The Notice

The rec on a Saturday morning, with the game going. Nadia hurrying after the ball; Omar in goal between two hoodies on the grass.

The Saturday game on the rec was eight minutes old. The rec is the field where the game happens every Saturday at ten. Then the ball got past Omar in goal and rolled all the way down to the clubhouse at the far end.

Omar ran after it. He picked it up outside the clubhouse door, and then he yelled for Nadia, loud enough to stop the whole game. There was something on the door.

The clubhouse is an old shed. The balls and the nets used to live in it, back when the goals had nets. Now the goals are two hoodies on the grass. The door has had a padlock on it since Nadia was seven.

Everybody in the game went down to look, because Nadia went, and it is Nadia's game. On the way, Omar rolled the ball back to her, and she stopped it under her foot without even looking at it.

The clubhouse door at the far end of the rec. Ruby side on at the door, reading the notice out loud, a little in front of the others; all of them turned toward it. Nadia with her eyebrows up and her mouth open; Omar turned toward Ruby; Dara watching; Priya beside them, saying nothing.

On the door was a notice, which is a printed sheet put up so that everybody will read it. Omar was already at the door, but of everybody who came down after him, Ruby got there first. She has been in their class since Easter, and this was her first Saturday at the game. She read it out loud.

Ruby: The council will decide by the summer fair whether the clubhouse is to be taken down. The roof is not safe, and the building has not been used for four years.

The council is the group of people who run the town. They own the rec, and the clubhouse on it. It turns out they also own the door, and whatever gets taped to it.

Nadia: At the fair. They're deciding at the fair.

Ruby: The roof part's true. My mom wrote the report. She did the survey. That's where you check a whole building and write down everything that's wrong with it.

For a while, nobody said anything to Ruby. The quiet went on a bit too long. Priya looked at Ruby's face, and then at Nadia's, and said nothing either. Nadia noticed that nobody was talking to Ruby. Then she noticed that she was not talking to Ruby either.

A tall boy, Gus, hurrying across the grass with a clipboard, his mouth shut tight; Dara watching him come; Nadia with her eyebrows up and a ball at her feet; Jonah beside them, half smiling; Ruby side on at the edge of the picture, apart from everybody.

That was when the tall boy came across the grass from the road, walking fast, with a clipboard under his arm.

Dara: That's Gus Lyle.

Nobody asked Dara how she knew. Gus is sixteen. He had seen the notice on Thursday, when he walked past, and now he had come back with a clipboard. He did not say hello.

Gus: Okay. Who's here? Names.

Jonah gave his name first, and said he was the top scorer, in case Gus wanted to write that down too. Gus wrote down Jonah's name and nothing else.

It took Gus about ten minutes. By the time they had all walked back up the field there was a sign-in sheet, which is a list of everybody's names with the date at the top. There was a job chart, which is a list of jobs with a name beside each one. A few of the jobs were for the game, like who brings the ball and whose hoodies make the goal. Most of them were for the clubhouse, for the day it got opened: sweeping it out, carrying things, and cleaning it up so the council could see that kids would use it. And Gus had written out fixed teams, the same every week, though nobody had said yes to that part yet.

Back up the field. Gus, sixteen and a head taller than anyone else there, holding a clipboard, his eyebrows pulled down hard; Nadia facing him with her arms folded and a ball at her feet; Jonah and Omar on his other side, Jonah half smiling and Omar turned to Gus, his face open; Dara a little way back, watching him; Ruby side on at the edge of the picture, apart from everybody.

When Jonah asked why the teams had to be the same every week, Gus said the council needs to see numbers. When Omar asked what a job chart was, Gus said the council needs to see numbers, which did not answer Omar at all. Nearly everybody put their name down for a job anyway, Omar too. That clubhouse was where the balls and the nets used to be kept. If it was saved, maybe the goals could have nets again, instead of hoodies.

Ruby was the last name he asked for. She spelled it for him, R-U-B-Y, C-O-L-E, and went back to where she had been standing, a little way off from everybody.

Nadia has run this game since she was seven. That is four years of picking the teams, and remembering what everybody agreed last week, and saying so when something is not fair. And now the list is in somebody else's hand.

Gus: They say nobody's used it for four years. I know exactly how long.

He said it to the clipboard more than to anybody. Dara was watching him.

What happened first?

How is Gus feeling?

What shows it?

Just the two of them. Gus holding the clipboard, his eyebrows pulled down hard; Nadia facing him with her arms folded and the ball at her feet.

Look at Nadia's face and Gus's again. Nadia's is aimed at Gus. That is what angry looks like: it is at somebody. Gus is not mad at anybody on this field. He is stuck on one sentence in a report, and he keeps pushing at it, the way you keep pushing a door that says pull.

A sixteen-year-old does not usually turn up at a pickup game run by a fifth grader. Gus has not kicked the ball once. He has not asked which team he is on. He is not here for the game. He is here for the clubhouse, and he has not said why. Whatever this is, it will soon have a name: the campaign to save the clubhouse.

And Nadia. She had the ball under her foot when he arrived. She still has it.

What does Nadia want here?

What does Nadia do next?

Choice: It's our game. You can help.

Gus stops writing. For a long second nobody says anything. Nadia keeps her foot on the ball and does not look away.

Gus: Fine. Your list, then.

Nadia holding the clipboard, half smiling, the ball at her feet; Gus beside her with empty hands, his mouth shut tight.

He hands her the clipboard. Then he takes it back for a moment, to tuck his job chart in behind the sign-in sheet, and hands it over again.

Nadia picks the teams the way she has picked them for four years, and the game starts again. Gus does not play. He walks down to the far end and looks at the clubhouse door for a long time, as if it might do something.

From the next Saturday on, the sign-in sheet is in Nadia's writing. Gus comes every week anyway.

Keeping the list turns out to be a job. By the third Saturday, most people who are going to miss a game tell Nadia first, and some of them take a very long time explaining why. She did not ask for that part. It came with the clipboard.

Choice: What's the sign-in sheet actually for?

Gus turned toward Nadia with the clipboard, his face open, explaining; Nadia listening, her head on one side.

Gus: The report says nobody uses it. Four years. If I get thirty names down every Saturday, the council can see thirty kids who'll use it the day it's open again.

It is a good answer. Nadia can tell it is a good answer, which is annoying, because she had been hoping for a bad one.

Nadia: Then you do the list. I'll do the teams.

She lets him keep the clipboard, and she means to. It is not being taken. She is handing it over, on purpose, for a reason she can say out loud. The game starts again with her teams.

By the next Saturday, it is Gus's club. People walk up to the clipboard to sign in, and the clipboard is Gus's, so it is Gus they ask about it. Nadia still calls the teams, same as she always has, and when the game is over, Gus unclips that week's sign-in sheet and gives it to her to keep, because she is the one who keeps track. But nobody looks for her at the clipboard anymore. Nadia chose that, for a good reason. Choosing it did not make it cost less.

Choice: Say nothing. Let him get on with it.

Nadia by the goal with the ball under her arm, her mouth shut tight; Omar next to her; Gus holding the clipboard.

Nadia does not say anything. She picks up the ball and walks over to Omar's goal, and stands next to one of the hoodies with the ball under her arm.

The clipboard goes around without her. Somebody asks her which team they are on, and she shrugs, so they go and ask Gus. By ten thirty Gus is reading the teams out loud, and the game starts again without anybody asking Nadia anything.

Nobody took the game away from her. She watched it go. That is a different thing, and it is not a smaller one.

By the next Saturday, it is Gus's club, and the clipboard is Gus's. People still ask Nadia for the teams, out of habit, so she picks them again. When the game is over, Gus unclips that week's sign-in sheet and gives it to her to keep, like a job left over. None of it is the same as the game being hers.

Kit side on at the edge of the picture, watching the field; Dara turned toward him, half smiling; Jonah and Omar between them, Jonah half smiling and Omar thinking.

At the end of the morning of the notice, the two hoodies come up off the grass, and their owners put them back on. There is a sign-in sheet on the clipboard now -- there had been none when the game started at ten. Gus wrote the date at the top, and Ruby's name is the last one on it.

Jonah wants to know what the score was before the notice, and he cannot remember. Neither can Omar, and he was in goal. But Kit can. Kit is Dara's best friend, and he has watched all of it from the edge.

Dara: Ask the Lookout. He's got the score.

Kit: Two to one.

The Lookout is Dara's name for him, because, Dara says, Kit sees everything from out there. Kit does not mind it. Not yet.

Gus standing, ready to go; Dara turned toward him, her mouth shut tight; Ruby side on, a little way off from both of them.

Gus: Tuesday. I'll get it opened.

Ruby: You can't just open it. There's a padlock. It's in the report.

Gus: I know. I'll ask Mrs. Talbot.

Mrs. Talbot runs the after-school program on Tuesdays. She is the one who can open the padlock.

Ruby had said it without looking at anybody. Dara is looking at Gus, and she keeps looking until he has gone.

Nobody on this field under sixteen has been inside the clubhouse in four years. Kit and Ruby have never been inside it at all. Tuesday is three days away.