Four hours after my talk with Coach Pisano, I was gearing up for our game against Eastside High. I pushed Alex’s death behind some dark curtain inside my head and concentrated on football. That had always been one of the best parts about being on the field: there weren’t any outside problems. Right then, only the game mattered. Everything else just vanished. It was like I didn’t have parents who were divorced, an older brother to compete with, or headaches over grades at school. For sixty minutes of game clock, I didn’t have a single worry in the world, not as long as I was playing quarterback.
Before I took the field, Cortez came up to me.
“Hey, you showed up big last week. But it was all Bobcats from start to finish. Nobody rocked you,” he said. “New game tonight. If things begin to go wrong, make sure you don’t pull that disappearing act I warned you about. Don’t become an empty uniform out there.”
“I’m solid,” I said, tapping my chest. “And I’m hungry for another win.”
“You’d better be. That Eastside D is thinking freshman means fresh meat.”
On my first series of the game, I had a Bobcat receiver ready to run a deep route down the far sideline. The Eastside defense was covering us man to man. At the snap of the ball, I looked to the other side of the field, freezing the safety in the middle and stopping him from sliding over to help out. Then I turned back to my receiver running that deep route.
His defender ran with him stride for stride, covering him like a blanket.
My receiver had a few inches on the guy. So I had thoughts of throwing it up for grabs and giving my guy a chance to win a jump ball. But as the football was about to leave my hand, I saw my receiver’s eyes start to turn toward me.
Within a fraction of a second, I read the move. That’s when I purposely threw the ball toward his back shoulder instead of leading him down the field. Two strides later, my receiver slowed up just enough to let his defender run past. Then he reached back for the football, snagging it for a long gain.
A few snaps after that, we had a broken play. Two of our receivers nearly collided when one of them ran the wrong route. I scrambled, looking for somewhere to go. As I prepared to throw the ball away, out of bounds, I recognized the body language of our tight end. He gave his defender this little shifting move, something I’d seen him do at practice a bunch of times. So I had the ball heading to him before he made his cut to be wide open in the end zone.
It was like my receivers and I were thinking with the same brain. Totally in sync.
I even took my first sack on our following offensive series. A heavyweight Eastside lineman beat our O-line clean off the snap. He came lumbering at me in our backfield. I lost my footing and got stuck in his sights. I ducked down, like I was trying to dive beneath a monster wave at the beach. He pounded me pretty hard. But I went with his momentum and didn’t try to fight his force. I bounced up off the ground right away.
That called for eye contact with Cortez on our sideline. I gave him a nod to show I could take a real hit. The guys in my huddle had their eyes on me too. I took the play Pisano sent in and found it on my wristband. Then I called it out for them, loud and strong, before I stood tall in the pocket and completed my next pass.
Everything was going great. We had a thirteen-point lead. Cortez even sacked the Eastside QB, glancing over at me afterward to return the nod.
Then, early in the third quarter, it happened.
I was on the sideline, sipping from a cup of Gatorade.
The Eastside quarterback threw a high spiral down the middle. His receiver cut across the field, leaping up to catch it. One of our D-backs absolutely drilled him, burying his shoulder pads into the receiver’s chest and causing the loudest pop I’d heard in a long time. I could almost feel the hit from where I was standing. I thought that receiver might not get back up. Eastside’s trainer probably figured the same, because he was already running onto the field toward the guy.
But that receiver jumped to his feet, shaking off the hit like it was nothing.
That’s when I saw he was wearing number eighty-eight, Alex’s double-infinity.
The receiver spun the ball onto the ground with one hand before pounding a fist to his chest. I swear, he was looking straight at me as he shouted, “Nothing in this world can break me! Nothing!”
A wicked chill ran through my body.
All my inner defenses disappeared. That dark curtain I hid things behind was torn to shreds. I couldn’t keep the thought of Alex’s death from creeping into my mind. And I couldn’t watch Eastside on offense for another play, all because I didn’t want to catch sight of that receiver again.
Back on the field, my concentration started to slip away. No matter how hard I tried to hold my emotions back, I could feel the flood taking me over.
I got sacked again. Only this time, I rose up feeling battered and numb.
My accuracy suffered for the rest of the game, with passes drifting off-target.
I had a tough time finding the plays on my wristband too. The distraction even caused a pair of delay-of-game penalties.
“Keep your head in the game, Gardner,” Pisano barked. “Everything’s in front of you, not off to the sides.”
Somehow, though, I managed to hold myself together through the fourth quarter, completing a couple of passes, and we beat Eastside 23 to 18.
Walking off the field, Cortez looked me up and down. “You got rattled, but you’re still here. That’s more than I can say about our former QB.”
@TravisG_Gator Bobcats win, 2-0. As a starting QB, after the final whistle, I threw 1 more pass deep dwn field for Alex Moore, RIP Fam!
While the Gators were dressing for their game on Saturday, one of Alex’s jerseys hung inside his open locker. Players passed by it and crossed themselves or bowed their heads, like it was a sort of shrine. They’d drawn 88 on their cleats with Sharpies too. I reached inside the locker and ran my fingers over the fabric, trying to feel Alex’s spirit.
“Dad call you this week?” Carter asked me, from his locker next to Alex’s.
“Yeah, late last night.”
“Talk about anything special?”
“My game, a lot about Alex’s funeral and stuff,” I answered.
“What he say?”
“What you’d expect. That dying is part of life. Accept it and move on.”
“Know what he told me?” Carter said. “I should tell the dean of students that my roommate dying is going to make it impossible for me to keep my mind on studying. He thinks the school would probably give me straight As this semester because of it.”
“Really? I never heard of anything like that.”
“I told him I didn’t want a free ride on Alex’s death. That I didn’t deserve it.”
“What’d Dad say?” I asked.
“That I shouldn’t take things so personally.”
“Like when he threatened to take Mom to court, to lower our child support payments?”
“I still love you boys. It’s just the way the system works,” said Carter, with a near-perfect imitation of Dad’s voice.
I stared back at Alex’s jersey and asked, “Ever feel like we’ve been halfway cheated out of having a dad? I mean, with the divorce and him moving to California?”
“I feel just like you do, Trav,” Carter answered, putting on his pads. “Just hope neither one of us ever feels like we were halfway cheated out of having a brother.”
A moment later, Coach Goddard stepped out of his office. He took Alex’s jersey from the locker and handed it to me.
“I want this on our sideline tonight for inspiration,” Goddard said. “Travis, it’s your job to make sure it never touches the ground.”
I nodded my head, going back and forth between his eyes and Carter’s.
“Big responsibility,” Carter said to me.
“I’ve got it,” I said, with the jersey already feeling a few ounces heavier.
Right before the Gators left their locker room, Coach G. gave his pre-game speech.
“I don’t know what’s waiting for us on the other side of life,” he said, laying a hand to the front of Alex’s jersey. His voice filled more of the room with each word. “Maybe the answer to that is different for every one of us. I can only tell you this much for sure. If Alex had one more opportunity to put on this uniform and play football for the Gators, he’d devour it. You have that opportunity, each one of you. Appreciate it. Be thankful. Don’t squander it. Alex’s mother will be in the stands. Play for her. Play for Alex’s memory. Play for the family that surrounds you right now—this team.”
Carter rushed his hand forward to touch Alex’s jersey. A frenzy of other arms reached out for it after that.
Harkey shouted, “Everybody, on three! One team! One family! . . . One, two, three—”
“One team! One family!” we shouted together.
The Gators steamrolled Furman that night, taking a 28–0 lead after the first quarter. But as the game wore on, Alex’s jersey got heavier and heavier to hold.
Carter caught six passes. He hauled one in at the five-yard line before dragging three Furman defenders on his back into the end zone. Rather than spiking the ball, though, Carter walked it over to the first row of the stands and gave it to Alex’s mother.
By the fourth quarter, my arms were aching. Even my legs felt the strain. Twice, the jersey almost slipped out of my hands and touched the ground. But I was able to steady myself both times. With less than a minute to go in the game, Carter took the jersey from me. He held it high over his head for the crowd to see. A thunderstorm of applause came in return. Only, I was too exhausted to even clap.
* * *
That next week at practice, I had my mind fixed on football. I was completely zoned in, refusing to let anything else wreck my concentration. After my miserable second half against Eastside, I had dropped out of the ten top-ranked passers in the state. But I was still undefeated as a high school quarterback and I had picked up a ton more Twitter followers.
Beauchamp’s student store started selling black-and-gold jerseys with GARDNER printed across the back. I was hyped to see kids wearing them around school. I even autographed a few.
While I was signing one for a girl in the cafeteria, I noticed Lyn had spotted me.
“You really enjoy that?” Lyn asked afterward, once I’d parked myself next to her with my tray.
“Just giving my fans what they want, being a gentleman,” I answered, shaking my container of chocolate milk. “I am the varsity quarterback.”
“You don’t have to remind me,” said Lyn. “Did you know Damon’s thinking about quitting the football team?”
“That’s crazy. We could be state champs. Is it because he’s not getting enough playing time?”
“No. He wants to train for some bodybuilding competitions. He’s getting pretty serious about being in shape.”
“I need to talk to him more, find out what he’s thinking,” I told her. “I’ve been too distracted lately. I’ll take care of it.”
Then I finally got down to the reason I’d sat next to Lyn.
“So you want to get together soon? Catch a movie?” I asked.
“You’re so busy being a gentleman, I’m surprised you’d have the time. Anyway, I have a full schedule coming up—school and social.”
“Whatever,” I said, absorbing that minor hit.
Anyway, I figured I wouldn’t have to look too hard to find another female fan.
* * *
Later that week, in Mrs. Harper’s math class, we were doing conversion charts. One question from the book read like someone had written it especially for me: An NFL quarterback throws a football 60 yards. How many feet does the football travel?
I raised my hand up high. It was the most excited I’d ever been in her class, with the answer sitting on the tip of my tongue. But Mrs. Harper didn’t pick me, probably on purpose. Instead, she chose some girl who got it wrong.
A few minutes later, she passed me up again. I was really annoyed. She must have seen on my face how bad I wanted to be called on.
As the next kid gave the right answer, I said, in a voice just beneath his, “One hundred and eighty feet.”
I sulked in my seat for the rest of the period. On the way out, I walked past Mrs. Harper’s desk as slow as I could, almost staring her down.
“I understood that you knew the answer, Travis. I’d have been greatly disappointed if you didn’t,” Mrs. Harper said. “I’m more interested in seeing you learn something new this semester.”
“It’d be nice to get some credit for what I already know,” I said, leaving without softening the look on my face.