CHAPTER 13

Pacing around the locker room, I check my phone for messages, but there are no new notifications.

“No word from your dad?” Sunny asks.

“I—What? I mean, I’m not—” I drop my voice, looking around to see if anyone else heard.

I feel my face heating up and look quickly away. “I actually haven’t. I want to do this on my own. I just thought…”

My words trail away as I shove my phone back in my locker. I haven’t asked my dad for advice partly because I’m afraid he’ll just tell me all the things I’ve been doing wrong. But mostly because I sort of hoped he’d call on his own. Maybe come down after a game. Or visit one of our training sessions.

But other than a few texts from him and my mom, it’s pretty much been radio silence.

At first, when we were losing, I thought it was because they were embarrassed to be seen with me. Then, we started winning, and I thought it was because I wasn’t running my dad’s plays anymore. Now, I guess he’s just too busy with his own team and doing commercials and stuff.

Sunny shakes her head, smiling. “You’re kind of weird, Wyatt. But also a little cute. I can see why Nova likes you.”

“Okay, but—” I start to say before realizing what she just said. “Wait, how do you know Nova likes me? Did she say that? And did she mean like like or just like?”

Sunny nods to a spot over my shoulder, and I turn to see Nova coming straight toward us holding the soap.

“I almost slipped on this,” she says before looking into the mirror as she smears black grease paint under her eyes.

“Sorry about that.” I feel blood rush to my face and casually cover my ears that are so hot I’m pretty sure I could cook s’mores over them. “So, I guess you’ll go back home to keep doing gymnastics when this is all over, huh?”

“I guess,” Nova says, meeting my eyes with her deep brown ones for a moment. “Assuming we win and don’t all get turned into galactic fast-food workers. What about you? Are you going to keep playing football after the tournament?”

I shake my head. “It wouldn’t be the same with another team. I’ll probably go back to school, I guess. Or maybe I could invent more flavors of W00t!. If it got popular enough, I’d probably travel around the world though.”

Coach bought a new bionic eye for the big game and it’s a fraction lower than his real one, which makes him look like he’s constantly checking his shirt to see if he spilled mustard on it.

I shake my head and step forward. “I think what Coach is trying to say is that the Yextals might look scary, but they’re probably even more frightened of us than we are of them.”

Coach’s eye looks from me to the front of his shirt to me again. “You think so?” He takes out a handkerchief, blows his nose, and nods. “All right then. Let’s get out there and win this one for planet Earth.”

“On three,” Nova says, holding out her fist and counting.

Outside, Skeevitch Snorkblot is having the time of his life. “This game promises-promises-promises to be one of the nastiest-nastiest-nastiest and most violent-violent-violent competitions in the history of sports-sports-sports.”

Sunny kicks a football into the practice net and smiles. “I guess that means they’ll put us in the record books.”

“What is that?” Nitro asks, and we all turn to see that the turf is divided into about fifty squares that bounce randomly up and down. “How am I supposed to run on that?”

A second later, a chain above the turf releases, swinging a rocket-propelled mallet across the field with a whoosh that sounds like a Weedwacker slicing through my mom’s favorite flower bed. (Don’t ask.)

Chuck’s rubbery antenna shudders as his single eye follows the giant swinging hammer back and forth. “They can’t add new obstacles without letting us know, can they?”

Nova glares up at a rocket ship hovering a few hundred feet above the field. “I’ll bet it was his idea.”

We all look up to see Schnozly Grofsplot gloating down at us. Once we started winning, he kept getting more and more angry each game. But today he looks happier and sleazier than ever, which makes me nervous. “Keep an eye on him. I’ll bet he’s up to something.”

After a famous pop star sings Earth’s global anthem and a bone creature screeches something that my helmet bleeps out almost every word of, Nova, Nitro, and I walk out for the eye toss.

Now that we’re playing them, the Yextals are even more terrifying. The Tater Tot smell has been replaced by the stench of rotten eggs, and heat radiates off their bodies like the time I burned my eyebrows off with the kitchen oven. (You know the drill. Don’t ask.)

Glaring down at me with his fiery eyes, the team’s captain, Yex, says something that sounds like a bunch of snakes being attacked by a rabid badger with a slight lisp.

The computer in my helmet translates the skeleton’s words.

This time I’m ready with a comeback.

“Don’t bother,” I say. “It’s mostly Cheetos and chicken nuggets, along with about half a package of tropical-flavor Starburst I ate just before going to bed. But trust me, it still looks way better than that noseless wasteland you call a face, bone dome.”

Nova snickers as Yex’s eyes flare and he grinds his teeth.

We win the toss and choose to kick to start the game.

As we walk back to the sideline, Nitro leans toward me and shakes his head. “Dude, that might be the coolest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say. Weren’t you scared?”

“Oh, yeah,” I say. “I totally peed myself back there.”

Sunny nails the kickoff and sends the ball flying into the Yextals’ end zone, but the hulking three-armed skeleton runs it out anyway.

Astrid meets Yex running full speed at the thirty-yard line, and I grimace, wondering how many bones they’ll have to collect off the field.

But instead of sending the Yextal flying the way she has every other player she’s hit all season, Astrid bounces off the alien with a surprised grunt.

Yex glares down at her with his flaming eyes, as if enjoying the moment, then continues on down the field, jumping from moving square to moving square like a mountain goat leaping from rock to rock. It takes four of our players to finally drag him down just across midfield.

This time, we might really be doomed.