Perfect Season (13 page)
Authors: Tim Green
THE CROWD ROARED.
Troy hit the turf and bounced like a toy. Pain shot through his shoulder.
Big Nick Lee lifted Troy to his feet. Troy winced, but bottled up a gasp.
“You good?” Big Nick Lee grinned and sweat glazed his swollen cheeks.
“Good,” Troy said. It was his left shoulder. He didn't need it to throw. He only had to stand the pain.
The other linemen swarmed him, pounding his back so that they propelled him down the field toward where Chuku stood in the end zone with his arms outstretched. The excitement helped Troy push the pain to the back of his mind. It was his first varsity touchdown.
“You got lucky on that one, punk!” a Lawton defender shouted.
The right defensive end tried to get in front of Troy. “You're going down, junior. You won't make it through this game.”
Big Nick Lee shoved the defender, who shoved him back until a referee stepped between them both. Troy soaked up the cheers. Chuku hugged him and they both jogged off to the sideline. Seth wrapped his arms around Troy and lifted him off his feet. Troy winced.
“You okay?” Seth wore a look of concern.
Troy nodded. “Banged my shoulder. I'm fine.”
“Maybe have Emily Lou look at it. Ms. McLean!” Seth waved the trainer over, then turned away to focus on the field.
Ms. McLean asked Troy what happened.
“When they threw me down.” Troy pointed to his shoulder.
Ms. McLean felt up under his shoulder pad.
“Ah!” Troy flinched.
The trainer nodded and put him through a series of tests in which she asked him to hold out his arm and resist her pushing it one way or another. Sometimes he could hold strong. Other things made his arm flop like a dead fish and he growled in pain.
“I think it's a slight shoulder strain,” the trainer said.
“Slight?” Panic chocked Troy. It didn't feel slight. “What does that mean?”
She shrugged. “It's your AC joint. There's nothing you can do. If you can take the pain, you can play. It's not a separation or anything. It won't get any worse.”
Troy heaved a sigh of relief.
“It's gonna hurt, though.”
“I'm okay,” he said.
“It's probably gonna get worse before it gets better.”
Troy nodded that he understood. He was playing with the big kids now, the men. He knew what he had to do. He thanked the trainer and walked away.
The Summit kicking team missed the extra point and the crowd went flat. Troy grabbed a cup of Gatorade and found himself standing next to Seth on the sideline. It was time to play defense. Summit kicked off. The ball landed short. A Lawton player returned it, and ended up close to the fifty. Troy watched the Lawton offense take the field. He knew Seth would love it if he could read the offense and tell him the plays.
He watched Lawton and tried to absorb the personnel grouping they sent onto the field. It looked like two tight ends and two backs. He watched as they ran the ball off-tackle for seven yards.
“You gotta fill that, Reed!” Seth shouted at the top of his lungs.
Troy felt only the smallest of pleasures, even though Reed got yelled at good. The Summit defense needed to hold. If they did, it would take some pressure off him and the rest of the offense.
Down the field Lawton drove the ball, running left, right, and center. They threw one pass, a short crossing route that Reed broke up and could have intercepted.
“His hands stink.” Troy meant to say it to himself, but Seth heard.
“That was a tough catch,” Seth said. “Hey, I see that look in your eye. You got anything for me?”
TROY LOOKED OUT AT
the field. His shoulder throbbed with pain.
He willed his football genius to kick in so he could figure out what Lawton would do next. They came to the line and ran a sweep to the weak side.
Nothing. Troy saw nothing. He probed his shoulder, wondering how it would hold up in the game, then realized that Seth was looking at him.
Troy huffed. “It takes time sometimes. I'll let you know.”
Part of him was annoyed with Seth for pestering him. He was the quarterback. He just threw a touchdown pass. Wasn't that enough? Why should he have to read the other team's offense for them to win? Let Reed and Tomkins earn their keep.
And still, he tried.
But nothing happened. Whether it was the pain in his shoulder or the frustration, Troy just didn't feel it. He didn't see it. Nothing happened, and after a couple of series, he shut it down, refusing to waste his energy and focus on
that.
He was a player. He needed to play, and that's what he did. He threw. He ran. He ducked and dodged and made things happen like an All-American.
The problem was that for every score Troy engineered, Lawton returned the favor. It was a back-and-forth game, with both offenses having a field day.
The one thing Troy's team did better at was extra points. After Summit missed the first kick, Seth chose to go for two after every touchdown that followed. Troy completed passes on five of the next six extra-point tries, earning two points instead of the one they'd get for a kick. Late in the fourth quarter, Summit had a 52â48 lead. But with seventeen seconds left, Lawton scored a touchdown to make it 54â52. Instead of kicking the extra point, Lawton went for their own two-point conversion. Lawton's big fullback carried the ball up the middle, plowing right over the top of Grant Reed and giving Lawton a four-point lead, so that a Summit field goal wouldn't be enough. Troy would need a touchdown to win.
Seth grabbed Troy's face mask and pulled him close. “You got to do this. This is it. It all starts here, Troy. We can win this thing.
You
can win it.”
The ache in his shoulder didn't mean anything to him now. It hadn't gotten better, but it wasn't any worse. Coach Sindoni handed Troy a flash card. It had three plays scribbled on it.
“Stick it in your pants,” Coach Sindoni said. “Three plays. Use them all. We're not going for the end zone right away. They won't expect us to work our way down the field. They'll leave the underneath stuff open, and if we execute it right, we can do it. Tell Levi to get out of bounds, then use our last time-out after the Y seam.”
Troy took the card, looked at the plays, and stuffed it into the waistband of his pants. He bumped fists with his coaches and jogged out onto the field. In the huddle, he told Levi to make sure he got out of bounds at the end of the play to stop the clock so they could huddle before the second play.
“You don't get out of bounds, we lose.” Troy held Levi in his gaze before he called out the play to the others.
At the line of scrimmage, the Lawton noseguard snarled up at him. “You're dead meat, little boy. Totally dead.”
“You're the meat,” Nick Lee growled as he gripped the football. “Hamburger brains.”
Troy barked out the cadence, took the snap, dropped three steps, and fired. Levi did a quick out, caught the ball, and surged up the sideline for seventeen more yards before getting out of bounds. The crowd loved it. Troy didn't have time to celebrate. He gathered his guys in the huddle and called the second play. During the game, Summit's only running back, Jentry Hood, had scored two touchdowns, but Troy had thrown for the other five and he could see in his teammates' eyes that they believed in him.
“Spencer, we got one time-out,” Troy said. “I'm going to hit you right away, then you get up that seam as far as you can. We'll call time-out and still have time for two more plays. Green Ghost Twenty-Two Y Seam, on two. Ready . . .”
“BREAK!”
Troy took the snap, fired the pass, and Spencer got them twenty yards. Troy called a quick time-out. They were on Lawton's twenty-seven-yard line. Two seconds remained on the clock.
In the huddle, his offensive linemen were gasping for air. They were tired, and they'd begun to break down in the fourth quarter, letting the defense swarm him so that he'd been sacked three times. Normally, Troy wouldn't have needed to look at the card, but with so much at stake he didn't trust his memory. He tugged the card free from his pants, glanced at the final play, then looked up at his line and saw the hunger in their eyes.
“Give me time, guys. I need time, or it won't work.” Troy took a gulp of air. “Chuku, you get deep, then come back. I'm putting this thing on your back shoulder in the corner of the end zone. Just be there. Trips Right, Roll Right, Seven Twenty-Nine Comeback, on one. Ready . . .”
They broke the huddle with a roar. At the line, the Lawton noseguard was huffing and puffing and too tired to threaten Troy. Troy took the snap and rolled right. Levi and Spencer broke to the inside. Chuku burst upfield toward the deep zone. Troy rolled right, into the open space. His line battled the Lawton defenders with grunts and bellows of rage. Pads crashed. Sweat sprayed into the air in great gusts.
From the corner of his eye, Troy saw the middle linebacker streaking toward him, blitzing up through the middle of the line, untouched by a blocker. He needed time, but he wasn't going to get it. Chuku was only halfway to the end zone. It was impossible. He couldn't throw the pass. It was just too soon.
In the instant before the linebacker hit him, Troy saw it all in his mind. He saw the glory of a championship: newspaper articles, TV interviews, admiring faces in the hallways at school, melting into a muddle of disappointment and ridicule. Yes, they'd mock him now. That's how it worked.
It burned.
The linebacker hit him so hard, the impact lifted him up and spun him around.
There was nothingâand no oneâto break his fall.
TROY HAD NO IDEA
how
he did it.
He just did it.
His hand broke the fall and the shock of pain in his shoulder flashed like lightning in his brain. Still, the momentum whipped his legs into a cartwheel, so that one foot landed and the other swung around and left him facing the opposite way. He spun, cranking his hips around, and saw more defenders surging toward him. His eyes found Chuku, right where he should be. Troy set his feet and fired the ball.
As they'd practiced time and again for the past several weeks, Chuku broke back at the last instant and snatched the ball.
Touchdown.
Game over.
Big Nick Lee bear-hugged Troy, lifting him off his feet. The rest of the line raised him up and they carried him to the end zone, where they picked up Chuku, too, dancing and cheering, laughing and crying.
It felt like something special.
It felt like it was just the beginning.
ADVIL AND EXCITEMENT MADE
Troy forget about his pain. His first win as a
varsity
quarterback lifted him like a magic carpet. Cheering and backslapping and laughter carried him through a night that ended with a dozen teammates, parents, and coaches crowded around the TV in Troy's living room to watch high school football highlights and interviews on the eleven o'clock news. Troy and Chuku stood close as they watched, jostling each other and kidding about who looked better on TV.
Even Chuku's dad beamed with pride at the sight of his son and Troy connecting on touchdown pass after touchdown pass. When the highlights ended, the sports announcer's face came back on with a big picture of Chuku frozen in laughter on the screen behind the announcer's desk.
“And get this,” the announcer said. “When I asked Chuku Moore if he had a nickname, he told me he and his friend quarterback Troy White are the Killer Kombo, combo with a
k
.”
The news anchor, a pretty, dark-haired woman who sat beside him, had a laugh before they went to a commercial. Everyone around the living room cheered. Troy blushed, but Chuku ate it with a spoon.
When the excitement waned, Troy took out his phone and texted Tate in San Diego. He wanted to share the joy of the evening, and also to ask about her dad. Tate texted him right back and replied that her dad was no better, but she was happy for Troy because she knew what the win meant to him. When everyone finally left, Troy's mom told him to go to bed while she and Seth cleaned up.
His mom put her hand on Troy's cheek. “I'm so proud.”
Troy went up, dropped into his bed, and didn't move until nine thirty the next morning, when his mom woke him.
“It's time,” she said. Her whisper was quiet but businesslike, with no room for complaints.
Troy had to think where he was, not in their cabin outside Atlanta but in New Jersey, where they'd just won a huge game and made believers of everyone. The muscles in his face tightened with joy.
“Time for what?” Troy rubbed his eyes and pressed his temples. His body felt like a punching bag. Soreness polluted his legs, back, head, and neck. He sat up and felt his shoulder.
“Is it bothering you that much?” His mother studied him from above.
“No.” Troy shook his head. “I'm fine. Really. Just a little achy all over.”
His mom sighed. “I hate this part of it. It's not junior league, is it?”
“Nope.” Pride flooded Troy.
“The charter leaves at noon. It's a half hour to Newark.” His mom walked out of his room. He heard her footsteps on the stairs. “Breakfast in ten, pack your bag!”
After swallowing some more Advil, Troy used the bathroom, then pulled on a hat and some clothes, threw more clothes in his duffel bag, and crept downstairs. He'd forgotten all about the Jets and their opening game on the road in Miami. The breakfast table had been set. Resting on the checkered cloth was the morning newspaper.
“There's a picture in the paper.” Troy's mom didn't look up from her frying pan on the stove. “Nice, huh?”
Troy studied the full-color shot of him on one leg, spinning to stay upright and make the final touchdown pass. Above the article in bold letters across page five of the sports section were the words: SUMMIT WIN PURE GENIUS.
“Don't let it go to your head, right?” His mom slipped two fried eggs onto a plate, then a third onto another plate for her before bringing them to the table. “Eat up.”
“I won't. It's an awesome picture, though.”
“That it is.” His mom dipped her toast in egg yolk. “How's the shoulder now?”
Troy forced a laugh. “I'm sore all over. The Advil will kick in.”
His mom shook her head. “I told you, you should have kept playing soccer. You were a great soccer player.”
Troy sighed but said nothing. He'd heard it all before.
“I saw your ball out in the yard.” His mom looked past him and out the window. “You better not leave it. It's supposed to rain.”
Troy finished eating, cleaned off his plate, and loaded it into the dishwasher. He limped out onto the back porch and spotted the ball. He retrieved it and climbed back up onto the porch, stopping before he went inside to study the spiderweb in the window. Strung up in its middle hung what looked like two white cocoons. He looked closer. One might have been a housefly, the other a moth, dead and wrapped in webbing so that their killer could feast on their fluids at a later time.
The spider was nowhere. He checked the hole in the casing where he knew it hid. Empty. Not knowing where it was sent a little chill down his spine. Maybe it wasn't the spider that was creeping him out. Maybe it was the idea of his father, out there somewhere.
He stepped away from the window and heard his mom calling him from inside.
“Coming!” he called.
This was the first time he wasn't excited about going to an NFL game to help his team win. He sucked in a quick breath. He wasn't just not excited.
He was dreading it.