Football Champ (17 page)

TROY MARVELED AT HOW
many people it took to run a TV studio. There were wires and monitors and desks everywhere, and people darted in and out all over the place with headsets and clipboards. He was taken down a hallway and into a white room filled with mirrors and lights and several barber chairs.

“Makeup,” his mom explained.

“For what?” Troy asked.

“You.”

Troy raised an eyebrow.

“It’s okay,” Seth said. “Welcome to TV. Everyone does it.”

“Man,” Troy said, shaking his head and hoping Nathan wouldn’t hear about it.

Someone sat him down in one chair and his mom in
another, since Larry King had asked that she be with him during the interview. Troy tried to stay still while one woman put makeup on his face and another messed around with his hair. A third patted his dark blue polo shirt with a piece of tape to remove the lint. Troy’s mom smirked at him.

“Part of what being famous is all about,” she said, winking at him in the mirror from her own chair.

“Man,” Troy said again, still shaking his head.

A young man led them halfway back down the hall and into a smaller room with a desk and chair facing two cameras. Behind it, the wall had been plastered with a photo of downtown Atlanta.

“We could be in Alaska for all everyone knows,” Troy said.

He and his mom sat behind the desk and two other people attached microphones to their collars, running the thin black cables up the backs of their shirts before plugging earbuds into their ears so they could hear Larry. A woman who said she was the stage manager told them they’d be able to see Larry on a TV monitor that she wheeled over to the side of the room.

“But don’t look at that when you’re talking,” she told Troy and his mom. “Just look right at the camera.”

His mom nodded. Troy gripped the edge of the desk, and his hands began to sweat. A different woman appeared from nowhere and set two bottles of water in front of them. Troy’s hands shook as he cracked the
cap. He gulped down some water to try to wet his dry mouth.

Before he knew it, Troy was hearing Larry King in his earbud. Troy mumbled hello to the booming but friendly voice, then listened to his mom talk as if she’d known Larry for years.

“You okay, Troy?” Larry asked.

“Yes,” Troy said, swallowing.

“Great,” Larry said, “we’ve got about four minutes, then I’ll be back with you.”

Troy’s earbud went quiet. Seth gave him a thumbs-up.

“Break a leg,” Seth said, then ducked out of the studio.

Troy looked at his mom. She reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze. He blinked at the spotlights and shielded his eyes.

“You okay?” his mom asked.

Troy nodded, wondering if, when Larry came back live and they were on TV across the entire world, he’d even be able to speak.

A sudden flurry of talking erupted in his earpiece. People began counting down, music blared, and Larry King’s voice boomed, welcoming everyone to his show.

“And tonight,” Larry said, “from CNN Center in Atlanta with his mom, Tessa, a boy whose mental abilities some say will change the balance of power in the NFL—a boy so extraordinarily brilliant that league
commissioner Roger Goodell, who’ll join us later from New York, at first suspected the Atlanta Falcons of a cheating scheme more elaborate than the New England Patriots infamous Spygate scandal. But that was before Goodell met and witnessed firsthand what this football genius can do. Troy White…”

Three red lights above the camera’s lens burned suddenly out at Troy while Larry kept talking.

Troy took a deep breath and heard Larry King say his name again, this time waiting for him to say something back.

THE TOWERING BANK OF LIGHTS
glared down onto the pristine grass field, muscling back the black of the night sky beyond. The concrete bowl of the Georgia Tech stadium seemed twenty stories high, and already several thousand fans filled the best seats.

“Man,” Nathan said, buckling his chinstrap, “I thought you were gonna choke on your tongue. Like a seizure or something.”

“Thanks a lot,” Troy said, scowling and putting his own helmet on.

“Your head’s not still buzzing, is it?” Nathan asked with a serious face.

“No,” Troy said, frowning. “My head feels fine. I looked that bad?”

“No. No one even noticed,” Tate said, tightening the belt on her football pants. “After that first—I don’t know, hiccup—you did great. You
sounded
like a football genius, and that Larry King is so nice.”

“Speaking of Larry King, it’s time for me to make my own TV debut,” Nathan said, pointing up at the press box, where cameras with Georgia Cable System stickers on their sides poked their noses down at the field. “When I score tonight, I got a dance that’ll make the highlights on ESPN.”

“How are you going to score?” Tate asked. “You’re a lineman.”

“Defense, my friend,” Nathan said, wagging his hips and throwing out a stiff arm. “You gotta visualize it to make it happen, and I see myself scooping up a fumble and going on a rumble.”

Tate shook her head and snorted.

“Hey, you gotta have a dream, Tate,” Nathan said, dropping his hands to his sides. “As a kicker, you might not know about that.”

“Forget about all that junk,” Troy said. “We’re a team, right? We all have to play our best tonight, every position. Let’s win this thing, right? Football champs.”

Troy held out a fist and Nathan and Tate pounded it with fists of their own, grunting in agreement.

When Seth blew his whistle, they jogged down under the shadow of the goalposts with the rest of the Duluth
Tigers. As they warmed up, Troy marveled at the size and speed of the Valdosta Vipers on the other end of the field, their green-and-white uniforms glowing like gems under the bright lights. Before long, cameras with stickers other than the GCS ones began to appear on the sidelines. Troy ignored them until Tate poked him in the arm.

“Did you see?” she asked. “FOX, ESPN, CBS, they’re all here. Can you believe it?”

“Here for the championship?” Troy said.

“No, meathead,” Tate said. “They’re here to see you.”

Troy looked over and saw that, in fact, the cameras were trained at him even as he spoke to Tate.

“Don’t even think about them,” Seth said, turning Troy and Tate around by the shoulder pads. “You’ve got to focus on the game. Those cameras can’t do anything to help us beat Valdosta. We need all you got, Troy.”

And that’s what Troy gave.

The Tigers received the ball first and he set the tone, changing plays at the line of scrimmage, directing his receivers, and completing his first ten passes to score the opening touchdown. On defense, it was more of the same. While the Vipers were bigger and faster, Troy was able to predict their plays after the first four. Even though the Tigers couldn’t keep Valdosta from scoring, they were able to sometimes hold them to a
field goal instead of a touchdown, and twice they even made the Vipers punt. So the game went—until the fourth quarter.

That’s when Troy got hurt.

TROY LAY UNDER A PILE
of Valdosta defenders, gripping his throwing hand. A sort of howling noise escaped his mouth through gritted teeth. As the artificial light began to appear through the big bodies of the Vipers, so did Troy’s mom and Seth.

“Let me see that,” Seth said, taking Troy’s right hand in his own.

Troy saw his mom’s face go pale. She grimaced and looked away.

Troy forced his eyes to look.

The pointer finger on his right hand, his throwing hand, stuck out sideways from the middle joint, making an upside-down L. Seeing it made the pain worse.

“We’ve got to get him to the hospital,” Troy’s mom said.

Seth glanced at the scoreboard, then at Troy. They were ahead 35–23. Just over eleven minutes remained.

“If he goes,” Seth said to Troy’s mom, “we’ll lose.”

“You’re ahead by twelve,” Troy’s mom said, “and he’s hurt.”

“We don’t have to score again,” Seth said, “so he won’t have to throw. But if we don’t have him on defense, calling the plays, this team could score forty or fifty points before it’s over.”

“I can’t risk his health,” Troy’s mom said.

Seth’s lower lip disappeared beneath his upper teeth. He bit down, then said, “It’s dislocated. If we tape it good, it can’t get any worse. I’ve done it plenty of times. Trust me.”

“Seth,” Troy’s mom said with a horrified expression, “he’s twelve years old. You’re in the NFL.”

“I want to, Mom,” Troy said, blurting out his words over the searing pain.

“I can snap it back in place,” Seth said, reaching for the finger.

“Oh my God,” Troy’s mom said. “We’re talking about a junior league football game.”

“I want to win, Mom,” Troy said.

“He’s a football player,” Seth said. “This is a championship, Tessa. I’ve only played in a championship once in my whole life, back in high school. You always think you’ll get another chance, but most people never do.”

“Mom, please,” Troy said. “I’m fine.”

“
That’s
not fine,” his mom said, pointing at the dislocated finger and averting her eyes.

“It will be,” Troy said. “Fix it, Seth.”

Seth looked at Troy’s mom. She threw her hands up in the air and began walking away.

“Fine,” she said.

Seth took Troy’s hand in one of his and grasped the end of his bent-over finger in the other.

“Don’t look,” Seth said.

TROY TRIED NOT TO
make a sound, but that proved impossible. What came out, though, was a grunt worthy of an NFL player. A sweat broke out on Troy’s face and he felt slightly nauseous, but when he looked down, the finger sat straight.

“Come on,” Seth said, helping him off. “We’ll tape it and you’ll be ready for defense.”

While Tate lined up to punt the ball, Seth bound Troy’s pointer finger to his middle finger with thick bands of tape. Then he wrapped all four of them into one bunch and anchored the whole mess down with strips of tape that circled Troy’s palm and wrist so that his arm resembled a seal’s flipper more than a boy’s hand. Troy took the field with the defense and did his best.

He got his players in the right position, but when it came to leading the charge and making the tackle, his hand made it tough. Not only did he feel a bolt of excruciating pain every time he hit a runner or a receiver, the tape made it much more difficult to wrap up a player and hang on. The Vipers managed to kick two field goals, closing the gap to six points.

Offense was even worse for Troy. He stayed in, telling Seth he could take the snap and hand the ball off better than his backup. He gutted it out, even though Duluth’s running game never gained more than three yards on a single play. There were just fifty-three seconds left when Valdosta’s halfback burst through a wave of Tigers’ tacklers and into the end zone to tie the score. The extra point went through, giving Valdosta a one-point lead and setting off an explosion of cheers from the Vipers fans.

Troy jogged to the sideline with the rest of his team and gathered around Seth.

“Do
not
give up,” Seth said, growling at them. “I see that look in your eyes. Well, don’t do it. Don’t you give up now.”

Troy felt the tears welling. His words sounded choked as they came out.

“But how are we going to score?” he said. “I can’t even throw a pass.”

“We’ll run and kick it,” Seth said. “Rusty, you get us past the fifty on the kickoff. You did that once already
tonight. Nathan, you and your hogs got to get us three and a half yards a carry—that’s it. You’ve done that before, too. Now you got to do it six times in a row, get us another twenty yards, and Tate can kick a field goal to win it. She’s done that before, and she’ll do it again.”

Everyone looked at Tate. Blood ran down from the bridge of her nose, cut after her helmet shifted from making a tackle on the last kickoff. Her eyes glittered back at them. She smiled past her mouthpiece and nodded her head.

“Bring it in,” Seth said, his words now filled with an electric current that ran through them all. “We don’t have to do anything we haven’t done before, right? We can do this. Champs on three. One. Two. Three.”

“CHAMPS!”

They broke the big huddle, and the kickoff return team took the field. Nathan lumbered to the middle of the formation and pointed at one of the Valdosta defenders, who was even bigger than he was.

“I got you, ninety-eight,” Nathan said.

Troy and Tate watched, and Nathan did get number ninety-eight. Rusty also got them the ball over the fifty-yard line on his return, all the way down to the Valdosta forty-six.

“Go get them,” Tate said, slapping Troy on the shoulder.

Troy jogged into the huddle and called a run play.

Three times in a row, they ran for more than three yards, giving them a first down and stopping the clock. The Tigers felt a surge of energy and confidence, but the Vipers were a great team, and the next two runs sputtered, leaving Duluth with a third down and eight yards to go. Only a pass could save them. Seth used their second-to-last time-out and ran onto the field, kneeling down in the huddle next to Troy and looking up at all of them.

“Let me try to throw it,” Troy said.

Seth smiled at him but shook his head. “You can’t do what you can’t do. We’ve got to run a sweep.”

“We haven’t run more than three and a half yards all day,” Troy said.

“Troy, you can’t throw it, not a spiral,” Seth said. “It’s impossible. We’ve got to try a sweep.”

“Unless,” Troy said.

“Unless what?” Seth asked.

“
WHAT IF I DON’T
throw a spiral?” Troy said. “What if I just lob it up? Heave it like a big rock?”

“What are you talking about?” Seth asked. “It’ll get intercepted and we’ll lose.”

“What if I throw it to someone they don’t expect me to throw it to?” Troy said, pointing at Nathan.

“What’d I do?” Nathan said, touching his chest as his mouth dropped open.

“We’ll show them our unbalanced formation to the right,” Troy said, “only instead of having a wide receiver to the backside, we’ll move all the receivers to the right side, too, and everyone will make it look like a sweep to the right. Then Nathan sneaks into the end zone and I throw it to him.”

“If Nathan’s the last man on the left side,” Seth said, “he’ll have to report in as an eligible receiver. Even though he’s big and slow as a turtle, they’ll cover him for sure.”

“A turtle?” Nathan said, scowling.

“He doesn’t have to report,” Troy said, shaking his head.

“He’s number ninety-nine,” Seth said, pointing at Nathan’s jersey. “That’s not an eligible number unless you report it to the referee.”

“It’s not eligible in the NFL,” Troy said, “but we play by high school rules, and anything between eighty and ninety-nine
is
eligible.”

“You sure?” Seth said, scratching his head.

Troy nodded. “That’s the rule. I know it.”

“And you think you can throw it that far?” Seth asked. “Even if no one is covering him? With that finger?”

Troy set his teeth and said, “It’s one pass. I can do it.”

Troy said, “If we make this look like a sweep to the right, trust me, the whole defense will be running that way. Nathan can fall down like he’s spastic, then sneak out to the left side and get downfield. He’ll be wide open. Can we do it?”

Seth bit back a smile, nodded, and said, “Well, you’re the football genius. I’m not betting against you. Nathan, think you can do it?”

“Do it?” Nathan said, his eyebrows disappearing
underneath the front pad of his helmet. “I may not be fast, but I got some slick moves. I can go spastic as good as anyone and then take this baby all the way to the house.”

“Don’t worry about the house,” Seth said, “just get us close enough for Tate to kick a field goal. And
catch
the ball.”

“With these sticky fingers?” Nathan said, holding up all ten digits, wiggling them, and splaying them wide. “How can I miss?”

Seth studied him for a second, then nodded at Troy and said, “Okay. Do it.”

Seth jogged off. The ref blew the whistle and Troy called the play, repeating for his teammates exactly what each had to do, how they had to line up, and locking eyes with each player to make sure he understood. Troy broke the huddle and they jogged up to the line. Nathan looked over at Troy and winked before getting into his stance. Troy called the cadence and took the snap, wincing in pain. He pivoted the same way he would on a power sweep and took off to the right along with the rest of the Tigers. As he ran, he saw Nathan from the corner of his eye, falling to the turf before slipping back the other way.

Troy kept his hands in the position he would use if he were running a quarterback sweep, pretending the ball was tucked under his arm and covering it with his free hand. He got as far to the right as he could before
he ran out of room. The Vipers’ defense swarmed him. He rocked back and heaved the ball sideways in the air, sending a jolt of agony through his mangled finger. Half a second later, they knocked him to the ground.

Troy wormed his way up through the pile of bodies in time to see Nathan holding the ball high in one hand and doing a backward jig that was the silliest thing Troy had ever seen. It didn’t matter, though.

Nathan was already in the end zone, under the lights.

The ref shot both hands straight up in the air.

Touchdown!

The clock on the scoreboard showed that time had run out. The game was over.