by Mike Lupica
By now Mrs. Brandon was helping them. Her reasoning, as she explained, was simple: she wasn’t doing it for herself, she was doing it for the school, because she believed no school should be without music.
They were meeting in Mrs. Brandon’s office today, and there was even more excitement than usual in the room, because they had been given a date for the show. The next step was to decide how much to charge adults, how much to charge students, and what the best way was to start selling tickets in advance.
Before long, though, Teddy and Jack and Gus were going at one another about being coaches in the competition, and how each of them was sure his team was going to win.
Cassie looked at Mrs. Brandon and sadly shook her head. “Boys,” she said, as if that explained everything in the universe. “All they care about is keeping score.”
“I am so winning this,” Jack said, “even with one hand tied behind my back.”
“You do remember your sling came off a week ago, right?” Teddy said.
“Figure of speech, dude. Figure of speech.”
They were going to start auditions next week. The finals would be three weeks later, on a Thursday night. So far Cassie had gotten more than two thousand dollars in donations on the Internet. She vowed that they hadn’t seen anything yet—she was just getting started.
The best part of it was that Mrs. Brandon was now as excited about the project as they were. Just not as excited as Teddy’s mom, who was as full of ideas as ever, about how she thought the stage should look on the big night, about how there should be a student master of ceremonies; even about hiring a local band to back up the singers.
Then they were all talking about ticket prices, because the show needed to be the biggest part of the fund-raising if they wanted to have any chance of saving Mrs. Brandon’s department.
“It’s tricky,” Mrs. Brandon said. “We want to bring in as much money as possible. But at the same time we don’t want to scare people off.”
“People in town will support a good cause,” Teddy’s mom said, “even if some of the jerks in city government won’t.”
Teddy turned and high-fived Gus. “Jerks,” he said. “Listen to the chirp from Mom.”
“Are you making fun of your mother?” Mrs. Brandon said.
“Just making an observation,” Teddy said.
“In the end,” his mom said, “we are going to show those people how wrong they were.”
“Light ’em up, Mrs. Madden!” Gus said.
Then she was the one high-fiving Gus. “That’s what I’m talking about,” she said.
“Mrs. M,” Cassie said, “this is the most fired up I’ve ever seen you about anything.”
“You think only the men in my family are competitive?” she said. “Well, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
Then she told everybody to follow her out of the office, it was never too early to start thinking about set design.
“Set design?” Teddy said.
He looked at his friends. “We’ve created a monster.”
“Is there a problem?” his mom said.
“Absolutely not, Coach Madden,” Teddy said.
His mom punched him in the arm the way Cassie did sometimes.
• • •
It was the Thursday night practice before their next game, against the Clements Spartans, on the road. Gus’s dad had dropped them off way early, because this was one of the nights of the week when he worked the four-to-midnight shift at the car service for which he’d been working since he’d settled his family in Walton. He had started his life in America in New York City after moving there with his own parents from the Dominican Republic. Gus had even been born in New York. But he had no memories of it, having grown up in Walton from the time he was two.
Tonight Mr. Morales had a late-night pickup and then a long drive home from the airport. But he didn’t complain. He never complained about anything. Gus never complained about much either. The only time Teddy could remember Gus getting really mad, at anybody, was after Jack had briefly quit their Little League team last spring. Gus didn’t understand why Jack had done it. Jack originally didn’t tell Gus or anybody else that he blamed himself for his brother’s accident.
Once Gus—along with Teddy and Cassie—found out, he and Jack went back to being as close as they’d ever been. And Gus went back to being the happiest kid Teddy knew, except when they lost a game.
Today he told Teddy he’d run pass patterns until the other kids arrived. Teddy said he didn’t want Gus to tire himself out before practice began. Gus said that if he didn’t want to run the patterns, he wouldn’t have said anything.
So that’s what they did for more than half an hour, and Teddy could see their timing getting better and better. He knew he’d never have the timing with Gus that Jack had before he got hurt. Jack had been the quarterback and Gus the star wide receiver on every team the two of them had ever played on.
But they were getting there.
Teddy was learning to trust that Gus would be exactly where he was supposed to be the way Teddy trusted his throwing arm. More and more, especially on the cuts that required almost perfect timing, Teddy would release the ball before Gus even turned to look for it.
When they stopped, Gus said to him, “So how we looking?”
“You tell me,” Teddy said as the two of them stretched out in the grass. “You’re the guy who makes me look like I know a lot more about what I’m doing than I really do.”
“Are you kidding?” Gus said. “You get better with every practice.”
He stuck his elbow in the grass and put his head in his hand. “But I wasn’t asking about football so much.”
Teddy groaned. “You too, dude? Now you want to have the father-son talk with me?”
Gus barked out a laugh. “Not that talk!” he said.
“Can’t we please talk about something else?”
“Nope.”
“Well, if you’re asking me how things are between my dad and me, they’re pretty okay lately.”
“Just okay?”
“Yeah,” Teddy said. “Just okay. Unless I’m supposed to just forget that he hasn’t been around for the last eight years.”
“That doesn’t sound okay,” Gus said. “That sounds like you’re still mad.”
“But not mad at you.”
“I know,” Gus said, grinning at him. “It’s practically impossible to get mad at me.”
“Try me, if you don’t change the subject.”
Teddy was sitting cross-legged. He leaned over and checked his phone. It was still a half hour, at least, before they’d start seeing any of their teammates. But he was good with that. It was easy being with Gus, unless you wanted him to change the subject.
“You want my opinion?” Gus said.
“So I guess we’re not changing the subject.”
Gus rolled over and sat up, so he was looking directly at Teddy. “I think you need to start trusting him. Your dad.”
“Not there yet,” Teddy said. “Not even close. Not even sure I’ll ever get there.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Teddy said. “Because he hasn’t earned it, that’s why.”
“How does he do that?”
“By not leaving again.”
Gus just stared at him.
“Wait a second,” he said. “He can’t leave. He just moved back.”
“He left before.”
“But that was, well, that was before,” Gus said. “And when he did leave, he stayed in one place all that time.”
“Maybe he won’t like ESPN and want to go back,” Teddy said. “Or go someplace else.”
“But why are you expecting something bad to happen?” Gus said. “You can’t go through your life expecting bad stuff to happen. That’s no way to be.”
“You don’t know anything about bad stuff,” Teddy said. “Your life has always been good. It’s why you’re you.”
They were quiet again. Teddy knew the field would get loud as
soon as their teammates started piling out of their parents’ cars. Just not yet.
“I get why you started off being mad at him,” Gus said, “especially when he just sort of walked in and became part of our team.”
“You think?”
“But now you both got past that and things are good,” Gus said. “Or at least a lot better.”
“I’m happy that you’re happy,” Teddy said.
“Go ahead and be sarcastic,” Gus said. “But I’m right about this. You need to trust your dad.”
“I do,” Teddy said. “As long as we’re on the field.”
“Dude,” Gus said, stepping on the word. “You gotta listen to me. You don’t see the look on his face when you make a good throw to somebody besides me. Or you make a good run. The guy looks like he’s over the moon.”
“I understand he wants me to do well.”
“Dude!” Gus said again. “Do you trust me?”
“You know I do.”
“Then trust me that you gotta start trusting him.”
After practice ended, Teddy’s dad asked if he wanted to do a little extra work. Teddy said sure. Then he asked Gus the same thing, and Teddy knew what the answer was going to be. Gus would stay until it was dark if you asked him to, and even after that.
David Madden wanted Teddy to work on what he called his “arm slot.” He was constantly telling Teddy that if you were serious about being a good quarterback, you could never get loose with your mechanics, and he’d seen Teddy dropping his arm down tonight without even knowing he was doing it.
“I love Tony Romo’s heart,” Teddy’s dad said. “And the kid from Detroit, Matthew Stafford, he’s got a world of talent the way Romo does. But the two of them have awful mechanics, to the point where I don’t even want to watch sometimes.”
“Then watching me must be like watching a horror movie,” Teddy said.
“Quite the contrary,” his dad said, shaking his head. “You usually have a beautiful throwing motion.” He winked at Teddy and said, “Sometimes I feel like I’m watching myself when I was your age. You know, back when it was all still ahead of me.”
He had that faraway look on his face he’d get sometimes when he’d talk about his playing days.
“You still miss it, Mr. Madden?” Gus said.
“Only every day.”
“Even now?”
“Let me tell you both something about sports,” David Madden said. “You never know how good you have it until you don’t have it.”
He put his big smile back on then and said, “But you guys, you’ve both got it going on. Now let’s run some of our stuff and fix what I saw from my kid tonight.”
They stayed out there until it did start to get dark. When they finished, Teddy’s dad said, “Okay, now we’re ready for Saturday.”
“Best day of the week,” Teddy said.
“You better be ready,” his dad said. “Because we’re going to open this offense up. Spring training is over. Time for you to cut it loose.”
• • •
They beat Clements. Teddy did get to throw more, even after a couple of early interceptions, coming back to throw two touchdown passes to Gus and one to Jake. The final score was 19–7. They were 4–0.
They won again the next Saturday, in a heavy rain, against Ridgeway. It was a mess of a day and a mess of a game. But somehow the Wildcats made it down the field in the fourth quarter, and Teddy got enough of a grip on a wet ball to throw a touchdown pass to Mike O’Keeffe with two minutes left.
As soon as Mike caught the ball, Teddy turned around quickly enough to see the look on his dad’s face that Gus had talked about. His dad was soaking wet, the way everybody else was, his old Walton High cap pulled down tight over his eyes.
It wasn’t just that he looked happy. It was more than that. He looked young.
It was as if for one more afternoon he’d gotten back everything that he’d lost when he had it better than he knew, even if somebody else was throwing the game-winning passes now.
TWENTY-TWO
It was halftime of the Giants–Redskins game on Sunday, Eli Manning already having thrown three touchdown passes, two to Odell Beckham Jr. Normally that would have been a cause for great excitement. Just not today.
Today, Teddy and Jack and Gus and Cassie were watching in Jack’s basement, all of them—even Cassie—still trying to process what the Wildcats players had learned the day before: that the finals for All-American Football, the league’s Super Bowl, would be played at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. On the same field where Eli and Beckham were playing right now. They first had to win their league title, and then win their county. But if they did, they were going to MetLife to play for the title the first Saturday after Thanksgiving.
“I still can’t believe it,” Gus said.
“Same,” Teddy said. “We nearly closed the deal in the Little League World Series. Maybe we can do it now in football.”
“In that stadium,” Gus said, pointing at the television screen.
“On that field,” Teddy said.
“Long way to go, though,” Jack said.
Gus said, “We could be ahead by two touchdowns in the last minute of the championship game and you’d still be telling us not to get ahead of ourselves.”
“Let’s just get there first,” Jack said.
On the halftime show, the guys seated at the desk were laughing their heads off.
“When I’m on television,” Cassie said, “you’re not going to see me acting as if everything is that hilarious.” She turned to Teddy. “By the way, are you coming when we go up to ESPN with your dad?”
Teddy had the remote in his hand. He muted all the laughter coming from the set.
“What trip to ESPN?”
“He just mentioned it after the game yesterday when you’d gone over to be with your mom,” she said. “He said he was going to ask you if you wanted to do it next Sunday, because the Giants play at night.”
“Well, he didn’t mention it to me.”
“He probably just forgot before he left,” Gus said. “No biggie.”
“It is to me,” Teddy said. “He should have asked me before he asked you guys.” He turned his attention to Cassie. “And how come you didn’t mention it?”
“I just did.”
“I mean last night.”
“I didn’t talk to you last night!” Cassie said.
“You’re the one who wants to be the television star,” Teddy said. “Maybe my dad should just take you.”
“Teddy Madden, stop this right now,” she said.
She didn’t make any attempt to hide the exasperation in her voice, or maybe just the anger. Just like that, she was in what Gus liked to call her “extra-chafe” mode.
“Stop what?” Teddy said, not backing down. “He makes a plan with my friends before he checks it out with me? Not cool.”
Cassie stood up. “You’re the one being not cool,” she said. “And I would like to talk to you outside.”
“The second half is about to start,” Teddy said. “And why can’t Jack and Gus hear what you have to say?”
“Because right now this is between you and me,” she said. “They can pause the game till we get back.”
“Don’t make this a thing, Cass,” he said.
“The thing will be me going home if you don’t come outside with me.”
She walked up the stairs. Teddy made a helpless gesture to Jack and Gus but followed her. As usual when she was in her extra-chafe mode, he felt like he was on his way to the principal’s office.
As much as the four of them did think of themselves as a team, there was no question who the captain was.
When they were out in the front yard, Teddy said, “What did I say that was so wrong?”
“What’s wrong,” she said, “is you acting as if you have the right to hand out grades to your father every single day!”
She was pacing in front of him, even hotter now than she had been inside. “You need to
figure out that it doesn’t work that way, whether your parents are divorced or not!”
“You don’t know anything about divorced parents,” Teddy said in a quiet voice.
“It’s not about that, and you know it,” Cassie said. “It’s only about one parent. Your dad. Who as far as I can tell is working his butt off to make things right between the two of you. Including this trip to ESPN.”
“Gus told me I need to trust him more,” Teddy said. “And I’m trying. But then something like this happens.”
“You’ve got to stop jumping on every little thing!” Cassie said. She was shouting at him now. “You act like him making this invitation, especially to me because he knows I’m interested in television, is something bad. Only it’s not bad. The way him coming back hasn’t turned out to be bad, has it?”
He had no choice but to give her an honest answer. “No.”
“Not only is it not bad,” she said, “it’s actually turned out good.”
“So far,” Teddy said. “So far, so good.”
“Just admit that he’s not only making you a better football player,” she said, “he’s starting to give you what you always wanted, even if you said you didn’t: a real dad.”
“You think we’re one big happy family, Cass? Come on, you know better than that.”
“You’ve finally got two parents in your life, whether they’re married to each other or not.”
Teddy looked at her. She had her hands on her hips and was still breathing hard. Her face was still a little red. But she had calmed down.
He smiled.
“You’re right,” he said.
She smiled back.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t quite catch that.”
“Do I need to post it on Facebook?” Teddy said.
“That won’t be necessary,” Cassie said. “Just hearing it is enough.”
“It must be so difficult for you,” Teddy said, still smiling, “being the bigger person all the time.”
“I manage,” she said.
Behind them, Gus opened the door and poked his head out.
“Beckham just scored again,” he said.
“I thought you were going to pause the game!” Teddy said.
