by Mike Lupica
Jeff and Lewis said the same word at the same time.
“Quit.”
“What’s wrong?” Alex said. “Scared of a little competition, Jeff?”
She picked up her book and stood.
Jeff’s face was angry now. “As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “I have no competition.”
Alex just shrugged in response.
“Why are you really doing this?” Lewis asked.
“Why are you?” she shot back.
“Because I want to play football,” Lewis said.
“Yeah, well,” Alex said, “so do I.”
Jeff shook his head. Alex couldn’t tell whether he was disgusted or just frustrated with how monumentally dumb he thought Alex was being.
Alex knew she should walk away now. They clearly weren’t going to change their minds about her. They certainly weren’t going to change hers.
But sometimes you couldn’t help yourself.
“If I intimidate you so much, maybe you should quit,” she said.
Now she turned and walked away. From behind her she heard Jeff say, “Starting quarterbacks don’t quit, Alexandra.”
He and Lewis started to laugh then. Alex kept walking, as if she couldn’t hear them, or didn’t care. Coach hadn’t told them who’d be starting, but Alex guessed it would be Jeff. His dig was targeted directly at her, but she didn’t let it get to her.
In The Lion King, Simba’s dad, Mufasa, said that being brave didn’t mean you went looking for trouble.
But she already had.
12
There was no tackling the first night of practice.
But there was the second night.
Alex was the one who hit the ground hardest.
The guys on defense had spent most of the first few nights of Owls practice working on the fundamentals of tackling.
“Tackling in my day used to be just tackling,” Coach Mencken said. “But in the modern world of football—the one we’re living in now—we know a lot more about how to protect our heads.”
Mr. Wise worked on proper technique at one end of the field with the defensive players. At the other end, Coach and Mr. Brewster, whose son Corey was their best offensive tackle, worked with the offense. Mr. Brewster, who’d played tackle himself for Ohio State, worked with the linemen. Coach worked with the receivers and the backs. He ran through the basics, too, starting with things as simple as handoffs.
Once Alex was positioned behind Cal, their center, she quickly discovered that the footwork required for a QB was more complicated than it looked from the stands or on TV. It involved pivoting and timing and making sure you were as accurate placing the ball in a receiver’s hands as you were throwing a pass.
Jeff Stiles had been practicing these moves since the time he’d started playing organized football. It was different for Alex. She was getting on-the-job training for the first time.
Once, when she turned a beat too late and muffed a handoff to Tariq, she heard Jeff say, “Being quarterback isn’t as easy as it looks, huh?”
Alex didn’t give him the satisfaction of turning around. She just got back behind Cal, ready to take the next snap. Coach told her to keep going until she got it right. But she could feel heat beginning to spread on the back of her neck and across her cheeks. Mostly because, in this case, she knew Jeff was right.
Being a quarterback was more than just throwing the ball down the field, or running with it when you got the chance.
Every time she made a less-than-perfect handoff, Alex found herself wondering what it was going to be like in a game situation, when everything sped up and a ball on the ground could mean a recovered fumble for the other team. It might even decide the outcome of a game.
At the end of the second night of practice, they played a seven-on-seven drill.
Jeff had taken most of the snaps, mixing running plays with passing plays. There were three guys in the line, two wide receivers, and Tariq in the backfield. The defense had two linebackers and two defensive backs.
The running plays and passing plays were pretty basic, as were the blocking patterns. Coach said he was just trying to “put the offense up on its feet a little.”
The ball was at midfield for the offense when Coach announced they were going to have one last drive and that Alex was going in as quarterback.
“Seven-on-seven,” Coach Mencken said. “But let’s see if we can get six to end the night.”
Meaning a touchdown.
Even now the objective was the same: get the ball over the goal line.
Coach was calling the plays. He let Alex throw on first down, and she completed what she thought was a pretty sweet pass to Gabe. The second play was a run to Tariq. He was supposed to take the handoff and run past Alex and behind Cal up the middle. But Tariq was overeager. If it had been a real game, he probably would have been called for illegal motion and coming out of his stance before the ball was snapped.
But there was no whistle now. He practically ran right up Alex’s back as she was turning to hand him the ball. He was still in a crouch, and the ball bounced off his left shoulder pad into the air.
Then it was on the ground.
Fumble.
Busted play.
Alex reacted quickly, though, scooping up the ball as the play officially became what Coach called a “fire drill.” During a fire drill, you were supposed to give up on the play and improvise. You were supposed to make something out of nothing.
Alex ran to her right, feeling the pursuit behind her. She didn’t have to look to know Jabril would be right on her heels. And even having only played with Gabe in scrimmage-type situations a handful of times, she knew he’d be reacting to the play, too. Sure enough, he came running in her direction.
She gave a quick look over her shoulder and saw Tariq trying to block Jabril. But it was too little too late. Jabril got past him and started coming toward her fast.
Of course.
He was always on the ball, wherever it was.
Make a play.
“Alex!”
It was Gabe. She’d almost forgotten he was there.
The offense was wearing red pinnies tonight. She saw a flash of red, saw that Gabe was running right along with her toward the sideline. If she didn’t release the ball now, she’d be forced to run out of bounds, and the next play would be third-and-long.
She sidearmed the ball in Gabe’s direction just as Bryan Chen, one of their cornerbacks, came plowing into her.
He must have left Lewis when he saw Alex take off and, like Alex, was trying to make a play, either by batting the ball down or bringing her down.
She was so focused on Gabe that she didn’t see Bryan until it was too late. Bryan would tell her later that he tried to veer off and miss her completely. But he was at full speed, and it was impossible to miss her or pull up.
The next thing she knew she was flying, feeling as if she were spinning in the air like helicopter blades.
* * *
• • •
She finally landed on her stomach. Not her head or her shoulder or throwing elbow.
That was a good thing.
The bad part was that as soon as she touched the ground, she felt all the air come out of her at once. She couldn’t breathe. Coach was always talking about how you had to focus on the fundamentals.
Alex rolled over and sat up, trying to catch her breath.
When she finally got some air in her lungs, she peered up and saw Gabe and Jabril standing over her. Coach was there, too. So was Bryan Chen, helmet off and tucked under his arm, looking worse than Alex felt.
And Alex felt as if she’d fallen out of her bedroom window.
“Didn’t have a good angle when you stuck the landing,” Coach said. “Did you hit your head?”
Alex wasn’t surprised at the questi
on. She followed football passionately. She knew how concerned, even obsessed, everybody was with head injuries, whether you were playing seventh-grade football in Orville or for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“My head’s fine, Coach,” Alex said. “Just got the wind knocked out of me is all.”
“I am so sorry,” Bryan said.
“It was a clean hit,” Alex said. “What my dad likes to call a real good lick.”
She actually didn’t know what kind of hit it was. Just that it was the hardest she’d ever been hit in her life. She’d collided with soccer players before. But nothing like this. She’d tumbled to the ground plenty of times on the soccer field.
Not. Like. This.
Welcome to football.
Sophie had asked about getting tackled. Well, now Alex had been. Her dad often quoted the boxer Mike Tyson, who once famously said, “Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the face.”
It occurred to her now that she didn’t know whether she’d completed the pass or not. She looked up at Gabe, who offered her his hand to help her up.
That’s when she spotted the football in his left hand.
“You caught it?” she said, more than a little surprised.
She could see his smile behind his facemask. “I mean, it was a little behind me,” he said, pulling her up.
Alex laughed and found that nothing hurt when she did.
“I was kind of occupied,” she said, “as you might have noticed.”
Coach told her to take the rest of the practice off. Alex tried to tell him she was fine, but he told her they were going to end the scrimmage on that play anyway.
“You made something out of nothing,” Coach said. “Heck of a play.”
Alex thanked him and went to get her water bottle out of her backpack on the sideline. She didn’t look at Jeff Stiles or Lewis Healey or any of the other guys who didn’t want her on the team. She’d made a play. Coach had acknowledged it in front of everybody. That was enough for her.
She knew she was probably going to be sore tomorrow, even if she wasn’t right now.
But she’d found out something about herself tonight, on a six-yard completion in a seven-on-seven practice game, no less.
Found out something and maybe proved something to herself, too.
Girl could take a hit.
13
“Okay, what hurts?” Alex’s dad said.
They were home now, and Alex had taken what felt like the longest hot shower in history. Now she was lying across the living room couch in sweats.
“Other than my pride?” she said.
“Over what? Getting knocked down?” Jack Carlisle said. “Everybody gets knocked down.”
They were eating enormous ice cream sundaes, courtesy of Alex’s dad. Jack Carlisle was a firm believer that ice cream could cure just about anything.
“My whole body,” she said. “But I could have finished the scrimmage if Coach let me.”
“My girl,” her dad said. “Tough as nails.”
“Nah,” she said. “Just couldn’t let them get me down.”
“I can’t believe you completed that pass after the Chen boy flattened you.”
“Best completion I never saw,” she said with a chuckle.
“Well, you’ve been wondering what it was going to be like when someone popped you a good one,” he said. “Now you know.”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “And if I ever get to play in games, I’ll probably get popped like that more than once.”
Her dad put down his bowl and said, “When. When you play in games. Keep that chin up.”
Alex stuck out her chin, as if to prove she was following his orders.
After they finished their ice cream, Alex gingerly got up from the couch. She had to get some homework done. It was the first week of school, but that didn’t mean teachers went easy on them. Before she headed upstairs, her dad said, “You sure you’re okay?”
“It was a little scary,” she said, “being in the air that way. You don’t know what kind of a crash landing you’re gonna get.”
“You gave me quite a scare,” he said.
“It was just football, Dad,” she said. “I wanted to be a football player. Nobody made me do this. Nobody seems very happy that I am. But I knew what I was getting myself into. It was my call.”
“But if you ever change your mind,” her dad said, “and decide that it’s not worth it, that’s your call, too.”
“I know,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks,” he said. “Just what you think.”
“I know that, too.”
She went up to her room, shut the door, leaned against it, closed her eyes, and smiled. She hadn’t lied to her dad. She was okay.
But she was sore.
All-over sore.
From her first hit.
But not her last. If she did get real playing time this season, the players bearing down on her weren’t going to try to miss, like Bryan. They weren’t going to pull up. The guys on the opposing defense might feel the same as her own team about a girl being on the field. Maybe they would want to flatten her the way Bryan Chen did tonight.
Then she thought back to what Sophie said. About how the boys might try to avoid tackling her because she’s a girl. As much as it hurt taking the hit earlier, it was also a relief. These guys might not want her on the field, but getting hit tonight was evidence they’d do anything necessary to win, tackle whoever they had to.
Which meant Alex might be taking a few more hits this season.
Was it worth it?
Yeah, she told herself after her first official night of tackle football. Yeah, it was.
14
The next practice wasn’t until Saturday, a week before the season started.
Coach said there would be only two practices per week. But because their first game, against Latrobe Middle, was scheduled the following week, Coach got permission to have an extra practice, as long as it didn’t involve contact.
Fine with me, Alex thought. Now that she’d been hit once, she wasn’t intimated by a little rough play.
But at school on Friday, she found out there were all kinds of ways to get hit.
Hard.
* * *
• • •
Sophie packed her own lunch on Friday. The cheerleaders could only meet during lunchtime that day; otherwise they would have been sitting in the cafeteria with Alex.
“You’re not the only one getting ready for the start of the season,” Sophie told her earlier in the day.
“I’ve got this feeling,” Alex said, “that next Saturday you’re going to have a lot more action on the field than I am.”
“We’ll still be cheerin’ for ya!” Sophie’s teammate Kim said to her, smiling.
When Alex did get to the cafeteria for lunch, she saw that Gabe and Jabril were sitting with Cal Calabrese and Perry Moses and some of the other players on the team. It was Alex’s team, too. It should have been the most normal thing in the world for a person to join their teammates at lunch. But there was, Alex knew, nothing normal about her place on this particular team. Nothing normal about what she was doing, and not just on the football field. From what Sophie and the other girls had told her, she knew she was the talk of Orville Middle. There were some who might find that exciting. Alex wasn’t one of them.
There was an empty seat at the table where some of the girls’ soccer team was sitting. The girls who would have been Alex’s teammates this year had she gone out for soccer instead of football. Lindsey Stiles, Jeff’s cousin, was there. Ally McGee. Carly Jones. The best goalkeeper in their league, Mallory Bidwill, was there. And there was lots of chatter and laughter going on at the table. Their area sounded like the bus used for road trips last season.
Alex filled up her plate w
ith mac and cheese, some salad, and a bread roll and walked over to where they were sitting with her tray.
As soon as she got close, the chatter stopped. All the girls turned to stare in her direction.
At first, Alex thought they might be looking at something behind her, but that was wishful thinking.
It was Mallory who piped up and said, “You must have the wrong team.”
Then Lindsey. “In case you didn’t notice, your team is over there.”
She pointed to where Gabe and Jabril and the guys were having lunch.
“Are you serious?” Alex said to them.
“Do we look like we’re joking?” Lindsey said, a sharpness in her tone.
Suddenly, the entire cafeteria went quiet. Alex saw Jabril’s head snap up from his table, looking in Alex’s direction. It was as if she’d sent up a smoke signal, and Jabril was reading it from a mile away. She could see him reaching for his backpack, ready to back her up, but she waved him off, not wanting to draw any extra attention to herself.
Alex had never anticipated her old teammates would box her out like this. They acted as though trying out for football was a personal affront to them. Like she’d intentionally snubbed them for the fun of it. Why couldn’t anyone understand this was about doing something for herself? It made her angry now. But worse, it made her feel something else.
Alone.
Finally, she walked away, feeling all eyes in the cafeteria bore into her.
She swept through the swinging doors, found an empty classroom, and ate lunch by herself.
15
They were two days away from their first game.
Alex still didn’t feel like part of the team. She was no doubt on the team. It just wasn’t how she knew a team should be. With everyone having your back, celebrating your triumphs and picking you up after you got knocked down. She had Gabe and Jabril on her side. But it wasn’t like they could go around campaigning in Alex’s favor. A lot of the boys had proven to be as hardheaded as Alex. Unwilling to accept her as part of the team. Keeping their distance. Only interacting with her when Coach called a play that made it necessary. Although she was out on the field for every practice, there was a part of her that still felt as if she were watching football from the sidelines.
