Defending Champ

by Mike Lupica

On Thursday night, the team received an email from Coach Cross that Chase’s MRI results came back showing no signs of any real damage. She’d heard from Coach Selmani that Chase’s ankle was definitely swollen and bruised and that Dr. Calabrese advised icing it every day and keeping it wrapped and elevated as often as possible.

  But Coach Cross also pointed out that when she’d asked Coach Selmani if that meant The Game was back on, he said it would still be up to the team at large.

  Coach said she’d told Coach Selmani that postponing The Game at this point wasn’t an option and that he understood the circumstances and said they’d talk again on Monday.

  “So we have to wait a little more?” Alex said to Coach before their practice on Friday. Coach Selmani had given the boys the day off, and though ordinarily the girls took Fridays to work on The Game, they couldn’t pass up an empty field.

  “This is the worst,” Lindsey said. “It’s like Chase gets to decide our entire season.”

  “It’s not just him,” Alex reminded everyone. “It’s the other guys who voted not to play without him.”

  When it came down to it, though, Alex didn’t know which would be easier: convincing one person to play or convincing an entire team to play without their star player.

  She and Chase may not have had much in common, but they were both passionate about their sport. Sure, Chase tried to act like missing The Game was no big deal, but Alex knew it was cutting him deep. For someone who loved to show off, he was giving up an incredible opportunity to do it in front of the whole town.

  She kept coming back to that. To her hope that Chase’s pride would win out.

  “I still think he’s looking for an excuse to cancel The Game,” Annie said.

  “Remember when I sprained an ankle last season?” Carly said. “Right at the end of a game. And I was back in there the next Saturday.”

  Surprisingly, Alex found herself jumping to Chase’s defense. “Everybody’s injuries are different,” she said.

  After talking to Jabril earlier that week, Alex realized it was unfair to expect other people to share her perspective. Had their circumstances been reversed, and Alex was the one injured, who’s to say she wouldn’t have felt just as Gabe or Chase did now? Would she be worried about next year’s football season? Would she hesitate to play because of the risk she might injure herself worse? From the outside, it appeared as though they were milking their injuries, and maybe they were. But that wasn’t Alex’s call. In both cases, it came down to how comfortable the person was playing. Even if they were fully healed.

  “Well, just because he has one shouldn’t mean everything we’ve done should go to waste,” Lindsey said. Then she crouched down in the grass and grabbed both sides of her head. “Gah! I hate waiting!”

  “Pretty sure nobody likes it, Linds,” Roisin said, stretching her hamstring.

  “Waiting is fine, but there’s gotta be something we can do in the meantime,” Annie said.

  That night, Alex came up with something.

  Two things, actually.

  37

  Eleven thirty Saturday morning, Alex paid Gabe a surprise visit at his house.

  When he opened the door and saw her standing there, he said, “You could’ve called first. It’s not like I would’ve told you not to come.”

  “But you might have,” Alex said, pressing her lips together in a tight grin.

  “Well,” Gabe said, “you got me there.”

  Alex caught a hint of a smile on his face.

  A good sign.

  A good start, anyway.

  “Don’t tell me,” he said. “You’re here because you want to help me.”

  “Nope,” Alex said, “I’m here because I want you to help me.”

  They went inside. Gabe said his parents were at their favorite place: the home-improvement store.

  “What are they looking for?” Alex said.

  “See, that’s the thing with them,” Gabe said. “Most of the time they don’t know until they get there.”

  They sat in the living room, because Gabe insisted Alex did not want to see the current state of his bedroom. His mom had threatened to hide his Xbox controller if it wasn’t cleaned by the end of the day.

  Alex had rehearsed what she would say to Gabe on the way over. She wasn’t here to ask him about his knee. She wasn’t going to pry about whether he’d decided to quit baseball. And she totally wasn’t going to worry about him getting angry with her.

  “Sometimes,” Jack had said before she left the house, “friends have to tell each other things they don’t want to hear.”

  “So, what’s up?” Gabe said. “You have that look.”

  Clearly Alex had to work on her poker face. Between Gabe and her dad, they could read her like a book.

  Alex inhaled deeply. “So, I know it’s a personal decision. And I’m not here to force you to do anything,” she began, “but as your friend, I need to say this.”

  Gabe looked at her expectantly.

  “If the doctor clears you for baseball,” Alex said, “I think you should play.”

  Boom.

  There it was.

  “Really . . .” Gabe said, but Alex cut him off.

  “I’m sorry you got hurt,” Alex kept on, “and then re-hurt or whatever. You know I blame myself. We don’t need to talk about it, because you’ve heard me say it a dozen times.” She stopped to take in some air. “But you’re not the first person to get hurt, Gabe. And if you don’t play, I think you’ll regret it.”

  This wasn’t all of what she’d planned to say.

  But it was most of it.

  When she finished Gabe said, “Can I say something now?”

  He waited. She waited. He was on the couch, his left leg perched on the Hildreths’ coffee table. Alex sat in a chair across from him, leaning forward.

  “Let me just say one more thing,” Alex said.

  “Is there any way I can stop you?”

  “You could try,” she said, then plowed ahead.

  “The baseball team starts practicing outside this week,” she said. “You could be out there with them. And if you want to get extra throws in or whatever, I’m here for you. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  Gabe held back a smile, and Alex had to admit, that wasn’t the reaction she’d expected from him. Anger? Yes. Denial? Absolutely. But now Gabe looked as if someone had told a joke in class and he was choking back laughter.

  “Now may I say something?”

  “Go ahead,” Alex said, leaning back in her chair.

  “I just came from seeing Dr. Calabrese,” he said. “He cleared me to play. And I’m going to play. And unless something awful happens before then, I plan to be pitching next Friday.”

  Alex’s mouth went slack. “Seriously?!” she said. “You let me give that whole speech even though I didn’t have to?”

  “I kind of enjoyed it,” Gabe said, grinning. “And I could tell it meant a lot to you.”

  Alex got up and messed up his hair, like she sometimes did. “You couldn’t have told me when I got here?”

  “You barely gave me the chance!”

  Alex had to admit he was right, but still. “Did your knee injury affect your texting ability?”

  “You know I would have given you the good news,” Gabe said. “I literally just got home ten minutes before you arrived.”

  “Fine, fine,” Alex said. Then: “Sooooo, you wanna play catch?”

  There was no use beating around the bush.

  Now Gabe really smiled. A big one. Big as he had. The old Gabe now, 100 percent.

  “You brought your mitt?” he said.

  “Maybe . . .”

  He told her to meet him in his backyard. He had to change into sneakers and grab his ball and glove from the garage.

  Halfway up the steps, though, he s
topped. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You said you came over because you wanted my help.”

  “Tell you outside,” she said.

  Once she did, he asked, “You really think this will work?”

  “Why not?” Alex said. “I’m on a roll.”

  38

  Alex wasn’t sure if her roll was going to continue. But by the next afternoon, the girls on the soccer team, with Mrs. Hildreth’s permission, had turned the Hildreth living room into their office. Alex and Liza went over together.

  Annie and Carly were counting up T-shirts now, separating them into piles of smalls, mediums, larges, and extra-larges. On Saturday, a bunch of Alex’s teammates had gone back into town and sold more ads, which meant more pages to lay out before all the copy for the program went to the printer.

  They still didn’t know what was going to happen with Chase or with the boys. But they proceeded as if The Game was still on for next Saturday. Their energy and enthusiasm never wavered.

  Every girl on the team was there except for Rashida, who’d come down with a case of strep throat. Unfortunately, her doctor said she’d be out for at least a week, meaning she’d have to miss The Game, if it took place.

  Sophie had also come over to help, and about a half hour after most of the team had arrived, the doorbell rang and there was Jabril, standing on the other side of the door.

  “It would have been like having a party and not inviting him,” Gabe explained when he noticed Alex’s shocked yet delighted expression.

  “And that,” Jabril said, “would have been a tragedy.”

  “If you’re going to be here, though,” Alex said, “you have to contribute somehow.”

  “Alex . . .” he said. “You know nobody in our school is better at getting the word out than I am.”

  “You mean the word about our game?” Lindsey said.

  “The word about anything!” Jabril said.

  Alex looked around the room. There were six laptops going at once. Mrs. Hildreth was helping with the page layouts, having once worked on her college yearbook. She and Alex’s mom, with Lindsey and Roisin, were all hovering over Lindsey’s laptop.

  At one point Alex’s mom looked around the room, smiled, and said, “Organized chaos has never looked so good.”

  Then Gabe’s mom said, “I’m still not sure how our house turned into headquarters today, not that I mind.”

  “You’ll see,” Alex said. “And thank you again, Mrs. Hildreth. Really appreciate you letting us take over your living room for the day.”

  “Don’t mention it!” Gabe’s mom said. “I haven’t had this much fun since planning Gabe’s first birthday party.”

  “Mom,” Gabe droned. “Shall we not?”

  They were just finishing their break for cookies and lemonade when the doorbell rang again. Alex and Gabe jumped at the exact same moment and yelled, “I’ll get it!”

  Gabe had the honor of opening the door.

  On the other side was Chase Gwinn.

  He looked at Gabe, then Alex, then past them and into the living room, as if he’d just been ambushed.

  “We need to talk,” Alex said to him.

  39

  No one had moved from the doorway.

  “You didn’t tell me they would all be here,” Chase said to Gabe, like Gabe had fooled him into coming.

  “Well, yeah,” Gabe said. “But I didn’t tell you they wouldn’t be here either.”

  Alex glanced down. She noticed that Chase was no longer wearing his walking boot.

  “I’ll . . . we . . . we can do this another time,” Chase said, turning to go.

  “No,” Gabe said, reaching out to put a hand on Chase’s shoulder. “You should stay.”

  “What’s going on here?” Chase said.

  He stepped inside now, and Gabe closed the door behind him, as if afraid Chase might try to escape.

  “We’re trying to have a season,” Alex said. “I just thought you should see what that looks like.”

  “What’s this got to do with me?” Chase said.

  “Pretty much everything, dude,” Gabe said quietly.

  The girls looked up from their work and shouted greetings at Chase. Even Lindsey acted as if she were happy to see him, which Alex thought was quite possibly the best acting job Lindsey Stiles had ever pulled off.

  Alex’s mom came over carrying a tray of Mrs. Hildreth’s homemade cookies. Chase reluctantly took one.

  “Alex told me you didn’t sustain a high ankle sprain,” Alex’s mom said. “That’s wonderful news.”

  Chase looked confused, so Alex told him, “My mom’s a specialist in sprained ankles.”

  Liza chuckled. “That’s my daughter’s way of describing my medical career.”

  “Well, I mean, yeah, she does other stuff too.”

  “So how is it feeling today?” Liza asked Chase.

  Chase shrugged. “Still in pain.”

  “But you’re not wearing your walking boot,” she said. “So it can’t be hurting too badly.”

  “But it still hurts,” Chase said.

  She smiled. “I’m sure it does.” She walked back into the kitchen then, to chat with Gabe’s mom.

  Ally and Maria were sitting cross-legged in the corner of the living room with their phones out. Today’s social media strategy was to post “fun facts” about as many of the girls on the team as possible. Anything to get people talking about The Game.

  Alex took Chase on a tour around the room, explaining what everybody was doing, even though he hadn’t asked.

  I’ve never seen him this uncomfortable in his life, Alex thought.

  “This is all about one soccer game?” he said, looking at Alex.

  “If there is one,” Alex said, hoping she’d opened his eyes to their dilemma.

  She walked into the room and grabbed a couple of printouts so he could see what the T-shirts were going to look like.

  “Cool,” Chase said, not knowing what else to say.

  “But what would be totally uncool,” Gabe said, “is if they were doing all this for nothing.”

  Chase gestured to him and Jabril. “What do you guys have to do with The Game?”

  “We’re honorary team members,” Gabe said. “Just doing what we can to help out.”

  “But you’re guys,” Chase said. “And you don’t even play soccer.”

  “Does that matter?” Jabril said. “It’s not about personal gain. It’s about the larger cause.”

  Chase stared at him, still a little hesitant.

  Then he turned to Alex. “You said you wanted to talk.”

  Gabe led them into the kitchen. Chase and Gabe sat down at the kitchen table, but Alex remained standing. Even when she had to present to the class, she couldn’t simply stand in front of a podium. She had to be in constant motion. Like she was giving her own TED Talk.

  Before she could say anything, Chase blurted, “This game isn’t all on me, if that’s what this is all about. And it’s not as if I asked to get hurt.”

  Alex shook her head. “I’m not here to accuse you of anything, Chase,” she said. “And you’re right—it’s not your fault you got hurt, and The Game shouldn’t depend on you alone.”

  Chase looked to Alex as if to say: Then what am I doing here?

  Alex took her cue to continue. “Problem is, all the other guys on your team say they won’t play if you don’t.”

  “I didn’t tell them to do that,” Chase rushed to say. “Johnny said we should vote on it, and we did. My vote didn’t count more than anybody else’s.”

  “You may not think so,” Gabe said, “but a team looks to their leader for direction. So you voting no sent a powerful message to your boys. They followed your lead.”

  Alex could see what Gabe was doing. Appealing to Chase’s ego to get him to come around. Like
reverse psychology. By Gabe acknowledging how much influence Chase had over his team, it might get Chase to change his mind about The Game.

  “I still don’t know what you want me to do,” Chase said.

  “Listen,” Gabe said. “I get it. I got hurt too, and it’s not fun. Even when the doctors tell you it’s fine, there’s still a part of you that worries it might be worse than they’re telling you.”

  Chase was paying attention now.

  “I got so anxious worrying about my knee that my brain got twisted all around. I thought it’d never heal and started telling myself that baseball was out of the question. But once I started listening to the doctors and getting back out there, I realized it was all in my head.”

  Chase was quiet for a minute. Then he spoke. “If I’m ready, I’ll play,” he said. “I just don’t know if I’ll be ready in time.”

  “We obviously can’t make you do anything,” Alex said. “But if you can’t be a leader on the field, could you at least be one off it?”

  “Not sure I’m following . . .”

  “You see what we’re doing here,” Alex said, gesturing toward the living room. “You see how much effort we’re throwing into this game. If you can’t play on the day, at least convince your teammates to take the field without you.”

  After another beat, Chase stood up, said he was leaving, and walked out of the kitchen.

  “Wait,” Gabe said, jogging to catch up with him. “Got time for a short walk? We’ll go slow. Me with my knee. You with your ankle. Just down the street and back.”

  Chase hesitated, but finally said, “Okay. But then I have to bounce.”

  For a short walk, Alex thought they were gone a long time.

  When Gabe returned, he was alone. He came through the back door, into the kitchen, where Alex was waiting for him.

  Gabe stood there, arms crossed in front of him, shaking his head.

  “What?”

  Then Gabe grinned.

  “Guess who else got cleared to play without telling us?” Gabe said.

  “You’re joking.”

  “Nope,” Gabe said. “Our new bud Chase failed to mention that Dr. Calabrese gave him the thumbs-up a few days ago.”