Why does the captain stop laughing?

The boys of Kothapalli played football every evening on the dusty ground behind the school, and every evening Lakshmi watched from the wall. She knew the rules better than most of them. She had learnt them from her cousin's old phone, watching matches with the sound turned down.

One day the team's goalkeeper fell ill just before a match against the next village. "Let me play," Lakshmi said. The captain laughed. Then he looked at the other boys, none of whom wanted to stand in goal, and stopped laughing.

"Fine," he said. "But if we lose, it's your fault."

The other team scored in the first five minutes. Lakshmi had dived the wrong way. She heard someone on the wall jeer, and her face burned. But she remembered something from the matches on the phone: good goalkeepers watched the hips of the player, not his eyes. After that she watched hips.

She saved a shot low to her left. She saved another with her fingertips. In the last minute she threw herself at the feet of their best striker and came up with the ball, her elbow bleeding.

Kothapalli won, two goals to one. Nobody carried Lakshmi on their shoulders. But the next evening, when she arrived at the ground, the captain did not look at the wall. He threw her the goalkeeper's gloves.