CHAPTER 5

Which brings us back to where we started.

After only three weeks of practices—where I spend half my time trying to convince everyone I shouldn’t be on the team and the other half explaining the differences between football and the sports the other players know—I’m about to play my first football game ever in what my helmet’s Guide Mode says is the largest free-floating arena in space.

The QISL season is divided into eight games, with the four best teams going to the playoffs. The only way to save Earth is to win the championship. But right now, I’m just worried about living through the first game.

The head referee, Lorngosh Snoofbill, flips a coin to see who will receive the ball first. Except instead of a coin, she pulls an eyeball from one of the three sockets in her forehead and flings it onto the grass.

The gooshy-looking eyeball is both disgusting and strangely fascinating. It turns left, right, and finally ends up glaring at the Droglidorians, who choose to kick the ball to us to start the game.

As the Drogs line up to kick, our return team jogs onto the field and sets up to block for Ajay and Nitro, who move back near our goal line to receive the kick. Since I’m not part of that unit, I can only stand on the sideline trying not to hyperventilate.

“Guess the Drogs brought in a ringer,” Nova says, pointing to a creature that looks like an armadillo and an octopus had a baby with a bad case of diaper rash. Green goo drips from its tentacles onto the grass, instantly turning the field around it into a swampy muck.

“Gotta remember to avoid that,” I whisper to myself as the Drog kicker runs toward the ball.

For having such stubby little legs, the warty alien kicks surprisingly hard.

Ajay steps up as the ball sails toward him and the crowd roars, jumping to their feet so quickly that the arena seems to tilt like the Titanic after it hit that iceberg.

“Run!” I yell as Ajay catches the ball and races up the field.

The first Drog meets him at the twenty-yard line.

Pfft

Ajay fakes left.

Zing

He cuts right and does a flying jump kick off the other player’s helmet.

Durf

The Drog reaches, their claws snapping on empty space as they face-plant into the field, getting a mouthful of dirt and grass.

Sprinting up the sideline like the time I accidentally walked into the wrong bathroom at Walmart and got chased by a cranky mom with a poopy baby and a can of pepper spray, Ajay makes it almost to the thirty when…

A blast of fire shoots up from the ground all around him!

(I wonder how long it will take to grow his eyebrows out again.)

Blinded by the smoke, Ajay backpedals straight into a pair of snarling Droglidorians who grab him with their giant claws and close their teeth around his helmet.

“No fair!” Nova yells to the refs. “Biting is against the rules!” But the referees don’t seem to care.

Just as I’m imagining Ajay’s helmet getting crushed like a walnut in one of those terrifying nutcrackers people put out for the holidays, Astrid appears out of nowhere. She drops one of her massive shoulder pads in a block that fans can hear clear up in the nosebleed seats and sends the Drog tacklers flying.

“Go!” Coach screams—spit spraying from his mouth like a waterfall.

With no one between Ajay and the other end zone, it looks like he might be able to score. Which would be totally cool because it would mean I didn’t have to play yet. But just when it seems like he could go all the way—

“You’re in,” Coach says, slapping me on the back so hard that I trip over a cooler of Gatorade.

As the fans scream all around me, I feel like one of those prisoners the Romans fed to lions in the Colosseum.

Nitro wrinkles his nose as I join the huddle.

Nitro’s totally right about my cleats. But pointing it out here is a low blow—especially in front of Nova.

I may have zero chance of impressing her now that she’s seen me spew most of a large Hawaiian pizza, but I can still show her how witty I am with a clever but stinging comeback.

“Yeah, well, your hair smells like…like the stuff my grandma sprays on her dresses to keep them from wrinkling.”

Wait, where did that come from? I may not be much of a football player, but I am the king of comebacks. My brain is literally filled with stinky smells for any occasion:

Instead, I went with the stuff my grandma sprays on her dresses, which is literally the worst comeback in the history of comebacks.

Moustapha shakes his head. “Weak sauce, bro.”

“It’s okay, mate,” Quake says, patting my shoulder. “Sometimes you eat the crocodile. Sometimes the crocodile eats you.”

That’s probably comforting to an Australian, but at the moment, it doesn’t make me feel any better.

“Listen up!” Coach’s voice screams inside my helmet, and a play called counter run T appears as a hologram in front of my face mask.

In this play, I start in shotgun formation—where I stand a few feet behind the center to catch their snap—before I fake a handoff to Nova, then actually give the ball to Nitro, who runs around the left side.

Nitro grins when he hears it’s a run. “Of course, the first play is for the best player on the team.” He thumps his chest in case any of us lesser beings didn’t know who he was talking about. “Watch the ladies go crazy when I take it to the house.”

As we break the huddle to start the play, Nitro moonwalks to the line of scrimmage and points to the aliens across from us.

Insights from FERN: Droglidorians love anyone who can moonwalk.

My hands are shaking so hard I’m afraid I won’t be able to hold on to the ball as I line up behind Briny, our four-tentacled center.

On the second hut, Briny hikes the ball and it nearly slips through my sweaty fingers as I catch it.

I barely have time to turn when Nova races toward me in a blur of graceful speed, blue hair, and the smell of peach-scented shampoo. For a single second our hands touch and I imagine how happy we could be with her doing gymnastics and me giving out samples of W00t! in the stands.

Then she’s gone and Nitro is running toward me, a swarm of Droglidorians coming right at us.

“Where’s the ball?” he screams.

I look down to see that my hands are empty.

I wonder how many quarterbacks have started the first game with a fumble as a horde of aliens makes me understand what it would feel like to be a chicken nugget in a garbage disposal.

When the pile finally clears away, Quake pulls me to my feet. “Quake to the rescue.”

“Good job!” Ajay says.

“Huh?” I look around woozily, wondering if there are really twice as many players as usual or if I’m just seeing double.

Twenty yards down the field, Nova tosses the ball to the refs. Nitro stands up looking as confused as I am.

Nova rolls her eyes as she trots up. “Next time, you might want to save your celebrating for after the play, so the other team doesn’t know what’s coming. But thanks for being a perfect decoy.”

She smiles at me. “Great handoff, Wyatt.”

The next play, I heave a pass that slips out of my hand and flies straight up over my head. But Andromeda swoops up and snags it for another completion. For one glorious moment I think I could be the quarterback the rest of the world believes I am. A totally uncoordinated knight in fireproof armor and a football helmet who rides into town with a bag of Cheetos and a case of W00t!.

Then the referees rule that Andromeda caught the ball too high and rule it out-of-bounds—I didn’t even know that QISL plays had a height limit.

The very next down, I mess up a pass that the Droglidorians intercept and run back for a touchdown. After that, I turn the wrong way on a fullback toss and throw the ball directly to a defender, fumble three times—in a row—and accidentally run the ball back into my own end zone for a safety.

The final score is Droglidorians 72–Earth 6. All of our points come from field goals Sunny kicks, and more than half of the Drogs’ points come directly off my turnovers.

It’s not like the rest of our team is perfect, but this loss is 100 percent on my shoulders. I should honestly be voted most valuable player. For the other team.

We are definitely doomed.