I LET MY EYES WANDER TO Lucy’s blond mane in the middle of the flock of soccer girls who’d flopped onto the hillside, but she was barking at Madden, if a bark can have a purr to it, “Yeah, number fourteen!”
“Lefferts!” Ward shouted. “Get in there!” Madden called my number: the square in, which would take me right into Zowitzkiland. I caught the pass and braced for Zowitzki’s blow. Instead, the linebacker let me off easy with a half shove.
“Zowitzki!” screamed Ward. “What kind of tackle was that?”
“My knee’s sore, that’s all,” grumbled Zowitzki. “I don’t want to mess it up more before Hesford.”
“Yeah, well, next time I want to hear her scream.”
I kept it zipped. For now. But on the next play, when I was supposed to just decoy Thorn, “she” laid a solid block at his legs, knocking him down, although it was Zowitzki I wanted a piece of. For his stupid supplements and my stupid paranoia and anyone else in his goon squad who had me in their sights.
“All right, Lefferts,” growled Ward. First good thing he’d ever said.
Of course, three plays later, after the whistle on a running play, Thorn clocked me, helmet to helmet, throwing a forearm into my stomach for good measure. I hit the ground, rolled, hopped up, and shot him the finger.
For the next few minutes, there was sort of a shimmer at the edges of my field of vision. Concussion symptom. My first. Something like a badge of honor, I thought. But I wasn’t about to tell Ward—or anyone—that I was in a different dimension. When the practice ended with two laps, my head was straight again. Martin and I led the pack, and we locked into a friendly sprint at the end. Eighty-five beat me by ten yards.
I’d just pulled off my helmet, and Will and I had started up the hill toward the locker room, when I heard a girl’s voice—“Hiya, Jack”—in a singsongy tone. Lucy. Her legs were a mile long beneath her short soccer shorts.
“Hey,” I said, looking around for Madden. But she was alone, walking up to the girls’ locker room.
Martin shook his head. “Don’t even think about it. Lucy’s game is to try and keep Madden on a leash by testing new waters.”
Martin kept walking. I waved at her. She waved back. I did some quick calculations. Do what any meathead would do and get lured by the Siren? Or do what I wanted to do: follow Martin’s advice. Concentrate on Caroline.
“So I heard you had your visit with Zowitzki,” Martin said in the locker room. “What are you going to do?”
“No way I do needles,” I said, pulling off the jersey.
“Jack,” he said, staring me in the face, with a very serious look. I guess this was going to be the final word from eighty-five. My last, best chance to keep him as the mentor. “Like I told you, it’s all in your head. This game is mental. If you think you’re good, you are. And you could be good. So don’t . . . be . . . stupid.”
“Then I’ll be good,” I said. And that was me, I think, actually meaning it.
I sat on my stool, savoring the ache of all the hits and the fact that I was still standing. Trying not to think of Lucy’s legs . . . and picturing Caroline’s shy smile.
“Hey, boss, good practice.” It was Clune.
“You too,” I said. “That counterplay? Who’d you block—the whole defensive line?”
He laughed a friendly laugh. “I love football, man,” he said in his Boston accent. “Always have. Saturday mornings, my old man was always on the road. I’d go down to the school field and play with big kids, get my head bashed in, boy. But nothing ever felt as good as getting hit and hitting back.”
“Where was your dad?” I said.
“On the road. Salesman. Army when I was a kid. I’ll be the first guy in the family to go to college if I make it through here. Gotta get straight Bs, otherwise no college ball. Without Devin, I’d be dead.”
“Devin? The thirds coach?”
“Yeah. He tutors me in science, on his own. For free. Good man. Mellow. Says he’s gonna pull some strings for colleges. Then, the Big Man willing, I get an MBA and move the family up the North Shore. Outta Dorchester.” He said it “Daw-ches-tah.”
As soon as Clune headed for the showers, I walked over to the big guy’s locker, leaned in, and picked up the jug of pills: 1,000-milligram vitamin C’s. That was it. The kid had been telling the truth. He wasn’t juiced. Not with that belly.
• • •
“So how’s the running?” I said to Caroline at dinner.
“The woods are really beautiful—that’s the problem.” She smiled. “I’ll be lucky if I don’t get cut. I was on the trail where it goes through in the woods, and it was like I was gliding . . . you know how a deer kind of hops all over the place, but still gets where it’s going? So, anyway . . . I kind of left the trail.”
“You just took off? In the middle of practice? That’s not the Callahan I know.” She didn’t seem to mind when I said it that way—as if I knew her. This was a good thing.
“I know, I know, but it was like being free. I even started just running uphill, and I found this old stone fireplace. The view was insane. So when I got back down, I told Booth I’d just gotten lost, even though the route is pretty obvious. Of course, she flipped.” She laughed. “What was I thinking?”
“You weren’t thinking,” I said. “That’s what sports are all about. Plus I have her in French, and she’s schizoid.”
“Tell me about it. So how’s football?” she said.
I told her I made varsity. “Can you believe that?”
She slid over and bumped my shoulder with hers as she scraped at her peas. Which was a way of a girl maybe fist-bumping or something. To me, it was a lot more.
“Yeah,” she said. “I can believe that.”
I guess some guys remember touching a girl for the first time somewhere else. That shoulder felt pretty good to start with.
• • •
It was time to call home. I was feeling like maybe I’d finally gotten off the ground. Like I was dealing from strength for, well, maybe the first time ever. So the next morning before English, I used Josh’s cell phone—like everyone except me, he’d given Ward an old one and kept his real one—and called my dad.
“Jack? Hey, boy. Good to hear from you. What’s the news? How you settling in?”
I told him that it was going pretty good. How I’d lucked out on a roommate. But there were a few teachers who were more hard-ass than I’d figured on. Hearing his voice wasn’t quite as weird as I’d thought it’d be. Maybe some wall had come down a little since he wasn’t always in my face.
“Well, that’s what they’re there for. To set the limits for you, point you in the right directions. I know that it’s hard for you to understand, but you’re not really ready to make your own decisions yet.”
Oh. Right. It was Dad. “I guess that’s why I made the stupid decision to try out for football,” I said.
“Yeah, how’d that work out?” he said, but I could tell he was looking at numbers on a computer screen.
“I made the team. The varsity.”
There was a pause, and a silence. “Varsity? What position?”
“Third receiver. I’m a sub. Our first game is down in Concord Saturday, against Hesford, if you want to come.”
Another pause. “Damn. I think I’m in Kansas City. The Royals are looking for a new stadium site, and we’re in on the planning. I may have to become a Royals fan! Hey, wait a second. I have to take this.”
I hung up.