Harlan Coben: Fool Me Once

The flight lessons today would take place aboard a Cessna 172, a single-engine four-seater that just so happened to be the most successful aircraft in history. Teaching ends up being about hours in the air for the student. Maya’s job was often more “watch and see” than active instructions.

Flying, or just being in a cockpit when the plane was up in the air, was the equivalent of meditation for Maya. She could feel the bunched muscles in her shoulders loosen. No, it didn’t offer the rev or, let’s be honest, thrill of flying a UH-60 Black Hawk over Baghdad or being one of the first women to pilot a Boeing MH-6 Little Bird helicopter gunship. No one wanted to admit that awful high of combat, the adrenaline boost that some compared to narcotics. It was unseemly to “enjoy” combat, to feel that tingle, to realize that nothing else in your life would ever really approach it. That was the terrible secret you could never voice. Yes, war was horrible and no human being should ever have to experience it. Maya would have laid down her own life to make sure that it never came close to Lily. But the unspoken truth was a part of you jonesed for the danger. You didn’t want that. You didn’t like what it said about you. Liking it means you are prenatally violent or lack empathy or some such nonsense. But there was an addictive element to fear. At home, you live relatively calm, placid, mundane lives. You go over there and live in mortal fear, and then you’re supposed to come back home and be calm, placid, and mundane again. Human beings don’t work that way.

When she was in the air with a student, Maya always left her phone in her locker because she wanted no distractions. If there was an emergency, someone could radio up. But when she checked her messages during her lunch break, she saw a strange text from her nephew, Daniel.

Alexa doesn’t want you to go to her soccer game.

Maya dialed the number. Daniel answered on the first ring.

“Hello?” he said.

“What’s wrong?”

When Maya tapped Alexa’s soccer coach on the shoulder, the big man turned so quickly the whistle around his neck nearly slapped her across the face.

“What?” he shouted.

The coach — his name was Phil, and his daughter was an obnoxious bully named Patty — had been shouting and pacing and throwing tantrums pretty much nonstop the entire game. Maya had known drill sergeants who’d have considered his behavior over the top for hardened recruits, let alone twelve-year-old girls.

“I’m Maya Stern.”

“Oh, I know who you are, but” — Coach Phil gestured theatrically toward the field — “I’m in the middle of a game here. You should respect that, soldier.”

Soldier? “I have a quick question.”

“I got no time for questions now. See me after the game. All spectators need to be on the other side of the field.”

“League rules?”

“Exactly.”

Coach Phil dismissed Maya by turning so that his expansive back was now facing her. Maya didn’t move.

“It’s the second half,” Maya said.

“What?”

“League rules specify that you’re supposed to play each girl half the game,” Maya said. “It’s the second half. Three girls haven’t gotten in yet. Even if you put them in now for the rest of the game, it wouldn’t total half a game.”

Coach Phil’s shorts probably fit him okay twenty, thirty pounds ago. His red polo shirt with the word “Coach” stitched in script across the left breast was also snug enough to double as sausage casing. He had the look of an ex-jock gone to seed, which, Maya surmised, he probably was. He was big and intimidating, and his size probably scared people.

Keeping his back to her, Coach Phil said out of the corner of his mouth, “For your information, this is the semifinals of the league championship.”

“I know.”

“We’re only up by one goal.”

“I checked the league rules,” Maya said. “I don’t see an exception to the half-game rule. You also didn’t play all your players in the quarterfinals.”

He turned toward her and again faced her full-on. He adjusted the brim of his cap and moved into Maya’s personal space. She didn’t step back. During the first half, sitting with the parents and watching the guy’s constant tirades at both the girls and the refs, Maya had seen him slam-dunk that stupid cap onto the ground twice. He’d looked like a two-year-old midparoxysm.

“We wouldn’t even be in the semis,” Coach Phil said as though spitting glass, “if I played those girls last game.”

“Meaning you’d have lost because you followed the rules?”

Patty, Coach’s daughter, chuckled at that one. “Meaning they suck.”

“Okay, Patty, that’s enough. Go in for Amanda.”

Patty smirked her way toward the scorer’s table.

“Your daughter,” Maya said.

“What about her?”

“She picks on the other girls.”

He made a face of disgust. “Is that what your Alice told you?”

“Alexa,” she corrected. “And no.”

Daniel had told her.

He leaned in close enough for her to get a whiff of tuna salad. “Look, soldier—”

“Soldier?”

“You’re a soldier, right? Or you were?” He grinned. “Rumor has it you were a bit of a rule breaker yourself, no?”

Her fingers flexed and relaxed, flexed and relaxed.

“As a former soldier,” he continued, “you should get this, plain and simple.”

“How so?”

Coach Phil hoisted up his shorts. “This” — he gestured to the field — “is my battlefield. I’m the general, these are my soldiers. You wouldn’t put some dumb grunt behind the wheel of an F-16 or whatever, would you?”

Maya could actually feel the blood in her veins start to warm. “Just to be clear,” she said, somehow managing to keep her tone even, “are you equating this soccer game to the wars our soldiers fight in Afghanistan and Iraq?”

“You don’t see it?”

Flex, relax, flex, relax, flex, relax. Take nice even breaths.

“This is sports,” Coach Phil said, gesturing toward the field again. “Serious, competitive sports — and yes, that’s a bit like war. I don’t coddle these girls. I mean, this isn’t fifth grade anymore where everything is rainbows and sweetness. It’s sixth grade now. It’s the real world. You get my meaning?”

“The league rules on the website—”

He leaned in so that the brim of his cap touched the top of her head. “I don’t give a damn about what’s on the website. If you have a complaint, file an official grievance with the soccer board.”

“Of which you are president.”

Coach Phil gave her a big smile. “I have to coach my girls now. So buh-bye.” He gave her a toodle-oo finger wave and slowly turned back toward the field.

“You shouldn’t turn your back on me,” Maya said.

“What are you going to do about it?”

She shouldn’t. She knew that. She should just leave it alone. She should not make the situation worse for Alexa.

Flex, release, flex...

But even as such lofty ambitions swam through Maya’s mind, her hands had other ideas. Moving with lightning speed, Maya bent down, grabbed hold of his shorts, and — praying that he hadn’t gone commando — pulled them all the way to his ankles.

Several things happened in pretty short order.

There was a collective gasp from the crowd. The coach, sporting tighty-whities, also moved at lightning speed, bending down to pull his shorts up but tripping in the process. He tumbled to the ground.

Then came the laughter.

Maya waited.

Coach Phil quickly regained his balance. He jumped to a standing position, pulling up his shorts, and charged toward her. The red of both rage and embarrassment came off his face like a call girl’s beacon.