by Mike Lupica
Only the place in the middle where the two words should have connected was empty. That’s where somebody would try to put the million-dollar throw on Thanksgiving night.
Abby was right on top of the poster now, squinting, somehow managing to read the contest rules.
Nate said, “What do you have to do, go through some kind of tournament like you do in Pass, Punt and Kick?”
“Nope,” she said.
Then to the man she said, “Borrow a pen, please?”
“What are you doing?” Nate said.
“Getting a pen for you to sign up with.”
“Right.”
Abby looked at him, smiling her best smile, and said, “You could make a throw like that with your eyes closed, Brady.”
Always the eyes with her. Her favorite expression, one she used all the time, was about the eyes being the window to the soul. Nate wasn’t sure he totally got that one, but he tried to act like he did, even used it himself sometimes, never wanting Abby to think he was a step slow keeping up with her in what he called “the smart world.”
“I’m not signing up,” he said.
“Yeah, Brady, you are,” she said. “It says right here that all you have to do to qualify is make a purchase of more than five hundred dollars, which I believe you’ve just done. And be thirteen or older. There it is, game, set, match.”
The man behind the counter said, “But if you’re under the age of eighteen, you need a signature from a parent.”
Nate’s mom said, “He’s got one of those right here.”
She signed. Nate signed. The man told them that at the end of the month the winning number would be drawn on the CBS football pregame show, the one hosted by James Brown. It would be like one of those jackpot lottery drawings you saw all the time on television.
“You’ve got about the same odds as winning a lottery,” the man said. “But good luck anyway.”
Nate had taken his ticket home and put it in the trophy case with the Brady ball and hadn’t taken it out until the day of the drawing, watching with his parents and Abby as James Brown called out the winning numbers, one after another.
Every one of them the numbers on Nate’s ticket.
They stopped dancing around and hugging and screaming only when Nate’s mom told them to hush so they could hear the representative from SportStuff say that the winning numbers belonged to a thirteen-year-old from western Massachusetts by the name of Nate Brodie, that a boy who was now the most famous thirteen-year-old in America would get a chance on Thanksgiving night to make the throw of a lifetime.
The man from SportStuff said, “A million-dollar throw from a one-in-a-million kid.”
James Brown had said, “Hope he’s a quarterback.”
And Nate said to the television, “I am.”
CHAPTER 3
Suddenly Nate was famous, at least as famous as a thirteen-year-old from Valley, Massachusetts, could be.
Now, in Nate’s living room, they had just watched a story about him on SportsCenter with some clips from the Hollins Hills game, including the throw he’d made down the sideline to Pete.
“SportsCenter,” Pete said as they watched the show in Nate’s living room. “That is as fresh as it gets.”
“Fresh to death,” Malcolm Burnley said.
LaDell, the Patriots’ tailback, said, “Look at you, throwing a ball to Mullaney on national TV.” He shook his head and said, “That’s what I call putting your man suit on.”
Abby, sitting between Malcom and LaDell on the couch, just sighed. “You guys talk about SportsCenter like it’s church.”
“Church with highlights,” Nate said.
“How did I end up being the lucky girl included in this boys club?” Abby said.
“You’re not just in the club,” Pete said, “you’re practically a member of the team. Except you never have to get hit.”
“Or end up at the bottom of the pile and the guy on top of you has breath that smells like feet,” Malcolm said.
“Okay,” Abby said, “that’s a little more information than I need.”
For all the other things that had happened since Nate won the lottery—the big feature about Nate in the Valley Dispatch, the one in the Boston Globe, another on the NVC station out of Spring-field, Massachusetts—the SportsCenter they’d just watched was the best of it.
By far.
It didn’t matter what age you were or what sport you played, being on SportsCenter was like having every sports fan in America going to your Facebook page. It was why Nate had invited Abby and some of the guys to come over and watch with him after practice on Monday.
Now the guys were getting ready to leave. Valley was a small enough town that Pete and Malcolm and LaDell would all be riding their bikes home. Abby wasn’t going anywhere, she would be staying for dinner, even though Nate hadn’t made any big announcement about that. Even if he had, none of the guys would have said anything about it. They were all cool with the fact that Abby wasn’t just a part of their crew, she was Nate’s best bud.
“A dude who happens to be a girl,” Malcolm had said one time. “An almost-perfect combination.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Abby had pinched him, because that was her signature move when she thought one of them had stepped out of line. “What do you mean by almost a perfect combination, big boy?”
They didn’t have TiVo anymore because things like that were too expensive in the Brodie house these days, now that just about everything—with the exception of the Brady ball—seemed too expensive. But they still had their old-fashioned VCR that had “4-head” written over the place where you inserted the tape. So Sue Brodie had taped SportsCenter, and when the guys were gone, Nate and Abby and his mom watched it one more time.
When they finished, his mom got up and rewound the tape so it would be cued up to the exact right place when Nate’s dad came home from work later. Then she said she needed to finish getting dinner ready.
Nate thought her eyes looked watery, as if she was getting ready to cry about something.
“You okay, Mom?”
“Better than okay, actually.”
“You sure?”
She put a finger to one of her eyes and said, “You mean these? Happy tears.”
“I never get that one,” Nate said. “How can you be happy and sad at the same time?”
“You’ll understand when you’re older.”
“I’m not sure I want to,” Nate said.
“I just want you to enjoy every single moment of this,” his mom said.
“I just wish it was Thanksgiving night already,” Nate said.
“It will be here soon enough,” she said. “You just promise me you’re going to enjoy the journey.”
“Promise.”
Then his mom said, “And in this house a promise is a promise,” and headed off to the kitchen.
Abby had moved over to a chair next to the window and was drawing in her sketchbook, even though she knew she only had a few minutes before they were going to sit down and eat.
Abby McCall was good at just about everything. She was the smartest kid and the prettiest girl in the eighth grade in Valley—not that Nate would ever say the pretty part out loud, to her or to anyone else. But she was best at drawing—it didn’t matter whether she was working with a pencil in the sketchbook she always seemed to have with her, or working with colors, color combinations that only she seemed to be able to see, on one of the canvases back in her room.
Because more than anything, Abby McCall thought of herself as an artist.
And these days she was painting even more than ever. Nate watched her now, not saying anything, seeing the concentration on her face, as if she were the one taking a team down the field with less than two minutes to go.
As if she were the one on the clock.
“You gonna let me see that?” Nate said.
“When I’m done,” she said, not looking up, her right hand flying all over the page as if it ha
d a mind of its own.
“Your mom’s right, you know,” she said.
“About what?”
“About you enjoying all this and not putting too much pressure on yourself.”
“C’mon, Abs,” he said. “How can I not? I mean, if I ever make the throw, which I have no chance of actually making, that money would change everything for my mom and dad. Starting with the fact that they wouldn’t have to work so hard. My dad might go back to having one job instead of two.”
“I heard that,” Sue Brodie yelled from the kitchen. “You can worry about money when you’re a dad someday. We’ll handle it around here until then.”
Abby closed her sketchbook, walked over to where Nate was sitting on the couch, and pinched him hard on his left—nonthrowing—arm. “I thought we had a deal,” she said. “Did we not have a deal?”
“We did.”
“And the deal, as I recall, went something like this: This isn’t a job for you. It’s an adventure.”
Nate grinned. “I’m almost positive you stole that from somebody.”
“You do not want to tangle with me on this,” Abby said. “You’re the one who’s always telling me that the very best part of sports is how it can make a new memory for you practically every day. And right now you’ve got a memory going that will last both of us our whole lives, whether you make the throw or not.”
She called out to Nate’s mom, asked how much time there was before dinner, was told five minutes, and went back to her chair. She opened her sketchbook back up and put her face so close to the paper Nate thought her nose was going to touch as she studied her work. “Even though you are going to make that throw,” she added.
“How can you be so sure?”
“You know me,” Abby said. “I see things nobody else does.”
They had a rule, Nate and Abby:
He never looked in her sketchbook without permission.
But he was allowed to ask to see something. Which is what he did now, the two of them sitting out on the Brodies’ small screened-in back porch after dinner, Nate asking to see what she’d drawn when they’d been inside watching SportsCenter.
“Okay,” she said, opening up the book, leafing through pages of drawings Nate knew he’d probably never see, the ones that were for her eyes only. “But I want you to know it’s nothing you’re going to want to slap a frame on, Brady, it’s just a fun thing.”
It was an amazing fun thing.
Nate knew how fast she’d done it, knew it should have looked like the first draft of one of his papers for school, with scratch-outs and corrections all over the page. Only it didn’t look that way at all. Somehow, just using her pencil, it was like she’d taken a picture of what the room had looked like with all of them sitting there in front of the television.
She’d imagined it as if she were on the side, in front of the picture window. So you saw Malcolm’s face from the side, and LaDell’s, and Pete’s. You saw Nate more clearly, and his mom. Somehow you felt how intensely they’d all been focused on the set, which is where Abby had some fun, having a football flying out of it, as if it were on its way through the window and out of the room.
“A fun thing?” Nate said. “Abs, this is awesome. Awesomely awesome.”
“It’s okay, Mr. Art Critic,” she said. “I could have done better with the picture inside the screen, so I took the easy way out, with the flying football.”
“Yeah, that’s obviously going to take your grade way down.”
She leaned over, as if a pinch were coming, making Nate flinch. And making both of them laugh. “You know as much about art as you do needlepoint,” she said. “Or pedicures.”
“I know enough to know what’s good and what isn’t,” he said. “And I know you’re as tough on yourself after you draw as I am on myself after a game. Even if we’ve won.” Nate pointed to her book and said, “How come you’re not in the picture?”
She closed it up and said, “You know me. I like to be invisible and let everybody else tell the story. Wait till you see what I’m going to come up with the night you make the bazillion-dollar throw.”
He smiled at her. But then, smiling at Abby McCall, at the things she said and the things she drew and the way she was, felt as natural to Nate as throwing a football. They had always gone to school together, always lived a block away from each other. Nate couldn’t remember a time when they hadn’t been best friends. Not Nate’s “girl” friend. Just best friend.
Mostly she was just Abby.
Nate’s mom called her a force of nature.
She must have felt him staring at her as she looked out into the backyard with night falling, Nate wondering, as always, what she really saw.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t nothing me.”
“I was just thinking.”
She turned and smiled back at him. “Always a good thing, at least until it starts to give you a headache.”
“I was just thinking,” he said, “how great it would be if we could just keep talking about me making that throw, and being excited about me making the throw, but me never actually having to go there and make it.”
“We’ve already been over this a hundred times. You’re going. I’m going with you.”
Nate said, “Where else would you be?”
“Exactly,” she said. “That night I’ll be up in the stands, cheering you on as you put the ball through the silly hole and we all live happily ever after.”
Nate didn’t say anything to that because he never knew what to say when Abby said something like that. It was almost completely quiet now in the back of the house. Nothing from inside the house, where Nate’s mom was reading. No traffic sounds from out front.
“You have to see me do it,” Nate said.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I will.”
“But you said . . .”
“Forget what I said, things haven’t been so bad lately.”
“You never say things are bad.”
“This is another thing we’ve gone over, Brady, about twelve thousand times. Things aren’t good or bad with me. They just are what they are.”
“I don’t want them to be what they are.”
Abby said, “This isn’t one of your games. You can’t control everything because you’re the best player on the field.” She smiled again. “The boy with the golden arm.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t want to,” Nate said.
“And guess what?” Abby said. “When I hear the crowd that night after you make your throw, I’ll be able to see everything perfectly.”
They both knew she was lying.
Because the truth about Abby McCall was that she was going blind.
CHAPTER 4
Nate remembered the first time he had known there was a problem with Abby’s eyes. It was a year ago, and they’d decided to go to the movies on a Saturday afternoon in the summer even though most of the guys had gone over to the public pool at Coppo Park.
It was the movie about Kit Kittredge, All-American Girl, and wasn’t one Nate would have gone to see himself, even on a bet. But Abby never complained when he wanted to see one of his movies—Abby called them all the same thing, War of the Exploding Car-Chasing Aliens—so Nate went along with her, just to keep her company.
It was something he knew he could never possibly explain to his buds or even to Abby herself. But for Nate, it wasn’t just sitting back in the pocket where he felt the best.
It was pretty much in any room that Abby was in.
So they went to the movies. And Nate didn’t have a clue at the time, because she hadn’t said anything, that she’d started having a terrible time with her night vision. And that she’d already begun to lose most of her peripheral vision.
When Nate found out that part later, he’d said to her, “You can have some of mine.” Meaning his peripheral vision, his ability to see the field in front of him like it was in that wide letter-box format he watched movies in.
Nate couldn’t just see the whole field, he felt like he could see behind him sometimes, when a would-be tackler thought he had a clear shot at him from that blind side to his left.
Blind side.
It was what all sides were becoming for Abby, like walls closing in on her.
He knew all about the disease called retinitis pigmentosa now. Just not then. All he knew that day was that when they were inside the theater, a few minutes late, there was this night scene that made it hard for even Nate’s eyes to adjust to the dark. And when they were halfway down the side aisle looking for seats, Abby just froze.
Nate didn’t know right away. He had spotted a couple of seats and said, “Right there, Abs.”
Only she wasn’t behind him.
She was about twenty feet back up the aisle, not moving.
“I can’t,” she whispered loudly, and for a second Nate stupidly thought she just didn’t want to sit in the middle seats he’d managed to find.
“Okay,” he whispered back. “We can move closer if you want.”
Then Abby finished her thought.
“I can’t see,” she said.
Nate walked back up the aisle to her, still not getting it, saying, “I can’t see too good, either.”
And in this small voice, not sounding anything like herself, she said, “No. I can’t see anything.”
Then the movie went back to daylight and it was like a light switch had been thrown in the theater, and they’d made their way to their seats, and just like that she was back to being Abby. “Well,” she said, “that was certainly weird.”
“Well, yeah,” Nate said.
Abby poked him and said, “No, I meant weird that you were my guide for a change.”
It was her way of making things all right, saying it was no big deal, joking that she’d suffered the eye version of one of Nate’s famous brain cramps in school. And Nate went right along with her, because he always did.
Only now he knew that was the real start of it, everything that was happening to her, and there was nothing anybody could do to stop it.
It was the beginning of everything, and it had forced Nate to learn about how eyes really worked—or didn’t work—about rods and cones and colors.
