Page 55 of Born for Starlight

They put me on one team, then traded me to the other, then gave up and let me run wild. I scored my only goal with my hands. The referee was nine years old. He laughed so hard he counted it. The game kept dissolving and starting over around me, and I ran until my dress stuck to my back and my hair came out of its pins. I couldn't remember the last time a day felt this good.

I was chasing a loose ball toward the sideline when I saw them.

Off the field, in the shade at the edge of the trees, Matthew stood with a boy of maybe ten. Rafael. He had a brace on his left leg. I wondered just how many games he had missed out on over the years. But Matthew was teaching him to head butt the ball. At least that’s what I thought it was called. He tossed it up, soft. Rafael propelled himself upwards and met the ball with his forehead. Matthew caught it, said something, and tossed it again.

His sunglasses were pushed up on his head. His suit jacket hung on a fence post. This big, lethal man, bent down to the level of one boy, feeding him the ball over and over. I could read the lesson from fifty feet away.

Your legs are not the game.

Nobody heads the ball better than the man who can't chase it.

This is the one skill on this field that's all yours.

The boy missed one. He set himself. Matthew waited. Rafael nodded, and the ball went up again.

On maybe the tenth toss, the boy met it clean and hard, and the ball flew. Matthew threw both arms straight up like the kid had just won the World Cup. The boy lit up so bright it hurt to watch.

I stood in the middle of a soccer field in Brazil and fell the rest of the way in love.

I didn't get to stand there long. A nine-year-old bounced a ball off the back of my head, on purpose. Of course, I had to go and chase him. We all laughed.

All morning, through all of it, I was looking for her.

I hadn't admitted it to myself on the plane. I admitted it now. I’d looked for her when I’d told the story, and I looked for her while I wove through the game. I looked under the mango trees and checked the faces at every window. Small. Thin. Seven, maybe eight. Eyes too big for her face. The girl who stood at the edge of the video and looked into the lens like she could see me on the other side. She was nowhere.

Engines came up the drive before I was ready. The press caravan, announcing itself in a cloud of dust above the trees. I made my decision fast. I pulled out my phone, found the video, and touched Sister Beatriz's arm.

"Sister. Before they get here. There's a child I keep looking for, and I haven't seen her." I pressed play and turned the screen toward her. "There. At the edge. The little one."

Beatriz took the phone in both hands. I watched the joy drain out of her face. Something older and more tired settled in behind it, and before she said one word, my stomach dropped.

"Luzia," she said softly. "This is Luzia."

"Where is she?"

"In hospital. In the city. The São Marcos." Beatriz crossed herself, quick and small. "Her chest. She gets the infections in lungs, since baby. Two weeks now. They keep for fever, it goes and it comes." She handed my phone back and made her voice bright again. I knew that trick. It was mine. "She will be so sad to miss you. She no talk much, our Luzia. But she watches all things. She sees all the things in this place.”

The first van rolled through the blue gates.

"Senhorita Drakos." Beatriz touched my arm. "The photographs now. You know how to do this part, yes?"

"Sister," I said, "it's the part I could do in my sleep."

The ceremony took forty minutes, and I can’t remember much about it. There was an oversized check and my press smile. Father Tomás said grave things to a reporter while children made faces behind the cameramen. I said the words I had come to say. But the real visit was already over. It happened in a story circle and on a dirt soccer field, and none of it would be in any photograph.

Then it was done. The blue gates closed behind us. I watched Casa Semente get smaller out the back window until the mango trees hid it. The children never stopped waving.

I turned around in my seat.

Matthew was watching me. He'd been watching me all day. From the back wall of the story circle. From the shade at the edge of the field. Through every camera flash. Except for the time he’d been coaching Rafael, he’d been watching me. Now, the mirrored sunglasses were back down, and I reached over and took them off his face myself, because I needed his eyes for this.

"Luzia," I said. "The little girl from the video. She's in the hospital in the city. The São Marcos. She's been there two weeks with a lung infection. She can’t be more than eight years old, Matthew, and Sister Beatriz says she watches everything, and I missed her because she’s sick."

"I heard."

Of course he'd heard. He heard everything.

"You have to find her." I had his hand in both of mine, and I didn't remember taking it. "Tomorrow or the next day. Before Aurora, after Aurora, I don't care how it fits. I need to see that she's okay. Whatever you have to arrange, arrange it. Please, I want to meet her."