Perfect Season (19 page)
Authors: Tim Green
TROY MOVED SO CLOSE
that Tate's long dark hair tickled his lips. He tried to keep his words to a whisper. “You mean the UPS guy? How can he be connected to all this? You're crazy.”
Troy's heart didn't match his words. It was pounding with panic because he remembered now seeing the UPS man at the stadium with the tall man, and his instincts told him there was a connection.
Tate narrowed her eyes. “People talk, Troy. It's not like you're not in the news or anything. That guy could have told anyone.”
“Stop trying to blame me, Tate,” Troy growled.
“I'm not blaming.” Tate raised her chin and spoke louder than Troy liked. “But if we're going to figure out what's going on here, we've got to look at all the facts.”
Troy folded his arms tight across his chest, signaling an end to the discussion. No way was he getting into this mess with his mom and Seth and the other coaches sitting right there, so he clammed up.
It wasn't until later, when they were home and Troy lay alone in bed, staring at the ceiling and unable to sleep, that Troy realized Tate was right. If they were going to have a chance to stop all this nonsense, he didn't want to leave it in the hands of some lawyers. He wanted to
do
something, and he would.
Quietly he crept out of bed and slipped into the hallway.
The question he had to have answered was whether Tate would help.
THE DOOR SQUEAKED, THEN
let out a low groan as Troy eased it open. Moonlight fell in a thick beam across the dresser and the rug next to Tate's four-post single bed.
She bolted straight up. “Who's there?”
“Shh. It's me.”
Troy sat on the edge of her bed and told her what he was thinking.
“Of course I'll help,” she whispered. “Why do you think I'm lying here awake? I've got practice tomorrow at nine and I can't even sleep.”
Tate swung her legs out of the bed, put her feet on the floor, and rested her chin on one hand. “When I first got here, Troy, you said there were some people at the football field doing surveys or something.”
“Yeah, because the stadium is falling apart, you know that. If we do good, though, they're going to have to build a whole new one. Stands, a press box, hopefully a couple of twenty-five-second clocks in the end zones like they have in the NFL stadiums.”
“But . . .” Tate scratched her ear. “What happens if the team doesn't do well?”
“Well, they were talking about shutting it down before Seth came. That much I know,” Troy said.
Tate sat there nodding slowly to herself. “So if Seth wasn't around, football might be finished in Summit?”
“That's the way it was looking.”
Tate looked up sharply at him. “Troy, what if those surveyors weren't measuring for a new stadium?”
“What do you mean?” Troy wrinkled his nose.
“What if they were measuring for something else?” Tate's voice was a mixture of excitement as well as danger. “Something that would go there if they knocked it all down?”
“YOU KNOW WHAT, TATE?
There's this guy. I don't know who he is, but I see him around all the time. I saw him with the surveyors. I see him at our football games. I saw him with Mr. Biondi before he told Seth the news about the league and . . .” Troy looked down at his guilty hands. “I saw him with the UPS guy before a game pointing out Chuku.”
“What? Who?”
“That's what I'm saying. I don't know who. He's tall, though, like NBA tall, six eight or six nine. Huge. He's always wearing a suit.”
“I think I
have
seen that guy,” Tate said, “but I have no idea who he is or what he does. Maybe there's a connection.”
“There
has
to be. I know it.”
“Know it like you know what plays a team runs?” she asked.
Troy looked at her and saw she was serious. “Yes. Like how I
used
to know. This guy is behind it all. I'm sure. But what is it? What could it be?”
“I have no idea, but there's that big empty field next to the stadium,” Tate said. “What if he wants the stadium torn down so they can use the land? What if they were planning on the football team being its usually crummy self, hardly enough kids to field a team, losing all the time, no one showing up for the games, so the program gets folded? The stadium comes down, and they get the land to use for . . . I don't know, whatever it is they want it for.”
“Tate, why would anyone want that land?”
“I have no idea,” Tate said, “but I think I know how we might be able to find out.”
THE NEXT DAY, TROY
and his mom dropped Tate off at the back of the school for soccer practice before he headed for the football meeting rooms. The football team watched film, lifted weights, then went out onto the field for a brief walk-through practice where the players didn't even have to change clothes, but merely to walk to the spot on the field where they had to be when certain plays were called. Seth said every college and NFL team did this to correct the big mistakes they made during a game.
“But Coach?” Chuku had said the first time they did it. “We didn't make any mistakes. We
won
.”
Seth had laughed at that. “Even when you win, you make mistakes, Chuku. Trust me, you always need to improve.”
Halfway through their walk-through, Troy saw a flash of gold from Tate's jersey through the fence. He looked just in time to see her wading into the tall grass on the empty lot next to the field in her soccer uniform.
As the practice slogged on, Troy lost sight of her, but when the team wrapped up their session, Tate was waiting at Seth's truck for a ride home. Her cleats and long soccer socks were soaking wet. Troy could see the streaks of mud on her shoes, even though she seemed to have wiped most of it away. When he started to ask what she was doing, Tate put a finger to her lips to quiet him.
When Seth pulled into Troy's driveway, he didn't even get out, but texted Troy's mom instead. Troy and Tate climbed out and thanked him for the ride. Troy's mom burst out of the house and gave him and Tate kisses before she swung open the truck door.
“I left you two some raviolis you can heat up,” Troy's mom said as she climbed in. “There're two plates in the fridge, just put the microwave on three minutes and pop them in.”
“What's your hurry?” Troy asked.
His mom glanced at her watch. “One of the lawyers gave me tickets for a two o'clock show at the Museum of Modern Art and the tunnel is down to one lane. Love you. Bye!”
Off they went, with tires spitting stones.
Troy shook his head. “Jackson Pollock. I swear, I could do one of those paintings. Give me a couple of cans of paint and a spoon.”
Tate rolled her eyes. “Really? First you tell us about Chagall at the Guggenheim, and now you think you could paint a Pollock? Don't pretend you know what you're even talking about.”
“What? Have you seen what one of those paintings looks like? They're a mess.”
Tate got dreamy-eyed and looked to the sky. “They make you
feel
things. They're not supposed to
look
like anything.”
“Come on, you need a soda or something.” Troy marched into the house. “Give your brain some sugar. What were you doing in the weeds, anyway?”
Troy got two sodas, put them down at the kitchen table, then slid one of the ravioli plates into the microwave. He noticed the peas next to each mound of ravioli and wondered why his mom never mentioned the vegetables. Did she think he wouldn't notice a pile of peas and would just eat them by mistake? When he turned, Tate was already at his mom's computer.
“Well?” Troy asked.
With her fingers dancing on the keyboard and her eyes on the screen, Tate said, “Checking it out.”
“Checking what out?”
Tate huffed. “The lot next to the football field. There're new orange markers all over the place. They go for a ways, but when I got to a certain point the plastic flags were faded, like they were old.”
“I see markers like that all over the place.” Troy took the first plate out of the microwave and popped the other one in. “Are you gonna eat?”
“Don't you get it?” Tate looked up from the computer.
“Uhhhh.” Troy tilted his head. “I guess not.”
Tate huffed again. “Look, those markers are for when you're going to build something or dig something. You have to get permits to do that kind of stuff. You can't just build anythingânot even a shedâwithout permission from the town. And towns keep records of everything. I think it's like a law or something. So if I can find the records . . .”
“You think you can find out who's trying to build something there?” Troy asked, seeing the value in that.
Tate scratched her ear and nodded toward the computer. “I don't know if I can get it off the computer. But trust me. I'm on it. If the information is out there, I'm gonna find it.”
ON MONDAY MORNING TROY
woke to a thump at the front door. The clock beside his bed said 5:57. It was still dark outside and he had another half hour before he had to get up for school. He rolled over but couldn't get back to sleep. He kept hearing that thump over and over in his head.
The windows in the old house leaked heat like rusty buckets leak water. Troy shivered as he dressed, then tiptoed down the stairs and eased open the front door. There was no need to wake his mom or Tate. On the porch the morning paper lay wrapped in a plastic bag. The sky spit cold drops of rain at random and a breeze tossed handfuls of them onto the porch in little fits. Troy stepped out and looked down the street. Through the fog of his breath the paperboy was nowhere to be seen.
Troy wondered if it was someone new and decided to have his mom call the paper company and tell whoever the delivery person was not to throw it at the door from now on. Usually, it was delivered without any noise.
Troy bent down, picked it up, and extracted the sports page as he flicked the lights on in the kitchen. What he saw was a big picture of Seth in his Summit Football coaching cap.
What he read made him sick.
“MOM!” TROY BOUNDED UP
the stairs, threw open his mother's bedroom door, and flipped on the light.
She blinked and pawed her eyes before peering at the clock beside her bed.
“Look!” Troy smacked the newspaper with the back of his fingers.
“What's wrong?” She spoke in a scratchy voice as she studied the picture and the headline. “Why are you up?”
Troy said nothing.
He watched her lips move as she read then muttered to herself. “You've got to be kidding.”
“It's not even true!” Troy tugged his hair. “How can they put this in the paper?”
His mother twisted her lips. “It says they have a witness, Troy. Someone who works for UPS? A Falcons jersey for Chuku Moore? And an unnamed player on the team who heard Seth talk about a signing bonus?”
Troy clenched his jaw so hard he thought his teeth might break like candy. His voice was too low and guttural for his mom to understand. “Reed, that rat.”
She looked up. “I thought Chuku moved here on his own. Do you know anything about all this?”
Troy's mind worked quick. He stabbed his finger at the paper. “Forget about the jersey, Mom. Look at this bull!”
Her lips moved as she continued to read. Her face rumpled and then she laughed. “A
car
? Seth offered some kid named Dennaro a car to play high school football? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Who is this kid? Do you know him?”
Troy huffed. “He's a goof. Dennaro couldn't play his way out of a wet paper bag. He showed up the first week we started over the summer. He said he played on the line at St. Stephen's. He showed up for only a couple of nights for workouts before everyone knew he was a joke. He kept flapping his mouth about how he knew Seth would want him at Summit.”
“Do you think Seth . . .” His mom shook her head. “I don't know . . . do you think he might have just asked this boy to play here? I know he didn't offer him a car.”
Troy rolled his eyes. “Mom, come on. Seth didn't get anything for anyone, especially not some sloppy kid like that. That kid's a clown.”
Troy felt almost giddy knowing that he'd thrown his mom off the track about the jerseys, but his outrage was real. “How can they put that in the paper? Don't they have rules about telling the truth?”
“It's called defamation.” His mom frowned. “Slander is when you say something untrue, libel is when you print it in a newspaper. The problem is that, either way, Seth's a public figure.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” Troy asked.
She shrugged. “A politician. Movie star. An NFL player. You.”
“Me?”
“You've been in the news. You've done interviews on
Larry King
,
GMA
, all that. You're an entertainer, at least for the stuff you did for the Falcons, and now . . .”
Troy's voice dropped as he continued her thoughts. “For the stuff I'm supposed to be doing for the Jets.”
“Sort of.” His mom waved a hand in the air to dismiss it. “Anyway, newspapers and TV shows get a lot of slack when it comes to what they say about public figures. It's slander only if you can show that they intentionally lied. So if they can get someone to say something crazyâlike this Dennaro boyâthey can repeat it and make it sound like news, even if it shouldn't be.”
Troy felt bile streaming up into the back of his throat as if he was going to be sick. “This says the league is planning a vote to suspend our whole team because of this stuff. It'd be over. No playoffs. Nothing. That is so not fair.”
“Yeah.” His mom frowned at the paper. “Who said life is fair?”