THE LOCKER ROOM SEEMED QUIETER THAN usual. Something was up. Ward walked over to me. “Lefferts,” he said, staring at his clipboard, “you’re down with the JVs today.”
What?
“They need bodies down there, and we got Saturday off, so you get an extra game.”
“Come on, Mr. Ward,” I said. “What’s the real deal?” I looked over at Madden’s locker, but the captain wasn’t there. Could Madden be that powerful? I take a ten-yard walk with his Muffy, and now I’m minor league?
“The deal is what I said it is, Lefferts. Mr. Jarvis needs a receiver. His QB is out, he has to go with the backup. You could use the work.” He looked up from his clipboard. “And you have a pretty big ego for a kid who’s caught, what, two passes? So get down to the pond—ten minutes ago.”
I banged the side of my locker with my fist: stupid. I could have bruised the hand. As if my “talented” hands were doing me any good anyway.
“Hey, cool out.” It was Will. “Don’t give them a reason to make it permanent. Look at the bright side. You’ll probably get a lot of catches.”
He was right. Plus, I got Jarvis instead of Ward, and that was a trade I could live with. I jogged down to the pond. Pick your battles to win the war, right?
Jarvis was waiting for me at the bottom of the path, and the rest of the JVs were stretching. “Pearson threw out his elbow in some game of touch,” Jarvis said. “And hey, I like to win as much as the next guy. So all I got is Alex at quarterback. Ward offered you up after the faculty meeting last night.” He chewed on a knuckle. “So do me the favor. Bury the pride. I’ll bump up your grade.”
Actually, it was kind of nice to be back on the pond. Alex jogged over. His helmet was jiggling like a bobblehead doll.
“Hey, this is gonna be great. Oh, man, this is gonna be so great,” he said.
The kid who covered me in the practice was a tenth grader—small, but tough. He hit hard, but he couldn’t keep up with my moves, and Alex was throwing good spirals. No pressure. Just ball.
On the final play of the practice, I caught a long pass and sprinted sixty yards into the end zone, into the wind coming off the pond. I could smell the flavor of fresh water when it starts getting colder. Soon, there’d be ice forming on the fringes, the earth beginning to lock up and turn toward winter.
I used to see it on the Reservoir. Up here, I thought, it was going to be the real thing: Winter coming in. Getting warm by a fireplace. Maybe with a . . . friend.
• • •
That night, in the practice room, with no weed and no wine, The Others were musicians, pure and simple. We were beginning to rehearse now: we had something we’d composed, something original, to break down, tweak, caress. The second time through, I looked up from the piano. Simon was drumming with his eyes closed. Josh was grinning at me. Danny was just nodding with each bass note, losing himself, as we all were—in the soft parts, in the storms, in the highs and the lows.
Then the echoes of the final notes whispered away into the silence of the room.
“We wrote that?” said Simon. “Geez.”
“So what are we going to call it?” Danny said.
What would a song by The Others be called?
“‘Everything Else,’” I said.
“Cool,” said Simon, nodding. “We play the stuff you don’t hear anywhere else. So now, what do we do with it?”
“The holy Thanksgiving concert,” I said.
“No way,” said Simon. “That’s all classical. Scouts from Sony. The admin in tuxes. Alt stuff need not apply. Besides, you’re supposed to be the First Piano that night, not the indie keyboard player.”
“No way,” I said, and as I said it, I finally knew it was true. I was bowing out of the competition. Thank fucking God. “I dropped out of that game.”
They all looked at me.
“Seriously?” said Danny.
“Seriously,” I said, which sealed the deal. I could tell the bond among us had just grown a little stronger.
“I like it—we make a little Oakhurst Hall history,” Danny said. “New tradition.”
“And we’re going to do this how?” said Simon.
“Our only chance to even get a chance is to have a wingman,” said Josh. “Faculty adviser. What about Jarvis, Jack?”
“No good,” said Danny. “The head thinks he’s nuts.”
“Yeah. We need a heavyweight,” Josh said. “Someone Carlton listens to.”
“What about McGregor?” I said.
“Corporate McGregor?” Josh said. “Are you crazy?”
“Why not?” I said. “He used to be a musician. He’s on Carlton’s team.”
Simon laughed. “What do we have to lose? We’ve already been admitted to this place. The dude can’t unadmit us.”
• • •
As the band packed up, I told them I was going to stay back, practice for my next lesson. When they’d left, I walked down the hall toward the chords that were shaking the whole damned building. Amazing. Like the soundtrack for a marching army a hundred years ago. Definitely Russian.
I opened the door, and there he was, as I knew he’d be. He stopped playing. “You practicing for the audition? You got your piece?”
“Come on,” I said. “You know it was the band rehearsing. And you gotta admit, Mario, we’re getting there. We’re not half bad.”
“It’s nice,” he said. “I’ll give you that. Definitely original. And don’t think I can’t hear the Schubert in there.”
“So anyway,” I said. “About the big night. It’s yours. I’m out.”
He pushed away from the piano. Then he slumped his head; I couldn’t tell if he was happy or bummed. When he looked up I could tell that it was both. “Why?”
“Well, for one thing, I wouldn’t stand a chance. You know it, and I know it. Come on—you were just playing, what?”
“Prokofiev. Soundtrack to Aleksandr Nevsky. Was it any good? I can never tell.”
“Mario,” I said, “it was amazing. No way we’re going to leave this year to Hopper the head case.”
He stood up and stuck out his hand. We shook. “It’s going to make my parents pretty happy, that’s for sure. But I wish I’d earned it.”
“Oh, you earned it,” I said. “Trust me.”
As I turned to leave he said, “I owe you.”
“Comrade,” I said, “the only thing you owe me is to play your ass off on the big night. Otherwise, you’re going to hear it from me. So what are you going to play?”
“The Rach 3, I guess.”
Right. Only the hardest freaking piano concerto ever written.
• • •
Down at the pond on Saturday afternoon, I looked around at the tiny crowd: a dozen parents on the home sideline, a half dozen parents from a private middle school down in Massachusetts who’d made the drive up to see their ninth graders try and knock off the big preppie JVs—and a girl in a big, shapeless hoodie standing over near the pond watching a few dozen Canada geese who’d just lifted off from the pond.
She turned around. She was smiling a smile that was a lot wider than her usual shy smile, which meant that she knew how happy I’d be that she’d surprised me. And she was right.
I left the warm-ups and jogged over. “I went looking for you, and Josh told me you were back with the JVs,” she said. “I thought you could use some moral support.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m going back to my humble roots.”
“You’ll do great. Maybe you’ll even have fun. Maybe today you can leave the trail.”
Without thinking, I reached out a hand. She put hers in mine. Then took it back.
“I have to get back up there,” she said. “We have a meet in an hour. Booth’ll kill me if I’m late.”
She jogged away. I watched her bounce up the path.
“Jack!” I heard Jarvis shout. “Get over here!” I turned around to see our guys lining up to receive the opening kickoff and hustled back to our sideline.
“Okay,” Alex said in the first huddle. “I’m gonna hit Lefferts on a bomb. Everyone hold your blocks. Gimme time to throw it. You got it?” Nine helmets bobbed in unison.
The defender faced me across the line. I broke downfield like a sprinter. But the guy stayed with me stride for stride and just when I expected the ball to land in my lap, he reached in and batted it away. Great play. This wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought. As I watched the ball bounce away, I knew in a flash: I’d gotten a little too cocky.
“Same play,” Alex said in the huddle, all business. Then he looked me in the eye. “Like the touch game.”
“Come on, Alex,” said one of the other kids. “He’s had one practice with us.”
“Same play,” said Alex.
“Pump-fake me on a square out,” I said. “Then I’ll go long.”
He nodded his bobblehead. We lined up. At the snap, I took off, cut sharp right, felt the cornerback move in to try for the interception, then took off upfield. Alex’s pass nestled into my hands, and I outran the rest of them: my first touchdown for Oakhurst, Well, sort of. But it felt good anyway.
As I trotted back to the bench, I saw a big blue bird take off from the water with two huge slow-motion flaps of its wings and bank off toward some pine trees.
“Jack,” I heard Jarvis say, “you with us, or the heron?” The Zen master was still a coach. I had to do him right. So on the next series, when Alex drilled a slant a few feet behind me, I pictured the ball hitting my hands, reached behind, snagged it, and ran about forty yards diagonally through their defensive backfield . . . until, when I slowed up, like a showboating idiot, a guy dragged me down from behind on the five-yard line.
“That’s your mulligan,” said Jarvis, rightfully angry. “Ward would want your head on a platter. Try taking the game seriously, Jack. You might learn something.”
The words hit home. On the next series I took a short pass, headed upfield, dodged one tackle and then another, and when their safety wrapped an arm around my waist, I shifted my hip, and he fell away. The whole thing was kind of like a blur. All I knew was that my instincts were kicking in. I was a split second ahead of everyone. This must be the difference between college and the pros, I thought. I was a pro.
I reached the end zone and politely handed the ball to the official.
It was 21–0 at the half. Alex walked over and said, “Hey, Jarvis told me to stop throwing to you ’cause they don’t want to embarrass these guys ’cause it isn’t good sportsmanship.”
I spent the rest of the game teaching myself more about how to play football: mainly, blocking defenders, running really precise roots, losing the ego. Since I knew that I wasn’t going to have to do anything else, I laid a hit on anyone I could find—high, low, and in between. I blocked the cornerback. I blocked the linebacker. I blocked a lineman from behind, just for the hell of it, and got a penalty. I blocked two guys so that Alex could score on a bootleg.
We won, 42–14. When it was over, I traded high fives, low fives and fist-bumps with a bunch of kids I didn’t know, and the one I did. Then I accepted a firm handshake from Jarvis.
“Now do it up next week for Bruno,” he said.
As I walked off the field, I saw Clune waiting for me, after the varsity practice.
“I heard you ate ’em up the first half,” he said.
“Yeah, it was pretty cool,” I said.
He walked with me up the path. “You’re gonna be a star next year, man. Zowitzki, Mancini, they’ll be gone. Pearson’s got a good arm. Bruno’ll shut Ward up and take over for real. You’ll be raking ’em in.”
“If Thorn hasn’t taken out my knees by then,” I said. And suddenly it felt like a good time to find out what I had to know. “Mike, break this down for me. Who’s on, and who’s off? The juice?”
He stopped, looked around, waited for the last cluster of JVs to walk by us. Then we started walking, slowly. “For Christ’s sake, you didn’t get this from me, okay?” I nodded, “Zowitzki, Thorn, Mancini do the needles. Three or four other guys on defense do every supplement you can find from every sleazy website from here to Japan, but they stay away from the needles.”
“What about offense? Madden?”
“Clean. Doesn’t need it, with his arm. Leaves the juice to Anabolic Addison and the left side of the line . . . the guys he needs to protect him. And Bannion, believe it or not. Just to make Vic like him. He also thinks it makes him a stronger kicker. And he still sucks.
“The champ is Swicky. He’ll shoot up anything his dealer ships him. He’s nuts. And I mean that seriously. The juice works in mysterious ways, and not all of them are good. Take my word on that.”
“So you too?” I said, my heart sort of sinking. We’d reached the varsity field now. It was empty, but the light towers were still looming like sci-fi monsters, and I was seeing the field in a new kind of way.
“Not since fourth form—two years ago,” he said. “I weighed two sixty. I was having an all-America season until I pulled about forty muscles I never knew I had. Now it’s just the vitamins. Fred Flintstone never needed ’roids.”
• • •
Corporate McGregor looked up from his desk. The fire was crackling. His tie was still yellow. He must have had a dozen yellow ties. “Jack! Come on in. How’s it going? How’s that audition piece? Going to give Mario a run for his money?”
“Actually, sir, no,” I said. “I’m not going to compete this year.”
McGregor frowned. “Why not?”
“You know—commitments and stuff. Grades. Football and . . . music. That’s actually why I’m here. Like I told you, the band, we’re writing this . . . I don’t really know what you’d call it, a song, only it’s about fifteen minutes long. It’s kind of modern.”
He nodded. “That’s, well, terrific. This is for an elective?”
“Not really,” I said. “It’s just on our own. Anyway. We think the song is pretty good, and we were thinking of maybe trying to perform it at the Thanksgiving concert.”
“Real-ly,” he said, like I’d suggested that he quit his job and join a carnival. “Have you talked to the head about this? That concert is purely classical, as I’m sure you know. Perhaps in the winter, or next year, we could plan for . . . an evening for the student groups. A sort of battle of the bands!”
I’d figured that it was going to be hopeless. But I couldn’t back down now. “Sir, it’s not about competing. We sort of thought that if we made that night about all kinds of music, not just classical, it would mean more to the whole school. To the kids. It’s their school, right?”
“Well, Oakhurst Hall is all of us, Jack. Not just the students, but the alumni and all the people who have sacrificed so much for this institution.”
“Right. Exactly. It’s about pride in our school, sir. And if we join together . . . you know, as a community and all . . . well, I mean, we might have a better chance to perform it if we had a faculty adviser for the group.”
He was already only half listening. I saw him sneak a glance at some forms on his desk. Application forms. Finding the next rich future alum. “That’d probably be a good start. Have you asked Mr. Hopper?”
“I was thinking more that maybe you could do it, sir.”
“Me?”
I couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it coming. “Well, remember last year when I talked to you the first time?” I said. “You probably don’t, but you said you liked music? All you’d have to do is come listen to us, and maybe you’d like it.” But this was so off his radar he didn’t know what to say. He tried to look like he was in control while he came up with an answer.
“Well, I don’t . . . that is, my duties here are very specific. I’ve never . . . and I’m awfully busy . . . but I do appreciate your thinking of me.”
“Sure, I understand,” I said. “No big deal.” I stood up. “Thanks for your time, Mr. McGregor,” I was almost out the door when he said, “Jack.”
I turned around. He’d stood up. “I”ll try and make a rehearsal. Keep me posted.”
“Will do,” I said. “I’ll shoot you an e-mail.”
“That’d be fine,” he said, sitting back down to look at his applications. “Jill might enjoy it. My wife is quite the character,” he said, without looking up.
“I’m sure she would, sir,” I said. “Maybe you would too.”