In the morning, I lower my sore body down from the top bunk, put the Ray Charles record in my locker, then shake my dad awake.
“Let’s call the vet,” I say.
He rolls over and grumbles. “I bet they’re not open yet.”
“Try.” I hand him his cell phone.
He sits up and rubs his eyes. “Fine.”
Someone picks up right away, and my dad clears his throat and says we were in last night with a dog. A stray. He listens and waits and says, “I see,” then, “Thanks again. Will do.” And hangs up.
“So?” I ask.
“She’ll update us later. He’s still touch and go.”
I just keep looking at him because I don’t know what that means.
“They’re not sure if he’s recovering yet,” he says. “Still have to see. Touch and go.”
My stomach sinks and turns.
“We should visit . . .” I start.
But Dad looks right at me and pinches his lips together, and I know my dad. He’s saying that we can’t. It’ll just make things harder, and he really is sorry. “Let the vet do her job,” he says. “We’ll call again tomorrow.”
I lie back on his bunk and close my eyes and try not to think about Parker, and how I hope he can last in touch-and-go longer than I can.
“Plus,” Dad says, “it’s your big day.”
As soon as we step out of the car at Joseph Lee Heywood Middle School, the coach calls out, “Well, if it isn’t Brooks Olson!” He’s jogging toward us, waving his clipboard, his whistle bouncing. I’m wondering if he can see from there that I’m not too much like my dad, who has wide shoulders and big hands. My shoulders don’t fill out a youth small T-shirt, and my hands can hardly grip a junior size-six football.
We’re early, but I can see Marcus and Shane tossing a ball back and forth on the field, and that uneasy feeling in my stomach settles down a little because tryouts would stink even more if I didn’t know anyone.
A few older kids are stretching and lacing up their cleats on the bench, and they look over too. One of them points and I can hear him say, “Twenty-three touchdowns!” My dad pretends not to notice.
Marcus tosses the ball to Shane and looks up. He waves at me and I wave back, but I can’t run over there because the coach is just getting to the parking lot to meet us and giving my dad a friendly punch on the shoulder. He hands him a playbook. “Thought you might like to glance at this.”
My dad nods and says he’ll look it over.
Then the coach looks down at me. “And this must be our next wide-receiving star!”
Dad pats my brown curls, which are still fuzzy from sleeping, and says, “That’s right.”
I stick out my hand to shake because that’s what Dad taught me to do. I tell him my name is Cyrus, but I don’t tell him I’m not a star at much—not touch-and-goes, not bench presses, and definitely not wide receiving. And that’s just football.
I’m not a star at most everything else too.
No one knows that, except for the pictures, I can’t even read two pages of that playbook and keep the words in my brain long enough to understand them all together. Because that’s a secret, and I guess I’m actually kind of a star at keeping it that way. I made it all the way to the sixth grade without anyone finding out.
“Happy to meet you,” he says, and he calls me Olson. “I’m Coach Matthews.” His handshake is tight.
Marcus and Shane are calling my name from the field and waving me over. I look up at my dad, and I almost say Can we please get back in the car and forget about football and drive to the animal hospital to check on Parker instead? But my dad is smiling down at me, and before any words can come out, my throat closes up and he says, “Go on.” He pats my back and says, “You got this. I’ll be back in an hour.”
I head toward Marcus and Shane, my bag bouncing against my leg as I jog, and when I look back at my dad, he runs his hands through his hair, gives me a thumbs-up, and yells, “Have fun!” I send him a thumbs-up back but really I’m wishing the hour were already over and that Coach Matthews would call and say he was sorry to report that I didn’t make the A Team.
When I get to Marcus and Shane they stick out their fists for bumps and say, “What’s up?” and “Happy belated birthday,” but I can tell that they’re nervous. Probably because they started liking football even more when we switched to full tackle last year, and they actually want to make the A Team. They sit next to me on the grass while I pull on my cleats.
“You’re so lucky the coach knows your dad,” Shane says.
“Everyone knows Cy’s dad,” says Marcus.
“Yeah, well, I hope the coach doesn’t expect me to have that Olson gene, because I don’t.”
That’s the actual truth, and it’s pretty easy to tell.
“You’re totally going to make the A Team,” Shane says.
I hope not, I’m thinking.
“We all are,” Marcus adds. “Plus, Cy, you’re due for a good season. Last year was rough.”
I nod and say, “No kidding,” and start lacing up my cleats, which never feel right on my feet. They pinch my pinkie toes, even if I tie them loose, and the left one slips on my heel and rubs a sore spot that sometimes bleeds into my sock. It’s not the cleats. This is my third pair. My feet just aren’t built for football. But after returning the first two pairs, and having three different salesmen measure my feet and study my arches, I finally just told my dad that these ones fit like a charm.
He put his arm around my shoulders in the store. “Should have known,” he said. “You’re a Nike Vapor Ultrafly kid.”
I didn’t know how to tell him that I didn’t feel ultrafly, not at all, especially with my pinkies pinched in like this, so we just bought the cleats and took them home and started breaking them in with long passes in the backyard.
“Sweet cleats,” Marcus says, and runs his finger over the black Nike swoosh on my right foot.
“They’re all right,” I answer.
Shane stands and pulls his right leg behind him to stretch, and he doesn’t waver or fall over or anything. I do all my stretches sitting. I stay down in the grass with my legs out and try to touch my toes but only get halfway down my shins. I pull one arm across my chest, then the other. Even though that stretch never feels like anything, everyone always does it, so I fake that I’m getting good and limber and ready.
“Go long,” Marcus says. He pulls a ball behind his head and juts his chin down the field. Shane cheers me on, and I get up and start running. I like this part. Just the three of us, out on the field, running routes and throwing long passes, spiking touchdowns and doing silly end-zone dances like we’re seven years old again. Like any time before last year.
The three of us have been friends since pre-K when Shane and I were in Ms. Hendricks’s class together. I met Marcus that same year, when he and his mom walked over to the firehouse to say that their cat was stuck up a tree. My dad said I could come for that one, so we rode in the truck to Marcus’s house, and sure enough, there was Harry, their shaggy black cat, out on a thick limb of their backyard tree. He had gotten too close to a nest of blue jays, and the mommy bird was dive-bombing Harry, beak first, trying to protect her babies.
I remember feeling bad for poor old Harry, but also thinking that the bird was just being a good mom.
We were all in Mr. Garrison’s class for kindergarten, and that’s when we started tossing a pee-wee-sized football in our backyards after school. Then we joined the Mighty-Mites together, and we’ve been friends ever since.
I look back, and Marcus juts his chin and wags his hand, and I know what he’s saying: Look left, zag right, hand out, touchdown! Because I know Marcus, and he’s good at making calls.
I follow his commands and fake right around a pretend defender and catch the ball easily and run it across the end zone for a spike.
“Touchdown!” Marcus yells. “Where were those steady hands last year?” He says it like a joke, but I know he’s seriously ready for me to get over my fifth-grade fumbles so he can put up good numbers this year. “If the old Olson is back, then we’ve got this,” he says.
But as we walk toward the bench where all the seventh and eighth graders are lacing up their cleats and smudging eye black on their cheeks, what I’m really wishing is that I could zag left and fake right and run right back to the firehouse.
Coach Matthews blows his whistle, then yells, “Huddle up!”
“This is it,” Marcus says.
“Ready?” asks Shane.
I don’t say no, but no.
Coach Matthews is standing up on the first bleacher and we’re all gathered around beneath him. He waves his arms when he talks, the papers on his clipboard blowing in the breeze.
“Who here knows who your middle school is named for?” He pauses, and every single one of us raises our hand, because if you grew up in Northfield, or have been here for more than a day, you know who Joseph Lee Heywood was. He was the guy who refused to open the safe and kept Jesse James from robbing the bank in town a million years ago.
“This town is famous for its bravery, for blocking the bad guys. We have a long tradition of courage here in Northfield!” He pauses again and takes a deep breath, and his face is getting a little red because he’s kind of shouting.
“You are here to try out for the Heywood football team!” He’s pointing his finger and getting louder. “Today you will work harder than you ever thought possible! You will give one hundred and ten percent! You will leave here sore and praying that you make the cut so you can return tomorrow to work even harder!” Then he stops and gazes out over all of us. “If you think you are in the wrong place, raise your hand now.”
A few kids laugh, but the coach keeps looking at each one of us like he’s completely serious and this is our last chance to bail. And when his eyes reach me, I wonder if he can see through the Vikings jersey my dad surprised me with this morning, right through the too-big shoulder pads that reach down over my chest, and straight through to my heart, and I wonder if he can see that this is not where I belong.
But he smiles at me and nods, and his eyes move on.
“OK then,” he shouts. “Let’s play!”
Coach Matthews wasn’t kidding when he said 110 percent. I have to give that much just to get to the first water break fifteen minutes in, and all we’ve done is warm up. We ran a lap around the field in our pads and then lined up in rows to do jumping jacks and high knees and all these other things that made me sweat into my eyes.
I’m squirting water from my bottle through my face mask, and even though it looks easy when I see the Vikings players do it on TV, I still get it all over my face and it drips down my neck and into my jersey, which actually feels pretty good because it’s also 110 degrees under these pads.
Shane takes a gulp of yellow Gatorade. “The eighth graders are big.”
And if Shane is saying that, you know it’s true, because he’s five feet four inches and maybe even that wide across too. His shoulders are broad, and his jersey fits tight over his stomach and chest, and his legs are round and sturdy like fire hydrants, and just by looking at him you know his position. Offensive center. He snaps the ball, then shields the quarterback and plows into people and makes everyone scared when they’re lined up nose to nose.
“The eighth graders aren’t just big, they’re huge.” Marcus spits his neon green mouth guard into his hand and shoves an orange slice in. Someone’s mom brought a big Tupperware full of them to share.
Marcus is a quarterback. Shane’s been protecting him since we were seven, and I’ve been running long and catching his passes before the defenders could lay two hands on me.
I’m a wide receiver. That’s what my dad was. I have pretty good speed, and I know the game because I never miss watching the Vikings. I know how to run a route and follow a play. I know how to cut and weave and lose a defender. I just don’t do it anymore, because if I get the ball, then all eyes are on me, and guys who are a foot taller and three feet wider will be hustling to smash me to the ground, and if the ball pops loose, then they’ll run full speed and jump, and I’ll be breaking my bones at the bottom of a pile of knees and cleats and helmets and sweaty tight-bellied jerseys. And I’m not brave like that. Brave like break-my-bones-for-the-love-of-the-game kind of brave.
I take off my helmet so I can get a real sip of water, and I pop in an orange slice too. It tastes so good, and if football were all huddles and halftime breaks, talking about the game and the plays, and eating fruit, I’d probably be MVP.
Coach Matthews is blowing on his whistle already and hollering that defense will go with Coach Thompson and offense will come with him.
I put my helmet back on, and all the offensive players watch as Coach Matthews scribbles some routes on his clipboard, and before I can sink my teeth back into the new mouth guard that I dropped in boiling water and molded to my jaw last week, he’s saying, “Olson! Show them how it’s done!”
“Me?” I sputter.
“You.”
“Assistant Coach Erikson will play cornerback, and . . .” He scans the crowd of us. “You!” He points to Marcus. “You ready to throw? Let’s see how tough the sixth graders are this year.”
Marcus hurries to the line and does that arm stretch across his chest that doesn’t work for me and hops up and down on his unpinched toes.
“Ready!” he shouts.
Coach Matthews tosses the ball to Shane. “Snap?”
Shane nods his head and lines up. He snaps the ball back to Marcus, and I’m off, running the route the way I’ve practiced over and over in our backyards. It wouldn’t be hard to fake a cut and lose Assistant Coach Erikson and receive Marcus’s pass. Coaches never go one hundred percent. And even if I couldn’t get away from him, I’m pretty sure that coaches can’t tackle kids anyway. I think that might be illegal. At least, I figure, he wouldn’t hit hard.
I don’t want to catch Marcus’s pass, though. Because I don’t want to make the A Team, and I wish it were possible to not make the B Team. Because I don’t want to be chased and tackled all season.
But I also don’t want to make Marcus look bad, because he does want to make the A Team, and I think he’s good enough to, even if the eighth graders are huge.
So I cut loose and raise my right hand, calling for the ball, running toward the end zone. Marcus pulls his arm back, locks his eyes with mine, and sends a perfect spiral right to my open hand. It hits my palm, bull’s-eye.
I could wrap my fingers around it and pull it to my chest like my dad taught me, but instead I bobble it back and forth between right and left and right again, then drop it.
All the other kids groan and say, “Noooooo,” and look away like it’s the ugliest thing they’ve ever seen.
Marcus slaps his hand against his thigh and shakes his head. “What the heck, Cyrus?”
“Perfect throw!” I shout, making sure Coach Matthews can hear. “It was perfect! I just have butterfingers!”
I hang my head and run back to the rest of the group.
Three other kids run the same route, and Marcus hits their hands just as perfectly. Two out of the three catch it, and run it to the end zone for a spike. The one that misses really misses, a right-through-the-hands kind of miss, and I don’t think he’s trying to either, because he rips his helmet off and throws it to the ground and says a couple words that make Assistant Coach Erikson say, “Hey, hey, now.”
Coach Matthews pats Marcus’s shoulder pads and says, “Well done,” and calls up another quarterback to try.
I don’t want a second turn, so I ask the coaches if I can go to the bathroom, and I’m actually pretty good at faking that I really have to go because it’s the best move I have during English class too. As soon as the teacher wants us to read something, then partner up to discuss it, that’s when I raise my hand, right when we’re supposed to talk about what we read. I give a little jiggly dance and say it’s an emergency.
“Quick,” Coach Matthews says and points toward big blue double doors on the side of the middle school building. I run off fast, past all the other preseason tryouts—soccer and field hockey—and I’m wondering if everyone really wants to be kicking balls and whacking sticks with a whole opposing team chasing after them, or if I’m the only faker out here.
The bathroom is at the end of the hall. All the lights are turned off and the lockers are open and empty and everything smells like the cleaning products they use at the doctors’ office. It’s weird to be in a school before the year starts, and I think about how next week this hallway will be filled with a hundred kids.
Last year, we had cubbies in our classrooms, but now we’ll be switching rooms and teachers for every subject, so we’ll get tall, red lockers that line the hallway and slam and have combination lock codes that we’ll have to remember.
I pass by a couple classrooms and search for signs with the teachers’ names to see if I recognize any from the schedule that was mailed home at the end of fifth grade. One door is decorated with a dozen book covers printed off in color, and right in the middle of the door it says Mr. Hewett, 6th Grade English. I remember his name.
I peek in the window, and I can’t see much. All the tables and chairs are stacked and pushed to one side, and there are shelves that wrap the whole way around the room. Each shelf is packed with baskets that are full of books. There’s a whole library right there in the classroom.
I look at the walls and the whiteboard and try to find any clues about what books we might be reading this year so I can get started looking up summaries online and memorize a couple themes to write about in my journal, but I can’t tell.
I lean in close and see a huge bulletin board covered with blue paper, and on the top it says Classroom Book a Day. I can read it because it’s not words I can’t read. I can sound out almost any word, even really long ones, and read perfectly for a hundred chapters, but when I have to string them all together and tell you what I read, that’s when my brain goes blank and I can’t remember any of the words or how they fit together. It’s easier when someone reads out loud and I can just focus on listening to the story, but I’m hoping Mr. Hewett doesn’t think I can read a book a day by myself when I haven’t even really ever read one.
Coach’s whistle screams from the field, and I better move it, but as I’m hustling out I see the trophy case and an old picture of my dad in his jersey—number eighty-eight. His name is engraved on a plaque that says Football Records and 23 Touchdowns.
It’s weird to think of Dad at my age, and to see his picture in my new middle school and imagine him walking down the hall to class. And I bet when I get to high school it’ll be the same thing, because he holds records there too.
I smile at his picture, then the whistle screams again, so I run with my pinchy cleats clicking down on the freshly waxed floor and out the blue doors and back to the field.
At the end of practice, Coach Matthews lines us all up in the end zone to run. Line touches, he calls them. “You run to the line, touch it, and run back. Touch the line, run to the next one.” He’s pointing down the field. “Touch. Go. Touch. Go. Got it?”
It makes me think of lunges and Parker, and now I can’t stop wondering if he’s OK and if he has a big pen or a little cage and if he’s getting along with the other dogs and if he’s gotten any bones. I wonder if he still has my T-shirt, and if he remembers me.
The whistle blows, and I get a late start on purpose. I’m still touching while everyone else is going. Then I see my dad’s Volvo station wagon pull into the parking lot, and even if my legs burn and I want to finish in the back of the pack, I pick up the pace and pass a few of the other guys who started out too fast and are losing steam.
My dad leans on the hood of the car and shields his eyes from the sun as I pass two more guys. Through my face mask, I can see his lips press into a little half smile.
When the whistle blows for us to stop, I’m in the middle of the pack, finishing with Shane, who is huffing and heaving. It’s ahead of where I wanted to finish, but I’m still not a star. Not like Marcus, who was neck and neck with the eighth graders out front.
Coach calls us all together for a final huddle. “There are forty-four of you here today.” He’s standing up on the first bleacher and we’re all still breathing hard. “I will see thirty of you back here tomorrow to continue your fight for a spot on the A Team. The rest of you will play B Team ball this season. You’ll hear from us this afternoon.”
Shane, Marcus, and I sit on the bench and loosen our cleats. We take off our pads and pack up our bags. I’m too tired to talk, and I think they are too, because they don’t say anything about my missed pass.
When we’re halfway to the parking lot, Coach Matthews calls me back. “Olson!” He’s standing with the other coaches and waving me over with his clipboard.
Shane and Marcus give me worried looks, but they stick their fists out for bumps and Marcus says, “Call you later, when I hear from the coach.”
“OK,” I say. But I’m really thinking that maybe the coaches can’t even wait until this afternoon to tell me I didn’t make the cut. That I was that bad.
I jog back on wobbly legs and instead of putting a disappointed hand on my shoulder, Coach Matthews hands me a pair of Under Armour gloves still in the plastic packaging. “We have a few extra. Every star wide receiver has to have a good pair of gloves.”
“No more butterfingers,” Assistant Coach Erikson says.
I nod and say thanks and that maybe these will help.
“You got this, Olson.” They clap me on the back, and I jog to the parking lot.
In the car, I unwrap the gloves and try them on. They’re a little big, but I pull the Velcro tight around my wrists.
My dad reaches over. “Sticky palms to help you grip the ball.”
“Cool,” I say. But really I’m thinking that for me, playing football just doesn’t stick. And beneath the pads and pinched into the cleats with sticky gloves cinched tight around my wrists is not where I belong.