Payback Time (25 page)

Kimi got into Cornell, which isn't Princeton, but which is an Ivy League school, so she's happy. She says she wants to keep in touch and that maybe we could even visit each other over spring break.

I gained some weight back over Christmas, but since then I've been losing steadily, though slowly. I do my same run, across the footbridge to Magnolia. Every once in a while I veer off to Elmore Street. Whenever I run by Angel's house, I try to picture just where he disappeared to after the game, and what he's doing now. When my mind really gets going, I try to imagine what his entire future will be like. I've thought about it so much that I've actually worked it all out.

So here's Angel's life, according to me:

After the championship game, he and his cousin drive up to Canada. McNulty knows a coach up there, and Angel ends up with a football scholarship at the University of British Columbia. He has to take another new name, and he grows a goatee and shaves his head, but he's still the same phenomenal player on the field. He plays four years at middle linebacker at UBC, leading his team in tackles every year. After college, he's drafted in the second round by the Toronto Argonauts. He makes a bundle of money in the CFL, meets a French-speaking girl on the road, marries her, has two boys, and ends up living on a quiet, tree-lined street in Montreal.

Nobody from Philadelphia ever bothers him again.