals?”
“Yes,” all the players responded, apart from . . . well, you know which one.
“Really?” Krillo said, irritated. “You’d rather we just went home and forgot the whole thing instead of going out there and taking a pounding from the best team in all of England and the most expensive player in the world?”
“Yes!” all the players cried in unison, even the tiny redhead, although just because he’d gotten carried away by their conviction.
Krillo’s head sank into his hands in despair. “Fools!” he yelled, outraged. “The correct answer is ‘no!’ That’s three out of three you got wrong! All righty, let’s give it one more try. . . .”
“No!” all the players yelled.
Krillo rolled his eyes. “I haven’t even asked the question yet! All righty, let’s forget the questions. Here comes your pep talk now, so pay close attention and imagine inspirational music, rising to a crescendo like in a Hollywood movie, all righty?”
Krillo stood up, cleared his throat, and closed his eyes in concentration. “Let’s see. Yes, here’s how it goes: We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight in the air, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall—”
“Excuse me?” Nero Longhands asked.
“Yes?” Krillo said.
“In the schedule it says our game is at Wobbley. What’s all this about oceans and beaches? Are we in the wrong stadium?”
“Fool!” Krillo said, stomping to express his anger, although his rubber fisherman’s boot didn’t make much noise.
The door opened, and there stood a middle-aged man with thinning hair, wearing shorts that flapped loosely around a pair of unbelievably skinny thighs.
“Get out!” Krillo growled. “I’m giving my players a pep talk here!”
“And I’m here to tell you that if you’re not out on the field in ten seconds, the match is going to start without you,” the man said.
Krillo glared at him and said, “You’re what?”
“Everyone’s waiting for you guys,” the man with the thinning hair and thin thighs said.
“I think that’s the referee,” the girl with the braids said.
Krillo glanced suspiciously at his watch. Tapped it. Put it up to his ear. “Hmm, looks like my watch stopped. All righty, I’ll have to give you your pep talk after the game, boys. And . . . uh, girl. Let’s start trouncing them, Toes!”
And with that
all the players ran out the door, through the players’ tunnel, and out into the tremendous noise in Wobbley Stadium.
Doctor Proctor (aka Hamish MacKaroni) and Lisa (aka Ockolmes) sat down next to Krillo on the bench by the sideline.
“Where are the other substitutes?” Doctor Proctor asked.
“What substitutes?” Krillo asked. “You don’t think we can afford to pay people who don’t play, do you?”
“What if someone gets . . . uh, injured?” Lisa asked.
“They’re not allowed to get hurt,” Krillo said. “Could you quit bugging me now so I can concentrate?”
Ibranaldovez was standing in the middle of the field, ready for the kickoff, but looking down at Nilly.
“Seriously?” he sneered. “You’re going to play? I thought you were the mascot. I’m going to have to pick you out of my cleats after the game.”
And then, at exactly forty-three seconds after four o’clock, forty-three seconds later than planned, a whistle blow started the big World Cup finale.
THE GAME CLOCK had just passed forty-three minutes when Krillo moaned in despair, because this couldn’t be happening. Chelchester City had had the ball the whole time and they had made two offside goals, three goalpost shots, eighteen corner kicks, and the bookmakers were giving them five-hundred-to-one odds of winning. In other words, it was a miracle that the score was still 0–0. Ibranaldovez shot, and Krillo leaped into the air with excitement on the sideline as the ball bounced off the crossbar. Krillo came back down again on the very end of the bench, flipping it up and launching Lisa into the air so that she landed again with a little “Hiccup!”
“Two minutes until halftime,” Krillo said, mostly to himself. “If we can just keep it 0–0 until then! Please, oh, please!”
The Rotten Ham ’n’ Potatoes goalkeeper passed the ball to Nero Longhands.
“Get the ball out to that little redheaded guy!” Krillo yelled.
“Beckadona Hamarooney Sherl,” Doctor Proctor said.
“Whatever. Just get him the ball!”
Nero tried, but it wasn’t so easily accomplished, this feat. First he had to gain control of the ball and then send it where he wanted it. Not to mention all these guys dressed in blue all over him all the time. They were really pushy! But now he saw the little redheaded boy who’d been standing in the center circle for the whole game, waiting for the ball. Yes, that little Beckumoonie Shirley or whatever his name was had even lain down in the grass for a while when Chelchester City was giving them their worst. The little guy had plucked a blade of grass, stuck it between his teeth, and lain down with his hands clasped behind his head, staring up at the blue sky.
Nero aimed for the little boy and kicked at the ball, but ended up kicking the turf just behind it instead. And suddenly his leg was in Ibranaldovez’s legs.
“Tackle!” Krillo yelled.
And Nero lunged forward, shut his eyes, and tackled Ibranaldovez.
Which is to say: He wasn’t entirely sure if he’d tackled Ibranaldovez.
Apparently he’d tackled the air where Ibranaldovez had just been standing a second before, because when he opened his eyes again, he heard a roar of cheering from the stands and saw Ibranaldovez on his way back with his hands up in victory. It might have just been an accident that Ibranaldovez happened to step on Nero’s hand as he went by.
“No!” Krillo screamed. “No! No!”
“Well, well,” Doctor Proctor said.
The teams each moved back to their sides of the field again. Rotten Ham put the ball on the midline and waited for the referee to blow his whistle and start play again. Nilly yawned, spit his blade of grass out, and walked over to the ball along with his teammates.
“Watch this,” Doctor Proctor told Krillo, who’d pulled his sou’wester down over his face.
But Krillo wasn’t watching. Instead he was staring at the inside of his sou’wester, dreaming that he was back on his krill-fishing boat in the Antarctic Ocean, teeth chattering as they hauled in the net, pulling yet another big catch onboard. He should have stuck with that! Not come to this gloomy country where everything was sorrow and . . .
Thunk!
. . . miserable . . .
Whistle!
. . . wretchedness?
Judging from what Krillo could hear as he stared at the inside of his sou’wester, there was cheering. Not as loud as before, but if he wasn’t mistaken, he thought he heard a guy named Tony singing something like, “Toes, my Toes, you’re not exactly England’s rose . . .”
He opened his eyes and saw a pile of players wearing white. Eventually a little redheaded guy crawled out of the pile and ran over to the stands, blowing kisses to the crowd, both the ones wearing blue and the ones in white. And Krillo also saw the world’s best soccer player’s eyes about to pop out of his head.
“From midfield!” MacKaroni, the new ball boy, cried excitedly. “Did you see that?”
And then, with a score of 1–1, the referee blew his whistle and it was halftime.
A Short Interlude
“YOU JUST HAVE to do that one more time,” Doctor Proctor whispered to Nilly as Krillo spoke, diagrammed, and pointed to the whiteboard in the locker room.
“I know, but I’ll never get the ball,” Nilly said. “The only time would be at the kickoff after they’ve scored!”
“Be patient,” Lisa whispered. “We have to win! We’re heading straight to the airport with the trophy from here!”
“Yeah, about that,” Nilly said. “Did you guys get the fake trophy from Madame Tourette’s Wax Museum?”
“Yeah, of course,” Lisa said. “I’m going to have it in my suitcase, and I’ll be waiting in the players’ tunnel right after the game. And you remember what you have to do?”
“Yep,” Nilly said. “After I accept the adulations of the crowd for having more or less single-handedly determined the outcome of the World Cup final with my fantastic shot and the ladies are begging me for kisses and—”
“Get to the point!” Lisa said.
“Yeah, sure. Holding the trophy, I will be carried to the locker room on the shoulders of my teammates, and as we enter the players’ tunnel—”
“I’ll turn off the lights,” Doctor Proctor said.
“And in the darkness, Nilly will toss the trophy down to me,” Lisa said. “And I’ll swap it out, toss the fake trophy back up to you, and put the real one, which is made of the Bank of Norway’s gold, into the suitcase.”
“Then we catch the first flight home to Oslo,” Doctor Proctor said. “And get home just in time so that the trophy can be melted back down again into a gold bar, put back into the vault, and the inspection will go off without a hitch.”
“And I will be carried through the streets of Oslo on people’s shoulders as girls throw red roses at me and burst into tears when they realize that I can’t marry them all unless the king passes a new law that says that I, Nilly, am actually allowed to marry—”
“LET’S GET ON WITH IT, THEN!” Krillo yelled. “And don’t wait too long to start trouncing them, please!”
Nilly certainly had no intention of doing that.
Back at the Final World Cup Game
NO, NILLY HAD no intention of waiting at all. Because Rotten Ham had the kickoff in the second half.
Nero Longhands nudged the ball to Nilly, who stood ready, his foot raised.
Thunk!
“I made a little adjustment last night, you know,” Doctor Proctor (aka MacKaroni) told Krillo.
Whistle!
“I moved the heel, which is actually designed for chopping wood, up to the toe of the shoe.”
Whoosh!
“Really smart, huh?” Doctor Proctor said.
It was 2–1 Rotten Ham! Cheers erupted in the tiny Rotten Ham fan section and the players once again buried Nilly under a pile of sweaty bodies.
Nilly emerged from the pile and once again ran toward the stands, blowing kisses left and right. He thought he even noticed some of the blue-clad femal
e spectators looking like they really wanted to blow kisses back to him, but of course they didn’t dare for fear of how the other blue whiners would penalize such disloyal behavior.
Nero patted Nilly on the head. “I’m sure I’ll be able to get you the ball a few times,” he said. “We’re going to win this!”
“Definitely,” Nilly said, concentrating on pulling off a rather decent moonwalk over the grass, which is no small feat when you’re wearing one hand-stitched boot and one soccer cleat. When the cheers subsided and they were ready to let Chelchester City kick off, Nilly heard a voice right by his ear:
“Is that your sister, that ugly girl on the bench over there?”
“Hey, no one calls Lisa ugly!” Nilly said, turning around.
It was Ibranaldovez. He was sneering down at Nilly. “Your sister is the ugliest girl I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of girls. She’s uglier than the village I come from at low tide, and that’s ugly! And dumb! She’s dumber than one of those trees you put in your living room around Christmastime, what are they called again? Whatever. Those trees are really, really dumb, and that’s how dumb she is. At least. No, actually, she’s even dumber. Ha-ha! Did you hear that? She’s dumber than one of those tree-thingies! And ugly! Did I mention the part about low tide back home? Why’s your face so red, huh?”
Nilly felt his head boiling. No one—no one!—was allowed to talk about Lisa that way! Or any of his other friends! Not even Eva, who actually was his sister! Nilly’s first thought was that he should ram Ibranaldovez in the chest, but the problem was that he only came up to the man’s knees.
So he kicked Ibranaldovez instead. On the butt. It just sort of happened.
Thunk!
A whistling noise ran through the crowd as they watched the best soccer player in the world soaring through the air, flying over the field and up into the stands. And a groan as he landed in the VIP section.
“Ibranaldovez just landed right in Maximus Rublov’s lap!” a radio reporter screamed into his microphone.