Truth: I continued to feel like shit. After the Country Kitchen breakfast, I nearly threw up. I stayed lying on the bathroom floor in the basement for the better part of an hour after we got home. It was bad. And the plans I had for watching games and studying the rest of the day just couldn’t happen. My broken bell meant bed was the only reasonable option.
I canceled my day by text. Grandma didn’t respond (she received texts but never sent them). Dad asked, Concussion? I didn’t reply. I told Twiggs I had the flu. Twiggs asked if I was okay after that crazy hit.
100 percent I responded, before turning off the lights in my room, pulling the curtains tight, and burying my head in the pillows.
I drifted into sleep. Back out. Had that conversation with Mom been real? It didn’t seem real to me, sitting in Country Kitchen, the old people acting like synchronized swimmers, tilting their heads toward us in unison, trying to hear what? That I had to quit playing football? Mom said that, but it was impossible. Football was the future.
Really.
I had a big secret.
Our first game of the year had been against Glendale, a giant school in suburban Milwaukee. Given the school’s size, Glendale thought they’d beat the crap out of us cornhole, small-town rubes (some names they called us). They barked at us across the field. They called us fat-ass farmers and hillbillies. They accused us of doing nasty things with farm animals. It’s like they had no idea of who we were, even though we’d been kicking ass all over Wisconsin for a couple years.
I have to say, their nastiness pissed us off. We took it out on them. Five minutes in we’d knocked out their top running back and were up by two touchdowns. It was violent. I unloaded on that running back. They stopped talking shit. They looked like dogs with their tails between their legs.
By halftime we were up by twenty. By the final whistle, we’d destroyed Glendale, 40–14. And honestly, it could’ve been worse. Coach Reynolds sat our supertalented running back, Iggy, and our all-area quarterback, Riley, the whole fourth quarter. Twiggs, our all-conference split end, came out after one series in the fourth. I never came out—I told Coach Reynolds I wouldn’t come out after we gave up two touchdowns at the end of a game sophomore year.
Yes, we destroyed Glendale. This was not a surprise, if you were paying attention. We’d unloaded on two giant suburban schools the year before, too.
There was a surprise, though. A serious recruiter had been there to see the Glendale quarterback. I had twelve tackles—violent tackles—a sack, a crazy, long bomb interception, and a fumble recovery that I returned for a touchdown. I, personally, had made that Glendale quarterback look like a middle schooler.
On my way off the field, this guy waited next to the stands. He wore a college insignia golf shirt, had big shoulders, and carried a clipboard. I knew he was a recruiter. I’d seen these dudes before but had mostly blown them off because I already knew what I was doing after high school—Bluffton College. The guy pulled me aside. Riley and Twiggs had gone into the locker room in front of me. Only a few underclassmen and scrubs walked behind. No one really saw the exchange.
“Isaiah Sadler?” the man said.
“Yeah?”
“You’re a senior?”
“Yeah?”
“Have any D-I coaches come to see you play?”
“Last year. Wisconsin and Iowa State. They think I’m small, which is fine.”
“You’re not that small,” the man said.
“No. I’m pretty small,” I said.
“You’re a baller, straight up. That’s what I see.”
I paused. Blinked. Looked at the red C with a bear climbing through it on the left chest of the dude’s golf shit. “Who are you?” I asked.
“What kind of student are you, Isaiah?” the man asked. “Do you like school?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m second in my class. I probably should be first. My mom didn’t want me to take AP Human Geography last year because it’s tough and I had a lot of tough classes, so I got behind in AP credits. I’m taking it this year, though.”
A big smile spread across the man’s face. He reached out his hand to shake. “I’m Jim Conti. Cornell University.”
“Cornell?” I said.
Since that game in mid-August, Conti had lit me up like the sun on a summer day. He texted several times a week. He called my cell once a week. He asked for my family’s financial data. I broke the rules, went into Mom’s office. I copied bank statements and tax returns from Mom’s files. Conti asked for video, which I got from Kirby Sheldon, our team’s student trainer and AV guy. That video showed again and again what Jim Conti saw in person, I suppose. Truth: I’m a little small. But, also, I am a baller, straight up. And based on my grades, my high ACT score, and, mostly, on my nose for the football, Cornell University, a great institution of higher learning—the alma mater of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and this writer I really like, Kurt Vonnegut, and Bill Nye the Science Guy, who Hannah and I watched on YouTube, and lots more (I googled everything about the school)—wanted to fly me out to Ithaca, New York, to visit their campus. They were preparing to offer me a scholarship. . . .
But I hadn’t told anybody else (except for Joey, who thought it was awesome). Coach Conti kept asking to talk to Mom or Dad. I made up excuses about how they were busy but were as excited about Cornell as I was. I’m not even sure what I was afraid of. Mom, I guess. How would she react if I told her I wanted to go back on the commitment I’d made to her to stay in Bluffton for college, to stay close to home, to keep our family together? That fear might seem stupid if there hadn’t been all this death and disaster in my family.
Coach Conti texted Sunday around noon.
Big win against Sacred Heart yesterday. Gave up too many points, though. We could use you out there! Harvard next week. When can we get you out here to see a game? Talk to your parents this week?
I shut my eyes tight. Slept the sleep of the dead, except I dreamed my recurring dream, which included Hannah drinking a black coffee at Badger Coffee on Main Street.
I woke. Twiggs texted again. Apparently, Aaron Rodgers threw a crazy touchdown to Davante Adams. I tried to focus on the phone screen, to see the highlight Twiggs sent. But I couldn’t watch the motion. I couldn’t track it. My eyes didn’t work.
I am broken, I thought.