by Paul Volponi
That all became meaningless the next time Citrus had the ball.
I was standing on our sideline, chewing on my mouthpiece, when Aiden escaped the pocket. Some of the Bobcat defenders were out of position, and I dug my toes deep into the turf. Moving downfield, Aiden completely juked a linebacker. His fake was so smooth that even I leaned the wrong way for a split-second as Aiden cut past the defender.
Next, Aiden lowered his head, splitting a pair of tacklers and staying on his feet.
With a fifteen-yard gap between Aiden and the end zone, no one in black-and-gold stood ready to stop him. I closed my eyes, hoping he’d trip over one of the white lines. Or the ground would somehow open to swallow him up. But the reaction of our crowd let me know none of those things had happened.
I opened my eyes to see Aiden spike the ball and watched it bounce high into the air.
After that touchdown, Citrus lined up for a two-point conversion. I knew Aiden wasn’t giving the ball up to anybody else, not after scoring on a run like that.
Sick to my stomach, I ran down the sideline toward our defense, screaming, “Quarterback keeper!”
Aiden barked, “Hut, hut,” and sure enough, he kept the ball, pumping his legs and lowering his head again.
This time, Aiden met Cortez, who’d lowered himself even closer to the ground and stopped Aiden cold at the goal line. But that stop came one play too late.
I kissed two fingers on my left hand and touched them to the #88 on my cleats. Then I buckled my chin strap and went back onto the field. We were trailing 22–21—the game depended on whatever happened next.
“This is it. This is everything for me. I’m going to leave it all out here, every bit of what I got,” I told the guys in my huddle. “Who’s going to give me less than that?”
“Nobody,” answered one of my linemen. The rest of them responded in kind.
I called the play and led us to the line of scrimmage, nearly eighty yards from a winning score. I scrambled to my left to avoid the blitz, delivering a short strike to my tight end. My elbow was on fire with the wrong kind of flames. But the throw gave us a nine-yard gain. Next, I handed the ball to our fullback, who got three yards up the middle for a first down, with the clock stopping for the two-minute warning.
“We need to get the ball inside their fifteen-yard line. Our field goal kicker is money from that close,” Pisano said to me on the sideline. “Just move us along. If the receivers aren’t open, throw the ball away.”
Pisano gave me three consecutive plays to run, as we went to our no-huddle offense to save time.
I took the next snap and pump-faked a short pass. That bought me enough time in the pocket to find someone deeper downfield. But when I released the ball, it didn’t move like the tight spiral I was expecting. Instead, the ball wobbled through the air like a wounded duck, bouncing off a defender’s fingertips right into my receiver’s hands for the ugliest eighteen-yard completion I could imagine. Thankfully, this wasn’t about style points.
That messy pass play put us just past midfield into Citrus territory. Their blitz came at me full-force again. Pisano had called a delay draw, trying to sucker in the D-line. The defenders rushed forward, certain it was another pass play and ready to bury me. As they committed to that, I handed the ball off to our halfback. He sailed through a gaping hole, untouched, all the way down to the Citrus twenty-six-yard line.
There was 1:16 left on the clock.
My elbow felt almost numb as I ran Pisano’s third play: another draw, this time with a different look, to our fullback. He powered the ball down to the twelve.
Right then, I was so confident, I felt like a tightrope walker in a hurricane who wouldn’t even admit the wind was blowing.
Fifty-two seconds left.
Citrus wasn’t stopping for a timeout, and neither were we.
Pisano sent in a straight-ahead running play, trying to get us a little closer before our field goal attempt. As we approached the line of scrimmage, I could see our kicker warming up on the sideline out of the corner of my eye. Then I glanced at Aiden, who was staring right at me. The clock was down to thirty-nine ticks.
The Citrus defense looked heavy up the middle. On the outside, I had a receiver one-on-one with a defender he’d beaten all day. Deep down, I didn’t trust our kicker. In my mind, he wasn’t even a real football player. He’d come over from the soccer team.
I had too much riding on this game to leave it all on his leg.
I wanted at least one shot at a touchdown. So I called an audible.
“Tango, flyer, forty-four! Tango, flyer, forty-four!”
At the snap, I felt for the laces. Then I turned my eyes left and zeroed in on my receiver. It was either hit him clean on his break or throw the ball into the stands.
The defender got himself turned a half-step the wrong way. I reared back to put as much mustard on the ball as I could. But the instant my receiver was about to make his cut, he slipped.
I was already in mid-motion. My elbow was so tensed up, I couldn’t hold back the throw.
The football floated toward the corner of the end zone while the Citrus defender regained his balance. My pass hit him high on the left shoulder pad. He juggled the ball, with my heart in his fingertips, before gaining control for an interception. Now I was the biggest loser by far.
When the final whistle blew, Aiden came over to shake my hand. I thought about hiding, but there was nowhere to go.
“Good game,” Aiden said, putting his hand in mine.
I muttered the same words back, sweating enough to camouflage my tears, and prepared to face Coach Pisano and my teammates.
Chapter 28
I didn’t take any more Tylenol. I wouldn’t use ice or a heating pad. I dealt with the pain, alone in my room, because I felt like I deserved it. And I wouldn’t even consider sending out a tweet.
Twenty minutes after I got home, Carter called my phone. The Gators didn’t have a game that week, and he’d missed mine because he was studying.
“Mom made you call?” I asked.
“Not really. She told me what happened. I figured you’d need to talk.”
“I know what you’re going to say: ‘Quarterback’s ego. Think you’re more important than the team.’”
“No, I just wanted to see how you were feeling. Let you know it’s not the end of the world, just a football game.”
“But I gave this one away. It was a big one,” I said, glancing over at Carter’s bed in the far corner, as if he were there.
“They’re all big ones. So you messed up. Don’t repeat the same mistakes. That’s why they call it learning.”
“Sounds good, but it doesn’t change things,” I said, as new waves of pain and self-pity slammed my insides.
“Nothing changes things,” Carter said.
“Then why am I even talking to you about it?”
“Because I might have answers to questions you didn’t even know were coming. And if I don’t have the answers, at least maybe I’ve seen the questions before.”
“Anything else?” I asked, hoping to end the conversation.
“Just know that I’m here.”
“I’ll take it. But I wish there was more,” I said, and then got off the phone.
The worst night of my life was when Dad left home. But this was right up there. I couldn’t sleep. Pain and pressure came at me nonstop from every angle. What would Coach G. think about the way I blew the game—and my selfishness? And what if my elbow didn’t come around?
* * *
Early the next morning, I got a call on my phone.
He wanted to meet me at a park close to my house. I was completely exhausted. But after everything he’d done to help me out, I felt like I couldn’t turn him down.
I sat alone on a bench beneath a huge oak tree. There wasn’t another soul in sight when he appeared.
“Saw some of your game last night.”
“You did?” I asked.
“Enough to know that el
bow isn’t healing fast enough on its own.”
“It’s terrible. My passes have nothing on them,” I said.
“That’s why I think you need these,” he said, pulling a vial of pills from his pocket.
“What are they?” I asked, trying to peer through the darkened plastic. “A new supplement?”
“Sort of. Just not approved yet. But they’re completely undetectable to any test,” he said. “I use them myself sometimes.”
“So they’re not legal?”
“Not for athletes, not without a prescription.”
“You mean they’re steroids?”
“Travis, steroids are everywhere in society. They’re in the feed we give chickens and cows to make them healthier. These are for humans. In pill form, no needles. The mildest you can take. Just a few steps above aspirin or Tylenol. But instead of masking pain, they heal the problem at the source and promote growth,” he said, pointing at my left arm.
I started to tremble on the inside. All I’d ever heard since the first grade was, Just say no!
“I can’t. They’re drugs,” I told him, feeling some distance between us for the first time. “Anyway, it’d be cheating.”
“I didn’t mean to insult you,” he said, putting the vial away. “I was only trying to help. It’s what plenty of scholarship athletes do to compete when they’re injured. I just wanted you to have the same options they do.”
I made my excuses and then got out of there. I even turned down a ride.
By the time I walked home, the pain in my elbow was nearly unbearable. I waited for it to die down. It didn’t. I was starving, but I couldn’t even twirl leftover spaghetti around the fork.
This time, I called him.
I’d talked myself into believing I really wouldn’t be cheating. That for me, taking steroids would be about getting healthy, not about becoming a better player. I already had the talent. That’s why I had the scholarship in the first place.
A few hours later, we were back at that same bench. But now, he produced two vials of pills.
“It’s a seven-week cycle,” he explained. “The first four weeks, you take the ones in the container with the blue stripe. The next three weeks, take the ones from the red. They’re stronger.”
Before squeezing them tight inside my right hand, I almost laughed over the vials’ child-proof caps.
When I got back home, I found a note on the kitchen table:
Hope you’re feeling better. Took Galaxy to the dog-run for some exercise. See you in a couple of hours—Love, Mom
I locked my bedroom door behind me. Then I put both vials on top of my dresser and stared at them as my elbow throbbed.
It’s almost the same as taking Tylenol, I told myself.
Dad rang my phone, but I wouldn’t pick up. I didn’t want to mix one set of problems with the other. I had too much sitting in front of me right now.
I must have walked twenty laps around the room, with my mind racing in a thousand different directions. Once I even stopped in front of my dresser and pushed down on the cap of the blue vial. I felt it give and knew it would twist open with one turn of my wrist. But just as quick, I took my hand back off.
Alex’s face popped into my mind. What would he think of me taking a shortcut after how hard he worked to get his knee ready?
The trophies on the top shelf of my bookcase could have made up a team of golden football players. They looked down on me, like they were already passing judgment—only none of them had a dent or scratch on his body to worry about.
Something he said kept echoing in my ears: It’s what plenty of scholarship athletes do to compete when they’re injured. That definitely had me leaning toward trying the pills. I figured there was so much about big-time football I just didn’t understand yet—maybe this stuff was totally common.
I turned around and noticed Carter’s empty bed. That’s when it came to me. I could ask my brother for an honest answer about what college players did. Like Carter had told me, If I don’t have the answers, at least maybe I’ve seen the questions before.
I put one of the vials in my pocket and hid the other inside a pair of sweat socks in my underwear drawer. Then I jumped on a city bus and headed down to the Gainesville campus.
I didn’t call Carter until I was there.
“I’ve got a team meeting in about forty minutes. But come on up,” he said.
Walking through the athletes’ dorm with steroids felt strange. And every time the pills rattled inside my pocket, I looked around, paranoid that someone would hear them.
Carter met me at his door and asked, “How’s your elbow? Looks like you can barely move it.”
“I need to talk,” I said. “I want to show you something, get your advice.”
“On what?” he asked, closing the door.
I pulled the blue vial of pills from my pocket.
“Do you know anything about this kind of stuff?” I asked, with my voice dropping a couple of notches.
“Who gave you this crap?” Carter asked, snatching the vial away.
He looked so angry, I was afraid to tell him.
“I, I can’t say.”
“You don’t have to. I’ve got my own ideas,” he said, heading for the door.
A second later, he was bounding into the hallway and then starting down the stairs.
I chased after him, calling, “Come back, Carter! Please!”
But there was no stopping him.
Carter entered the football complex, with me on his heels. He marched past the pair of crystal footballs on display, through the sliding glass doors, and into the Gators’ weight room. Coach Harkey was standing by a weight machine, studying some chart. That’s where Carter grabbed him, running Harkey back against a wall.
“You! You did it!” Carter screamed, trying to shove that vial down Harkey’s throat. “You gave these to Travis!”
Harkey managed to get his arms up, protecting himself.
“Are you crazy, Gardner?” Harkey hollered. “What are you saying?”
“It wasn’t him!” I yelled, trying to pull Carter away with my good arm. “It wasn’t Coach Harkey!”
Carter either didn’t believe me or was too far gone to hear. Some Gators who’d been training tried to get between them. But Carter’s grip on Harkey was solid.
“I’d never give a player steroids. Let alone a high school kid,” said Harkey. “What kind of animal do you think I am?”
“Don’t pretend with me!” Carter raged. “First you killed Alex, now you’re pushing them at my brother!”
“It wasn’t him!” I cried. “It was Walter Henry! He gave them to me!”
Carter slowly loosened his grip.
“Walter Henry,” he said. The anger in Carter’s eyes intensified until it turned to fire. “God, I should have seen it.”
He pushed past everyone and darted out the door. Me and Harkey ran after him, but Carter got to his car in the parking lot before we could reach him. Then he sped off so fast, he left behind skid marks and the smell of burning rubber.
Carter’s Take
I gripped the steering wheel tight, like it was Walter Henry’s throat. I hated every second of being inside that car, being connected to anything that came from him. I was so geared up, I blew right through a stop sign and didn’t notice until a van on a cross street came to a screeching halt.
“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” I pounded at the horn.
I wanted so much to go back in time, to change everything. But I couldn’t. All I could do was speed that car through the streets, to Walter’s dealership.
Walter was standing out front, talking to one of his salesmen. I aimed the car straight for him, jumping the curb. The salesman saw me bearing down on them first and took off. By the time Walter looked up, I was almost on top of him. He let out a scream—a real one, not a fake Tarzan-commercial scream. I slammed on the brakes, stopping just a few feet away, nearly pinning him against the glass of the showroom.
Walter was breath
ing hard by the time I stepped out of the car, like he was about to have a heart attack.
“Are you insane, Carter?” he hollered. “You could have killed me!”
“Like how you killed Alex, giving him that trash?” I shouted.
I could see the look in his eyes. He couldn’t deny it.
I grabbed Walter by the collar and rammed him against the hood of the car.
“Then you want to push that same garbage on Travis!” I shouted. “Explain that!”
“It wasn’t the same, not even close,” Walter said. “You’ve got to believe me. I never wanted anything but the best for Alex, for both of them.”
“No, you only wanted the best for you,” I told him, an instant before I punched him in the solar plexus.
Before I let myself do the wrong thing, before I split his skull open, I pulled him off the car’s hood and shoved him inside the driver’s door. Then I closed the door, picked up a garbage can, and smashed in the locks on both sides. After that, I took my keys and heaved them onto the dealership’s roof. The last step was calling the cops—even though they were probably going to arrest me too.
Chapter 29
Dad wired us money, in case Mom had to post bail for Carter. But that wasn’t necessary after Walter Henry refused to press any charges.
“I know exactly what he’s thinking,” Mom said, barely able to control her temper as we waited for the police to release Carter. “That if he doesn’t press charges, we won’t. But that’s not going to happen. I don’t care how much money he has or what kind of lawyer he hires. He belongs behind bars for pushing poison at my son.”
Then she turned her anger toward me.
“And Travis Jerome Gardner,” she said, hitting my middle name like a kick drum. “If I go into your dresser drawer, you’re saying I’ll find steroids that you brought into my home?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered, with my eyes on that police station floor.