Keeper by Mal Peet

had never imagined that he might
follow
me. I hadn’t wanted to leave him, but the possibility that I
couldn’t,
that he might haunt me forever, everywhere, was terrifying. Hateful.
    I walked over and faced him. ‘You were watching, weren’t you?’ I had to force the words out. ‘You were there at the camp when I kept goal.’
    His mouth moved beneath the deep-shadowed eyes. The words followed. ‘Of course.’
    It was so matter-of-fact, the way he said it. As if he was confirming some trivial fact that I should already have known. My fear and my rage were, clearly, of no interest to him. He turned his back on me and walked into the goalmouth. Then he faced me again, crouching.
    ‘What now?’ I said at last. I could hear the bitterness in my own voice.
    The Keeper pointed to the ball. ‘Be the penalty taker.’
    ‘You know I can’t beat you,’ I said.
    The Keeper stood up straight. ‘I know no such thing.’
    ‘I have never beaten you. You have always known what I am thinking.’
    ‘Then think something I cannot imagine,’ the Keeper said. ‘Hide your thought from me.’
    It was a ridiculous, impossible, stupid challenge. I hated him. I took four paces back from the spot, a small voice in my brain saying,
I hate you.
My strike on the ball:
I hate you!
    I drove the shot to my right and low. The Keeper’s body seemed to want to go in two directions at once; his upper body went to the right but hesitated. His hips and legs and feet seemed to be thinking differently and threw his balance to the left. He staggered, recovered, and was on his way to meet the ball with his left hand when it flew past him and into the net, but he was lost, and too late. He ended up on one knee, his left hand on the ground. I had beaten him.
    He didn’t look at me. He took the ball from the net, rolled it in his hands, bounced it twice, and then held it.
    ‘A good penalty,’ he said. ‘You hid your thought well. I could not read it at all.’
    I looked down at the grass as if I had seen something really interesting there.
    ‘Enough for today, I think,’ he said. ‘Your family will want you home. It is getting dark.’
    I looked at the sky. The sun was still well above the shoulders of the trees.”
    “On Monday morning we traveled to work under a blue sky. A long cloud of red dust followed the pickup. At the camp my father patted me on the back and then left me. I walked over to the steel sheds. Estevan was already at the bench, squinting at a work sheet clipped to a board. He looked up when my shadow fell on him. And then he did a strange thing. He bowed, making a fancy sweep of his arm like a servant in a comedy.
    ‘Good morning, El Gato,’ he said. ‘I hope you are well, Gato.’
    I looked at him. I thought he was being sarcastic in some mysterious way. I thought that perhaps I had done something wrong, something I did not know about. Puzzled, I remained silent.
    Estevan straightened up and looked at me with great concern. ‘El Gato?’ he said. ‘Has some other cat got your tongue, Gato? Is there something wrong?’
    ‘I am fine, Señor Estevan,’ I said at last. ‘What is this “El Gato” thing?’
    Estevan opened his eyes wide, two brown-and-white targets. ‘You don’t know? This is what everyone is calling you now, after the game on Saturday. I thought I had just a boy learning tool shop. Now I hear I have a great goalie working with me. El Gato, the Cat. The people here are saying, “Estevan, look after this boy. Keep his hands away from the drills, the blades. Make sure he does not get hurt like the others. He is like the cat, the
gato
!” Also,’ said Estevan, ‘I was at the game. You were quite good.’
    Throughout the morning and the whole day, men who came to our bench or just passed it made a big thing of calling me ‘Gato.’ And that is where the name came from. Not from the papers, Paul, or from players, but from that hellish place. And since then I have had no other name.
    My second week at