by Mike Lupica
“One hundred percent,” her mom said. “Or a hundred and ten. Isn’t that the expression they use in sports? You know this isn’t exactly my area of expertise.”
“No kidding, Mom,” Alex said. “It’s like that old coach once said.”
“Go ahead.”
“You don’t know if a football is blown up or stuffed.”
Her mom laughed at the other end of the line, from the other side of the country.
“Well,” she said, “you got me there.”
Alex gave her the rundown of the last few nights. How well she thought she’d thrown, especially compared to Jeff Stiles. She told her how she was sure Jeff had tripped her, and how Lewis intentionally missed a ball to make her look bad. Or maybe to make Jeff look better.
“Welcome to the world, my darling,” her mom said. “You’re finding out now what most women find out eventually, sometimes the hard way.”
“What’s that?”
“That being as good as the guys isn’t always good enough,” she said. “You’ve got to be better, even when you’re going after the same job.”
“That doesn’t sound fair,” Alex said.
“No one said it was fair,” her mom said.
Sometimes Alex felt as if she were speaking with an older sister and not her mom.
“Any other words of wisdom?” Alex asked.
“Sure. When they go low, you go high.”
“Pretty sure you stole that one from Michelle Obama, Mom,” Alex said.
“Doesn’t mean it isn’t solid advice.”
* * *
• • •
An hour later, Alex was sitting on the back porch with her dad, the two of them listening to the crickets and watching fireflies. Alex once asked her dad what fireflies did during the day. He’d smiled and said sometimes it was more fun to imagine than to know for real.
“What if I don’t make it?” she said to her dad now.
“I think you will,” he said. “I was there tonight. I was there the other two nights. I’ve watched both quarterbacks. And I think you’re the best one. If this really is an open competition, not only will you make the team, you’ll start.”
Alex snorted. “Like that’s gonna happen,” she said.
“Not saying it’s gonna happen,” her dad said. “Just saying it should.”
“Only because you’re my dad.”
“No, no—I’m serious,” he said. “I may be a little biased, but I was a quarterback once, too. And I’d tell you if I thought you weren’t the best one out there. If Coach Mencken’s going to keep two, you should be one of them.”
She looked out into the backyard and imagined the fireflies chasing each other around in the dark.
“And whatever happens, sweetheart, I’m proud of you,” he said. “And you should be proud of yourself.”
“Still one night to go,” she reminded him. “Coach said we’re going to scrimmage. I hope I get to take some snaps.”
“If I were my old friend Ed,” Jack Carlisle said, “I’d want to see what you can do in something even close to a game situation. You’ve got the arm. And that’s something you either have or you don’t. Everything else about playing quarterback you can learn on the job. But you can’t teach talent.”
“Even if you’re a girl?” she said.
“I think it’s way more impressive because you’re a girl. You’ve got double the pressure.”
“I’m just me, Dad,” she said.
Jack Carlisle put his arm around his daughter.
“Are you ever,” he said.
* * *
• • •
Her dad came home early from work the next afternoon. Alex joked that he needed to rest up for all the spectating he’d be doing from the stands during the last night of tryouts.
“It does take a lot out of me,” he said. “Not so much the physical exertion. It’s the stress of not being able to control what goes on out there.”
“Would you rather be down on the field playing?” Alex asked. But she already knew the answer.
He smiled. “Anybody would want to be your age and down on the field playing,” he said.
Alex asked him if it was all right if she rode her bike into town. There were still a few hours to kill before the scrimmage, and the downtown area of Orville was only six blocks from their house. Alex actually could have walked to town. She just preferred being on her bike.
She liked going fast, pretending she was flying through an open field.
“Ah. I see. You’re the one who doesn’t want to sit around stressing about practice,” he said.
“Is it that obvious?” she said, a bit sheepish.
“As obvious as you needing some soft serve at Bostwick’s,” he said, handing her some ice cream money. “I’d get sprinkles, too.”
“Just to be on the safe side.”
She rode up Main Street, past Sam’s Pizza and Delvecchio’s Market and Taylor Books. She crossed over at the corner of Elm Street and came back down the other side, past the movie theater and the UPS Store and the Party Shoppe and the new Starbucks. She thought about all the times this summer when she’d ridden her bike through the downtown streets of Orville before she decided to try out for the team. It wasn’t like she didn’t have a care in the world then. More like she was still trying to figure out who she wanted to be.
At that time, her secret desire to play football was still just a thought. Nothing she planned to act on. But soon enough, that desire would turn into a need. And her secret would no longer be a secret.
Alex had a lot of secrets, even from her dad.
He didn’t know she’d cried after the first night of tryouts, after Jeff Stiles had tripped her and then Lewis had gone out of his way to make her look bad. It shouldn’t have been like that. They were all trying to do the same thing and make the team. And if Alex made the roster, whether they wanted her to or not, they were all going to be on the same team. They were going to be teammates. Teammates pulled for each other. Or so she’d always thought.
And if she did make it, did they think Alex was just going to magically forget that they’d intentionally sabotaged her? Maybe they didn’t want her to.
What she was doing was hard enough. Couldn’t they see that? Why would they try to make it harder? Regardless of all that had happened during tryouts, Alex kept coming back, facing the torment and ridicule day after day, just to make the team. She wasn’t afraid.
So why were they?
Alex hated meanness and bullies. She knew that Jeff and Lewis were careful not to make their bullying obvious. But she knew. And she knew they knew.
She’d hated that they’d made her cry. But it wasn’t just the bullying. It was that she felt so alone in all this. She knew her dad loved and supported her, but he couldn’t totally understand what she was going through. Her mom could. But she was all the way on the other side of the country. She didn’t want her dad to see her cry. Not only because they’d joked about no crying in football, but also because she thought it would seem to him that football was causing her pain, and not just the physical kind. He’d tell her she could quit. That you shouldn’t participate in anything that’s making you miserable. But the truth was that it wasn’t football making her miserable. Not really.
She’d had the same feeling that first night that she would have all week: of all the guys out there, only Gabe and Jabril seemed to be pulling for her. But what would it be like for them if she did make the team? No doubt they’d be hearing it from their teammates if they sided with Alex.
But aren’t we all supposed to be on the same side?
She’d buried her face in her pillow that first night and let the tears come.
Then, just like that, they’d stopped.
She’d sat up in her bed in the darkness and decided that she was done crying about it. N
o matter what the other players did, they weren’t going to run her off. They weren’t going to make her quit. She told herself that now as she leaned her bike against her hip in front of the movie theater. Her mom told her she had to be better? Well, she was. Better than a bunch of boys who wanted to act like chowderheads, anyway.
“Alex! Alex Carlisle!”
She looked across the street toward the sound of her name and saw Sophie Lyons waving at her from the sidewalk outside Bostwick’s.
“I hope you’re here for ice cream,” Sophie yelled.
“What else?” Alex replied.
“Good, you can sit with me then.”
Alex gave her a thumbs-up, waited for the light to change, and walked her bike over to where Sophie was standing. There was still plenty of time before football. Alex knew from experience that a little Bostwick’s soft serve usually made her feel better about everything.
“It would be a tragedy to eat ice cream alone,” Sophie said.
“Should be against the law,” Alex said.
Sophie Lyons was in Alex’s grade at Orville Middle. Her sport was cheerleading, and it was just as competitive as football in their town. The cheerleaders often made it to state and sometimes national championships, both at the middle and high school level. Sophie was a gymnast first, with a private coach and everything. But she told Alex she enjoyed being part of a team even more. Cheerleading was the perfect combination of the two. Alex met Sophie last year, in sixth grade. The soccer team practiced on the field right next to the track where the cheerleaders held theirs. They started bumping into each other at the water cooler. Alex was a little shy, but Sophie’s energy was infectious. Alex figured part of cheerleading was also having an outgoing personality.
They’d been friends ever since.
She was a little taller than Alex, white, with long, pin-straight red hair, lots of pink freckles on her cheeks and nose, and sparkling green eyes. She had a great smile, too. What Alex thought of as a happy smile. It took a lot to knock it off her face.
“Oh my god,” she said. “I can’t believe I ran into you. Everybody is talking about you. You’re a rock star!”
Alex grinned. They were in a back booth now. She’d locked her bike in the stand in front of Bostwick’s. They were waiting for the line at the counter to get shorter so they could order.
“First of all,” she said to Sophie, “I doubt that everybody is talking about me. And second? I’m hardly a rock star.”
“Okay, a football star then,” Sophie corrected.
“I haven’t even made the team yet,” Alex said. “It’ll be hard for anybody to think of me as a star if my name doesn’t show up on the final list.”
“Hold that thought,” Sophie said, stepping out of the booth. “It’s ice cream time.”
Alex followed, and they ordered ice cream at the counter. Chocolate with rainbow sprinkles for Sophie, chocolate vanilla swirl with chocolate sprinkles for Alex.
Once they’d paid the cashier, they took their cups back to the table. Sophie looked like she had a lot more to say.
“We all think what you’re doing is way cool, by the way,” Sophie said.
“Who’s we?”
“Everyone on the squad,” Sophie said. “My mom. Other girls I’ve spoken to.”
“For real?”
Sophie nodded as she swallowed a spoonful of ice cream.
“I haven’t been online since I decided to try out,” Alex said. “If people were talking, I didn’t want to know.”
“Most people have been nice,” Sophie said. “Some have been idiots. But there will always be idiots.”
Now Alex nodded, thinking back to two idiots in particular.
“Can I ask you something?” Sophie said.
Alex shrugged. “Sure.”
“Are you scared?” Sophie asked.
“Between us?”
Sophie rolled her eyes as if to say: Obviously.
“Sometimes I think the thing that scares me most is making the team,” Alex said.
She hadn’t told anybody that. Not her dad, or Gabe, or Jabril. But Alex could tell Sophie really wanted to know. And she deserved an honest answer.
“Wait,” Sophie said. “You put yourself out there to make the team and now you’re scared you might actually make the team?”
“Crazy, right?”
Sophie thought for a minute. Then said, “No, I get it.”
“I just keep thinking that if tryouts are this much of a grind, what’s it going to be like when the season starts?” Alex said. “It’s not like the other guys are suddenly going to welcome me with open arms or whatever.”
“Is everybody against you?”
She told her Gabe and Jabril weren’t.
“Twenty-four will make the team,” Alex said. “If I’m one of the twenty-four, I’d have two on my side.”
“And one more.”
“Who?”
“Hello!” she said. “I’m gonna be on that field, too, remember? Rooting you on.”
Alex hadn’t thought about that until now. The cheerleaders would be on the sidelines of most games. She wouldn’t be alone out there.
“Want me to give you a cheer?” she said to Alex.
9
There was a different vibe tonight. Alex sensed it and was pretty sure everybody else on the field at Orville High could, too. This was their last chance to impress Coach and Mr. Stiles and Mr. Wise, whom Coach had enlisted to help with player evaluations. There was a lot less chatter tonight while they went through passing drills. Even players who had been on last year’s team clearly weren’t taking anything for granted. There were no promises in football.
Alex thought she threw the ball well again, even better than Jeff Stiles had before her. But when she finished, something happened that bothered her. A lot.
Coach asked Lewis Healey to do some throwing, too. First time all week. Hadn’t even been mentioned before this.
“I was watching you throw on the side the other night with Jeff. I liked what I saw from your arm,” Coach said. “Let’s see if you can throw to some moving targets as well as you can catch. Just for the heck of it.”
Just for the heck of it.
“You up for that?” Coach said to Lewis.
Alex saw Lewis give her a quick glance before turning to Coach. “Everybody thinks they can play quarterback, right, Coach?”
He didn’t throw for very long. But while he did, Alex had to admit, he showed off a good arm. As good as mine, Alex thought. Not quite as accurate. But just as strong.
She had enough to worry about already. She didn’t need to add another thing to the list. Coach Mencken had just done it for her.
Maybe making him backup quarterback has been his plan all along.
* * *
• • •
Alex pursed her lips. She turned to the side, where she noticed Jabril standing a few paces away, arms crossed, feet planted in the turf. He smiled and nodded toward her as if to say, It’s okay. You got this.
Before long, it was time for the scrimmage. Coach, Mr. Stiles, and Mr. Wise passed out nylon belts with flags attached. To Alex’s relief, Lewis was at wide receiver. Jeff was at quarterback. Alex stood on the sideline with the boys who weren’t starting on offense or defense. Though Coach had said they’d all get a chance to play.
Coach was in charge of the offense. Mr. Wise was setting the defense, which dominated the offense early in the scrimmage. Alex suspected that might happen. Coach hadn’t put in any real plays yet. He said he’d do that next week, when real practices began. For tonight, it was as if they were playing in the schoolyard. Sometimes Alex could see Coach kneeling in the huddle and diagramming plays in the dirt.
Jeff Stiles and his running backs and receivers were struggling to make first downs. Every time they failed to execute, Coach w
ould make them go back to the twenty-yard line and start all over again. But no matter what they tried on offense, Jabril Wise was there to get in their way as middle linebacker, disrupting pass plays and run plays and looking perfectly willing to chase Jeff all the way to the parking lot.
He was the best player on the field by far. And he gave Alex one more thing to worry about, when and if Coach put her in at quarterback. Jabril may have been one of her only friends on this field, but unlike Lewis, he’d never throw a play as a personal favor.
Coach hadn’t specified how long the scrimmage would last. But when the offense still hadn’t scored after five or six possessions, Coach called out, “Miss—Alex . . . go in for Jeff.”
He announced that this would be the last drive of the night. Jeff had gotten one chance after another to move the ball. Alex was getting just one. It wasn’t fair. But then she remembered what her mom had said. No one said it was fair. Worrying about that wasn’t going to help her get where she wanted to go, which tonight was the end zone.
Okay, she thought.
Okay.
Gabe and Lewis were her wide receivers. Perry Moses was at tight end. Tariq Connolly was the one running behind Alex in the backfield. Tyler Sullivan, the smallest player on the field and the only one faster than Jabril, was the slot receiver.
If I’m going to be a quarterback, I better be one now.
Coach had her hand off the ball twice to Tariq. He gained two yards both times.
Third-and-six.
In the huddle, Coach said what Alex had hoped he would.
“Gabe, get open over the middle.”
Coach didn’t have to explain that he needed to get past the thirty-yard line for a first down. They all knew that. And Alex knew she didn’t want the last drive of the night—and the week—to come down to fourth down.
Jabril’s dad didn’t make things easy for her. He had Jabril come right up the middle on a blitz. None of the blockers did much of a job picking him up, so he was up in Alex’s face in a blink.
But she had the presence of mind to pump fake—not much else she could do—and froze him long enough to scramble out of the pocket to her right. She hadn’t had time to look for Gabe, because Jabril had been on her so quick. Alex picked him up now, though. He was running parallel to her as she ran toward the right sideline. She couldn’t look, but she knew Jabril had had time to recover and was likely chasing from behind. But a yard before she would have run out of bounds, Gabe waved an arm at her, and she flung the ball sidearm to him. It wasn’t perfect. It was a little low. Gabe went sliding to his knees and got his arms underneath the ball.
