CHAPTER 15

Yextal cheers fill the stadium, and human boos rain from the stands as I trudge to the sideline. I don’t even try to dodge the food and drinks thrown at me as I head to the locker room. Quake might come to the rescue, but, once again, Wyatt doesn’t.

At least now there won’t be any more expectations. The grocery stores will probably pull my Cheetos bags and the fans will realize I’m the failure I’ve always known I was.

As I step into the tunnel, a hand grips my arm and I turn around to see my mom and dad standing behind me.

“Wyatt,” Mom says, “you look so—”

“Bruised?” I ask, because I’m pretty sure there isn’t an inch of my body that doesn’t hurt. Except for possibly the spot between the first and second toes on my left foot. And even that is questionable.

She shakes her head. “I was going to say mature.”

My dad nods. “You’ve grown up a lot since you left.”

For a second I feel almost proud. Then I remember they’ve just watched me get trashed by the Yextals.

“Why are you here?” I ask. “You haven’t come to see me at any of my other games. Were you just waiting for the ultimate humiliation?”

“We’ve been to all your games. We just sat in a private suite,” Dad says.

I’m ready to tell my dad all the reasons why I can never be him, but his words stop me cold. “What did you just say?”

Mom nods. “We’re so proud of you.”

“How can you be?” I point at the scoreboard. “The Yextals are mopping the field with us.”

“We’re not proud of you because of some stupid score,” Mom says. “We’re proud of you because you tried something you didn’t think you were good at, and you didn’t give up just because it was hard.”

“I’ve been sending videos of your awesome plays to all the guys on my team,” Dad says. “We put up pictures of your players in our locker room.”

That doesn’t make any sense. I thought he was embarrassed by me. “Why didn’t you call or come to any of our practices? The team could really have used your encouragement.”

He puts his hand on my shoulder. “They’ve had something better. They’ve had yours.”

“A lot of good that did.” I grunt. “We’re getting killed out there.”

Dad glances up at the scoreboard and grins. “I always liked going into the locker room down at halftime. You know why?”

“So you could make a great comeback, probably.”

He laughs. “That was fun too. But the thing about going into halftime behind is that you can make adjustments while the other side gets overconfident.”

“You have to make adjustments?” I’d always thought he just went out and won.

“All the time,” he says. “The minute you start getting predictable, the other team has the advantage.

Your teammates are probably feeling pretty discouraged right now. What are you going to tell them?”

I shrug. “They wanted to go back to using your playbook, but I said I wouldn’t unless we were losing at the end of the second quarter. I guess that was a mistake.”

“It wasn’t,” Dad says. “I didn’t give you the binder because I thought you should use my plays. I gave it to you so you could see how I designed plays for my team then make your own plays for your team.”

“That probably would have been good to know before I programmed them all into our football.”

Dad laughs. “Your friends don’t need a new system. They need a leader who can show them how to use the one they already have.”

“I tried that,” I say. “And maybe it worked for a while, but after what just happened out there…” I shake my head. “I’m not you, Dad. Nothing I say in the locker room is going to turn this game around.”

Dad frowns. “Do you know why you’re on the Defenders?”

“Because FERN picked me.”

“Right,” he says, and lowers his voice. “But do you know why she picked you?”

I shake my head. It’s a question I’ve thought about ever since the draft. “I mean, I get why she picked the other kids on the team—they’re all total sports studs and they play football in a way no other kids could. But how could she possibly have known about me?”

Dad smiles. “Because I told her.”

I blink. “What?”

“Before the draft, FERN and I sat down and talked football,” my dad says. “She’s a million times smarter than I’ll ever be, but she doesn’t know diddly-squat about sports. Before she could calculate a roster, she needed to know what makes a winning team. I explained that to win a championship against opponents as tough as these aliens she’d need players who were smart, adaptable, and brave enough to hold up under pressure no kid should ever have to face.”

I think about Quake coming back after dislocating his elbow and Nova telling us we can win after our first horrible game. Even Nitro’s enormous ego. FERN definitely got them right.

“But I also told her she’d need someone to bring that team together,” my dad continues. “Someone to show them what they are capable of. Someone to inspire them when they get discouraged and make them laugh when they feel like crying. That’s why I told her about all your accomplishments at school.”

Dad shakes his head and continues. “Like how you came up with the genius idea to print your yearbooks backward. I’ll bet all the kids whose last names start with letters like Y and W loved you for that. And how you lowered chocolate milk prices, which should be free anyway, so kids will drink less soda.”

I didn’t think he’d ever noticed any of that.

“What was that amazing soda you invented? Whoop?”

“W00t!,” I say. “But you hated it.”

Dad wrinkles his nose. “I may have hated your drink, but I admired your creativity—your ability to look at the world in ways I never could have dreamed of. I knew that for the Planet Earth Defenders to win what has clearly been a rigged contest from the beginning, they’d need a leader who approached the game in a way no one else on Earth ever would.”

For once, I literally have no words. My whole life I’ve assumed he was embarrassed about having a kid like me, because I’ve definitely been embarrassed about never living up to what I thought he expected of me. I was sure my parents felt the same way. But now…

I take a deep breath and try not to cry, which I totally don’t want to do in front of my parents, but which I totally know is going to happen if I don’t get into the locker room quickly.

“Do you really think we can beat the Yextals?”

Mom and Dad both nod and say together, “We’re sure of it.”

---

* * *

When I enter the locker room, Nitro is holding a cloth to his mouth, Sunny has her foot elevated, and Moustapha and Astrid are arguing about whether the Yextals are alien monsters or monster monsters.

Nova walks up to me, her eyes on the floor. “I’m sorry I tried to make you run your dad’s plays.”

“Don’t be.” I lean down until she finally looks up at me. “You were just trying to help us win the game. And that’s what we’re going to do.”

I glance around the room, where almost everyone looks like we’ve already lost. Even Coach is starting to pack his bag.

“You know the best thing about being behind at halftime?” I ask.

A few of my teammates look up, but most of them are still staring emptily at their feet or into their lockers.

“It helps the other team feel better about themselves?” Sunny asks.

I can’t help smiling at how even now, she’s thinking about others. “That too. But mostly it means that they’re overconfident.”

“They should be,” Astrid says. “They are kicking our—”

“Yes,” I interrupt. “They are. And that means that over in their locker room, they’ll be dancing their bony buns off and singing their disgusting eating-other-species songs thinking they’ve got this thing wrapped up.”

“Don’t they?”

“No,” I say. “Because we’re about to change things up. Again.”