CHAPTER 14
By the time the first quarter finally ends, we can barely drag ourselves to the sideline. The score is 14–0. Everybody is limping or grimacing or icing a bruise, and RU-MD is buzzing around faster than a hummingbird in a syrup factory.
Prince Poodoo has one of his four arms in a sling, Astrid has a huge bruise across her right forearm, and even Quake, who never gets tired, is breathing hard.
“Those Yextals are monsters,” Nitro says, pushing his hair out of his face.
Ajay nods. “I don’t even think they were breathing hard when the quarter ended.”
“They’re inhuman,” Cricket Bob says, which is sort of ironic considering that both the Yextals and Cricket Bob aren’t humans themselves, but I know what he means.
I try to think of a snappy comeback, but my body is so fried that all I can do is nod and grab a water bottle. That actually worries me a little. What if one of the Band of Bone Boys somehow knocked the humor right out of me?
Over on the bench, Crush drinks too fast and throws up in the grass.
Crush groans and wraps a cold towel around his head.
Okay, I’ve still got it.
I pour the rest of the water over me and I’m pretty sure I hear my ears sizzle. As I turn to get another bottle, I see Coach and Nova sitting on a bench looking at something that Coach quickly hides behind his back when he sees me watching.
“What are you doing?” I ask as I shuffle over to sit beside them.
Nova blushes and looks away. “We were just going over some possible plays.”
I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. “What kind of plays?”
Slowly, Coach takes my dad’s playbook out from behind his back.
“We thought that since the Yextals have been stopping all our new plays,” Nova says, “maybe we could try a few of these again.”
I glare at Nova, feeling like I’ve just been stabbed in the back by my closest friend.
“We do want you,” Nova says. “It’s just that nothing we’re trying is working. We can’t outrun them. We can’t outmuscle them. We can’t jump over them or duck under them. They’re too fast and too strong.” She wipes furiously at her eyes. “I have my mom and dad and a baby brother at home. If we lose this game, where will they go?”
I stare at her. “You never mentioned them before.”
But now that I’m thinking about it, all the other players on the team have families too. It’s not just the planet they’re playing for. It’s their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and friends.
I stand up as the referees signal the start of the second quarter. “Give me until halftime. If we’re still losing by then, I’ll run any play you want. But for now, let me be the player you found at the rocket port with hot sauce eyebrows and a fake plant on his head.”
I might not always be the kind of person people turn to when they have a problem. In fact, I’m pretty sure I never am. Unless I’m the one who caused the problem in the first place. And even then, they usually go to my mom, who rolls her eyes when she answers the door and says, “What did Wyatt do this time?”
But today I’m going to be that person.
Pulling up handfuls of grass and dirt, I rub it all over my face and charge into the huddle.
“Captain who?” Moustapha asks, looking at me like I’ve taken one too many knocks to the noggin.
I grit my teeth. “From now until the end of this game, we will feast upon the blood of our enemies. If they actually have blood. If not, we will feast upon their bones—which doesn’t really sound like something you can feast on, but I’ve heard you can grind them to make bread, unless that’s just a fairy tale.”
Andromeda looks at Nova. “I think Wyatt might have lost it.”
I point to Quake. “When Briny snaps the ball, I want you to step aside and let as many defenders through as possible.”
Quake starts to object, but I’m on a roll. “Andromeda and Nova, both of you go out wide. Ajay and Nitro, stay in the backfield, one on each side of me.”
Ajay squirms. “I’m not really much of a blocker.”
“You don’t need to be.” I look at Nitro and he holds up his hands.
“Whatever you say.”
Briny crouches over the ball as I call out the signals. “Forty-two, thirty-six, hut, hut.”
Briny hikes the ball and the Yextals burst through the hole Quake opens. Andromeda and Nova break toward the sidelines, taking their defenders with them.
“Hey, bonemeal!” I shout at the alien who threatened to cut off my skin. “I thought you were supposed to be tough.”
The defensive linemen swarm toward me, and I wait until the last possible second before faking the handoff to Nitro, spinning, and tossing to Ajay.
I don’t actually see much after that since I’m buried under what feels like two thousand pounds of fiery-eyed skeleton. But when Quake finally pulls me out from the pile with a concerned expression, I look up at the scoreboard and see that it is now 14–6.
After Sunny kicks the extra point, we manage to keep the Yextals from scoring for two possessions in a row.
We don’t score either, but with under a minute to go in the half, we get our big break when Chuck breaks through the offensive line, hits the Yextals’ running back, and causes a fumble that Astrid recovers. With only forty seconds to go in the half, I huddle the team up. “Okay, I want to run Vampire’s Death.”
“It won’t work,” Andromeda says. “The skeletons are too tall for Crush to spike the ball to me.”
“That’s what I’m counting on.” I turn to Nitro. “The aliens will be expecting Crush to spike to Andromeda because they’ve seen it before. Instead, he’ll fake the spike and pass it to you across the middle of the field. The defense will be guarding the sidelines, because they know we’re out of time-outs and have to get the ball out of bounds to stop the clock.”
Nitro shakes his head. “There’s no way I can make it all the way down the field.”
“You can with this,” I say, reaching into my jersey and pulling out a handful of green goo I scooped up from the sideline.
The play works exactly the way I plan, and Nitro squirts through the Yextals’ grips. He’s nearly to the end zone when I see the rocket-powered mallet swing toward him.
“Look out!” I yell, but with all the noise coming from the stands, he can’t hear, and the giant hammer bashes him square in the face.
Screaming in pain, Nitro gets up with his hands clutched to his mouth and blood streaming down his chin.
I want to see if he’s okay, but with time running out, we quickly call Sunny in for a field goal. It won’t give us the tie, but at least we’ll go into the locker room only down by four.
A second before Briny snaps the ball, the Yextals’ captain jumps across the line, which is clearly a penalty, but none of the alien referees call it—probably because Schnozly paid them off.
As Sunny brings her leg back to kick, Yex barrels into Cricket Bob, who is holding the ball, knocking it loose.
Before any of us can react, the bony horror scoops up the ball, slams Sunny to the turf, and runs all the way down the field to score a touchdown, and the half ends with us down 21–7.
