by Mike Lupica
When the half ended, Nate sprinted off the field, not even bothering to look up into the stands, knowing Abby wouldn’t be there. Even his mom wasn’t there today. She was doing volunteer work at the hospital.
Pete and Malcolm came and sat with him, one bud on either side, both holding a bottle of Gatorade. The day was cold enough that when they took their helmets off, Nate could see the steam coming off of them, though it really should have been coming out of their ears after the way Nate had played. Their uniforms were covered with dirt and grass stains and even what looked like a couple of small drops of blood, as if all the effort the two of them had made, the effort all the guys on defense had made, was painted on the fronts of their uniforms and told a story as brilliantly as Abby could have with one of her paintings.
Malcolm offered his bottle of Gatorade to Nate before he even unscrewed the cap. Nate shook his head.
“Don’t try to make me feel better,” he said.
“It’s only Gatorade,” Malcolm said, grinning, “not gold.”
“I’m killing us,” Nate said. “We’re the ones who should be up two scores, not the other way around.”
“Can I say one thing?” Pete said.
“No.”
“You gotta stop acting as if it’s on you to win the game all by yourself,” Pete said. “Or think you’re losing it all by yourself.”
“If Danny Gilman was taking snaps from Malcolm instead of me,” Nate said, “you know I’d be right about the score.”
In a quiet voice, over the scratchy music being piped in over the loudspeakers at each end of the field, Malcolm said, “But he’s not our quarterback. You are. We don’t want him to be taking snaps from me. We want you.”
“So just go play like you in the second half,” Pete said. He grinned. “Problem solved!”
Malcolm stood up and said, “And stop whining or we’ll tell Abby.”
He knew they were right about all of it, especially the whining. He knew he wasn’t going to reverse the slump he’d been in, was in, all at once. He couldn’t tie up the game with one throw. It didn’t work that way in football. Nate was going to have to get himself out of this one complete pass at a time.
But the throws kept missing their marks in the third quarter. The one that hurt the most was an incompletion he tossed over Eric’s head when he was all alone in the back of the end zone on a fourth-down play that would have brought Valley back to within a touchdown.
The guys on defense continued to play like champs, though, continued to keep their team in it. They notched up their pass rush enough that suddenly Danny Gilman was missing his receivers as much as Nate was. So the game became a battle of field position, the way so many games did. But the problem for the Patriots was that even when they managed to get good field position, they weren’t able to take advantage of it. It wasn’t hard for Melville to figure out that Nate couldn’t complete a pass to save his life today. So they kept putting more and more guys in the box to stop the run, daring Nate to throw.
So this was the same guy he’d been for weeks, unable to get out of his own way, his head filled with so many bad thoughts that he imagined a long line of them outside, waiting to get in.
Not a Joe DiMaggio day.
Groundhog Day was more like it.
Making the same mistakes over and over again.
Finally, at the end of the third quarter, the teams switching ends of the field, Coach Rivers came over and said to Nate, “We’ll get you squared away in practice this week. But for the rest of today, let’s give Eric a chance, see if he can get us going.”
He’d been benched.
CHAPTER 18
Nate couldn’t remember the last time he had been benched.
Couldn’t remember if it had ever happened.
But now that it had happened, he wasn’t surprised, or even angry.
For Eric, who had been taking a few snaps in practice each week as Nate’s backup, it was as if he’d been waiting all season to get his chance to run the team. He completed his first four passes, the last one a total screaming ice-cold silver bullet to Pete, a thirty-yard touchdown pass that finished off a sixty-yard touchdown drive. Then he lofted a pass over Danny Gilman to Bradley Jacob for the conversion.
It was 21-14 now, and even standing on the sideline, Nate knew the momentum of the game had changed. You could almost feel it in the air.
A few minutes later the Patriots’ free safety Sam (The Bomb) Baum picked off a Danny Gilman pass and returned the ball to the Melville 10-yard line. On the very next play, LaDell knocked over three different tacklers on his way into the end zone.
It was now 21-20 and the parents and family and friends from Valley who’d made the trip to the game, sitting in the stands behind them, suddenly made it sound like a home game for the Patriots. Nate watched it all, heard it all, from next to Coach Hanratty, cheering like crazy with the rest of the guys on the sideline as LaDell ran in the conversion that tied the game at 21, but feeling at the same time that he should have been sitting in the stands where Abby and his mom usually sat.
It looked as if the game might end in a tie, but Valley forced Melville to punt with just under two minutes left. It was Eric’s first chance at their two-minute offense.
He handled it like a complete pro, mixing short passes to the side and passes over the middle, calling two plays in the huddle when he had to, spiking the ball when he needed to, and finally advancing the ball inside the Melville 10-yard line with eight seconds left.
On first down LaDell caught a quick swing pass to Eric’s right and looked like he might run it in, but Danny Gilman came out of nowhere, came flying across the field to knock him out of bounds. The clock stopped with three seconds left. Eric jogged over to talk with the coaches.
“I’m going with the lob pass to Bradley,” Coach Hanratty said to Eric, “the one we got your conversion on.”
“Love it,” Eric said.
He ran back to the huddle, and Nate could see him pointing to the linemen as he told them the play. They lined up, with only LaDell behind Eric. Malcolm snapped Eric the ball. Nate watched as Eric calmly dropped back and lofted a floater into the air that was going to be the last play of the game, one way or another, watched as Bradley fought off two Melville defenders for the ball, getting it into his huge hands, hitting the ground so hard that it was like he’d fallen out of his bedroom window.
But he held on to the ball.
Came down with the ball and the game.
It was the throw to end the game that Nate had imagined, the perfect comeback he’d imagined.
Just not his.
He thought about going over to Coppo when Pete’s parents dropped him off at home, but couldn’t even picture himself picking up a football again until practice on Tuesday.
Strictly temporary, Coach had said about his benching.
Right, Nate thought.
Until it became strictly permanent.
Coach Rivers had said Nate would get squared up during the week. But how exactly was he going to square it up with the other guys on the team, guys who wanted to win the game and the league championship as much as Nate did? How was Coach going to explain to them that Nate was still the starter, no questions asked, after the way Eric had played against Melville?
It seemed like just the other day that he’d been worrying about how his throwing was going to look on The Today Show. Now Nate was thinking how lucky he was that Today hadn’t shown up to see him standing there next to the coaches at the end of the game and doing everything except carry one of those clipboards backup quarterbacks carried in the pros.
Watching the guy who was supposed to be his backup win the game.
His parents were watching the news on television when he came through the front door. Nate never knew what to expect these days from his dad, what kind of mood he would be in when he was around. He seemed to know this dad less and less.
Tonight, though, the old dad was back, his arm around his mom’s shoulders, turn
ing and giving him a big smile.
“How goes the battle?” he said.
Nate was already at the foot of the stairs, just wanting to get up to his room, close the door, be as alone as he’d felt when the game against Melville ended.
He almost said, “We lost,” before he caught himself.
“Beat ’em on the last play of the game,” he said.
“No kidding!” his dad said. “Pass play?”
“Yeah.”
His dad said, “Who’d you throw it to—Pete?”
“I didn’t . . .”
“Who was the lucky receiver then?”
“I didn’t make the throw, Dad.”
“But you said . . .”
“Eric threw it,” Nate said. “To Bradley.” His dad was still twisted around on the couch, looking confused now, still not getting it.
His mom was staring at Nate, too. She said, “Honey, did you get hurt, is that why you couldn’t finish the game?”
“I got benched,” Nate said, the words spilling out like change when you emptied out a pocket. “I played lousy, I got benched, Eric went in and threw the ball the way a good quarterback is supposed to and we came back from two touchdowns down and won.”
He had started moving as he spoke, was halfway up the stairs now, like he was trying to escape a rush, trying to find some open field, this time behind a closed door.
His mom knocked on his door about seven thirty, carrying a plate with a burger and fries, saying she had just checked her parents’ manual and that after a rough game you were allowed to have food in your room.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Don’t feel like talking?” she said.
“Nope.”
“Never again?” He looked up to see her smiling at him and he smiled back, couldn’t help himself despite feeling about as happy as a rock.
“Probably not.”
“Thought so.” She placed his plate on his desk, along with a bottle of Gatorade. “Your dad said to tell you that kickoff is in half an hour.”
“Mom,” he said. “Tell Dad I’m pretty much footballed out today. Even where the Pats are concerned.”
“Forget about telling him,” she said, still smiling. “For news like that, I’d better send out one of those Google alerts.”
She left. He ate at his desk, managing to get through half the burger, not even touching the fries. When he was finished, he opened his laptop back up and went online, on the chance that Abby might be online at Perkins. Nate knew her well enough to know she must have brought her laptop with her.
She wasn’t online, though.
But then, he thought, why should this part of his day be different from any other?
Nate found himself wondering what she was going through right now, this minute. Wondering if she had a roommate. What her room was like. What it was like learning to be blind.
Wondering how scared Abby was.
Man, Nate thought.
Man, man, man.
It wasn’t just football that came out at you fast, it was life that did that.
He thought for a second about going down to watch the game, but this was a night when he didn’t want to see the real Brady do something great. He’d already seen one quarterback do that today.
So Nate went back to work online, back to places he’d book-marked already, learning things he never thought he’d want to learn. Or have to learn.
Then the computer beeped. An IM.
Miss you Brady.
He nearly jumped out of his chair, banging his knee as he did, and typed out:Not as much as I miss you.
But Abby was already gone.
CHAPTER 19
Tuesday, Nate’s mom informed him that she had decided to take a second job.
She had been working four days a week—her workday always ending before Nate got home from school—at The Clairmont Shop in Valley. It was one of the businesses in town that had been around forever, a place that sold stationery and picture frames and plates and bowls and silverware, where women in Valley, Mass., could find nice things to decorate their houses or gardens or even their dinner tables.
Until she went to work at The Clairmont Shop, it was just another store on Main Street he’d been walking past his whole life. Or waiting outside if Abby was inside shopping for something, like a gift for her mom.
Now Nate’s mom would also be hostessing at the American Grille, the best restaurant in town.
“You’re gonna be a waitress?” Nate said.
“Hostess,” she said. “Like a maitre d’.”
“Whatever,” Nate said. “But Mom, the Grille isn’t a place you work at, it’s a place we go to.”
“It’s only going to be for a couple of nights a week,” she said. “You know the owner, Mr. Lopez, is a friend of your dad’s and mine. He was in picking out a present for his wife at The Clairmont a couple of weeks ago, and when he saw that I was working there now, he said, ‘If you wanted to go to work, you could’ve worked for me!’ So I went in the other day and we decided to give it a try.”
“When?” Nate said.
“Friday and Saturday nights to start, maybe throw in a couple of Sunday brunches for a while for good measure,” she said. “No heavy lifting. Smiling nice at the customers, taking reservations, getting people seated.”
“But that means you’ll be working nearly seven days a week,” Nate said.
She forced a smile, maybe practicing her hostess smile on Nate. “And Dad says math isn’t your strong suit.”
“You’ve gone from not working at all to working every day or night.”
“Well, think how rested I am, not working all those years before this,” she said.
They were sitting on the front stairs, side by side. It was where she’d been waiting for him when he’d come through the door.
Nate turned to her now and said, “We need the money that bad? Because now that I’m such a math whiz, I just figured out that you and Dad are working a total of four jobs between you.”
“That is correct.”
He was about to say that he never saw his dad anymore and now he wasn’t going to see her, either. But Nate knew that wasn’t what this particular talk was supposed to be about. It wasn’t about him. So he didn’t say anything right away. His dad had told him that sometimes the smartest thing in the world you could say was absolutely nothing.
“You okay with this?” his mom said.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Life’s always about choices, sweetheart. Your dad and I are making some tough ones right now so that things will be better for our family down the road.”
Nate said, “Will they?”
“You know me,” she said. “I’m a silver-lining, blue-sky, glass-half-full girl.” She put her arm around Nate, pulling him closer, Nate knowing she was trying to make him feel safe. “Always have been, always will be.”
Nate said, “The only person I know with a better attitude than you—just slightly, like one of those photo finishes in the Olympics—is Abby.”
His mom let out a big sigh. “Now, there’s a change of subject I can handle,” she said. “Just because ever being compared to Miss Abby McCall puts me in high cotton indeed.”
“High cotton?” he said.
“It means I take it as high praise, young man,” Sue Brodie said. “Which I do. How is your girl doing at Perkins, by the way?”
Nate stayed where he was, head against her shoulder now. It was something he could still do with his mom, but only when it was just the two of them like this.
“Haven’t heard from her,” he said. “Well, except for a hit-and-run IM the other night.”
His mom said, “She must be pretty busy, a first week of school that’s also her only week of school.” She leaned back now so she could see Nate’s face. “You miss her, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Nate said. “But she’s the one going through stuff, not me.”
“Ha!” his mom said. “You’re going through this right al
ong with her.”
“Not the same.”
“You’ve got the biggest heart of anybody I know,” she said. “So when somebody you love is going through stuff, so are you.”
Nate gave her a look.
“Love?” he said.
She smiled again and said, “You got a better word for it, big boy?”
He wouldn’t have touched that one even with one of his old fishing poles.
“Plus,” his mom said, “it seems to me you’re going through some stuff of your own with the Valley Patriots these days.”
“We’re not talking football today, all right?”
“All right it is.”
Neither one of them moved. Nate could see from the big standing grandfather clock in the foyer that there was still an hour before practice. It was amazing how quiet the house was in the middle of the afternoon, quiet and still, Nate able to hear the sound of his own breathing.
Finally he said, “You never ask me about making the throw anymore.”
“Didn’t know you wanted to give me updates.”
“I just . . .” Maybe saying nothing would have worked for him again, but it was too late, he knew that, he could see the way his mom was looking at him.
She wasn’t just a great talker.
She listened, too.
“What?” she said.
“Mom,” he said. “You don’t have to be a math whiz to know how much that money would mean to us.”
“Wouldn’t even think about trying to tell you it wouldn’t, bud.”
This was the first time they’d ever really talked about it. Not the adventure of it, not the excitement of it, not the chance to be on television or the chance to be famous. The money part. But the two of them were talking about it now, here at the bottom of the stairs.
