CHAPTER 11

Week three is considered our first home game, although technically we play all our games at the same arena. The day before the game, we fly back to Earth for interviews, guest appearances on TV shows, and a parade that is supposed to be in our honor but actually has more people booing than cheering.

I try to remind myself that I don’t have to be amazing, just good enough to get the win.

That would be a lot easier if we didn’t pass thousands of people holding signs telling me how much I stink on the way to the stadium.

Today’s game is against a planet of three-eyed aliens whose name is unpronounceable by humans. For some reason, my helmet translates the confusing squiggle of strange symbols that make up their name as “Cupcakes,” which immediately makes me hungry.

But I quickly lose my appetite when I see that the “Cupcakes” are huge scaled creatures with magnetic joints that can turn at any angle and limbs that can stretch up to two times their normal length. Their team leader is nearly eight feet tall with arms that stretch almost twice that far. Getting passes by her is going to be nearly impossible.

Astrid peeks out of the tunnel into the stands, where billboards are flashing ads for hover cars and electric shirt hangers while the fans scream and stomp as they eat hamburgers bigger than their heads.

“Aren’t they supposed to be cheering for us?”

Crush shakes his head. “I hope we win. Otherwise, things could get ugly fast.”

“Do you actually think we can beat these guys?” Moustapha asks.

I want to say, “Are you kidding? We totally stink and those stretchy creatures are terrifying.” But then I remember that the team is counting on me. If I’m a weak link, the chain will never hold together.

“When we get done with those magnetic manglers, they’ll wish they’d never met the devastating dealers of debilitating destruction that are the Planet Earth Defenders.”

“Nice!” Chuck says. “I might use that for the name of my K-pop band if I ever form one.”

“I call keyboard!” I shout.

“Do you play the piano?” Sunny asks.

I shrug. “Don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

Quake rests his arm, which seems as good as new, on my helmet and it’s all I can do to keep standing straight. “Quake will join Wyatt’s band.”

That kind of chokes me up.

The good feelings last right up until I run out onto the field, and the entire stadium begins screaming insults. The boos only stop when Nitro jogs out of the tunnel—because apparently the world still loves him even when he’s on a team that hasn’t won a game. But they aren’t about to cut me a break.

The home crowd boos even louder when we lose the eye toss and the Cupcakes decide to have us kick off first—probably because they expect to score on us right away.

But the taunts quickly stop on the Cupcakes’ first play when Astrid heaves Cricket Bob so high in the air that he intercepts the aliens’ pass and runs it back to the ten-yard line.

Nova peers into my eyes as we take the field for our first offensive possession. “Are you okay, Wyatt?”

I lick my lips. “Well, I can’t breathe, and I’m pretty sure I just threw up in my mouth a little. But it didn’t make it onto my cleats this time, which is a definite improvement. So, I’m going to say yes.”

She slaps me on the helmet and winks.

Looking at the aliens’ team leader, I start to imagine how quickly the crowd will turn on me if I let her get her scaled hands on the ball. Then I remind myself to turn my brain off.

Coach calls in the first play, which is a handoff around the right to Nitro. But as I wipe my palms on my jersey and step up to the line, the defense shifts to exactly the spot where the run is supposed to go.

Coach’s voice screams in my helmet asking if I need a time-out, but I’m already changing the play. “Jump and Run on two!” I shout, making sure the whole team hears the audible.

The moment Briny hikes the ball, I fake the handoff to Nitro, and the Cupcakes run toward him like bargain shoppers on Black Friday. When I turn and throw a pass to Ajay, they dive for his feet, stretching their magnetic arms out long. But he jumps over their reach, spins around his defender, and takes it all the way to the end zone.

The only sound sweeter than the high-pitched gurgling of despair coming from the Cupcakes’ mouths is the roar of the Earth fans when Sunny kicks the extra point to put us up seven to nothing.

Back on defense, Astrid hits the Cupcakes’ quarterback so hard that his third eye pops out of his head and the aliens fumble the ball.

On our second possession, the Cupcakes’ defense blankets our receivers, covering them so tightly that I wouldn’t have been able to complete a pass if I tried. When Briny hikes the ball, I pretend to let it slip through my fingers like it did against the Expectocrats. Instead, I bounce it onto Nitro’s cleat as Quake and Cricket Bob bowl the Cupcake linemen over like a row of alien-shaped dominoes.

Kicking the ball from one foot to the other, Nitro darts through the opening, and even though the Cupcakes have a long reach, it turns out their legs aren’t all that fast. None of them can catch Nitro as he scampers all the way down the field for a seventy-six-yard touchdown, flashing his perfect teeth into the camera all along the way.

So far we’ve scored two touchdowns in two plays—which I’m not even sure my dad has ever done. I look into the stands, wondering if he and my mom are watching, but Coach yells at me to get my wompas-glomping head back into the game.

Late in the fourth quarter, Chuck gets injured. When the giant snail goes out, our defense gets tired, and the Cupcakes make a comeback.

With under two minutes to go in the game and our team only up by three points, Nova taps her chest and points at me.

I know what she wants, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Without programming the ball, too many things could go wrong. What if the football slips out of my hand? What if I throw an interception? We still have the lead. The smart thing to do is hand the ball off to Crush and let him run Vampire’s Death.

But when I start to call his number, I can see the big baseball player is clearly winded.

Nova meets my eyes.

“Okay,” I say, panting so fast I feel like I’m going to pass out. “But if I blow it, and we lose this game and have to move out of Earth and onto an asteroid with terrible TV reception and only space slugs to eat, I’m not sharing my slugs with you.”

As we break the huddle, the Cupcakes’ captain crowds the line of scrimmage, arms spread. Nova goes in motion, running to the right as I call out the count. Two defenders follow her, leaving Nitro with only one player covering him.

Sensing an opening, I scream, “Twenty-four,” and Briny hikes the ball. Nitro blows past his defender with nobody between him and the end zone. Shifting my feet to stay behind Quake’s blocking, I take a deep breath and raise my arm to pass, when the Cupcakes’ captain suddenly spins and breaks back toward the end zone. Her arms stretch up and up as the two defenders covering Nova leave her and race toward Nitro.

It’s a trap. They’ve been trying to set me up by pretending to leave Nitro open.

The safe thing to do is to throw the ball out of bounds and hope our defense can stop the Cupcakes from scoring again. But Nova is wide open.

Don’t think. Just act.

Spinning around, I launch the ball.

It flutters out of my hand like an injured duck with a bad case of hives and the Cupcakes’ captain realizes her mistake. She reaches her arms back toward Nova, stretching, stretching. Nova bends her knees and launches herself into the air like a heat-seeking missile. But the pass is dying quickly, and Nova’s leap won’t matter if the Cupcake gets to the ball first.

Just when it seems like the defender is going to intercept my pass, there is a loud clang.

With her body still going toward Nitro, the alien has stretched too far back toward Nova, and her magnetic joints spring apart, dropping her arms onto the field.

Nova pulls the ball out of the air. Her cleats dig into the turf as she hits the ground, dodges a burst of flame that shoots out of the field, blows past a defensive back racing to get to her, and dives into the end zone.

With less than a minute on the clock, Sunny jogs out to kick the extra point, and I realize the fans who booed me at the start of the game are chanting one word over and over.