by Paul Volponi
“I don’t know,” I said. “Any sandwich named after my brother should be stuffed with baloney.”
Alex had a grin on his face a mile wide over my reaction—and Travis’s.
“I’ve got to try one,” Travis said.
“So, Mama, that’ll be one Travis G. Gator, one Alex Po’ Boy—”
“There’s a sub named after you too?” I asked.
“For almost two years now—lean turkey and Swiss on a club roll,” answered Alex. “Don’t sweat it. Score a few more touchdowns, there might be one named after you.”
“Is that how Travis got his?” I asked.
I ordered a sub with ham and American cheese. But I’d just about lost my appetite. Then the three of us squeezed in around one of those little tables after Alex’s mom handed us our orders.
“Come on, Carter. Try some of my sub,” said Travis. “It’s really good.”
I didn’t want to, but I could see how thrilled Travis was. In my heart, I knew that none of this was his fault, all of the attention he’d been getting. And it was partly my job to help Travis grow up. So I took a gut check, put whatever jealousy I’d been feeling aside, and took a bite of his sub.
Chapter 11
That January, Mom and me drove to Miami to see Gainesville play Maryland in the Orange Bowl. And I had so much access to the team that Mom started calling me “the Gators’ unofficial mascot.”
I was standing on the sideline with the score tied 7 to 7 and less than one minute remaining in the first half. That’s when Coach G. called for a wide-receiver screen pass.
The play put Alex split out wide to the right, on the tight-end side. At the snap, he faked running downfield and stayed at the line of scrimmage. The quarterback delivered him the ball on his numbers. The rest was up to Alex and his flying feet.
He nearly juked the first defender out of the guy’s socks, losing him fast.
A second defender had a clear shot at Alex. He was about to make the tackle when Carter threw the block of his life. You could hear the huhh of air leaving that defender’s lungs as Carter flattened him like a pancake.
Then Alex sprinted into the clear and didn’t slow down until he was five yards past the goal line. The stadium’s video screen played Carter’s block back from two different angles.
“Thank you, fam. That touchdown’s part yours,” Alex told Carter at halftime, wrapping his arms around him. Then Alex called out to everyone in the locker room, “Did you see that monster block? Fam went bam!”
All that smiling and laughing didn’t last long, though. On the second half’s first play from scrimmage, Alex caught a cleat in the turf while he was making a sharp cut. His left knee twisted with a ton of torque, buckling beneath him. He fell to the field screaming in pain, with both hands clamped around his knee.
The trainers had to lift Alex up and carry him to the sideline.
“Looks like he tore something,” I heard Harkey tell Coach G. after talking to the trainers. “Could be serious.”
Within a few minutes, Alex was sitting on the back of a cart with his legs stretched out in front of him. A white towel hung over his head as he rode back to the locker room, but I could still see the tears running down his eye-black and onto his cheeks. Alex slammed the cart’s metal railing so hard I thought he might have broken his hand.
“Wide receivers, it’s next man up!” Harkey hollered toward the bench.
That’s something football coaches say—next man up. It means the team can’t worry about missing any one player. That somebody needs to step up and take his spot, almost like he was never there. To prove it, the Gators’ quarterback, Billy Nelson, fired a second-half touchdown to Alex’s replacement, securing the victory. Before the game was over, Alex came back out onto the sideline on crutches.
“What’d the doc say?’ Carter asked him.
“Can’t see ligaments on an X-ray. I’ll get an MRI tomorrow. They think it’s my ACL, maybe torn. If it is, surgery. Six to eight months minimum to recover,” Alex said. “Guess I’m out of the NFL draft. No pro team’s going to take a chance on damaged goods. I’ll have to come back and play another year, to show I still got my speed.”
Carter shook his head. “Too bad. I was looking forward to breaking in a new roommate.”
“That’s your miserable luck, huh?” Alex replied.
* * *
From mid-January until June, I worked most Saturdays at Walter Henry’s dealership. That meant I had my own money for things like pizza and movies. By the end of March, Lyn got over being mad, and I took her out a few more times. I liked Lyn a lot. But I liked all the attention I was getting from other girls too. That’s why, for the eighth-grade dance at the end of the school year, I didn’t ask any one girl to go. Instead, I went with a bunch of friends, guys and girls, and we danced together that night in a big group.
Dad didn’t fly to Florida for my middle-school graduation. He said it was less of a graduation and more of a moving-up ceremony. He was probably right. We were talking twice a week then, mostly about how long I’d stay at Gainesville U before I left for the pros. Dad did send me a $200 check as a present. Thanks to Coach G.’s scholarship, Mom let me spend it all on video games instead of putting it into my college fund.
Chapter 12
Throughout the summer before ninth grade, I stayed focused on sharpening my quarterback skills by running every drill imaginable—for footwork, arm strength, and accuracy.
Three times a week, Carter and Alex, who was still rehabbing his left knee after ACL surgery, would run pass patterns with me doing the throwing. Harkey added an extra day to our off-season training schedule and had us working out at the football complex on Sundays and Wednesdays. Alex outworked everybody else. Only, his knee was still healing slower than he wanted.
“Six to eight months’ recovery—that’s what it’s supposed to be. But that’s for anybody, not an NFL-caliber athlete,” said Alex, lying on the complex floor. He flexed his knee, using a giant rubber band that stretched from his hands to the sole of his foot. “It’s been nearly six months already. I’ve got a season to play soon. I can’t make the sharp cuts I need to. There’s no explosion in my first step.”
“Patience, bro. It’ll come. Just keep pushing. That’s all you can do,” said Carter, mid–butterfly stretch. “Any way you look at it, you’re still two steps faster than me.”
“You’re a tank. I’m a Ferrari,” Alex said. “You see Travis overthrow me by five yards on that deep ball yesterday? How’d that ever happen?”
“Because my arm’s getting a lot stronger,” I said, straightening my legs after my own butterfly stretch.
“Yeah, I forgot,” grumbled Alex, releasing the rubber band with a snap.
As Alex stood up, Harkey came over and put an arm around his shoulder. “Don’t sweat it, Moore. I’m personally going to get you there. No matter what I have to do. No matter what you have to do.”
Harkey walked Alex over into a small office for a private conversation, closing the door behind them.
“What do you think Harkey’s telling him?” I asked Carter.
“I don’t know. But if anybody can get Alex back to one hundred percent, it’s Harkey and Coach G.,” Carter said, rising to his feet and twisting the cap off a fresh bottle of Gatorade.
* * *
A few days later, Alex was in a slightly better mood. Between him and Carter running routes, I must have thrown them almost a hundred balls. After lunch at the sub shop, they drove me home, and I challenged Alex, who’d been bragging about his video game skillz, to NCAA Football on my Xbox 360.
Galaxy went out of his mind when he saw Alex. He was jumping up and down, shaking his rubber ball with the bell inside. It was all Alex could do to get past Galaxy to my bedroom, so he tossed the ball down the hallway, taking advantage of the clear path while Galaxy went to fetch it.
Me and Alex sat down on the edge of my bed, facing the TV. We both wanted to play as the Gators.
“Sorry, it�
�s my game,” I said. “My choice.”
“That’s such kid nonsense. ‘My game.’ ”
“What’d you expect? He is a kid,” said Carter from his bed in the far corner of the room.
“Not anymore. I got a college scholarship and a job.”
“All right, I’ll be Alabama,” Alex said grudgingly.
The players on the screen looked exactly like the stars from the real teams. They even wore the same uniform numbers and had the same moves.
“Think you’ll be able to cover yourself in this game?” Carter asked Alex.
“Nobody can stop double-infinity—not even me,” he answered. “Do they have a player who looks like you? Number eighty-five?”
As Carter shook his head no, Alex jabbed him a little more. “Too bad, I was going to leave him completely uncovered. Nobody would be throwing to him anyway.”
“I would. First off, he’s my brother. Second, you’re leaving him open,” I said, as Alex kicked off to start the game.
Two minutes into the first quarter, my phone rang.
“Carter, here, check this,” I said, taking one hand off the controller just long enough to toss him the phone.
“It’s Dad,” he said, checking the display.
“Answer it,” I told him.
“He’s calling you, not me,” said Carter.
“You gonna play your pops cold like that?” asked Alex, setting his defense for another play. “I wish mine could be on the line. I’d pick up in a heartbeat, no matter what.”
“He died?” I asked Alex.
“From diabetes, when I was ten. That’s something I got shortchanged on. I love my mama, but a dude only gets one pops,” Alex said.
The phone stopped ringing. Dad’s call went to message before Carter flipped the phone back onto my bed.
A minute later, I sent Alex’s avatar streaking down the field. It caught a long pass and out-sprinted three Alabama defenders into the end zone. That avatar even copied Alex’s touchdown dance, spinning the ball on its end and then warming his hands over it.
Alex exploded. “You win! I’m out of here!” He stood up and bolted for the door. “Even my Xbox character’s faster than me now.”
I’d never seen Alex lose his temper like that. I figured it was from all the pressure he was feeling, trying to get his knee healthy again.
“Where you going? I’ll drive you,” said Carter, getting up too.
“Back to campus. I need to talk to Harkey. Do some extra rehabbing.”
* * *
High school started for me in the last week of July—not classes, but football practice. It was ninety-five degrees that first day. Coach Pisano stood on the field in front of eighty players, ready to give a speech. We were broiling beneath the sun in our football pads, while Pisano wore a tank top, shorts, and sneakers with no socks. He had a tattoo of a pouncing bobcat that started on his right anklebone and ran up his calf. Pisano had coached the Beauchamp Bobcats for close to twenty years, and even played for them when he was in high school.
Coach Pisano cleared his throat. “Ahem.”
That’s when some senior players took their cleats to the butts of a few freshmen who were stupid enough to be sitting on the ground. The freshmen stood up in a hurry. Carter had played four years for Pisano. He’d clued me in to what was coming. So I’d been on my feet all along. I had let Damon in on it too. And he wore a big grin, since some of those freshmen were the ones who’d talked trash about him after that botched snap in our last Pop Warner game.
“A commitment, that’s what I’m looking for. Not just a commitment to be here, to take part. But a commitment to give it your all. A sacrifice. Maybe some of you don’t know what that means. Well, I’ll spell it out for you. This morning I had bacon and eggs for breakfast. The chicken that gave up those eggs probably thought it had made a sacrifice. I don’t. Not compared to the pig that supplied the bacon. That’s what I’m looking for from all of you. If you can’t give it to me, if you’re just here to be seen wearing the uniform, leave now.”
Everybody’s eyes seemed to search the crowd. But nobody walked away.
“Good,” said Pisano. “Then let’s play Bobcat football.”
Last season’s starting quarterback had graduated. Now the Bobcats had only two quarterbacks with any kind of experience: me and a junior named Aiden Conroy. Aiden was warming up on the sideline, throwing to one of the receivers. He stood an inch taller than me, with wider shoulders. He sported freckles, short red hair, and a strong right arm.
I walked up to him to say hello, but he waved me off with a shake of his head.
“I already know who you are, scholarship boy. But this is my team. I put in two years here as backup QB. It’s my turn to be top dog. So get used to sitting on the bench and carrying my jockstrap.”
Halfway through his rant, I was ready to clock him. Only, I was afraid of breaking my hand on his jaw and missing the season. Some upperclassmen who’d heard Aiden’s comments were laughing out loud. I figured if that’s what they respected—a smart mouth—I’d come right back at him.
“Maybe I’ll let you carry my jockstrap. Before I wash it.”
That got some reaction from the upperclassmen too. Only, none of it was positive.
“Freshman better learn his place.”
“Thinks he’s got mad swag.”
Aiden glared at me and spit out of the corner of his mouth. None of the receivers offered to warm me up. I guess they’d already picked a side. So I called Damon over and started playing catch with him to get my left arm loose. I stood just a few feet from Aiden, to let him know I wasn’t going anywhere.
I’d only seen Damon a handful of times over the summer. We’d mostly kept in touch by texting. By my third toss to him, I noticed he had lost a lot of weight, maybe twenty pounds.
“You on Weight Watchers or something?” I asked before zipping him a pass. “Offensive linemen are supposed to pack on pounds, not take them off.”
“Got tired of being a blimp,” Damon said. “If I have to change positions, so what? I feel better this way.”
“What else can you play?” I asked.
“Not sure,” he answered. “Wherever I can help out.”
Aiden piped in, calling out to Damon, “Hey, maybe you can be our new backup quarterback. I hear that job’s still wide open.”
That’s when Pisano walked over, ending all the talk. He set up quarterback drills, with both me and Aiden throwing to the receivers, tight ends, and running backs. Pisano had us splitting an equal number of reps, and I could tell Aiden was annoyed.
After twenty minutes, if I had to be totally honest, I thought Aiden’s throws were sharper than mine. Aiden must have thought he’d outplayed me too. Because at the end of that first practice, he shot me a grin like any competition between us was over.
I barely got any sleep that night. I was imagining the headlines—TOP PROSPECT RIDES BENCH AS SECOND STRINGER. Doubt crept into my mind. Aiden couldn’t beat out last season’s quarterback, a guy who’d lost as many games as he’d won. How could Aiden possibly look better than me?
I was surprised, on the second day, when Pisano gave me more reps than Aiden. He had me throwing on the side to some of the starters. And I could feel the pressure to be perfect beginning to build inside of me with every pass.
* * *
Sunday was our off day. But I didn’t need any rest. I was looking for every edge I could get. So I went down to the Gator complex to lift weights and throw some more.
Amazingly, Alex’s knee had recovered nearly one hundred percent. His quick first step was back. He flew down the field, cutting to the left and to the right at tight angles. And I couldn’t overthrow him on deep balls, no matter how hard I tried.
“You look like that Alex Moore from the video game,” I said, walking off the field with him and Carter.
“Double-infinity is back,” said Alex, brimming with energy. “Know what? I’ll do the driving today. I got myself a fast car for a re
ason.”
So Alex and Carter took me home in Alex’s Mustang convertible. Alex put the top down and zipped around Alachua like there wasn’t any speed limit. As we drove up to our house, I spotted Mom planting flowers in the front yard. Galaxy was out there too, rolling in the grass with his ball.
“Hey, want to see something faster than you?” I teased Alex, as we got out of the car.
I picked up Galaxy’s ball. With the dog on my heels, barking for me to throw it, I walked into the street.
“Watch out for cars from these driveways,” Mom warned me. “I don’t need another vet bill.”
When I hurled the ball down the block, Galaxy took off like a shot, running it down before the second manhole cover.
“How do you like the stride on him?” I asked Alex.
Once Galaxy came back, Alex lifted his knees up to his chest a few times and said, “Nobody’s outrunning me today, two legs or four. Throw it again.”
Carter tried to talk him out of it, but Alex wouldn’t listen.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” warned Carter.
“Fam, please,” Alex replied.
Then he looked to me, like I’d be insulting him if didn’t do my part. So I cocked my arm and let the ball fly.
Alex exploded down the street, two strides ahead of Galaxy. He kept the advantage for the first fifteen yards or so, with his arms pumping hard and his footsteps beating a rhythm on the blacktop. Then, as Galaxy cut that lead in half, Alex’s legs went into overdrive. An instant before Galaxy looked like he’d pass him, Alex reached out and snatched the ball from the air.
On the way back, Alex flipped the ball to Galaxy, who looked happy just to be playing.
“Now you know what fast is,” Alex told me.
“All right, I can’t watch that and not work on my speed,” said Carter, hanging his head. “I’m running five sets of wind sprints right now.”
“I’m down,” Alex said. “I got plenty of gas left.”
“Not me,” I said, heading toward the house. “I’m ready for a nap.”
“Finally, somebody’s showing some good sense,” said Mom, digging another hole for the last of her flowers.