by Mike Lupica
Her dad turned to face her.
“I thought this was what you wanted,” he said, his voice soft. “Don’t let Jeff Stiles get in the way of achieving your dreams.”
Alex stood up and walked to the other side of the coffee table.
“I’m better when I move,” she said, looking at her dad. “What’s that movie you love where the guy says that?”
“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” he said. “A classic.”
She paced back and forth, collecting her thoughts, like buying time on the field after getting forced outside the pocket.
Trying to make the right call.
“I know he’s acted like a jerk,” she said. “Jeff, I mean. But I’m past all that now.”
Her dad huffed. “Wish I was,” he said.
“Dad,” she said. “Let me finish.”
“Okay.”
“Coach,” she said, “you keep talking about how we’re going good as a team, that you don’t want to mess with success, even if we have to come from behind sometimes.”
Alex locked her hands around the back of her neck just to have something to do with them.
“This would crush Jeff,” she said. “And make him hate me more than he already does. He’ll probably hate me no matter what. But starting is way more important to him than it is to me, and that’s a fact.”
“Alex,” her dad said quietly, “do you think Jeff would ever consider your feelings this way? Or sacrifice what he wanted for you?”
“No,” Alex said.
“So why?” Coach said.
“You might not know this, Coach,” she said, “but all I’ve been hearing from everyone at school is that I’ve tried to make the season all about me.”
“All you did is play your best once I gave you the chance,” Coach Mencken said. “Nothing wrong with that.”
“But whether I liked it or not, it became about me,” she said. She let her hands loose now, smiling as she did. “I guess I’m just trying to be the better person. Better than Jeff has been to me.”
“And a better teammate,” her dad said.
“That’s what I’ve been all along,” she said, “even if most of my teammates don’t take the time to notice.”
She came and sat back down next to her dad, who kissed the top of her head.
Coach said to Alex, “You know that if I start Jeff on Saturday and he’s going good, I’m gonna have to leave him out there. You going to be okay with that?”
“I’ll have to be,” she said. “Even though it might be hard to swallow that we could be doing better if I were playing.”
“Gotta say,” Coach said, “this was not the way I saw this conversation going.”
Alex shrugged. “I’m never a hundred percent sure what to do on or off the field,” she said, “but I’m pretty sure this is the right move.”
Coach stood up, looked down at Jack Carlisle and said, “In your life would you have ever done anything like this?”
“Heck no,” her dad said. “But that’s why Alex is going to grow up to be better than I ever was.”
* * *
• • •
When Coach was gone, Jack said to Alex, “You ever going to tell Jeff what you did?”
“Nah,” she said. “He wouldn’t understand even if I did.”
“You’re sure this is what you want . . .”
“It’s not about me,” Alex said. “It’s about the team.”
35
Before the start of the game against the Washington Falls Rams, they could all see Coach having what looked to be a fairly heated conversation with Mr. Stiles down near one of the end zones.
Most of the conversation seemed to be coming from Mr. Stiles’s direction, as far as Alex could tell.
“What do you think that’s all about?” Alex said to Jabril.
“If I had to guess?” Jabril said. “One man down there is the coach of the team. The other man thinks he’s the coach of the team.”
Alex and Jeff hardly ever spoke. They didn’t speak at practice, they didn’t speak at school, and they certainly never spoke during games. They were practically on different teams, the way they interacted. Which is to say, never. It was like they’d never known each other at all.
Which, Alex supposed, they never really had.
Alex hadn’t told Gabe or Jabril about Coach’s trip to her house. She hadn’t told Sophie, either, and she wasn’t planning on telling her mom. At least not until after the season was over. Alex was pretty sure her mom wouldn’t understand why Alex had turned down the starting job. Liza Borelli believed all women should have the jobs they were qualified to have. Alex agreed, but in this scenario, she felt it wouldn’t do her, or the team, any good.
So Alex had one more secret.
One more to add to the growing list.
This secret fell just below the one she held closest to her heart. The one she thought about more than anything else: the desperate need for her mother to see her play.
“These guys are good,” Jabril said.
Alex knew he meant the Rams, their opponent in the game about to begin at Washington Falls Junior High. Washington Falls was a big town. Jabril knew a lot about their league and said the field at the junior high was almost as good as the one at the high school.
“You always think whoever we play is going to be as good as the Patriots,” Alex said to him, knowing Jabril was prone to exaggerating.
“I like to follow the other teams on social,” Jabril said. “I pretend I’m scouting them on the internet. It’s why I know they got a quarterback almost as good as you.”
He grinned.
“I mean, he’s good for a dude,” Jabril said.
His name was Jayden Brokaw. He was left-handed, tall and skinny, and had a good arm and a lot of speed. Jabril told Alex that Jayden was going to need it, because he planned to be chasing him all over Washington Falls.
But that didn’t turn out to be the story of the first quarter. The story of the first quarter was that Jeff Stiles was finally playing like a starting quarterback. Better than he’d played in any game thus far. He was completing short passes to Gabe and Lewis, Jake and Tariq. On one option play, he kept the ball and ripped off his longest gain of the season. The Owls ended up going seventy-five yards on the opening drive, finally scoring on a ten-yard run by Tariq. Jeff fumbled Cal’s snap on the failed conversion play. But the Owls were ahead, 6–0.
Jeff clearly thought this was the way things should have been all along. He came off the field high-fiving everybody in sight as if the Owls had just won the championship. When he got to the sideline, he bent down to fill up his water bottle at the cooler and glanced sideways at Alex, making sure she saw him. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Alex read him loud and clear.
It was a look that said, I’m the only quarterback of this team.
Jabril saw him do it and shook his head.
“One drive and Jeff thinks he’s turned into Lamar,” he said into Alex’s ear.
They both watched as Jeff went behind the bench and pointed toward where his dad was sitting in the bleachers on the Orville side of the field.
Mr. Stiles stood up and yelled at Jeff, “Hope your coach was watching!”
If Coach Mencken heard, he didn’t let on.
“That family has one volume,” Jabril said.
“Yeah,” Alex said, “loud.”
Jayden came right back. Now that the game was underway, Alex saw a much stronger arm than the one she’d seen when he was warming up. On third-and-ten from midfield, he threw a deep ball down the left sideline. His fastest wide receiver had a couple of steps on Bryan. It was all he needed. Jayden dropped the ball in like a pro. Score was 6–6. Then Jayden made a great fake to his running back on the conversion play, kept the ball himself, and it was 7–6.
&n
bsp; To Alex’s surprise, though, and maybe his own, Jeff Stiles responded. And brought the Owls right back.
“This is one of those body-snatcher deals,” Jabril said. “’Cause this is not the Jeff Stiles we’ve been seeing all season.”
“He must have had games like this last year,” Alex said.
“Yeah,” Jabril said. “Last year.”
“Well, looks like last year just turned into this year,” Alex said.
“If it did, it might keep you off the field,” Jabril said.
Alex knew what he was getting at. Same thing Coach had said back at her house. If Jeff was going good, he’d have no choice but to keep him in the game.
“You know what I always say,” she said.
“Long way to go,” Jabril answered.
The Owls scored again to make it 12–7, then missed the conversion. But Jayden was still on fire. He scrambled out of the pocket on the Rams’ next series, somehow managing to fake out even Jabril, and ran sixty yards for a score. After he completed a pass to his tight end in the corner of the end zone, it was 14–12, Rams. It stayed that way until halftime.
The Owls had been driving right before the half, but Jeff didn’t protect the ball well enough when he was under blitz pressure, got stripped, and the Rams recovered.
Alex honestly wasn’t sure what Coach would do at halftime, whether he’d leave Jeff in at quarterback or not. But he ended the mystery pretty quickly.
“He’s played well enough to keep playing,” Coach said to Alex.
They both knew he was talking about Jeff.
“Totally get it,” she said.
“I want to get you in there,” he said, almost apologetic.
“I’m not worried about it,” she said to him, just because she couldn’t think of anything better in the moment.
You knew this might happen, she told herself as she walked down the sideline to stand next to Gabe. Cal was just about to kick off to the Rams.
“What did he say?” Gabe said.
“He’s going to hang with Jeff for now,” she said.
Gabe nodded. “Makes sense,” he said. “Haven’t seen Jeff play this well in a minute.”
“If it’s good for the team, it’s good for me,” Alex said. She figured stating it out loud would help ease the disappointment of not getting to play. She wasn’t regretting her decision. It was selfless, and she did it for the benefit of the team, not the individual. But deep inside, a part of her was angry for not jumping on the chance when she had it.
“Because you’re more of a team player than Jeff will ever be,” Gabe said.
Two things happened near the end of the third quarter. Both were bad for the Owls. The first was that Gabe rolled his right ankle trying to make a cut in the open field after completing a really good leaping catch over the middle. When he got to the sideline, Cal’s dad checked him out and said the injury wasn’t serious, assuring him that icing it would have him feeling good as new by tomorrow. But when there’s still more game to play, that’s the last thing a player wants to hear.
“How about I start icing now and see how I feel toward the end of the game?” Gabe said.
“You can start icing now,” Dr. Calabrese said. “But you’re still watching the rest of this game from the bench.”
Then, just two plays later, Lewis Healey landed hard on his left wrist trying to make a diving catch on third down, going for a ball he had no realistic chance to catch. He ran off the field, cradling his left wrist in his right hand. Dr. Calabrese was having a busy afternoon.
He declared Lewis done for the day.
Just like that, the Owls were down their two best receivers. The punting team took the field, and the offense came off. Alex was trying to think along with Coach. They had a few other guys who had practiced at wide receiver. Tyler Sullivan, for instance, because of his speed. And Alex knew Jabril could take his spot as slot receiver, no problem. He could run and catch. She had no doubt that he could also be a star receiver.
The problem, she knew, would be Jeff. He was only comfortable throwing to two guys: Gabe and Lewis. Now both of them were on the bench with the fourth quarter starting.
Gabe got up off the bench, took Alex by the arm, and limped his way over to where Coach was standing.
“Coach,” he said. “You should put Alex in.”
He said it only loud enough for the three of them to hear.
“I know we’re not moving the ball right now,” Coach Mencken said. “But Jeff hasn’t done anything that would warrant me taking him out of the game.”
Gabe said, “I meant put Alex in at my position.”
Before Coach could say anything, Gabe continued, words pouring out as fast as he could run.
“Trust me on this, Coach,” Gabe said. “She knows where everybody is supposed to be on every play we run. And we’ve played enough games of catch for me to know she can do that, too. Catch, I mean.”
Coach beamed, and Alex could tell he believed Gabe. Despite everything that had happened to the Owls in the past few minutes, he seemed to have newfound hope.
Looking to Alex, he said, “Did Coach Hildreth run this by you?”
“I’m hearing it for the first time,” she said, “same as you, Coach.”
“You willing to give it a try?” Coach said.
“I’m willing to do just about anything to get on that field,” she said.
Coach shrugged. “We’ve got nothing to lose.”
Alex shoved her helmet on. “Well, we could lose the game, but I’m going to do everything possible to make sure that doesn’t happen,” she told him.
Coach waved Jeff Stiles over and told him the plan for when they got the ball back.
“No way,” Jeff said.
A beauty to the end, Alex thought.
“What did you say to me?” Coach said.
“I said no way,” Jeff said. Alex didn’t know where he found the nerve. “This is the biggest game of the year so far. And she hasn’t played a single down all year at wide receiver.”
Coach put a hand on Jeff’s shoulder.
“Couple of things, son,” he said. “One is that Alex hadn’t played a down at any position before this season. Two: I wasn’t asking for your opinion. And if you’ve got a problem with my opinion, I have another quarterback here ready to go in.”
That shut him up. Which was hard to do with Jeff Stiles.
“So, are we on the same page now?” Coach said.
“Yes, sir,” Jeff muttered.
“Thought so,” Coach said.
Coach put Jabril in at Lewis’s spot. Alex would take Gabe’s. But the first time the Owls had the ball, Jeff missed them both badly with pass attempts, even though they were wide open. His second pass was to Jabril, but it came up short.
Over on the sideline, Jeff said to Jabril, “You made your cut too late.”
Jabril had turned to get his water bottle off the bench but stopped in his tracks and came back to where Jeff was standing.
“No,” he said.
“No what?” said Jeff.
“No, I didn’t make my cut too late,” Jabril said. “No, you’re not going to blame me, like I didn’t do my job when the truth is you didn’t do yours. That cover everything?”
Suddenly Jeff knew what it was like to be the other team’s quarterback when Jabril Wise came after you.
“Whatever,” he grumbled.
Jabril took a quick drink and then went right back out after a Rams time-out to be with the defense. And the Owls’ defense was stellar again. They did what they’d been doing since the Rams took the lead, and held them again.
But it was clear when the Owls had the ball back that Jeff Stiles was no longer up to the circumstances of the occasion, as Alex’s dad liked to put it. That was putting it mildly.
Basically, he was
choking out there. He threw two more wild incompletions on the next series, one of them so far over Jabril’s head that it was nearly intercepted by a safety ten yards behind him.
It was still 14–12, Rams.
But Jabril and the guys on defense held them again.
Two minutes left now.
Still down two.
Coach came over to Alex after Tariq had made a nice return on the Rams’ punt, all the way to their forty-eight-yard line.
“I gotta take Jeff out and put you in at QB,” Coach said. “I owe it to the rest of the kids.”
“Coach,” Alex said, “I think I might have a better idea.”
36
“Kind of like it,” he said once she’d explained.
Then he shook his head, mouth curling up at the sides into a tight grin. “I didn’t originally want a girl on my team,” he said. “Now I’m letting her act as my offensive coordinator.”
“This can work,” Alex said.
“You know what else I like?” he said. “You acting like a quarterback even when you’re not on the field.”
“I’m just acting like an Orville Owl,” Alex said to him.
The offense went back on the field. Coach filled Jeff in on the play he wanted him to run on first down.
It wasn’t the one Alex had called on the sideline. Not yet.
Fortunately, the first play was a handoff. Jeff didn’t have to throw, just put the ball into Tariq’s hands. He could at least manage that. But Tariq nearly got tackled in the backfield and was lucky to fight his way to a two-yard gain. They had one time-out left. Coach didn’t elect to use it yet. Alex looked down at the clock behind the end zone.
Minute and thirty seconds left now.
Coach gave Jeff one last chance to complete a pass on second down, this time to Alex. But he airmailed another one out of bounds.
Alex looked over at Coach as she jogged back to the huddle, the clock stopped on the incompletion. He nodded. She nodded.
Now or never.
Alex told Jeff the play.
“Coach thinks this is how we’re going to win the game?” Jeff said to Alex.