Page 20 of Five Things I See in You

“Relax, Iris already warned me you plan absolutely everything,” she says, taking me by the arm to get in line.

And then chaos breaks loose. A team of girls about twelve years old shows up, maybe sixteen or seventeen of them, with a few moms trying to keep them together, all wearing the same tracksuit.

“Look, look, it’s Noa Reeves!” one of them shouts, and they all literally stare at us with their mouths hanging open. Well, them and a large portion of the people in line.

“It does seem to be me, yeah,” Noa says with a shrug. “What’s your name?”

“Sophie.”

“Sophie, and you guys?” she asks, turning to the others.

They all answer at once, and some of the names get lost in the noise. Noa repeats several out loud. The line stops, the kids gather around her for a photo, first as a group, then a few at a time, then one by one. Some people complain and we have to let them through.

“Can you take a picture of us, please?” one of the girls says, shoving her phone into my hand.

Then another one and another one.

A little girl with pigtails comes running from the back of the line, her mother hurrying after her.

“I play soccer too,” she says, standing in front of Noa.

“Oh, yeah? What position do you play?”

“Defense, but I’m terrible at it.”

Noa looks at her for a moment and smiles.

“What did you do well in your last game?”

The girl frowns.

“Nothing.”

“You must’ve done something well.”

“We lost four to one.”

“Well, you can lose and still play well. That happens a lot.”

The girl looks at her shoes. Then she says, very quietly, that she took the ball away from the forward four times.

“See? So we’ve already got at least four things you did well,” Noa says. “Next time you start there.”

The girl nods with a huge smile and turns to me.

“And what position do you play?” she asks.

“None. I take the pictures.”

She shrugs and goes off with her mother while I keep taking photos with whatever phone gets put in my hand, watching out of the corner of my eye how the line moves forward and we’re still in the same spot. Meanwhile, I step about ten feet away from her so I’m not in the way and they can all fit in the frame. Noa stops smiling for a moment.

“We’ll have to push back the dinner reservation,” I murmur when the photos finally end.

“We’re not going up.”

“I already bought the tickets,” I protest.

“I know. They’re stapled.”