Deadwood (19 page)

The offense squared off at the line of scrimmage, Nick's black helmet looming above the shoulder pads of his teammates. Lo-B threatened to score again, just inside the Radnor twenty-yard line. The roar of the crowd really sounded like thunder now. Nick took the snap, dropped back, and pumped his arm, looking for a receiver. A Radnor tackle broke through the line. Nick scrambled, then the tackle was on him, and three more big bodies piled on.

When the red shirts peeled off, Nick didn't get up. Hannah's stomach seized again, and she felt as if she would fall.

The trainers jogged out, but this time they followed Head Coach Schmidt, his face red and cheeks puffy. Hannah felt as if she was watching a replay of the scene when Chase was injured, except that this time more was at stake. This time, the injured player was her brother. The tears that had threatened when Jake announced the tree's fate had dried up, and Hannah felt a cold wind blow over the wide parking lot.

Head Coach Schmidt's gravely voice rose above the crowd. “Get up, get up, get up, you pansy!”

Then Hannah heard an odd, strangled cry within the circle of players, followed by a panicked scuffle, but she couldn't see beyond the solid wall of shoulder pads.
That yell didn't come from Nick
. At first the thought relieved her, and then she was even more worried. What was happening?

After a few minutes, EMTs brought out a stretcher, staggering under its weight. The bulky figure on the pallet wasn't Nick. It was Head Coach Schmidt, clutching his chest. The EMTs loaded him into the ambulance, turned on the lights, rolled across the field, and burned out of the parking lot. A trainer and Jake each put an arm around Nick, helping him to the bench. The players followed as a grim entourage. A trainer flashed a light in Nick's eyes, and Nick tried to wave him off.

Hannah clambered down the bleachers, pressing her way to the edge of the track. She put one hand on Martin's shoulder to balance as she stood on her tiptoes, but she could see less than before. After a few agonizing moments, A.J. found her. He wrapped his arms around her, and she felt very small, leaning against her brother as he filled her in on what had happened.

Head Coach Schmidt had probably had a heart attack, and Nick was out with a suspected concussion. Their parents would accompany him to the hospital for evaluation.

“Nick got his bell rung pretty good,” A.J. said, keeping an arm around Hannah's shoulder. She realized she must look pretty shaken. “They take these things seriously these days, but it's just part of the game. Nothing worse than the hits I took to the head, and I'm still a super genius.”

She smiled wanly.

“I'll take you home,” he said. “Martin, too.”

Hannah let A.J. steer her toward the players' entrance. The crowd opened up for him, and Hannah felt herself being eyed by them. She lifted her head so her ponytail swung behind, grateful that they wouldn't have to walk by Waverly and Libby. Then she heard the crowd shout at a completed pass, and took a last look at the field. The game continued under Assistant Coach Jake Laughlin and the backup quarterback, as if Nick had never been there.

But not exactly. Hannah stared at the turf. In the middle of field were two more dead brown patches. And the grass under Jake's feet glowed greener than before.

Light flared behind him, bright as lightning. The broken scoreboard had blazed to life, every bulb burning. No one but Hannah seemed to notice, not even Martin. She craned her neck to look behind her, stumbling as A.J. guided her forward. The scoreboard clock raced backwards, a hundred times faster than real time, and Hannah felt panic rising in her throat as the numbers ticked away. The clock counted down to zero, then blinked out.

The scoreboard was black and silent, the traces etched on Hannah's retinas the only sign that it had ever been lit. Time was running out. The message was clear, but was it a warning or a threat? Was there even a difference? Hannah and Martin were failing. They had already failed Nick.

Later at home, Hannah heard that the Black Squirrels had won—their first win in two seasons, and their first defeat of Radnor since Jake had been the captain.

27

Wrong Mon

H
annah didn't talk much on the ride home, and Martin couldn't blame her. The tree was going to be dismembered and sold off as trophies. Waverly had gone over to the dark side, Nick had gotten hurt, and Jake Laughlin was a part of it.

Still, Martin couldn't blame A.J. for trying to lighten the mood—he seemed like a pretty good guy. Plus, it was clear he hated Jake just as much as they did—a big plus in his favor.

“I don't know how Jake did it,” A.J. said. “Not about how the stadium deal happened—we've needed a new one for the past fifteen years. You saw what happened to that old scoreboard.” Hannah lifted her head for a moment, then put it down. “The field is worse. It's a miracle anybody can rush five yards without turning an ankle. And Nick's concussion? No surprise—I swear there's cement under that grass. You wouldn't believe the bruises we logged, even during no-contact drills.”

“So? What's so amazing about that?” Martin said, interrupting since Hannah clearly wasn't going to say anything. “Jake the Snake—isn't that what the guys used to call him back in the day? So he's slimy. Big surprise.”

“Snakes aren't really slimy,” Hannah said without looking up.

“Whatever,” A.J. said. “They called him that because he could slip a tackle like he had no bones. Plus, it rhymed.” He shrugged.

“Snakes are vertebrates. They have bones,” said Hannah.

“Thanks, Dr. Doolittle,” A.J. said, giving his sister a shove with his elbow. “But I'm not surprised he's underhanded. I'm shocked ‘cause I would've thought something this big was way beyond him.”

“You mean beneath him,” Hannah said. She sounded as if she wanted to say more, and Martin worried that she'd spill the whole Spirit Tree story.

A.J. shook his head. “Nah. He's pretty greedy. I can believe he'd chop up the tree to make a few bucks—he cuts corners and pads invoices whenever he gets a chance. But how did he get the superintendent, much less Head Coach Schmidt, to let
him
make that announcement?”

“What do you mean?” Martin asked.

“Dad works for the township,” A.J. said. “You should hear the stories he tells. But if there's one thing he taught us, it's that the guys at the top take credit for anything good and lay blame for anything bad.”

“Mud flows downhill,” Martin said. It was just like his mom always said.

“You got it. But announcing a new stadium at a football game? How did some nobody landscaper-slash-assistant-coach get that task? Why didn't someone else take the mic?”

“Maybe Jake had the best suit,” Martin said, joking. He looked at Hannah, hoping she would smile, but she had closed her eyes and showed no sign that she'd heard him. “At Junior Junior Executives of Tomorrow, they say to dress for the job you want, not the job you have.”

“Is that right?” A.J. said. “I wonder how I'd look mowing lawns in a spacesuit. I used to want to be an astronaut.”

Hannah spoke up, sounding annoyed. “Maybe they picked Jake to be symbolic. I'm surprised he didn't come out wearing football gear—he always wants everyone to know that he was the last quarterback to win a state championship for Lo-B.”

A.J. laughed. “Well,
pro
quarterback was the job he wanted back then. Me, too, if I'm honest, but it didn't work out for either of us. Neither of us even played college ball.”

“If he was so good his senior year, why not?” Martin said. A.J. took his eyes off the road to shoot Martin a wrathful look. “I'm sure you were good, too,” he added quickly.

“I was good. But you're wrong about one thing. Neither Jake nor I won a single game our senior year, but at least I got to play.”

“Wait a minute,” Martin said, confused. “How'd he win the championship if he didn't play?”

“The championship was his junior year. To hear him tell it, college scouts were all over him during senior preseason. Wouldn't leave him alone—Penn State, Ohio State, Notre Dame. Then old Jake tore his ACL during his senior home opener. Never got to play again—no more wins, no scholarship. No college, either. He's been cutting lawns ever since, and hating every minute of it.”

Hannah said in a hoarse whisper, “What year was that?”

“He was the class of '90, so the fall season was actually 1989. The championship was '88, then the next year Lower Brynwood lost every game. Hasn't had a winning season since.”

Hannah and Martin exchanged wide-eyed looks. The curse began in 1989. That meant Jake the Snake Laughlin was injured just days after the first Spirit Tree ceremony. He hadn't benefited at all—he was one of the first victims. Whether the bad one had set the curse for revenge or to gain, Jake didn't fit. He might be a bad guy, all right, but he wasn't the person they were looking for.

Martin looked out the window at the trees that lined the streets. The skeletal black shapes rushed by. Hannah and Martin were nearly out of time, and whoever had cursed the Spirit Tree was still out there.

Hannah's brother probably thought she'd cry as soon as she shut her attic door, but she felt more like yelling. She might not know how to fix her hair or pick out shoes, but her brothers had always teased her for acting like a girl—emotional, vain. Silly. And sure, she wore lip gloss and liked furry little animals, but she had always prided herself on being logical. More logical than Nick and A.J., anyway.

But when it came to the Spirit Tree, she had completely lost it. But how could a person think logically when she was talking to a tree? Her mind really had been blown. No matter how much she tried to find scientific justification, she just had to accept what her senses told her and go along. And Martin might think they were living in
Dragon Era
Marlicia, but he was the one that kept trying to pull her back from jumping from one half-baked assumption to another.

But that was no excuse for other lapses. It was written right in the notebook:
Forever young, 9/15/89
. How could she forget that school sessions span two calendar years? So a curse that started in the fall of 1989 would affect the graduating class of 1990, not the class of 1989.

She restrained herself from throwing Dr. Wiggins's yearbook across the room. She would hate to disappoint him by destroying his book in a tantrum.

Speaking of disappointing, Waverly had sure done it. Disappointment was too weak a word—betrayal was more like it. She and Libby were working with Jake. While he might not have actually cursed the Spirit Tree, now he was trying to usher in its doom, and for what? Money. Filthy money. Greed.

She picked up her phone—five messages from Waverly. She couldn't bring herself to read them, but she didn't delete them, either. Instead, she reread the message from her parents. Her mom had texted that Nick was alert and seemed fine, but that the hospital was keeping him overnight for observation. The Vaughan parents were sleeping over, too.

She had run downstairs and nearly hugged A.J. out of relief, but A.J. had brushed her off.

“Of course Nick will be okay, Banana,” he said. “The real question is whether the coach will let him start after a head injury. If he doesn't play, he can kiss that scholarship goodbye.”

She remembered Head Coach Schmidt's heart attack, which hadn't affected her nearly as much as what was happening with Nick, the tree, or even Waverly. She should have asked how he was, but instead she said, “Coach Schmidt? Is he going to be back in action so soon?”

“Not Coach Schmidt. He's alive and stable for now, but he's not going to be coaching for a while. I meant Coach Laughlin,” A.J. said miserably. “Good old Jakey is the acting head coach now. I guess he got the job he wanted, after all. Must have been the suit.”

Hannah opened the yearbook and flipped to the junior class. There was young Jake Laughlin—so smug, like he ruled the universe. He had no idea all his plans were going to be dust in a few months.

Nick had a chance to win this season. Heck, he hadn't finished the game tonight, but his arm had earned those touchdowns. He deserved the credit for the win. But would Jake let history repeat itself and keep Nick off the squad, or would he let him play and win? She wasn't sure which would be better. Nick would want to play. But why bother going to college if he ended up brain-damaged to get there? The price was too high.

The landline rang. Hannah raced to the phone next to the computer, but paused before answering—Waverly? Bad news from Mom?

“Are you all right?” Martin didn't identify himself, but Hannah would recognize his voice anywhere, even though he had never called her before. She felt a quiver at the back of her throat and realized how glad she was to hear from him.

“Been better,” she said. “But Nick's doing okay. And the coach is probably going to be all right, too.”