A few of us, including me, were busy putting sunblock on when Gordo went around passing out pieces of torn-out notebook paper folded into small pieces. There were two papers with stars on them for whoever won team-captain duties and nine pieces of paper with either a “1” or a “2” on them, the deciding factor for which team each person ended up on. We’d already agreed in the bus that Eli and I would be on the same team, so I would choose a paper for the both of us.

That part of it went fine. There was no problem.

Julian ended up the captain of the “1” team and Freddy, the tour manager/sound guy or front of house, got the other piece of paper to command the “2” team.

Julian, Mason, Sacha, Bryce, Isaiah and Mateo were on team one.

Freddy, Carter, Gordo, Miles, Eli and I were on team two.

Still, no problem.

Then they decided they were going to go over ideas as to what the losing team had to do as their punishment. This wasn’t unusual, either; every time I’d played their stupid Soccer Death Match in the past, there had been some bet going on. It had always been something humiliating, so my standards weren’t too high. I was pretty much ready for something involving bare asses or being someone’s slave for a day.

And then Mason’s dumb-dumb-dumb-ass blurted out, “Losing team has to shave their heads.”

Uhh…

“YES!” I wasn’t sure who first yelled out their agreement, but I wish I had so I knew who to nut-punch.

“No!” I threw my arms out and looked around at the group of idiots who weren’t screaming at how dumb his idea was. “Are you shitting me?”

They weren’t.

Why almost all of them thought this would be an excellent punishment for the losing team was beyond me.

“Majority wins,” they said. Carter and I seemed to be the only people against it, and that was more than likely because we had the most hair out of everyone on tour by far. Everyone was so confident that the team they were on would win, they didn’t mind taking a risk.

All the boys were too scared to accidentally break a finger that it was decided there wouldn’t be goalkeepers on either team. Fine, all right.

We split up on opposite sides, team 1 deciding that they’d go shirtless so everyone would know who was on what team. I may have ogled the guys that were in great shape—Mason, Julian and Sacha—a little more than necessary, but I had no regrets. We started playing.

The first fifteen minutes were good. We were all being respectful of each other, happy kicking the ball back and forth as we jogged up and down the field. I exchanged smiles with a few of the guys on the other team as I tried to defend against them in case the soccer ball made its way over in their direction.

Good. Fine. It was going well.

Then Mason, who had played varsity soccer in high school, scored a goal for his team and it was like a small animal had been slaughtered off the coast of South Africa. The sharks came out to play and the aggressiveness on the field multiplied.

My resolution to win didn’t come out of nowhere. There was no way in hell my head was getting shaved, and I was going to do whatever I needed to do to make that happen. Apart from running track, I’d played two years of soccer in high school, plus on and off with these guys most of my life.

In the fifteen minutes after that initial friendly beginning, each player began hustling back and forth across the grass. When Sacha got ahold of the ball and it seemed like everyone else on my team had their fingers up their butts instead of trying to keep up, I started going after him to steal it away. His legs were longer than mine but apparently no one on my team knew what cardio was, and I got stuck chasing after him. Sacha started putting his hand in my face when I got too close, and I had to whack it out of the way each time he did it.