by Paul Volponi
With a hint of a smile, he answered, “At this level, no win’s ever big enough. That’s why I look back as much as I look forward. Think on that, Travis.”
I tried, but I couldn’t make any real sense of it.
The Gators’ quarterback, Billy Nelson, was having problems with his accuracy all game. Watching from the sideline, I felt like I could have made most of his throws myself. Carter bailed him out twice by picking a pair of passes off his shoestrings before they skimmed the ground. But instead of being happy about it, Carter came off the field mad at himself for missing a blocking assignment. I hadn’t noticed. I guess Coach G. didn’t either, because all he said to Carter was, “Nice hands, Gardner.”
The Gators beat the Rebels 32 to 18. Only, Carter didn’t look pleased. I reminded him of the compliment he had gotten from Coach G., but he cut me off: “The coaches will catch that missed block on the game tape. They always do. And even if they don’t, I’ll know that I screwed up. That’s enough for me.”
* * *
Crystal was one of the prettiest cheerleaders at Beauchamp High—a tenth-grader with gorgeous green eyes that reminded me of a cat’s. She’d flashed enough smiles in my direction that I felt confident asking her out.
“You free this Sunday?” I’d asked her, a few days before we’d drubbed Chiles.
Right away, she answered, “Sure, I’d like that.”
I’ll admit it—part of the reason why I asked was the chance to go out with a girl who was a year older. When I bragged about it to some of my teammates, one of them told me, “Crystal went out with Aiden Conroy a couple of times last year, before she dumped him.”
That made the thought of going out with Crystal even sweeter.
I figured she’d probably dated juniors and seniors who had their driver’s licenses. I didn’t want to take her to a movie on the city bus. Or come off looking like a little kid by having Mom drive us. So when Carter came home to do his laundry, I asked if he wanted to do a double date in that sports car of his.
“I’m cramming for exams,” Carter said, before breaking out in a big grin. “But exactly why would I take a girl out just to babysit the two of you?”
That’s when I offered to wash all his filthy clothes as a trade.
“Think about it, Carter, because I’m not washing them,” Mom said.
He still wouldn’t do it.
“Thanks. Nice to know you’re always there when I need you,” I told him.
Later on, after Carter left, Mom cornered me and tried to have the talk.
“Travis, this is an older girl. I just want to make sure that you’re ready for these relationships.”
It was embarrassing. I never dreamed I’d hear something like that from her. I tried to cut her off short, but she kept at it. And deep down, I blamed Dad for putting me in that awkward position by not being there.
* * *
The morning of my date with Crystal, Mom let me put in a few hours at the dealership.
“I see you’re dragging that left arm a bit,” said Walter Henry, who still looked broken up over Alex, with heavy bags beneath his reddened eyes.
“Just nicked up. Nothing major,” I said, not wanting to complain. So I changed the subject. Eventually, the conversation got around to Crystal and my lack of wheels.
“What time’s your movie?” Walter asked.
“Four-thirty.”
“Tell you what, I’ll have a junior salesman take a car off the lot,” he said. “He’ll drop you and your date off at the theater. But you’re on your own coming home. I close up early on Sundays.”
“Really? That’s unbelievable!”
“I assume you want a car that’ll make the right impression.”
“I owe you huge,” I said, giving him an authentic Gator Pound. “Can I work a few extra hours for free to pay you back?”
“Forget it for now,” Walter said.
“Hey, maybe you could be my agent one day,” I said.
“It’s a possibility,” he replied. “That’s where I was heading with Alex, until—”
He walked away before finishing, and I wouldn’t touch the subject either.
* * *
“This is great,” Crystal said as our driver for the night opened the door of a cherry-red Benz. “How’d you swing it?”
“Just the perks of a part-time job at a dealership,” I answered.
When we arrived at the theater, I made sure it was me holding the car door open for Crystal. I paid for our movie tickets too. Then, at the concession stand, I tried to order us a large popcorn and two sodas.
“Oh, I can’t drink a whole soda,” said Crystal. The heels on her suede boots made her almost as tall as me. “If it’s all right, I’ll sip from yours.”
“No problem,” I said.
The theater was pretty crowded, but we snagged two seats in one of the last half-empty rows up close to the screen. I made sure to sit on Crystal’s left. That way, I could work on slipping my right arm around her without any stress on my sore elbow.
As the first preview started to play, I heard somebody call my name—PJ, a junior at Beauchamp and one of our buff linebackers: “Hey, Travis! Thanks for saving us seats, man.”
Then PJ and his date started down our row.
When the girl with him raised her head, I saw it was Lyn.
I sat there motionless, like somebody had paused the DVR on my life.
“Lyn, this is my teammate Travis. And this is Crystal,” PJ said. “You all know each other?”
Crystal answered something, but I don’t remember what.
As PJ and Lyn settled in their seats, he gave her a quick kiss. I could feel my blood beginning to boil. Sweat started running down my forehead. I couldn’t figure out why I was so upset. Lyn and me weren’t officially dating, and I was there with Crystal. So I should’ve been able to say, “Whatever.”
Once the movie started, Crystal snuggled up close to me. Only, I couldn’t get my mind off Lyn being there with somebody else. I wanted to walk out right then. But that would be like giving Lyn some kind of victory.
An hour into the movie, I couldn’t take it anymore.
I whispered to Crystal, “Let’s get out of here. We can find better stuff to do.”
She seemed confused, but she got up to follow me anyway.
“You guys leaving?” PJ asked in a low voice.
“Yeah, this movie really sucks,” I said, with people around us telling me to shush.
After that, we went walking through the mall next to the multiplex for a while before getting something at Dave & Buster’s. But I couldn’t concentrate on the food or any of those games that I usually loved. And in the end, Crystal texted her mother to come pick us up.
* * *
On Monday, Damon quit the team. I’d meant to text him, to find some time to learn what was going on with him. But things were so hectic, I never did. By the time I saw Damon leaving the locker room before practice, he’d already turned all his gear in to Pisano.
“I can’t believe you’re quitting. We’re undefeated,” I told him. “We dreamed about being Bobcats since Pop Warner. What’s wrong?”
“Football doesn’t mean something to me the way it used to,” said Damon. “I’m more excited about bodybuilding. I want to train for it without practice and games getting in the way.”
I had to admit, Damon was looking great, almost nothing like Ground Round from middle school anymore.
“You can always be a Bobcat next year. If you get lean enough, maybe you can be one of my receivers.”
“You never know,” said Damon. “Playing together in the park all these years, I’ve probably caught more of your passes than anybody else.”
I didn’t throw during practice at all that week. But after seven days of heat balms, ice packs, and whirlpool dips, my left elbow started to feel much better. And I still had a solid seven days left until our game with the unbeaten Lincoln squad and its top-ranked defense.
“That Lincoln D will be our biggest tes
t all season. They get physical as soon as they step off the bus,” Pisano told me. “I want your elbow completely rested. I doubt you’ll forget how to throw after a week off.”
But one week was as long a stretch as I could remember without a football spiraling out of my hand. So I wasn’t totally sure.
* * *
The Gators played a nationally televised game that next Thursday night in South Carolina. Mom and me watched from home on ESPN. The Gamecocks were blazing fast, and the Gator offense really missed Alex’s jets. Carter stepped up big, though. He ran one of the best routes I’d ever seen. South Carolina blitzed their linebacker, who’d normally be covering the Gators’ tight end. That left Carter one-on-one with one of South Carolina’s speedy defensive backs. Instead of trying to shake loose from that rabbit, my brother ran right at him. The defender had no choice but to backpedal. As soon as he did, Carter made his cut. Billy Nelson delivered the pass between the eight and the five on Carter’s jersey.
Carter cradled the ball in his hands like it was a newborn baby, then turned into a steamroller, using his weight and momentum to run right over the Gamecocks’ defensive back.
“Look who’s got the hammer, defense!” Mom hollered at the screen. “Carter Gardner! That’s who!”
“Tell ’em, Mom.”
Gainesville won 23–13, improving their record to 4 and 0.
Chapter 22
After the game against South Carolina, Dad sent a text to me and Carter. With neither of us playing football over the weekend, Dad promised to deliver on that fishing trip he owed us.
“I’ll fly into Florida early Friday night,” Dad told me over the phone later on. “We’ll hit the road right from there, and it’ll be just us three for the next two days.”
So Carter came to get me on Friday. He drove us back to his dorm room to hang out as we waited to go meet Dad at the airport. Out of nowhere, about an hour before Dad’s plane was supposed to land, a huge thunderstorm hit.
“Think Dad’s flight will be late?” I asked Carter, watching the lightning and driving rain through his dorm room window.
He looked out as the water streamed down the double pane and said, “If there’s a way to get a trip delayed, Dad will find it.”
“Maybe with the weather, they’ll divert his flight to Atlanta. And there’ll be some insurance convention going on,” I joked.
I went to sit on Alex’s bed, but Carter pitched a fit.
“Get off there, bro,” he snapped. “Have some respect.”
Carter hadn’t been assigned another roommate. He’d been keeping Alex’s bed made up perfect, with the sheets and blanket smoothed out and pulled tight at the corners.
“I just like to see it a certain way,” Carter said, half apologizing. “I know, I don’t even keep my own bed like that.”
“It’s okay,” I said, not wanting to make a fuss.
By five o’clock, the rain eased up, and Dad’s flight arrived on time. We picked him up at the airport. Then we all piled into Carter’s car and headed down to Daytona Beach.
“You got what kind of deal on this car? Carter, that’s almost too good to be true,” Dad said, checking out all the dials on the dashboard.
“You’ve seen the guy,” I told Dad, as I stretched out across both back seats. “He’s the one with all those crazy car commercials we used to crack up over—Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Spider-Man.”
“And he’s letting you both work hours that fit your schedules?” asked Dad. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch,” Carter said, slowing down for a police cruiser parked on the highway shoulder. “Walter Henry’s a friend of the football program. They’re called boosters. Alex introduced me.”
“Sounds like someone you boys should stay close to. It could be a life-changing relationship.”
“Definitely,” Carter said.
* * *
We stayed overnight in a motel. There were just two beds in the room, so naturally, Dad got one of them to himself. Me and Carter kicked around a bunch of ways to decide who’d get the other bed. But neither one of us wanted to be the loser and sleep on the floor. So in the end, we decided to bunk together. Half the night, the two of us went back and forth with identical complaints: “Move over! You’re not giving me enough room.”
Early the next morning, we drove to the docks and boarded a fishing boat, a sixty-five-footer called the Sea Spirit. There were maybe fifty people on our trip. After an hour of skipping over waves, we reached the middle of the ocean, no land in sight. Once the boat’s engines shut off and people got their lines into the water, I was amazed by the quiet. I did my fishing right-handed. But after a while, I stopped even thinking about my elbow.
Dad, Carter, and me stood at the rail, within five or six feet of each other. Stretches of ten or fifteen minutes passed when we didn’t say a word. But it was a good silence. After a few hours, I felt closer to Dad and Carter than I had in a long time. Dad was the first one to catch a fish, a twelve-pound red snapper. He held it up with the sun glistening off its scales. A member of the crew filleted the fish for him and then stored it in an ice cooler.
Later on, Carter got a barracuda on his line. They’re not good eating-fish—barracuda are all about the fight they give you trying to land them. Earlier in the day, one of them—maybe even the same barracuda—bit a fish on someone else’s line in half. Carter fought it hard for twenty minutes, until he was almost at the point of exhaustion. But he finally got it onto the boat. It had to be the ugliest fish in the world, with a face like a demon and a row of razor-sharp teeth. Somehow, a crew member got the hook out of its mouth and then released it back into the water.
“That was a hell of a workout,” Carter said before downing a bottle of spring water. “Now let him go test somebody else.”
All the fish I caught were too small to keep, and I had to release them. But that didn’t matter to me. I still had a great time. That night, we brought Dad’s red snapper fillets to a restaurant that cooked them up for us. I swear it was the best-tasting fish I ever ate.
Before we went to bed, Carter got a call on his cell from Walter Henry, who was shooting a new commercial the next day at the dealership. Carter put him on speaker:
“The idea came to me a few hours ago,” Walter said. “I’m going to take a portion of the profits on every car sold during the rest of this football season and donate it to a scholarship fund in Alex’s name. I want you guys to be in the commercial. You just have to stand there tossing a football, wearing jerseys. I’ll do the rest. It’ll be a great tribute to Alex’s memory. What do you say?”
We’d planned on spending the next day on the beach. But neither one of us wanted to miss out on a tribute to Alex—or disappoint Walter.
“An opportunity to be on TV without your helmets? I think you should do it,” Dad said. “Let people see your faces for a change.”
So we drove back to Gainesville early the next morning.
When we got to the dealership, we spotted Walter, dressed like Tarzan, wearing a flowing black wig and a brown loincloth. He was in incredible shape, showing off six-pack abs that made me think he’d been doing sit-ups for a week straight. Dad looked like an old man next to him, even though Walter wasn’t that much younger. Carter introduced them, and the two shook hands.
“I’m so proud to be associated with your sons,” Walter said. “I’m a businessman by trade. But I love sports, especially football. Maybe one day, I’ll be an agent, helping young players secure their first pro contracts.”
“You’d probably be sensational at it,” Dad said. “I have so much respect for everything you’ve built here. I’d love to see my boys learn something from you about marketing and business.”
“It would be my pleasure,” replied Walter.
Part of the dealership’s front lot was done up like a jungle, with fake trees and vines hanging everywhere. Up close, everything looked totally plastic. But when the director let me look through the camera lens, it all seemed real
.
Walter had even hired an animal trainer who had three huge gators in a pen.
A minute into the shoot, it was easy to see that the director didn’t count for much. Walter Henry ran the show. He had me and Carter wearing orange jerseys, tossing a football back and forth. The trainer’s job was to get those gators to come right up to us and open their mouths. That’s when we were supposed to drop the ball and call for help.
The trainer had been feeding the gators hotdogs and marshmallows on the end of a long stick since the time we’d got there, so they wouldn’t be hungry for football players. But when he released them from the pen and they flashed their teeth just a few feet from me, I didn’t have to act scared.
Right on cue, Walter swung in on a fake vine to rescue us.
“Me, Tarzan. You, Gators,” Walter said before looking into the camera. “Come to Gainesville Motors. I’ll save you even more.”
* * *
Midway through school the next day, Ms. Orsini called me into her office. I’d scored a D-minus on Mrs. Harper’s math quiz, so I kind of knew what it was going to be about.
“I’m monitoring you in that class, Travis. I’ve asked Mrs. Harper to alert me to any potential problems,” she said.
“That’s so unfair. Will she notify you about the good stuff I do too?” I asked.
“Yes, absolutely,” said Ms. Orsini. “Should she have? Did you score high on a different quiz or exam?”
“No, not really.”
Even though I begged her not to, Ms. Orsini called Mom. Then she put me on the phone with Mom, so we could talk about it, though Mom was mostly yelling.
“Maybe I got too caught up in rehabbing my elbow,” I said, as my only defense.
“You think so?” Mom said sarcastically. “D-minus? Travis, did you even know a quiz was coming?”
I didn’t answer and just let Mom talk herself out, figuring I’d have enough time before I got home to think of the best thing to say.
Carter’s Take
A dozen NCAA investigators were searching through my dorm room, tearing apart everything in sight. Coach G. stood in the hall with a huge checklist. But he wouldn’t set foot inside my room.