Jimmy and Preston sit on the bench in front of the Good Egg, reading the Southwind Sentinel. Jimmy’s smoking a cigarette, and even though the wind is blowing away from Preston, every once in a while the geek snaps the paper against his legs and glares at Jimmy for exhaling in his direction. Alex and Stanley lean against the diner’s brick exterior, also reading the Sentinel. Only Magnus’s legs are visible from underneath his car, which is parked along the curb behind Preston and Jimmy’s bench. From where Tom sits, on the hood of the Volvo, he can see pages of the Sentinel scattered across the front seat. He read the paper at home over breakfast, and he wasn’t thrilled about the news.
Pamela Routly wrote an extensive preview of the upcoming soccer season, including a sidebar about Tom’s Boosters, which she described as “a ragtag band of rovers with more tenacity than talent, but spirit to spare.” In the article she chronicled, more or less accurately, the team’s progress over the past two weeks but didn’t mention their upcoming match with Southwind—a sign, Tom figures, that Dempsey hasn’t divulged their secret to the world yet. Routly did, however, note that “former Tin River striker Tom Gray may have let youthful bravado get the better of him in refusing a starting spot on the championship squad.” After reading the article, Tom unpacked his dictionary and looked up bravado: false bravery.
Though he’d been accused of similar things before, by Skakenrahksen and kids at Tin River who thought he needed to come down off the pedestal upon which the local press and Tin River Boosters had put him, he had never been criticized in such a public way before. It didn’t occur to him, when he decided not to play for Dempsey back in front of the Southwind trophy case, that he’d have to answer for it in the newspaper. And what exactly did Pamela Routly know about why he made the decision he made? Nothing. What did anybody know about that, except maybe his mother?
Even Elizabeth Gray made the Sentinel that day, in an article about the Warrior mascot debate written by a reporter named Phil Olsen—“with additional reporting by Pamela Routly.” Tom got the impression, reading Olsen’s article, that the paper supports Dempsey’s position over that of the Parents’ Association and his mother. Olsen gave Dempsey a long, eloquent quote:
“The Warrior tradition, as imperfect as it may be, has for decades brought our community together around a set of virtues—courage, perseverance, and the camaraderie forged in competitive athletics. Political debates such as this one have done nothing but divide us.”
The article reported that Tom’s mother was “maintaining steady pressure on the school board to reconsider the team mascot—trying to head the Warriors off at the pass.” Tom suspected that this one phrase, “head the Warriors off at the pass,” had come from Routly, whose articles on the soccer season are all peppered with clever lines. Olsen gave his mother one short quote—“The mascot denigrates Native American culture”—and, in the process, gave Tom another word to look up. Denigrate: to attack the reputation of; to defame.
Tom is relieved that his bet with Dempsey is not mentioned in the paper, but even this bright spot, he knows, has its dark side: Unless Dempsey has forgotten about their wager or just decides to let the whole matter go—unlikely, given his comments in the mascot article—Routly’s going to have a much bigger soccer story when the regular season finally starts. And she’ll be proved right: Tom will be wearing Warriors red, his bravado, his false bravery, will have been just that. False.
“What do you make of all this, Jock Man?” Preston says, rolling up the paper and cramming it between slats in the bench.
Tom hesitates, hoping someone else will join the conversation. His thoughts on the matter seem too tangled to convey at the moment.
“Tom?” Preston persists.
“I hope you’re planning to recycle that paper,” Tom says.
Preston shoots him an annoyed look, but before he can respond, the group is distracted by Katya stepping out of the Nucleus. She stops in the middle of the sidewalk, puts her hands on her hips, and tilts her head back into the morning sun, closing her eyes. Tom fights the urge to stare and instead looks down at his Sambas, avoiding what he feels is just one more unpredictable factor complicating his already chaotic private life. A few moments later, he hears her walking toward them.
Tom looks up but in the opposite direction, away from Katya, just as the only person in the world more detrimental to his mental health rounds the corner at the end of the block: Dempsey.
Tom immediately hops off the Volvo and walks toward him.
“Where are you going?” Preston says.
Tom turns to find Katya standing at the perimeter of the gathering, hands on her hips again—but in a different way.
“Tom Gray,” Dempsey calls from down the sidewalk. “Just the guy I’m looking for.”
Tom turns away from his friends and hurries to catch Dempsey as far away from the others as possible.
“I heard this is your hangout,” Dempsey says as Tom reaches him in front of the Village Florist.
Tom gestures to the shop. “Here?”
Dempsey laughs.
Tom smells the scent of stale mint gum.
“Here on the block,” Dempsey says. “The diner, there.”
“Right. Sure, I eat there once in a while.”
Dempsey regards Tom with a smile and says nothing. He points at another bench in front of the store one shop farther up the block, a poster and framing store. “I just need a couple minutes of your time,” he says. “Sit.” Sitting down on the bench, Tom decides to let Dempsey start things off. He’s not sure he’d know where to begin anyway.
“So, Tom,” Dempsey says, “you’ve probably read today’s Sentinel.”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, you know that the reporter, there, Routly, managed to get in some information about your friends—”
“My team.”
Dempsey laughs to himself and shifts on the bench. “Right,” he says. “Your team.”
Tom eyes the reflection of them, seated on the bench, in the poster shop’s front window. Dempsey seems to be looking at their reflection too, as if it might be easier to talk to each other this way.
“Well, the problem with the article is not so much what she wrote. I think she got most of that right, actually. The problem is the way it makes our little . . . situation look. Do you follow me?”
Tom shakes his head.
Dempsey’s reflection scratches at his bald spot. “It’s like this.” He turns to Tom, but Tom keeps staring straight ahead. “It creates a bit of an . . . image problem—for both of us, in fact. See what I’m saying?”
Tom turns to Dempsey. “Not really. I mean, I know I don’t like being called a phony.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Bravado. She wrote that I have bravado.”
“Oh, that.” Dempsey nods. “Yeah, sometimes these journalists are a bit reckless with their word choice. But, then, I’m no English teacher. I’m hardly one to judge—”
“It’s strange to hear you say that,” Tom interrupts before he’s even sure what he’s saying. “Because this whole debate is about word choice, isn’t it? And aren’t you making a kind of judgment about what one particular word means?”
Dempsey winces and gnaws at his gum.
“I mean,” Tom goes on, “you sure seemed to know which words to choose when you spoke to that reporter, Olsen—”
“Look,” Dempsey grumbles, his voice lower, rougher. “You want to get cute about this, Gray, then that’s your choice. But I’ll tell you how things stand, because you don’t seem to get it. There are two things on the line here. One, you’re going to look like a first-class jerk when you come slinking back to the Warrior bench.”
Bench, Tom repeats to himself. The word is like a kick in the gut. “Did you say—”
“I sure did, hotshot,” Dempsey answers on a big whiff of mint. “My team’s a team. Everyone’s equal. And if a player needs some time to sort that out, I know just where he can sit until he does.”
Tom can’t think of anything to say, his heart starting to pound in his rib cage at the image of himself dressed in a Warrior jersey and sitting on the bench wedged between Chaz the Spaz and Kyle Erdmann.
“I don’t mean to be a hard-ass about this, Tom, I really don’t,” Dempsey says. He stands and walks over to the shop window, peers inside for a few seconds, then walks back to the bench. “I’m just trying to do the right thing.”
“You said there were two things on the line,” Tom says. “What’s the other?”
Dempsey clasps his hands behind his back and rocks on his sneakers. “Right. I did. Well, the other thing is my own personal problem, I guess.” He gazes down the street. “It’s that I end up looking like the bad guy in all of this.”
“What difference does it make how you look? You’re the coach and the athletic director. You’re in charge.”
“Yes, but remember that I represent the Warriors, Tom—present and past. It won’t do for me to cast that tradition in any but the most positive light—”
“So you put Chaz on the varsity roster?” Tom says, again the words leaping from his mouth by their own power. “When you know he belongs on the JV team?”
Dempsey scowls and folds his arms across his chest. “I’m through talking about this, Tom. Talking isn’t getting anywhere with you. Here’s the deal. I hear you’re scrimmaging Wittsford tomorrow. True?”
Tom nods.
“I’ll send one of my players out. Find him and tell him what you’re going to do about all this.”
“Do they know about our . . .”
“My team? No. No one knows. Just you and me. Not even that nosy reporter. But everyone’s going to know sooner or later. The question is, are they going to know that you made a foolish bet and lost, or that you decided to become part of a very positive, very honorable tradition—”
“It’s not my tradition any more than the Warrior image is your image,” Tom blurts out.
Dempsey stares at him, eyes narrowed, for what seems to Tom like an hour. Finally, the man’s expression softens, and he smiles. Without another word, he turns and heads back up the sidewalk.
Tom sits on the bench for a few minutes, staring at himself in the poster shop window, waiting for his heart to slow to a normal speed. He knows he’s just been given an out, a way to save face and keep playing soccer at the most competitive level. He wants to give Dempsey credit for that. Something about the way the man deals with him, though, makes it nearly impossible to do anything but resist: the way he assumes his way is right, refuses to see another perspective, rejects any alternatives. And this business about riding the Warrior bench . . . That’s the part of Dempsey Tom can’t accept—the part that flips a switch inside and is suddenly nasty, willing to trick a kid into a can’t-win scenario and to punish anyone who challenges his authority.
Yet Tom also knows that he’s powerless against Dempsey. The man’s been coaching longer than Tom’s been alive—by a lot. The regional championship trophy is in a showcase down the hall from his team’s locker room.
He stands and wanders up to the poster shop window, discovering that one of the three posters in the front display depicts a seemingly one-hundred-year-old Native American in full ceremonial regalia sitting astride a horse, the sun setting in purple-red hues in the background. The title running below the poster reads, SUNDOWN FOR THE WARRIOR. I never had a chance, Tom thinks.
Returning to his friends, he waves at Katya, who’s taken his seat on Magnus’s car. Without a wave back, she slides off and walks back to the store. Preston and the others turn and watch her leave.
“Want me to get my camera, Preston?” Tom says.
Preston turns around. “Dude, you totally dissed Katya.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“It sure seemed like it. Was it worth it, though? Did Mr. Coach Pants try to lure you back to the team?”
Tom hops back onto the Volvo. “Sort of.”
“Did he offer you anything good?” Preston says. “A limo to school?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well, are you going to play for the guy? Because that reporter made it sound like—”
“She doesn’t know anything,” Tom snaps.
His sharp tone silences Preston for a couple of seconds. “Well,” Preston resumes, more delicately, “are you going to play for the Warriors?”
“Would it make any difference either way?” Tom says.
“See, that’s just what I’ve been saying,” Jimmy interjects.
Preston groans.
Jimmy drops his cigarette onto the sidewalk and grinds it out. “Does any of this make any difference? All this attention over a stupid game—”
“In this,” Preston butts in, “I must admit, we’re somewhat in agreement. But—”
“The only part I like is the thing about the Southwind Athletic Boosters,” Jimmy continues, “you know, how they’re pissed because we stole their name. The rest of this is fricking tweaked.”
The group is silent as Jimmy lights another cigarette.
“And you, Tom?” Preston says. “Can you offer any insight more penetrating than ‘this is fricking tweaked’?”
“See?” Jimmy sneers. “You guys are clueless. Bunch of smart guys, geeks . . . but no clue. You think something like this actually matters?”
“I want to hear what Tom thinks,” Preston says. “Does this matter, Tom?”
“Jimmy’s right,” Tom finally says, leaning back onto the warm hood of the car. “It’s tweaked.”
“No, but doesn’t it say something about this community,” Preston rambles on, now very amped about the issue, “you know, that maybe we put too much emphasis on athletics?”
“And not enough on science?” Magnus says, finally climbing out from under his car. “This sounds familiar.”
“Seriously,” Preston says. “Don’t you think, Tom?” He walks over to the front of the car so he can look at Tom, who’s lying down. “Doesn’t this say something about what this community thinks is important? And what’s not?”
“Yes,” Tom says, straining to speak while on his back but reluctant to prop himself up and engage in this debate. “It says that it’s important to debate things. And that it’s not important to know when to shut up.”
Magnus and the others laugh.
“You weren’t talking about me just then,” Preston says. He cocks his head to look more directly at Tom. “That wasn’t a cut at me, was it?”
Tom closes his eyes and says nothing.