Rex laced up his cleats — left, right, double-knot — and stomped out onto the pitch. The grass was cool and damp under his feet. The stadium smelled of mud and popcorn. Tonight was the Big Match, and Rex was READY.
Except the ball net was flat. Empty. Saggy as a deflated balloon. Rex blinked. He looked left. He looked right. He got down as low as a T-rex can get, which is not very low. No ball. GONE gone.
Stomp, stomp, STOMP. Rex circled the whole field twice, tiny arms waggling at the sky. Then he stopped. Up on the roof of the equipment shed, something white and black caught the last of the sunset. The ball. On the ROOF. Rex stretched up his arms — his tiny, short, famously unhelpful arms — and waggled them uselessly. Not even close.
Stomp, stomp, STOMP. Someone needed recruiting. Rex set off around the stadium at full speed, cleats clicking on the concrete path, breath huffing in small clouds in the cool evening air.
He found Petra the Pterodactyl under the bleachers, sitting very close to the ground and eating a sandwich. "I don't do heights," she said, before Rex even opened his mouth. Her sandwich had pickle on it. She clutched it tighter. "Not discussing it."
He found Stompy the Stegosaurus by the corner flag, enthusiastically solving a problem nobody had asked him to solve. He had already neatly flattened the referee's table, two orange cones, and a bag of spare shin-pads with one cheerful wag of his tail. "HELPING," Stompy announced proudly, tail still swishing.
Stomp, stomp, STOMP. Rex led them both back to the shed. The ball glinted on the roof, small and smug. Stompy immediately swung his tail at the shed wall. BONK. The shed shook. The ball did not move. "Solved it," said Stompy. He had solved nothing.
Rex turned to Petra. She was staring at the roof like it had personally insulted her. "It's very high," she whispered. Rex thought for exactly one second. "Petra," he said, very seriously, "that roof is basically just the ground. But upside down."
Petra's eyes went enormous. She tilted her head. She looked at the roof. She looked at the ground. "Upside-down ground," she repeated slowly. Rex nodded, keeping his face completely straight.
Petra spread her wings. She took one enormous breath that made her whole body puff up like a balloon.
She fluttered up, eyes squeezed completely shut, beak pointed forward, wings beating so fast they hummed. She nudged the ball with one wingtip — just barely — and then dropped back down and pressed herself flat against the actual ground, trembling.
The ball rolled to the edge of the roof. It tipped. It bounced — boing, boing — off the drainpipe, off Stompy's back plate with a magnificent CLONK, and landed with a perfect little spin directly on the penalty spot.
Nobody spoke for one whole second. Then Rex scooped the ball up — with his foot, obviously — and the match kicked off just as the other team jogged through the gate.
Rex scored the winning goal in the last minute, off a ricochet from Stompy's tail that went sideways, backwards, and somehow into the net anyway. The final whistle blew.
Then all three of them belly-flopped onto the cool grass at once. Cleats pointing up at the sky. Too tired to even shout. The stadium lights flickered on, one by one, and the first stars appeared above the empty stands, tiny and bright and very, very still.
