THE DAY OF THE WILLIAMTON GAME dawned cool and windy. There was a good cold feel to the air, and the hillside was filling up while we went through warm-ups: the Abercrombies cracking out their state-of-the-art folding chairs with the little cup-holder things stitched into the armrests.
But this time it was the mountain that caught my eye, with its quilt of orange and yellow and red leaves. All week the trees had been turning, like someone was colorizing a black-and-white movie. Like Kansas becoming the yellow brick road. Like everything coming into a little more focus.
I spied the Lucy posse and Carlton’s group, then, up at the top of the hill, Caroline, with the Chloe girl at her side. Which automatically made it a great day for a football game.
But I still spent most of the first half on the sideline, watching us struggle against the school from Connecticut. These guys were so huge it was ridiculous. The rumor was that earlier in the year, when they’d shown up for a game down at some small school in Rhode Island, the head took one look at Williamton and called the game off because he didn’t want his kids to get killed.
They showed up at our place with all-black uniforms, a half dozen ranting, red-faced coaches, and a crowd of lunatic alums. And from the beginning, they played like a team possessed. Their offensive line was not only big, they were disciplined and they knew their techniques. Their center stood up to Maniac Mancini, which no one had done yet, and their running backs ground out steady yardage. Their defense were headhunters.
After his week off, Madden was skittish in the pocket, overthrowing Will three times in the first three series. Even Addison was getting stuffed at the line.
I got in for two series, but Madden never looked my way. On his best throw, deep in Williamton’s end, when he finally figured he had to throw to Bannion, he found him wide open down the middle. Bannion dropped it. Since he was also our kicker and had clearly decided to just survive the day without anyone actually hitting him, hurting him, or even running into him, he also missed a chip-shot field goal.
At the half, we were down 14–0, the first time we’d been behind in a game all season. As we gathered beneath the goalposts at the base of the mountain, for the first time that year, I felt the cockiness leaking out of the team.
Bruno’s speech, as usual, was short, and to the point: “You’re going to have to dig a little deeper inside yourselves today, aren’t you?” Then he walked away and Ward took over.
This time, the drill sergeant didn’t even open his mouth. He just looked at us like we were lepers, turned back toward the field, and sailed his clipboard like a Frisbee. It went a surprisingly long distance. When he turned around, he was scary calm.
“That’s what you’re doing: throwing away everything we’ve worked for. The perfect season. The championship. Your college scholarships. Hey, it’s your lives, not mine. I got time. I got tenure. Couple years from now, maybe I’ll get a gang that wants to win.”
Just then—you couldn’t have timed it better with a movie script—a loud guitar chord cut through the air, from somewhere up the mountain. Then another chord. Then a couple of drum strokes . . . and suddenly I was listening to the hard-rock middle section of our song. Josh and Danny and Simon must have dragged some battery-powered amps and a drum set up into the hills. Unreal. Who’d have thought the mountains had such good acoustics?
“What the hell is that?” Ward shouted. I turned around so Ward couldn’t see the grin beneath my face mask. The coach turned his back in disgust and started to walk back to the sideline. Most of the team followed him, led by Zowitzki.
But a half dozen of them stayed behind, to listen—including Madden.
Right on cue, the song moved into the final section, with Josh’s guitar playing part of the quiet ending that would have been my piano.
And then a few pockets of parents started breaking into applause, and some of the kids shouted out some props. They’d liked it!
• • •
When the last note died away from the mountain, Madden walked over to me, his long blond hair matted to his forehead. “You got some balls, Lefferts.”
“Glad you liked it.”
“I didn’t say I liked it,” said the quarterback. “I said you had balls.”
I wasn’t about to tell him I’d had no idea what was going to happen.
“You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” Will asked as we put on our helmets.
“Not a thing,” I said, with a cat-swallowing-the-canary look. If they all wanted to think I’d done it, that was way okay with me.
“I always thought we should have a marching band, anyway,” Will said. “I guess this’ll do.”
• • •
On the sideline, Ward turned to me. “Lefferts, you’re starting the second half. Bannion’s hurting.” Maybe his self-esteem had been bruised. Or his dad was threatening to cut off the inheritance. I didn’t care. All I knew was that Caroline and her friend were up there somewhere on the hill, and I was so amped on the sideline, looking to the faces in the hillside as we took the kickoff, that it took me a second to notice that Anthony had gathered in the short kickoff, and was now bowling right up the middle—and running all the way to the end zone.
Garver! The Prep for Prepster! A seventy-yard kick-return for a TD!
Then, on Williamton’s first series, after a couple of first downs, Mancini finally broke through their line, picked up their running back, and squeezed him so hard the ball popped loose, like a grape. Zowitzki fell on it, and we had it right back at midfield.
It was a ball game. Down just one touchdown. I was psyched for all the right reasons: we might win this thing.
On our next offensive series, Madden called the reverse. “For real?” I said.
“Just run the play,” he said. That sounded real.
At the snap, I broke back toward the quarterback, and this time, Madden actually handed me the ball. I looked upfield. I saw a tall linebacker, and his mistake was trying to take my head off with a clothesline. I ducked beneath his swipe.
Now a cornerback lowered his head, but he’d mistimed my speed, and I shook off his half tackle as I broke for the sideline. I’d gained twenty yards before the safety came over, took the perfect angle, and tackled me hard, lowering his shoulders at my knees. I flipped into the air and landed hard on my back. But I still had the ball.
As I trotted back to the huddle, I heard a few cheers and let them wash over me. Then, Caroline’s voice, above it all: “Yeah, number eighty-eight!”
Clune’s high five sealed the deal in the huddle.
From then on, we were a completely different team. The second-rate monsters were wilting. The louder their coaches screamed at them, the more they seemed to lose their manic high. Maybe the coke was wearing off. Addison and Anthony started finding holes. Madden found me on a curl-in for one first down: my second catch! Then he hit Will for the tying touchdown on a fade pattern from the fifteen. Tied at 14–14.
The next twenty minutes were a war game, with no one giving up any yardage in the trenches. With four minutes left, Addison came up six inches short on a fourth-and-one on their thirty, and we turned it over.
“Our turn! Our turn!” said Zowitzki, head-bumping the defense on the sideline. On Williamton’s next possession, their quarterback went for it all. Their end had Thorn beat, but the guy underthrew the ball, Thorn caught up, reached up, and picked it off: a highlight play.
In the next huddle, Madden wanted it all back and called a deep cross to Will—but then we heard the whistle. Bruno or Ward had called a time-out. Anthony sprinted in: “Bruno says all runs. All the time.”
Madden looked at him, and I could tell he was wondering whether to ignore the command. He did the right thing. First he called a running play for Anthony, who followed Clune’s block and juked for six yards. And for the next eight plays, Anthony and Addison substituted for each other on each play, and somehow, some way, each run gained more. The Williamton guys were exhausted. The hillside was now a rolling thunder of cheers.
We got it down to the ten. Now we were facing first and goal. But a field goal wasn’t an option—Bannion was hurt. We needed some way to get the ball into the end zone in four plays.
On first down, Addison hit the line, and I swear, he was screaming, and—call it ’roid rage, or maybe just guts—he refused to go down. He lowered his head, the whole pack began to move, like rugby, with all of us kind of pushing, and then next thing you knew, he was in: touchdown.
Game!
I was getting slapped on the pads, on the helmet, swirling in the maelstrom. We all moved down to the end zone for Ward’s sermon.
“Don’t get overconfident on me now,” he growled. “We’ve got a week off. If you don’t spend every hour of the next two weeks thinking about Anglican, then the Essex game on the last day won’t be for the frickin’ championship. So I’m giving you the heads-up. Tuesday’s practice is going to be intense.”
• • •
I was looking for Caroline and Chloe as the crowd thinned out, but there was no sign of them. It was hard to miss Lucy, though, as she and her friends surrounded Madden.
“Jack!” It was McGregor, the admissions guy. I hadn’t spoken to him since the day I’d had that interview, six months before. “Nice game, Jack! Great to see you out there,” he said, offering a pink-skinned handshake. “It’s always encouraging to see our students take advantage of everything we have to offer here. There’s nothing like being on a team, bonding in a locker room.”
His grin looked like he was posing for a portrait or something. “And how’s that piano going? We going to hear you at the Thanksgiving concert?”
“Well, I don’t know, sir,” I said. “But I’m in this band, and we’re writing a really nice song.”
“That wouldn’t have anything to do with our halftime serenade, would it?”
“Um . . . maybe,” I said.
And I suddenly I had this thought. And it was insane.
“Really,” McGregor said. “I’ve never heard anything quite like it.” Then he loped off to talk to some parents on the hillside.
I walked up the hill with Anthony.
“Looks like your band gave us a boot in the butt,” he said.
“No,” I said, “your kickoff return gave us the boot.”
“If that’s not on SportsCenter’s Top Ten Plays tonight, I’m gonna sue.”
Josh, Danny, and Simon were waiting outside the locker room. “How’d it sound from down here?” Josh asked.
“Sweet,” I said. “But you could have used a keyboard. So how come didn’t you tell me you were going to play?”
“Because you’d have told us not to,” Josh said. He was right. “But don’t feel like we left you out. You can help us carry the equipment back down.”
• • •
Caroline and Chloe were waiting after I’d showered. I was hoping for a hug or a shoulder-bump, but Caroline just gave me a high five.
“That was so cool!” Chloe said. “Your band is awesome!”
“Let’s hope Carlton appreciated it,” I said. “And doesn’t come down heavy.”
“What’s he going to bust them for?” Caroline said. “Illegal music?”
“He’ll find a way,” I said, because I knew he would.
• • •
And he did, in the next morning’s sermon: “‘A dim old wood, with a palace rare hidden away in its depths somewhere!’ The poet, of course, is James Whitcomb Riley—and even though he wasn’t writing about Oakhurst Hall, he might as well have been. We do live in a palace, overlooked by these glorious woods. And those woods are a special part of our campus.”
“Uh-oh,” said Sam, giving me an elbow. “This is about your boys.”
“Now, I don’t want you to think I’m opposed to the occasional prank,” Carlton said. “But I would encourage those who consider our mountain to be their own personal bully pulpit to keep in mind that freedom of expression, like our lovely forests, is a God-given privilege. Let us not abuse it.”
“Yeah, self-abuse should suffice,” said Sam.