by Mike Lupica
And the crowd roared.
When the clip ended, Sue Brodie said, “You’ve got better form than he does, and a better arm, let me just start off by saying that.”
“Mom,” Nate said, “that’s not why I showed this to you.”
“I’m just saying,” she said, “that if that guy, and I’m sure he’s a very nice and deserving person, can make a throw like that, my guy can do it, too.”
“Mom,” Nate said, “focus on the target. Please.”
“Now I’m confused,” she said, smiling. “Isn’t it you who’s supposed to be focusing on the target?”
He smiled back, thinking, At least we’re not talking about jobs or money for a few minutes.
Suddenly it felt like a whole different day.
“You’re being silly,” Nate said.
“I am,” she said. “And I can’t tell you how good silly feels right now.”
Nate said, “I want you to focus on the target so we can figure out how to set up mine in the backyard.”
Then she told him to play the clip again, saw how the target was on a stand, said “piece of cake” and told Nate to follow her down to the garage and to bring the target.
When they got down there, Sue Brodie moved her and Nate’s bikes and his dad’s golf clubs out of the way and said, “Aha!”
Leaning against the wall, completely forgotten, at least by Nate, was the old pitch-back he and his dad had bought the year Nate was ready for Little League baseball. The one Nate had worn out that first spring when he wanted to pitch and neither his mom nor his dad was around to catch for him.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d used it.
“Let me have the target for a sec,” his mom said, then held it up against the netting of the pitch-back and said to Nate, “Fits like a glove.”
She was right. If you forgot what was behind Abby’s target, it looked pretty much like the one Chris Bostic had thrown to.
His mom said, “Are you ever again going to need this contraption to improve your pitching skills?”
“Not likely,” Nate said.
“Well, then,” she said, “let’s turn this into a dream catcher. Though technically, of course, we don’t want it to catch your dream, we only catch the dream if the ball zips right through the hole, clean as a whistle.”
She went into the kitchen, came back with the strongest ball of string she could find, and a pair of scissors. Then they lugged the target and the pitch-back into the backyard, far end, and she went to work, as serious about this job as if it were the job that was going to solve all the family’s problems.
When she was finished, clearly proud of her handiwork, she stepped back and said to Nate, “Get a ball.”
He ran inside and came back with one of his old practice balls.
“Okay, then,” his mom said, hands on hips, as if she’d turned into his coach. “I would like you to step back . . . how far will it be at the Patriots game?”
“Thirty yards, five farther away than the guy on YouTube.”
“Thirty yards it is,” his mom said. “And then I would like you to miss.”
“Miss?”
“I want you to hit anywhere around the outside of the opening,” she said, “just to see if this sucker can absorb a hard hit.”
“I’ve been throwing like a scrub,” Nate said. “Missing the target I can do.”
“Hush and do as you’re told,” she said.
Nate paced off the distance, rotated his arm a few times, windmill style, backward and forward, just to loosen his shoulder up. He took a deep breath and cut loose at Abby’s target, not really caring where the ball went, not worrying about that big hole cut into “SportStuff.”
The ball went through the hole as easily as if Nate had put it through the tire at Coppo Field.
“I thought I told you to miss,” his mom said.
“I was trying to,” Nate said, laughing. “I wasn’t trying to throw a strike.”
“Maybe we’re on to something,” his mom said.
“Funny.”
“Well, could you please try—or not try—again?”
She tossed him the ball.
Nate put it through the hole again.
“Looks like we’re going to be here awhile,” Sue Brodie said, and retrieved the ball again.
On Nate’s third try, he rattled one off the white space above “SportStuff,” the ball making a big noise. But the pitch-back stayed standing.
“My work here is done,” his mom said. “Have at it.”
Nate did, until it was too dark and his mom was calling him in for dinner. Just him and the ball and the dream catcher that wasn’t a catcher at all.
And for this one night, the less he cared, the more he made.
CHAPTER 24
Coach Rivers made it official before the start of Tuesday night’s practice: He told the team that Eric would be starting against Westboro on Saturday.
He had told Nate before he told the rest of the team, Nate seeing how difficult it was for him. But Nate made it easy, telling him that he knew it was coming and that they both knew it was the right thing for the team.
“I’m trying to make you feel better about this and you end up making me feel better,” Coach said. “Now how does that work?”
“I’m still thinking right along with you,” Nate said. “I’ll just be standing next to you.”
“No,” Coach said. “I want you on the field. I’ve been thinking a lot about that. You’re too good of an athlete to stand on the sidelines. You’re going to play some running back, probably more wide receiver. I might even take Bradley out and line you up at tight end once in a while. It’ll drive the other coaches crazy, at least the ones who know who you are, have them thinking I’ve got something up my sleeve. I’m even gonna put in some direct snap plays to you, when you line up in the backfield with Eric.”
Nate had stopped listening about halfway through. “You mean the coaches who used to know me,” he said.
“I’m the one who knows you, inside and out. And if I’m half the coach you seem to think I am, I’m gonna get your throwing straightened out before this season is over.”
That was when he and Coach walked out to midfield and everybody gathered around them and Coach told the team they were fortunate enough to have two quarterbacks they could win with, but that Eric had earned the right to start against Westboro.
Eric took a step forward then.
“Coach,” he said, “you don’t have to do this because of me. This isn’t something I was ever looking for. I tell Nate all the time it’s his team—”
Nate answered before Coach Rivers did. “No, it’s not just my team. It’s yours. And Malcolm’s. And Bradley’s. And Pete’s. It’s all of ours. Coach is always telling us how sports is a merit system. The best guys play. The best team wins, at least most of the time. Even if this wasn’t a competition, you won the job fair and square, dude. So don’t worry about me. Worry about Westboro, and just keep throwing the way you have been.”
He bumped Eric some fist then, as Coach said there was really nothing for him to say because Nate had said it all.
From the time Nate had started playing sports, he had heard the expression “taking one for the team.” He knew it came from baseball, the idea that you had to be willing to get hit by a pitch if that’s what it meant to get on base and help your team win a game. And Nate knew how much it hurt to get hit by a pitch, even in Little League, because everybody did.
This had hurt more, saying what he’d said.
But Nate knew he was doing what the quarterback of the team was supposed to do.
Even if he wasn’t the quarterback anymore.
Malcolm tried to pull him aside a couple of times during practice, telling him to hang in there. Nate saying, he got that, he really did.
“Now I get to hang in there at wide receiver,” he said. “I can do that.”
He was a good wideout, as it turned out. He knew the patterns better than the regu
lars did, knew what he liked when he was the one doing the throwing, knowing that the key was being exactly where the quarterback expected you to be.
By the time they were halfway through practice, Coach Rivers had him in there a lot. And Coach Hanratty, who called most of the plays even on the practice field, was making sure that Eric was throwing as many balls Nate’s way as he was to Pete or Bradley.
He didn’t get open every time. But he got open a lot. And when he could get his hands on the ball, he caught it every time, challenging himself not to let a single ball hit the ground if it was anywhere near him.
The funny part?
He was working so hard at being a wide receiver and doing well at it that he felt more like a part of the team than he had for a while, whether he was out of position or not.
Pete’s mom dropped him off at home when practice was over. Nate’s mom was working tonight, had told him before school that one of the other hostesses at the American Grille was close to having a baby and was going off on what his mom called “maternity leave.”
“Which means a lot more hours for me,” his mom had said.
“How many more hours?” Nate had said.
His mom had smiled across the breakfast table, like she was about to deliver the best possible news in the world, looking like she did when she would wake Nate up with the two most beautiful words in the English language: “Snow day.”
“Pretty much as many as I can handle,” she had said. Then she’d reached across the table and put her hand over Nate’s. “Just till we’re back on our feet.”
So Nate’s dad was the one in the kitchen when he got home, banging around pots and pans, which made Nate smile. His dad cooking dinner was never a good thing, even when it was something as simple as pasta, which he was clearly preparing now.
His dad turned around when he heard Nate, held up two boxes of pasta.
“Fat or skinny?” he said.
“Angel hair.” Nate’s favorite.
“What about a salad?”
“Dad,” Nate said, “you know you’d rather pull one of your teeth out with pliers than make a salad.”
“Excellent point.”
Nate said, “Do I have time to take a shower?”
“Please do,” his dad said, “so you can just experience the result without watching the whole ugly process.”
“Dad,” Nate said, “do you want me to help you boil the water?”
“Go. Now.”
When Nate came back down, he saw the open newspaper next to him, a lot of red circles on the want-ads page.
“Any luck today?” Nate said as they both started to eat.
“Little bit. Got a couple of interviews tomorrow.”
Nate went to work on his pasta, which was surprisingly good.
“I can do this,” his dad said.
“I know.”
“We’re not the only family this is happening to,” his dad said. “I have a feeling there are lots of families in this town going through the same thing and we don’t even know it. They’ll get through it, and so will we. We’ve just got to hang in there.”
Sounding like Malcolm at practice. Just talking about real life now, not football.
Nate kept eating, even asking for seconds. And his dad kept talking, almost as if he were talking to himself.
“It’s just a question of attitude,” he said. “Definitely. The guy who was going to Big Bill’s every day, that guy wasn’t me. You can’t hate what you’re doing, even if you’re doing it for the right reasons. The best reasons. So now it’s a matter of selling just one house I’ve got out there, which would change everything. Or finding the right fit doing something else, finding something I want to do even if it turns out to be something I never thought I’d be doing.”
Now Nate looked up, grinning, and said, “Like your son, the wide receiver?”
“He made Eric quarterback?”
“I gave him no choice, Dad, the way I was playing. Coach had to do it.”
“But even the best quarterbacks go through slumps.”
“Sometimes it’s more than a bad slump, it’s just a bad season.”
“Yeah,” his dad said. “For everybody.” He shook his head and said, “I’m sorry, pal.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“Other than acting like a jerk lately,” he said. “Or just a stranger. I’m sorry about that, sorry this has happened to our family, sorry your mom is holding down two full-time jobs now.”
“I don’t worry about you,” Nate said. “You’ve always taken care of us.”
“Till now.”
Now Nate was smiling. “Until we’re back on our feet.”
“Yeah. Until then.”
Nate put his fork down. “Are we going to lose our house, Dad? Really?”
His dad gave him a long look. “I hope not,” he said. Then he got up suddenly and did something he hadn’t done in a long time, pulled Nate out of his chair and hugged him and told him not to stop believing in happy endings, no matter what, no matter how hard that was sometimes.
Nate went upstairs and made himself do all of his homework, even some stuff for Friday’s math quiz that he could have put off for a night. Made himself do his homework before he checked his e-mail or even thought about IM’ing any of his buddies.
Or Abby.
He hadn’t been talking to her much lately, as difficult as that was for him, making him feel as if it wasn’t just his mom who wasn’t there for him right now—it was Abby, too. But he thought he might make an exception tonight because Abby hadn’t been at school today and nobody was sure why, not even their teachers.
It was when he went online that he saw the Google Alert he’d set up for himself.
Clicked on the link Google had sent to him.
Read the story.
Then read it again to make sure he understood it.
Then he printed it out and waited.
When his mom came home, Nate was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, printout in his hand. It was a few minutes after eleven, which meant way past Nate’s bedtime. Even his dad was fast asleep upstairs.
“Good,” his mom said. “You’ve printed out your explanation for why you’re up this late. Very official.”
Nate motioned for her to sit next to him.
“Been waiting for you,” he said.
“And whatever you’ve been waiting for me for,” she asked, “cannot wait until morning, when I have rejoined the ranks of the living and functioning?”
“No,” Nate said. “It can’t.”
She sat down and Nate handed her the printout. She read it. When she was finished, Nate explained why it was so important to them, and why she had to take him to Boston as soon as she could fit it in around her work schedule.
Nate said they had to do it even if he had to miss a day of school, and a practice.
“Mom,” he said, “this could change everything.”
She smiled. “This is the top secret project you’ve been working on?”
“My game-changer. Maybe.”
“The kind your dad is always talking about,” she said.
Now she was the one hugging Nate, on this night of hugs. Then she said, “A lot has changed around here, kiddo. A whole lot. But one thing sure hasn’t.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re still leading with your heart.”
CHAPTER 25
This is the way Abby had explained her absence from school when she’d showed up on the bus Tuesday morning, wearing her special glasses to school for the first time:
“Had a bad day, is all.”
Nate knew the bad days were going to start coming more frequently.
The distance between them was still there. This was the new Nate-and-Abby, the world the two of them were living in now.
He wanted to talk about stuff the way they used to, talk about everything under the sun, make things the way they used to be. But he told himself that wasn’t going to do her any good.
It was Nate’s turn to miss school on Wednesday. He and his mom had raced up to Boston for the meeting she’d been able to set up.
Then Abby missed school again on Thursday. It was becoming routine now, routine for the two of them not to see each other or even speak to each other. When Nate arrived home Thursday from school, the package he’d forgotten he’d even ordered was waiting for him. And this time, he ignored what his head had been telling him and he led with his heart again.
He rode over to Abby’s on his bike, didn’t ring the doorbell, just left the package on her doorstep the way she’d left him the SportStuff target that day. Then he turned right around and went home.
There was no football practice on Thursday night this week, nothing until the Westboro game on Saturday. His dad, Nate knew, was on his way back to Valley from another job interview about an hour away. His mom was at The Clairmont Shop. So Nate was alone in the quiet, empty house, not bothered by that anymore, getting used to being alone. He used the quiet time to get his homework done, wanting to watch the Thursday night game on the NFL network between the Packers and the Jets.
He had just finished the chapter they were going to be quizzed on in history tomorrow when the phone rang.
Nate looked at the caller ID and smiled.
“You think you can just drop this off and run home like a weasel, you weasel?” Abby said.
“I think two weasels is a little strong,” Nate said.
“Get over here, Brady,” Abby said. “Now.”
The book was called The Story of My Life by Helen Keller, and Nate had gone looking for it on the Internet after Abby had told him about Helen Keller that day at Joe’s Pizza.
It was Keller’s autobiography, described as a “restored classic” on Amazon, and Nate couldn’t believe there was an audiobook version of it. But there was.
There was a long review of the book posted on Amazon, and the guy writing it started by saying how “Helen Keller would not be bound by conditions,” and down near the end he quoted from the book: “There were barriers, it is true,” she wrote. “But barriers that could in time be swept away.”
