by Mike Lupica
“You noticed.”
“Hey,” she said, “of course I noticed shoes, I’m a girl.”
Kendrick had tried to start chirping early, while both teams were warming up. Edging as close to the Bulldogs as he possibly could without actually joining their warm-ups. When he was about ten yards away, he made a big show out of counting the players.
“Wait,” he said. “You must be one short. No matter how many times I count, I still only come up with ten little Indians.”
Will tried to ignore him. They all did. Except for Toby, the one who usually had the least to say. Will hadn’t heard him say a word to an opposing player all season, the only exception being with Kendrick, when he’d run him off behind the bleachers.
But Toby made one more exception now, walking slowly toward where Kendrick was doing all his talking. Will moved up a little closer so he could hear.
“Try to learn something new every day,” Toby said, big grin on the big guy’s face. “Now I already have today.”
Will watched Kendrick as Toby got close to him, saw the swagger falling off him like sweat.
“What’s that you learned?”
“That you can count, Kendrick,” he said.
Kendrick’s comeback was so weak Will wondered why he’d even bothered.
“Well,” he said, “we’ll see who’s talking at the end of the game.”
Toby said, “Oh, I expect you’ll be. But what you’ll be talking about is us holding up the trophy.”
Toby turned and jogged toward the sideline with the rest of the Bulldogs, over to where Will’s dad and Toby’s dad were waiting for them in front of their bench.
“The time for talking is over,” Joe Tyler said. “You deserve to be here today. I believe you were meant to be here today. The only thing left for you to do now is play a game that you’re going to remember for the rest of your lives.”
He put his hand out. They put their hands on top of his.
“Don’t make me proud today, or all those people in the stands,” Will’s dad said. “Make yourselves proud.”
He looked at each face, one by one, finally stopping at Will’s.
“I’d give my good knee to have one more game like this to play.”
He came into the season saying he wasn’t a shouter. Didn’t shout now. Kept his voice low.
“Bulldogs,” he said.
“Bulldogs,” they said back to him.
Joe Tyler was right. Time for talking was over. Time to play Castle Rock.
A couple of times during warm-ups Ben Clark had tried to get Will’s attention, but Will had ignored him. They could go back to being friends when the game was over.
All season long, Joe Tyler had picked a different captain for every game. But today, all of the Bulldogs went out for the coin toss.
All ten of them.
“Safety in numbers?” Hannah said to Will.
“That only works,” Will said to her, “if you actually have the numbers.”
They won the toss, elected to receive. Kendrick looked like he wanted to say something, but the ref was standing right there.
So was Toby.
Will ran down to his position, waited for Ben Clark’s kick.
It was a surprisingly short one, considering the leg Ben had. Will’s dad would tell him later he caught it, in full stride, at the Bulldogs’ thirty-yard line.
He took it straight up the middle, not worrying that he had one less blocker than usual, just looking for a seam. Saw one open to his right, Toby’s side, got to it before it closed.
Cut to the right sideline.
And just like that, like it was too good to be true, Will was in the clear, all this green grass in front of him, running free, running one more time like he had Shea Field to himself.
He just looked over his shoulder one time, to see where the defense was, saw Kendrick angling across the field at full speed but knowing that as fast as Kendrick was, he had no chance.
None.
The only trash talk right now was inside Will’s head.
Eat my dust.
He was still ten yards ahead of Kendrick when he crossed the goal line, handed the ball to the ref, waited for his teammates at this end of the field, high-fived them when they got to him, made sure not to look like he’d lost his mind over the first play of the game, even one like this.
The crowd on the Forbes side of the field, however, was going nuts. Will had never heard such thunder at Shea.
Hannah kicked the point. Just like that it was 7–0. Before the Bulldogs kicked off, Dick Keenan yelled for them to come over to where he was standing.
“Okay, boys and girls,” he said. “Now comes the hard part: trying to trick them into thinking we’re the ones have them outnumbered.”
Somehow they kept the Bears scoreless in the first quarter. Toby sacked Ben three times and forced Kendrick to fumble. Mr. Keenan made sure the Bulldogs never gave Ben the same look on defense, never used the same blitz twice in the same series of downs. He kept calling out the coverages and formations to Toby, sometimes just using hand signals. Toby would nod and then tell his teammates what they were doing, totally in command, Toby and his dad connected on this day every bit as much as Will and Joe Tyler were.
The Bulldogs stretched their lead early in the second quarter. Toby, who had to be stronger than any quarterback Castle Rock had seen this season, got away from one of their blitzes, shrugging off their middle linebacker like he wasn’t even there. He scrambled to his right and threw the ball as far as he could to Will, who’d gotten behind the Bears’ free safety, Will running under the ball at the Bears’ five-yard line before scoring, the ball having traveled fifty-five yards in the air.
Like Toby was born to throw a football this way. Same as he was born to be this kind of football player.
The Bears blocked Hannah’s extra-point attempt, flooding one side of the line, so many guys smothering the ball Will wasn’t even sure which one got it.
It was still 13–0, Bulldogs. Somehow the game Will had dreamed this long about playing had turned into a dream game. For now.
On his way back up the field, Will ran past Chris Aiello, who tossed him a water bottle. Chris still had his crutches but was moving up and down the sidelines like a champ.
“How we lookin’?” Chris said.
“Long way to go,” Will said. “They’re too good not to figure it out eventually.”
“Yeah,” Chris said, “but they’re getting frustrated. Like they can’t believe this is happening to them.”
“Neither can I,” Will said.
It was here that the Bears did begin to figure it out. Instead of having Ben Clark try to out-guess Mr. Keenan’s crazy defenses, try to find the open man that had to be out there somewhere against ten-man defenses, the Bears decided to just pound the ball instead, running the ball on just about every play of the ensuing drive, sometimes right at Toby, almost like they were trying to use his speed against him, his ability to pursue to catch him out of position.
To Will, the drive seemed to take forever. Mr. Keenan didn’t just give in to them, he kept trying to trick things up, but right now tricks had no chance against old-fashioned, smashmouth football.
All of a sudden, it was as if the Bears did have the numbers on them. They threw the ball only twice on the drive, both short passes to Kendrick. The other eleven plays were running plays, the last a quarterback sneak from Ben for a touchdown. On their two-point conversion attempt it looked as if Ben planned to keep the ball on an option play, but right before Toby just planted him to the turf, Ben pitched the ball to Kendrick and it was 13–8.
Still 13–8 at the half.
Will wanted to feel happy about their five-point lead. Wanted to be happy that they had any kind of lead. But he wasn’t. He understood the game he was watching, could already see the defense starting to tire, especially the guys up front, on what was way too hot a day for the first week of November in Forbes.
Joe Tyler obviously saw it,
too, in the players who’d flopped into the grass behind the bench first chance they got.
“Everybody up,” he said. “Right now.”
The Bulldogs got to their feet.
“And when we go out there to kick,” he said, “I don’t want you walking out. Or jogging out there. I want everybody on this team to sprint. Then I want you to start pounding on each other the way guys in the pros and college do in the tunnel before the game. Like this game is just starting. Got it?”
They all nodded.
“I know you guys get tired of some of my quotes sometimes,” he said. “But my last one for this season is one that applies pretty good here: fatigue makes cowards out of us all. Only it’s not going to make cowards out of us. Because this is the toughest football team I’ve ever been around.”
He looked at Will now. “You got anything?”
Will did, actually.
“It’s like the coach says at the end of Miracle,” he said, referring to his all-time favorite sports movie, the one about the Lake Placid Olympic hockey team that beat the Russians in the Olympics. “Their time is over,” Will said, pointing over at the Bears, smiling as he did. “It’s done. This is our time.”
The Bulldogs started barking then, like they’d all gone whacked-out crazy at once.
But then, Will thought, maybe this whole thing has been crazy from the start.
Ben Clark came out in the second half acting like one of those cool quarterbacks in the pros, not deciding on the play until he got to the line of scrimmage and saw where Toby was lined up. Like Ben was waiting out Toby, and his dad. Will knew he had the smarts to do it, having grown up playing against him in all sports. Now the Castle Rock coach, Mr. Lyman, was putting the game in his hands, like Ben was Peyton Manning, his coach trusting him enough to change the play he’d called in the huddle anytime he wanted to.
Like a twelve-year-old quarterback wasn’t just trying to outwait Toby, he was trying to out-guess Toby’s dad.
And succeeding at it right now, more often than not.
It had gotten Dick Keenan to start yelling at Toby again, like he was back up in the top row of the stands.
“Come on,” he said, after the Bears lined up in a passing formation and then ran a draw play right past Toby. “This kid is kicking your tail!”
Will was playing corner on the side of Shea closest to the Bulldogs’ bench. And couldn’t help himself. Didn’t want this to start up again now, because they had all come too far, Dick Keenan included.
“He’s kicking our tails, Mr. Keenan,” Will said. “All of ours.”
He saw Mr. Keenan’s face get redder than it already was, saw him take in a big gulp of air, like he was fighting for control.
He won the fight this time.
Maybe because he knew that he’d come too far.
“You’re right, kid,” he said finally. “The one gettin’ bounced around right now is me.”
No matter what defense he tried, though, the Bears were moving the ball now, Ben mixing passes with runs, picking on Hannah with most of the passes. Johnny tried to cheat to her side of the field from where he was playing safety, especially when Kendrick was over there. Even double-teamed, Kendrick was too big and too good for both of them.
They finally had first-and-goal at the eight. Ben went with a quick count, stepped up, threw to Kendrick in the flat. He caught the ball, ran over Hannah at the five, went in untouched from there.
Ben went right back to Kendrick for the two-point conversion, a perfectly thrown jump ball lob pass.
Now it was 16–13, Bears.
And Hannah was hurt.
Will could see it in the way she was moving even as she tried not to let on. Before he went back to return the kick, he got alongside her and said, “You okay?”
“Fine,” she said.
“Liar.”
She said, “That’s my line, you dope.”
They were close enough that Will could see her eyes, so red he wondered if she’d been crying.
Before he could say anything more, she said, “I’m not coming out.”
Will grinned. “Wouldn’t let you even if you wanted to,” he said. “I was just gonna tell you to rub some dirt on it and walk it off.”
He shrugged and said, “It’s, like, a guy thing to say.”
“Wow,” Hannah said. “Don’t guys ever run out of deep things like that to say?”
The Bulldogs, getting more tired by the minute, managed to get to midfield on their next series, mostly on Will’s running. Yet they got stopped on downs and had to punt.
The Bears started to move the ball again, but Kendrick took his eyes off the ball when he was running free over the middle of the field and dropped the pass, and then Toby made a huge third-down sack on Ben.
The Bears punted. One minute into the fourth quarter, the Bulldogs had the ball back at their own forty-two-yard line. Will thinking: Biggest game I’ve ever played. Biggest crowd he’d ever seen at Shea, still applauding, as if sensing their team needed their energy.
Mr. DeMartini had come out of the stands and was standing with Will’s dad and Mr. Keenan. He too was cheering on the Bulldogs.
Before the team went back on the field, Joe Tyler put his hands on his son’s pads, put his face as close as it could get to his face mask.
“Take us home, kid,” he said.
“Take a look around, Dad,” Will said. “We are home.”
Toby hit Johnny for a first down. A bullet to the sideline. Then a handoff to Will went for eight more. They were at the Bears’ forty now. Second and two, Will feeling that the team had one more drive in them.
They ran one of their go-to plays, 37 Sweep to the left. Will waited for his blocking, the way he always did, knew he had the first down easily.
Until somebody punched the ball out of his hands.
It went flying through the air as if Will had pitched it ahead.
For a second, Will thought—prayed—it would roll out-of-bounds before anybody on the Bears could fall on it.
But it died, came to a dead stop, about a yard short of the sideline.
Sitting there, in Will’s mind, for about six lifetimes.
“Ball!” somebody yelled.
Then he saw Kendrick closing on it from the secondary and Will knew, just knew, that Kendrick wasn’t looking to just fall on the ball, he was looking to pick it up and run down the sideline with the score that could put the game out of reach for the Bulldogs.
But as he leaned down, suddenly Hannah Grayson appeared out of nowhere, launching herself at the ball, sliding in front of Kendrick and underneath him at the same time like a soccer goalie making a diving save, pushing the ball out-of-bounds.
Because it had been the Bulldogs’ ball when it went out-of-bounds, it was still their possession.
This time Will’s fumble hadn’t cost his team the big game.
He started breathing again. The entire crowd seemed to exhale as one.
In the huddle, Hannah poked him with an elbow.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
Four plays later, though, the offense stalled. The Bulldogs had moved the ball down to the Bears’ six, but then an offsides penalty against Wes on second-and-goal moved them back five yards. Will then got stopped for no gain, a great play by Ben Clark fighting off two blockers. Third-and-goal from the eleven. Toby wanted to throw it to Will in the flat, but the Bears came with a blitz and Toby was lucky to get back to the line of scrimmage.
Fourth-and-goal from the eleven.
They could go for it. Or they could try a field goal, from twenty-eight yards away.
Joe Tyler called them over and said, “We tie it here and take our chances in regulation, or overtime.”
Will said, “I’m good with that.” Looked at Hannah. “You good with that?”
“Pretty much my whole life,” she said.
The Bears tried to load up the left side again to block the kick, but Toby switched over there right before the snap. The move wa
s money, same as the snap and the hold.
The kick? Center cut.
Bulldogs 16, Bears 16.
Hannah said to Will, and only to Will, “You don’t have to say it. But now you really like me.”
Four minutes left at Shea, the Bulldogs hoping for one more chance on offense.
Only they could not stop the Castle Rock Bears now. The crowd was doing its best to be the eleventh man he’d asked them to be, the people even louder than they’d been all game long, stamping their feet on the old bleachers, even doing the wave a few times.
Then they started chanting “Bull-DOGS!” all over again.
But this was Will’s nightmare, what had been his real nightmare all along, the one where his teammates were gassed at the end, too tired to win the game, heart having only taken them so far. It didn’t even help that the Bears had to start their last drive at their own fifteen after an illegal-block-to-the-back penalty on the kickoff. Didn’t help, didn’t matter.
Even deep in his own territory, Ben went to work. Like this was his moment, not Will’s.
He was finding the open man now, whether it was his tight end or one of the other wide receivers, usually Kendrick. When they ran the ball, it was for six, or eight, or ten yards.
Bears at midfield, in what felt like a blink. Ben kept it on the option. Ten yards to the Bulldogs’ forty. Two minutes left. Ben threw one to Kendrick over the middle for twelve more yards.
Will’s dad called his second time-out to give his guys a breather.
The Bears came out of it and Ben hit his tight end again. Ball on the twenty now. Ben taking all the time in the world between plays, purposely running down the clock as he dissected the Bulldogs’ defense. He ran the option again, but Toby saw this one coming and stopped Ben for no gain.
Joe Tyler called his last time-out.
Thirty seconds left.
Second-and-ten, Bears.
Now Mr. Lyman, the Bears’ coach, called time-out.
In the huddle, Will said to Toby, “You want to know why you came back?”
“For a game like this?”
“No,” Will said, “you came back to get in Ben Clark’s face on this play.”
