by Mike Lupica
“Why?” Tim said. “Because she’s talking to you again?”
“You know how much I want to win,” Will said. “In everything. You know I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think she could help us win.”
He looked over at his dad now, the look basically saying this:
Jump in anytime.
He did, just not the way Will expected.
“I agree with the guys,” Joe Tyler said.
Will stared at his dad, trying to keep his face calm, hoping the other guys couldn’t hear all the air coming out of him the way it did when you popped a balloon.
“When I was your age, I would’ve quit before I lined up with a girl,” he said. “Are you kidding? In this town in the old days, when we thought we were the toughest guys around? They wouldn’t have just wanted to change our name to the Poodles; guys from other towns would have been asking us why we weren’t playing in skirts.”
He put his hands up, like surrendering.
“I told Will we’d put this to a vote, and we don’t even have to do that; I’m feelin’ you guys on this,” Joe Tyler said. “So the best thing is to call the whole thing off now. You can drop your equipment off at the house in the morning. I’ll call the league. Will should probably be the one to call New Balance.”
Tim hadn’t seen that coming.
“Wait a second, Mr. T.!” he said. “Nobody said anything about the rest of us quitting. We just don’t want a girl on the team.”
“But you see, that’s a problem, Timmy. Not for you, but for me. Even though I told Hannah that we’d have to hear from the rest of you guys, I frankly didn’t expect this kind of reaction. So she left my house feeling as if she was on the team. And I let her think that. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the same as if I gave her my word. The same as when I gave Will my word that I’d coach the team. Once I do that, I never go back.”
“But, Coach,” Chris said, “you just said that you would’ve quit rather than play with a girl when you were our age.”
Joe Tyler smiled now, at Chris, at all of them.
“Yeah, son, I did. But that’s only because I was a whole lot dumber at your age than I am now. About almost everything.”
“Not wanting to play with a girl doesn’t make us dumb,” Tim said.
“Didn’t say it did,” Will’s dad said. “It just makes you a guy. And now I want you to listen to this guy.” Poking a finger at his own chest. Backing up, so he was talking to all of them at once.
Now he was pointing to his left shoulder.
“Whether you can see it or not,” he said, “there’s a chip on that shoulder. It’s there tonight, it’s gonna be there for our first game, it’s gonna be there all season. There’s a chip on my shoulder, and Will’s, and Tim’s. Everybody’s on this team.”
His voice was rising. He had their attention now. Will’s, too. Looking at his dad and maybe seeing him as his coach for the first time.
“And this girl, whether you want her with us or not, has that same kind of chip. She doesn’t just want to show other teams. She knows she’s gonna have to show her own team. She wants to help us show everybody that a team from a nowhere town like this—and you know that’s what other people think about Forbes now—can take on anybody.”
Joe Tyler was out of breath, the way he was sometimes just climbing up the stairs.
“So I’m gonna ask something now,” he said. “I’ll ask Timmy first. You with me?”
There was just a slight hesitation, then Tim LeBlanc looked up at Will’s dad, nodded.
“I’m with you, Coach,” he said.
“Chris?”
Chris Aiello had been kneeling. Now he stood up.
“With you,” he said.
The rest of the Bulldogs stood up.
“I think we’re all with you,” Will said.
Then Will saw his dad looking past them, toward the arch, Hannah Grayson walking through it, ball under her arm, what must have been her own helmet on her head, shoulder pads showing under the oversized sweatshirt she was wearing as a practice jersey.
As she got closer to them, Will could see the number she’d obviously drawn on the front of the sweatshirt herself.
11.
Will had to admit:
As cocky as she was, the girl did have style.
“Yeah,” Joe Tyler said, pointing to his own shoulder again. “Here comes a girl with a chip on hers.”
CHAPTER 16
Awkward,” Tim said loud enough for only Will to hear.
Will said, “Just pretend she’s one more person hanging on every word you say.”
“What do you mean pretend?”
But it was awkward at first, the guys introducing themselves by their first names one by one, even though they all went to the same school with Hannah Grayson.
Hannah was still on her best behavior, taking a minute to tell them she understood how this was probably weirding them all out but that she was sure she could help the team and, besides, it wasn’t like she was taking somebody else’s position.
Then she said to the rest of the Bulldogs what she had said to Will.
“I can play,” she said. “I know I’ll have to prove it at every practice and at every game. But I can play.”
Tim said, “That all looks like new equipment. You sure you’re not gonna mind getting it dirty?”
Testing her right away.
Hannah gave him her best smile.
“Watch me,” she said.
A lot of the night’s practice was putting all eleven of them in their offensive positions, walking them through the plays that Will’s dad had put in already, then running them at full speed through the orange cones that Joe Tyler had set up as ghost defenders. Trying to give them a general sense, he said, of where the defense would be when they tried to run these plays in a real game. Against real players.
Will couldn’t tell whether his dad really wanted to school them on the plays or whether he was purposely avoiding any contact drills, not wanting Hannah to get flattened at her first practice.
Joe Tyler just kept lining her up at wide receiver. Chris Aiello finally threw her way on the third pass play of the night, a simple sideline pattern.
Ball went right through her hands.
“Great,” Tim said, standing next to Will in the backfield. “Girl’s got hands like feet.”
“Shut it.”
“Truth hurt?”
“You know that all-for-one thing my dad always talks about?” Will said. “I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to last longer than one series of downs.”
Joe Tyler’s only reaction to the drop was to say, “Run it again.” When Hannah took her position, Will’s dad said, “This time hold on to it.”
It was the kind of thing he said to the rest of them when they messed up.
They ran it again. Chris’s throw was high this time. Hannah Grayson reached up, made a terrific hands catch, even managed to keep both feet inbounds as she did.
“Better,” Will’s dad said.
They had been at it for two hours, Shea getting dark now, when Joe Tyler said, “Okay, let’s scrimmage for a few minutes. Like we do. Five on offense tonight, six on defense. Chris can snap it to himself. Two guys in front of him, Hannah and Johnny at wide receiver. Empty backfield. Ball on the twenty. Pretend like it’s overtime in college football and the offense wins if it scores a TD, defense wins if it gets a stop.”
Tim was the one who asked the question.
“Full contact?” he said.
“Tackle football, boys,” Joe Tyler said. “And girl.”
Wes and Gerry Dennis rushed the quarterback. Ernie Accorsi was the one linebacker; Jake Cantor said he’d roam as free safety. That left Will and Tim as the cover guys.
“I’ll take her,” Tim said.
“No,” Will said. “I will.”
“So you can go easy on her?”
“Do I ever go easy on you, big boy?”
Tim said, “If she catches it and you
get the chance to put her down, you’re saying you will?”
“Hundred percent.”
Will wishing he was as sure of that as he sounded.
Hoping that Chris kept throwing to the other side of the field.
But Chris missed Johnny on first down. Overthrew him badly on second. Rolled out and got tackled for no gain by Ernie on third down.
Fourth-and-ten.
It was right here, right now, that the jock in Will kicked in. He didn’t want them to score. He wanted the defense to win, even in a five-on-six scrimmage, and the field was getting darker by the minute.
“Let’s switch,” Will said to Tim. “I’ll take Johnny.”
“You think I can’t cover him?”
Will grinned. “No,” he said. “But I know I can.”
As Tim walked away, Will could hear him saying, “Please throw it to her. Please, please, please.”
Will said, “You really are an idiot.”
“Please,” Tim said.
Tim LeBlanc got his wish.
And promptly got beat.
By a girl.
He must have been sure that if Chris did throw it her way, it would be another sideline pass; it’s all they’d been throwing her way in the walk-through, then the run-through.
Will saw it all happen from the other side of the field once he saw Chris Aiello looking Hannah’s way. If there was one thing Will had picked up on already, it was that Chris—new to the position—never looked off a receiver. Once his eyes locked on somebody, the ball was going his way.
Or hers.
Will saw Hannah plant her right foot like she was cutting to the sideline. As she did, he saw Tim move around her to the outside, where he was sure the ball was coming, Will knowing his bud like he knew his name, knowing he wanted to end the scrimmage with a pick.
But as soon as Hannah felt him on her outside shoulder, she planted her outside foot, crossing him up, crossing to the middle of the field on a simple post pattern.
Dusting Tim in the process.
He scrambled to catch up with her but was a good five yards behind.
Chris threw a tight spiral this time, leading her perfectly, his best pass of the night. Ernie was out of position, Jake had been shading toward Johnny Callahan, the middle of the field was wide open.
Nothing but green.
Her only mistake was breaking stride as she caught the ball, being careful to lock the ball into her arms, as if she wanted to make sure she didn’t drop it.
It gave Will a couple of extra steps to get over there. The only question now, because Hannah had slowed down just enough, was whether Will or Tim was going to get to her first.
Will made sure it was him. He was faster than Tim now, the way he always was, and he figured that even his hardest hit wasn’t going to be as hard as Tim’s, especially not after she had just faked him out of his new cleats.
Low or high?
Easy decision; Will wasn’t going to take a chance coming in high, even against a girl; he had this way of bouncing off all ball carriers when he tried to hit them high. The safest and surest tackle was to come in hard and low, wrap her up with his arms and bring her down, well short of the goal line.
It’s exactly what he did. A good, hard, clean hit that did the job, just short of the ten-yard line. Scrimmage over. The defense had won.
Will got up first. But Hannah Grayson wasn’t far behind him, popping up like she was bouncing on a trampoline. Right up in his face.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she yelled.
She was about to give him a shove, Will was sure of it. He could see her eyes through her face mask, see how hot she was. But Hannah stopped herself at the last second, pulled her hand down, Will happy about that, at least, not sure what he would have done in front of the guys if she had knocked him back.
“What am I doing?” he said. “Tackling you, that’s what I’m doing.”
Hannah yanked her chin strap, pulled off her helmet. “You think I’m mad that you tackled me? Are you insane?”
Will said, “Then what are you so mad about?”
Hannah said, “If you’re gonna hit me, do it like you mean it.”
Then she walked away.
Will stood where he was, glad she hadn’t waited for an answer, embarrassed to tell her or the rest of the guys that he thought he had hit her like he meant it.
CHAPTER 17
The uniforms were as close as they could get to the color of the throwback jerseys the Steelers wore a couple of times a year, somewhere between red and brown.
“Rust,” Will’s dad said. “Like the rust on me.”
The Riddell helmets were as plain as they could be, as plain as his dad’s other favorite football team, Penn State, no numbers, no logos, just a simple stripe the color of the jerseys.
The people at New Balance, once they had the sizes, somehow outfitted the Bulldogs at what seemed like world record speed to Will. His dad said that money had a way of speeding up any process.
But he was happy when he opened the first box, because he had designed the look he wanted for the Bulldogs himself. Throwback jerseys, old-school helmets.
“It’s just the way I see us,” Joe Tyler said. “Bulldogs, just without the bull.”
Will grinned. “That leaves us with dogs,” he said. “Heavy on the under.”
The uniforms showed up on Thursday before their first game. By then, Hannah Grayson was an official member of the team, about to wear the same number 11 she’d worn to her first practice. The other coaches in the West River league didn’t like the idea of a girl playing; Will could tell that the night his dad was on a conference call with them, just listening from the top of the stairs to his dad’s end of the conversation.
But Joe Tyler finally—and calmly—wore them down, making it sound as if Hannah and her parents were prepared to sue if the league refused to let her play.
He had also let them know that if he had to hang up and tell the Graysons that their daughter wouldn’t be playing against Palmer on Saturday, they could all expect to be attacked by the Forbes Dispatch and the other papers in Mr. Grayson’s chain. And once that happened, they shouldn’t be surprised to see the story picked up on television.
Will heard his dad say, “You know what they say about newspapers. Never pick a fight with somebody who buys ink by the barrel.”
When his dad finally finished up, Will said, “Where’d you get the one about ink by the barrel?”
“Mark Twain. He was my favorite writer even before I went back to school.”
Will said, “And the part about the Graysons suing? I don’t remember Hannah ever mentioning that to me.”
“Well, I never actually said they were going to sue,” his dad said. “Just call it a good ball fake.”
“But not a lie. Because that would be wrong wrong wrong.”
“This is football,” his dad said. “You never heard of a little misdirection?”
So they had a full team. On Saturday they were going to start the season, ready or not.
Not, as it turned out.
Palmer was about a half hour east of Forbes. But even though it was smaller than Forbes, its high school team was always one of the best in the area, and so were its town teams.
Last year, Will’s team had lost just twice during the regular season, one to Castle Rock, one to Palmer, Palmer beating them on a long touchdown pass in the last minute, thrown by a kid named Ryan Webb, who had the second-best arm in the league after Castle Rock’s Ben Clark.
Ryan was still on the team, Will saw that during warm-ups, looking bigger than ever, as if he’d started growing at the end of last season and still hadn’t stopped.
“Is that a twelve-year-old like us,” Tim said, “or Cam Newton?”
“He does look like he’s got a shot at the Heisman, doesn’t he?” Will said.
It didn’t take long for Will to find out that Ryan Webb and his teammates knew about Hannah being on their team.
Ryan ha
d caught Will’s eye from his end of the field, motioned for them to meet up at midfield, Will thinking that one thing never seemed to change in sports, the best guys always felt as if they knew each other better than they actually did. Like they were in the same club, even though they were on different teams.
Ryan really did remind Will of Cam Newton, not just his face but his body, the biggest kid on the Palmer team playing quarterback. When he took off his helmet, Will noticed he was wearing the same kind of thick orange headband that Cam Newton wore under his helmet.
They shook hands and then Ryan nodded past Will to where the rest of the Bulldogs were stretching.
“The rest of your team coming on another bus?” he said.
“No, this is all of us,” Will said. “But I’m pretty sure you can only line up eleven at a time.”
“I heard that’s all you had, but I still thought you’d’ve added at least a couple more.”
Will shook his head.
“And it’s for real you brought a girl?”
Now Will nodded.
Ryan said, “You guys are gonna play with a chick?”
“Better not let her hear you call her that.”
“Why?” Ryan Webb said, smiling. “She gonna post a mean message about me on her Facebook page?”
“Hey,” Will said, “she might surprise you.”
Wondering if he was going to spend the whole season having conversations like this.
“Surprise me how?” Ryan said. “Going the whole game without crying?”
Will reached up then, lightly banged on Ryan’s shoulder pads, said, “Have a good one, dude,” and jogged back to where Tim and Chris were waiting for him.
“What was that all about?” Tim said.
“What do you think?”
“Your daddy’s little girl?”
“Pretty much.”
Hannah was standing at the forty now, standing next to Will’s dad, getting off one good punt after another to Johnny Callahan.
Please, Will thought.
Please let her at least kick well today.
