“YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS, CHRIS,” I said. “You know how important you are to me. How important you all are.”
But everything about him, everything in the air we were all breathing, told me he wasn’t joking at all. And neither were his teammates.
“Well, you sure don’t act like we’re all that important lately. We don’t know when you’re going to be around and when you’re not going to be around. And we nearly lost the other day because you weren’t around.”
Carlos Quintera stood now, halfway up the bleachers.
“You’re always talking about choices. It seems to us like you’ve made yours. And it’s not us.”
“But you guys really do know I’ve had a lot going on, right?” I said, and I knew how lame that sounded almost before the words were out of my mouth.
“We’ve got a lot going on, too,” Chris Tinelli said quietly. “And our stuff matters just as much to us as your stuff does to you. Maybe more.”
And I knew he was right.
I knew they were all right to call me out like this. I kept telling myself how special they were and how special it was for me to coach them and how, no matter how much craziness I was experiencing in my other football life, this team really was my safe place. When I was with them, I still felt like the person I used to be before I became Front Page Jenny Wolf.
Only now I wasn’t there for them.
You got me.
“So we’ve basically asked Mr. Rubino to keep coaching us the rest of the way,” Chris Tinelli said. “And my dad has offered to help him out.”
“And Mr. Rubino is okay with this?”
“He basically said it was up to us,” Chris said. “He said it wasn’t his team or even your team. It was ours.”
“Mr. Rubino pretty much said what we’re saying to you,” Carlos said. “You’re probably going to run the Wolves for a long time. But we all just get one chance to be high school players, especially on a team this good.”
“Truth is,” Chris Tinelli said, “it’s like we’ve been pretty much coaching ourselves lately, which is kind of a bunch of BS with us this close to maybe winning the first football championship our school has ever won.”
I looked up into the bleachers again.
“Anybody else care to weigh in?”
Noah Glynn, who’d subbed for Chris after he’d gotten mugged and kept us unbeaten that day, stood up.
“We all like you, Coach. I don’t think there’s anybody in this gym who doesn’t like you. But you’re the one always telling us to do our jobs. Except now you’re not doing yours, at least not with us, anyway.”
I stared hard into the faces staring back at me, thinking about how happy I really had been from the first day, being on the field with them. How pure it all was compared to so much of what I’d encountered with the Wolves and to everything that had happened to me and around me because of the Wolves, all the way to the death of John Gallo.
Suddenly I smiled. Couldn’t help myself. There it was.
“Something funny, Coach?” Chris said.
“I was thinking how much better I like things here than where I just came from.”
How much better I like myself here.
“That’s nice to hear,” Chris said. “But if that’s all you got, we sort of need to get out on the field.”
I thought: a guy yesterday offered me four billion dollars for a football team.
But right now this one felt like it was worth more to me.
“There’s one last thing I want to say,” I said to the Hunters Point Bears.
I hesitated.
“Please give me another chance.”