Naomi had a way of saying everything with a permanent smile, and it made Sacha bemused at first, irritated second, and the third time around she was willing to go along with whatever Naomi said. So when Naomi smiled and greeted the seven other players gathered upstairs in the indoor soccer centre, all of whom she seemed to know (though Sacha realised Naomi had greeted her as though she was a long-lost friend, too), and when she turned to Sacha and said "Looks like we've got more than enough, you happy to be on the bench?", the way she cocked her head and smiled and the way the lines of her exercised-tautened face pulled wide made Sacha drop her defences and gladly comply.

That, and Sacha was relieved not to have to jump in at the deep end. She managed to distract Naomi from her hugging of the other players to ask her: "Where do you want me to play?", and when Naomi repeated:

"On the bench",

Sacha repeated the question, unsure how else to phrase it.

At last Sacha managed to get Naomi, who seemed very excited about the whole thing - perhaps over-excited - to understand, and Naomi smiled, inevitably, and said "Oh gees Sacha, we'll figure that out later!" And she patted Sacha on the shoulder and cocked her head again, and Sacha had to wonder how much Naomi actually knew about indoor soccer. She was relieved, at least, to see that somebody else - a tall young man, who looked like he might have actually been an athlete of some kind in a previous stage of his life - step into goal. She didn't know the man's name: Naomi had been so taken up with greeting everyone that she'd forgotten to introduce Sacha. Sacha looked at the man and had to suppress a laugh, because with his white goalkeeper's gloves on he looked like a clown.

"Sacha!" Naomi called out. "Over here!"

Sacha jogged over to where Naomi now was. Nice to know she could jog, at least. "What's up?" she asked Naomi.

"This is where you have to stand" Naomi said, pointing to an area marked out by white tape stuck to the floorboards. "For the substitute bench."