NOT EXACTLY A NEWS FLASH

So unless you just picked up this book and started reading here, you already know that I made the team.

Coach Shumsky said he wasn’t offering any promises about putting me into the first game of the season, since I’d missed some practices. But I also saw the way he looked at Assistant Coach Flynn when I was running sprints during my tryout. I guess all those activities at Camp Wannamorra, killing myself in the Rockies, and running around town with Junior had paid off just a tiny bit.

The question is—did I want to play for the Falcons? And I guess that depends on what you mean by “want.”

On the one hand, I’ve never been on a real sports team before. I didn’t even know all the rules of the game yet. And I’m not exactly the most muscley, football-ready jock you’ve ever seen.More like the opposite. Don’t get me wrong—I love playing sports, as long as it’s with a controller in my hands and a couch under my butt.

But on the other hand, I figured this was still less risky than ticking off Miller. And Jeremy. And Tug.

Put it this way: If flag football was a five on a danger scale of one to ten, then those guys were somewhere around… oh, I don’t know.Like a seventeen.

And when I thought about it like that, then I guess the answer was yes. I “wanted” to play football (aka stay alive) very, very much.

“Take this,” Coach told me, and gave me a permission slip, plus some other papers to look at. “Have an adult sign the slip, and bring it to the next practice. And don’t be late!”

Flip was flashing me all kinds of thumbs-ups by then, and Miller was looking at me like I’d just figured out a way to cheat death, which I guess I had.

But there were still a few more technicalities to go. Starting with one very big one.

I still had to get through Mom.