“Who’s Dion?” demanded Kylie, looking up from her phone.
Ava turned. “He’s the backup quarterback to PJ Kelly,” she explained. “Why?”
“I just got a text from my sister,” said Kylie. “She says that Dion is out. He has a stress fracture.”
Ava’s eyes widened.
“Is that big news?” asked Kylie.
“Well, yeah,” Ava said. “Because with Dion out, that makes my brother, Tom, the backup quarterback, just behind PJ.”
“Oh! That’s pretty cool,” said Kylie.
Ava’s stomach flipped over. Of course it was highly unlikely Tommy would get into the game, but it could happen. She wondered what was going through her brother’s mind.
“Chances are he won’t actually get to play. Tommy’s only a sophomore,” she said to Kylie. “And PJ is really good.”
“Hey, you never know,” said Kylie. “Where’s your dad?”
Ava pointed. “He’s there, on the sideline. He’s the one with the big headphones on. That way he can communicate with the assistant coaches up there in the tower.”
Kylie looked behind them to where Ava was pointing. She whistled. “Wow. I always wondered who those people up there were.”
“They’re coaches, and also video people and TV camera guys,” Ava explained. She smiled at her new friend. Kylie seemed genuinely interested in paying attention to the game.
The Mainville Eagles won the toss, so they started with the ball. But Ashland’s defense stopped the first drive. Then, just at the three-minute mark, the Ashland Tigers scored a touchdown. The crowd went wild.
“Yaaaaay!” yelled Kylie along with everyone else. “That’s good, right?”
“That’s good, but it’s early,” said Ava. She glanced down at her dad, who was yelling something into the mouthpiece of his headphones and pacing up and down along the sidelines. He was looking at PJ in disbelief. Ava wondered why.
And sure enough, Mainville scored two unanswered touchdowns and led for the rest of the half, fourteen to seven.
During the halftime show Kylie went off to the refreshment stand. Ava was too nervous to do anything but sit and pretend to be watching the high-steppers and the band, although her mind was a million miles away, thinking about the game, about Tommy, and about her dad. It would be so awful if he lost his first game. She hoped no one would come try to talk to her. Thankfully, they didn’t, and the game resumed.
“What’s going on?” yelled Kylie at the end of the third quarter. The Ashland fans were booing.
Ava turned to explain. “We were in a good position to score. We had that interception, and our safety made a really good return to set up a touchdown. But PJ is not having a good game. He just had three incomplete passes, and that fourth-down running play got snuffed. So now it’s Mainville’s ball.”
The Ashland Tigers managed to stop the Mainville team from scoring. Then the offensive squad trotted onto the field. The Ashland fans booed even louder.
“What? What’s happening?” demanded Kylie.
Ava’s jaw fell open. “It looks like Coach has yanked PJ,” she said to Kylie. “Tommy’s in.”
Something isn’t right, she thought. A coach didn’t usually pull out the first-string quarterback—an experienced senior—in the middle of the first game of the season, unless the quarterback was injured, and Ava hadn’t seen PJ get hurt. The other reason might be that the coach wanted to teach him a lesson. She remembered what Tommy had said, about PJ being all over the place. Maybe he’d done something to really make Coach mad.
The score remained the same. Ava could sense the Ashland fans’ unease. Maybe they were blaming Coach for the way the game was going. He had so much to prove to everyone.
And then, in the fourth quarter, Tommy completed a pass to Tyler Whitley in the end zone with four minutes and twenty-two seconds left. The score was fourteen to thriteen. The crowd rose to its feet, roaring.
“Woooo!” yelled Kylie, jumping up and down. “We scored! We’re going to win!”
Ava cheered too, but she’d learned not to let down her guard. Ashland had an uphill battle ahead if they were going to beat this team.
A few minutes later it was the Mainville fans’ turn to roar.
Ava groaned as the Mainville band played a triumphant tune and the other team’s fans all stomped and clapped along.
“What! What just happened?” asked Kylie. “Why did that guy just get to run all that way? Why didn’t we tackle him?”
“Mainville had a sixty-one-yard kickoff return,” said Ava. “We should have stopped their guy, but we didn’t. And now—” She groaned again, as did the rest of the Tigers fans.
“Touchdown?” asked Kylie softly.
Ava nodded. She put up a finger to indicate that Kylie should wait.
The Tigers fans erupted in cheers.
“We just blocked the extra point. So the score is twenty to thirteen.”
The girls watched the scoreboard click through a blur of numbers until it read HOME: 13, OPPONENT: 20.
“Can we get a touchdown in one minute, forty seconds?” asked Kylie anxiously.
In spite of Ava’s anguish, she was pleased to note how into the game Kylie was.
“It’s going to be close,” said Ava.
“Now what’s happening?” demanded Kylie.
“It’s the second down and—wait—oh, Tommy come on, come on—”
Ava’s voice was drowned out in the roar of the crowd. Many of the Tigers fans reached out their hands to grasp an imaginary football, as though collectively willing the long pass Tommy had thrown to be caught by Tyler.
Tyler caught the pass at his own thirty-yard line and intentionally ran out of bounds.
“Why did he do that?” demanded Kylie. “So those two goons wouldn’t tackle him?”
“To stop the clock,” said Ava. “He knew they were about to tackle him, and if they’d done so on the field, the clock would have run down. When he runs out of bounds, the clock stops.”
Kylie nodded, trying to chew on eight of her fingernails at the same time.
“I’m going to sit down,” she shouted to Ava over the roaring fans. “My nerves can’t stand it. Can you poke me when something big happens?”
“Okay, now you have to stand up,” yelled Ava a few minutes later.
Kylie stood up. “All right—tell me.”
“It’s fourth down with eight yards to go at the thirty-eight-yard line. We have one chance to get a touchdown, and the other team knows Tommy’s going to pass it, because there’s no time for a running play. Because look how much time is on the clock.”
Kylie gulped. “Seven seconds!” she croaked.
Tommy threw the pass high. A perfect spiral.
The crowd on both sides went almost silent as the pass was in the air. The whole stadium seemed to be holding its breath.
Ava felt Kylie’s fingers dig into her arm.
Then the crowd went crazy.
“He caught it!” screamed Kylie, but no one noticed, because everyone else in the Tigers stands was screaming too, including Ava.
Kylie stopped jumping up and down. “But wait! The score is only twenty to nineteen, and there’s no time on the clock. Why is everyone still screaming? Did we lose or didn’t we?”
“We get to attempt the extra point,” said Ava. “The question is, are we going to kick for the extra point to tie, or are we going for two?”
“I certainly don’t know,” said Kylie. “I’m going to sit down and put my head between my knees.”
Many people around them groaned.
“Did we lose?” asked Kylie, lifting her head back up.
“No. They’re worried because we’re going for two points. They think it’s risky and we should take the tie.”
Time seemed to stand still again. Once more, the huge stadium got quiet.
Ava watched Tommy take the snap and fake a handoff to the running back. And then—
“It’s a bootleg!” screamed Ava. “Tommy’s running!”
Kylie jumped to her feet.
Ava gasped. “He’s down—”
Tommy was buried under a mound of defense at the goal line.
Ava realized she hadn’t breathed in quite some time.
There was utter silence in the stadium for what felt like the longest second of Ava’s life.
Then the Ashland fans went crazy as the referee in the end zone raised both arms straight above his head.
Tommy had scored. The scoreboard clicked to twenty-one to twenty. The Tigers had won.
After the game the crowd swarmed the field. Tommy was carried off on the other players’ shoulders. Coach was doused with the ice-water bucket. Ava was as delirious as everyone else, dancing with Kylie, hugging Alex, hugging her mom. Jack came running up to her and gave her a double high five. Even Ms. Palmer, the English teacher, gave the girls a big hug. It was a little weird being hugged by a teacher, Ava thought, especially one in whose class you’d flunked two quizzes. But she went with it.
“Don’t forget that we’re all going to Sal’s for pizza!” Alex yelled into Ava’s ear. “But not right away. I’ll text you when we’re all heading over!”
Ava gave her a thumbs-up. It was too noisy to have a real conversation, and she couldn’t really put into words what she was feeling anyway, but she knew her twin felt it too. It was exhilaration, relief, and something else, something neither probably knew how to explain. Ava wondered if it was a little bit of fear. The fear that this evening was short-lived, that every Friday night this season would be a new and fretful experience, and that like it or not, the two of them were going to be in the spotlight.
Kylie promised to show up at Sal’s with only a little persuasion, and then went to find her sister.
Ava’s throat had gone hoarse from all the cheering. She went in search of a drinking fountain. She was wandering in a semiquiet corridor of the stadium when she felt her phone vibrate. Her eyes widened. It was Tommy!
She hurried to a place in the corridor where the wall jutted out, squeezed herself into the corner, and answered.
“Tommy! Hey!”
“Hey yourself, dude. Pretty cool, huh?” It was extremely noisy in the background where Tommy was. Ava had to strain to be able to make out what he was saying. He was probably calling her from the locker room.
“Tom, that was an unbelievable game,” said Ava.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “But things are a little messed up with the team. Hold on. I need to go into the trainer’s office a second where they won’t hear me.”
She heard the noise fade somewhat and a door close.
“That better?”
“Much. So what happened? What’s going on with the team?”
“I’ll tell you, Ave, but you can’t go running to tell all your friends. This isn’t something we want circulating on Ashland Middle School’s social networks.”
“Duh, of course not,” said Ava, feeling slightly hurt. Tommy knew perfectly well that she was not a gossip.
“Not even Alex, okay? She’s my sister and all, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she put it into one of her campaign commercials.”
“Okay!” said Ava. Her curiosity was overwhelming. “Tell me what happened!”
“Coach is super mad at PJ,” said Tommy. “All game long he was running audibles at the line.”
“What are those again?”
“It’s when the coach signals a play and then the QB calls a different play when he sees how the defense is lining up. It’s totally okay to do once in a while. But PJ did it the whole game. He kept running a different play from the one Coach wanted him to run. Like he didn’t trust him or something, like he thought he knew better than Coach. And then during that final drive, he totally ignored Coach’s signal to pass, and ran his own running play. So Coach finally yanked him.”
“Oh wow,” said Ava.
“Yeah, so it’s great we won and all, but we’ve got some team stuff to work through.”
“Well, I’m really proud of you, Tom,” said Ava.
“Thanks,” said Tommy. “I’m enjoying the moment, but I don’t know if I’m cut out for this kind of stardom.”
“I understand,” said Ava, and she did. She knew Tommy’s heart was more in his music than football. “But enjoy the moment tonight, okay? Seize the day, as Alex has started saying. She learned about it in her English class for geniuses.”
He promised he would. As soon as the call ended, Ava got a text from Alex saying it was time for the pizza party.