Payback Time

by Carl Deuker

  Dieter sliced through Lincoln's defense, carrying the ball play after play. When he broke a fifteen-yard run down to Lincoln's ten-yard line, McNulty called time-out. I leaned forward. Sure enough, when the team returned to the field, Angel Marichal was at middle linebacker.

  I looked around me—no one else seemed to have noticed. I nudged the guy next to me, a kid I knew from calculus named Bill Diggsy. "Angel Marichal's playing. We'll stop them now."

  Diggsy grunted. He had no clue who Angel Marichal was.

  I guess I'd started thinking Angel was Superman, because I expected him to stop Dieter in his tracks. I'd forgotten that Angel was ice cold and that Dieter was a D-1 scholarship athlete firing on all cylinders. On first down, Dieter took a pitch, raced toward the corner, cut back against the grain, and waltzed into the end zone, untouched. The extra point sailed wide, making it Inglemoor 6, Lincoln 0, with half of the first quarter gone.

  There was an uneasy quiet around me. The more people want their team to win, the more pain they feel when their team falls behind.

  What surprised me was that I felt it, too.

  Once, when my dad and I were talking about college, he told me that I could major in anything I wanted as long as it wasn't philosophy. "What's wrong with philosophy?" I asked.

  "The logic part is useless," he said. "People have never been and never will be logical."

  I thought about that conversation as both teams took the field for the kickoff. I didn't like Coach McNulty; I didn't like Angel; and I didn't like Horst. The first two were probably cheaters and the third had an ego the size of Mount Rainier. So I should want Lincoln to lose ... right? When I thought about the team before the game, I always thought of them as they. But while the game was going on, when they were right down on the field below and I was surrounded by cheering kids, they somehow morphed into we.

  Blake Stein returned the kick to the thirty-five, and Horst came out throwing, threading the needle with his passes and mixing in a run from Shawn Warner now and then, transforming the silence into cheers. Just when a touchdown seemed inevitable, Horst got clobbered as he let a pass go. The ball wobbled in the air, underthrown by five yards, and an Inglemoor cornerback dived for it, making an incredible interception and killing the drive. Back came our defense with Angel at middle linebacker, and back came J. D. Dieter.

  What a battle that was. Dieter was the whole show for Inglemoor, but even though everyone in the stadium knew he was getting the ball on nearly every play, that didn't make him easy to stop. Sometimes he'd break through Angel's tackle and plow forward for seven, eight, nine yards; sometimes Angel would plant his shoulder pads into Dieter's gut and drive him back.

  Dieter was too good to be bottled up; Angel was too good to be run over. So throughout the first half Inglemoor picked up a few first downs only to have Lincoln's defense stiffen. Twice Inglemoor got in field-goal range, but both times the kicks sailed wide right. The other drives ended in punts.

  Inglemoor's defense wasn't strong, but if you're lucky, you don't have to be good. Throughout the first half, the football gods turned on Horst. The first two drives had ended with a penalty and then an interception; the next two ended with fumbles. And just before halftime, Lenny Westwood dropped a sure touchdown pass. The score at the half remained Inglemoor 6, Lincoln 0.

  I don't know what McNulty said to the team in the locker room, but I bet it wasn't pretty, because it was a different Lincoln Mustang team that came out of the locker room.

  After a short return of the kickoff, Inglemoor's freshman QB led his team onto the field. Across the line of scrimmage from him, the Lincoln defenders were jumping around, sky-high. Angel was playing middle linebacker; Darren Clarke was on the bench where he belonged.

  On first down, the Inglemoor QB handed off to Dieter on what looked like a standard dive play. Angel shed his blocker and was moving in to make the bone-jarring tackle—only Dieter wasn't running. He took one step toward the line of scrimmage, and then turned and lateraled back to the freshman QB. It was the old flea flicker play, and our entire secondary—eager to make the big hit at the line of scrimmage—had dropped coverage. The Inglemoor QB had a weak arm, but his receiver was open by twenty yards. Sometimes when a receiver is completely open, that's the pass that gets dropped, but the Inglemoor receiver looked the ball into his hands and raced seventy-five yards to the house. Inglemoor 13, Lincoln 0. And just like that, Lincoln's momentum was gone.

  Still, it was just two touchdowns. I'd seen the Lincoln offense put up four touchdowns in a half. Only this game Horst couldn't get untracked. He'd get a drive going, and then make a lousy pass, and out would come the punting team. Inglemoor pounded J. D. Dieter at us. He'd manage a couple of first downs on each possession, taking precious minutes off the clock and saddling us with lousy field position. The third quarter ended 13–0, and halfway through the fourth, that same score held.

  Then something finally went right. After Angel stopped Dieter on a third and three, the Inglemoor punter shanked his kick. I don't think it went ten yards. Horst came back onto the field with great field position for once, and McNulty went for broke. On first down he sent Lenny Westwood streaking down the center of the field on a post pattern. Westwood soared up between the Inglemoor defenders and somehow pulled the ball down. The two defenders collided, knocking each other off the play. Westwood kept his balance and took the ball to the end zone. Inglemoor 13, Lincoln 7.

  After the kickoff, our defense roared onto the field. There was still time; we just had to get the Inglemoor offense off the field. Stop them, score again, and sneak away with a 14–13 win to keep the perfect season alive.

  On first down, Inglemoor ran Dieter wide to the right. Our entire defense chased after him. And again the Inglemoor coach caught us overpursuing, because it was a reverse. Dieter pitched to a wide receiver coming around, and no one was on the opposite side of the field to stop him. The guy ran like a greyhound. The forty ... the thirty ... twenty ... ten ... five ... touchdown.

  Inglemoor 20, Lincoln 7.

  And five minutes later, at the horn, that was the final score.

  The undefeated season was gone.

  10

  THERE WAS AN ACCIDENT in the parking lot, so Kimi and I sat in the dark for half an hour while tow trucks cleared the cars. At Peet's, we got tea and went upstairs. She scrolled through her photographs while I opened my laptop and got to work on my story. Because of the car crash, I had to hustle to meet my deadline.

  My headline read LINCOLN FALLS TO INGLEMOOR. I followed that with a brief description of each of Inglemoor's scoring plays, and a line on how Dieter would have run wild had it not been for Angel Marichal and all the tackles he made. I didn't come right out and say that McNulty had been out-coached, but it was there between the lines. When I finished, I downloaded Kimi's photo of the Inglemoor receiver crossing the goal line with the clinching touchdown and e-mailed all of it to Chet the Jet with five minutes to spare.

  "Okay then," Kimi said, and I watched as she opened the manila envelope and pulled out the photocopies of Angel's school records.

  She turned the pages over one by one, holding them sideways so we could both see. On top was the registration page. After that came a medical insurance form, followed by an emergency contact sheet, neither of which had been filled out. "Flip to the real stuff," I said.

  "Let's do this one page at a time. Systematically."

  She flipped to the next page—a counselor's notes on a meeting with Angel. Student missed appointment was written across the top. "No surprise there," she said. "I sometimes wonder if he's said one word to anybody at school."

  "Keep going," I said.

  Then came a page recording another missed meeting. And then another. She flipped the page over, and we both froze.

  We were looking at a nearly clean sheet of white paper. At the top, in large bold capital letters, were the words RECORDS REMOVED: BIRTH CERTIFICATE. Printed underneath was the name Hal McNulty, and beneath was McNulty's sign
ature, along with the date: July 1. I stared at the page, trying to figure out what it meant. "Flip," I said.

  Kimi did. Another nearly pure-white page: RECORDS REMOVED: VACCINATION HISTORY. Below, again, McNulty's name, printed, signed, and dated. She flipped again: RECORDS REMOVED: STANDARDIZED TEST SCORES. She flipped: RECORDS REMOVED: HIGH SCHOOL REPORT CARDS. She flipped. RECORDS REMOVED: MIDDLE SCHOOL REPORT CARDS. Page after page, all removed by McNulty on July 1.

  "That's the last page," Kimi said, looking up. "What's it mean?"

  "It means McNulty doesn't want anybody to know anything about Angel Marichal."

  Kimi turned back to the top sheet, the registration. She'd gone right past it the first time, but now we both read the page slowly. "Look," she said, tapping the line that read Expected Date of Graduation. "January fifteenth."

  "He's here for one semester," I said.

  She looked up. "This fits with the cheating thing, doesn't it?"

  I nodded. "It sure does."

  "But it seems so stupid to cheat in high school football. Who cares?"

  "McNulty wants to get back into college coaching. He's said that, from the first day he came here. Once Horst graduates, and Warner and Westwood, and the rest of this senior class, the team will nosedive. McNulty has to take the state title this year, or at least make it to the title game. He does that, and he'll get a college offer. Maybe not as a head coach—it's more likely he'd be an assistant. But he can work his way up."

  She bit her lip. "If McNulty needs to win so badly, why doesn't he start Angel? Why doesn't he play him constantly?"

  "I've thought a lot about that. I think he's playing it smart. If Angel became a big star early in the season, some opposing coach might start asking questions like 'Where did this guy come from?' So McNulty saves Angel for crunch time, sticks him in for the crucial plays, and then gets him off the field before he makes too big of a splash. That's why he has Angel wear different numbers—to throw other coaches off his track."

  Kimi looked back toward the papers. "Did you see the date the records were pulled?"

  "July first. Why?"

  "Remember the first day of practice? That was in mid-August and McNulty acted like he didn't know Angel's name or anything about him. The whole thing was a charade."

  We sat, both silently thinking. Finally she looked back at me. "Where does Chet the Jet fit into this? Why does he cut Angel's name out of your stories?"

  I told her what Chet had said the one time I'd asked.

  "And you haven't asked him since?"

  I shook my head.

  Kimi frowned, and then she checked her watch. "I've got to get home," she said, gathering up the papers. "Okay if I keep these?"

  "Sure."

  "One more thing, Mitch. Does the loss to Inglemoor change everything?"

  I shrugged. "At first I thought it was a big deal, but the more I think about it, I'm not so sure. The loss will drop Lincoln out of the top ten in the state rankings, and McNulty won't like that. But if they beat Bothell next week, both teams will finish the season 7–1 and in a tie for the league title. If that happens, Lincoln would get the invitation to the state tournament because they'd have won the head-to-head game. That's always the tie-breaker. Once you're in the tournament, rankings don't matter at all."

  "I hope they beat Bothell," Kimi said. "If you're right about Angel and we're able to break the story, I want it to be big. Nobody will care if Lincoln is just some team whose season is over."

  11

  EARLY SATURDAY MORNING, I checked the online version of the Times. My headline was there, and so was every word I'd written about Inglemoor's touchdowns. But there was no photo, and Chet the Jet had cut all mention of Angel.

  What was going on? Had the guy who'd told me to keep clear of Angel phoned Chet the Jet, too? That was hard to believe. Chet was a professional writer. Even if the guy had called, Chet wouldn't be scared off by some anonymous phone call. So was it McNulty? He'd told me to feature Horst in every story. Maybe he'd said the same thing to Chet, and maybe Chet was going along, but that was a lot of maybes.

  The Seattle Times wouldn't run anything I wrote about Angel, but the Lincoln Light would. His name ran like a thread through all my stories, but I could do more. The second issue still hadn't been published. I got out my cell and called Alyssa. "How's the paper looking?" I asked.

  "Not so good," she said, discouraged. "I wish the other writers were like you. I'm so sick of hearing 'I'll have it for you tomorrow.' We need to get an issue published, and I'm still three stories short."

  "Maybe I can help. I've got an idea for a feature on a football player who's new to Lincoln. It won't be too long, and it will fill some space."

  "I'd like to say yes, Mitch, but the paper is already top-heavy with your volleyball and football stories."

  "Come on, Alyssa. You're the one who said that all kids read is sports. And you want to get an issue out in October, right? This story will be good."

  There was a long pause. "Okay, go ahead."

  I cut the connection and got to work. Two hours later, I was done.

  MAXIMUM IMPACT

  Angel Marichal, a transfer to Lincoln High this year, has played a major part in the football team's success despite limited playing time. Marichal's heroics began with the Mater Dei game, where his fourth quarter interception saved the victory that started the Mustangs' season rolling. Marichal continued his contributions with extraordinary special teams in the following games. A one-man wrecking crew on punt and kickoff coverage, Marichal has forced three fumbles, two of which he recovered himself. All three turnovers led to Lincoln touchdowns and played a huge part in the resounding victories. From his middle linebacker position, he has picked off three passes and knocked down at least a half dozen more.

  Marichal plays behind Darren Clarke at middle linebacker. However, when the game is on the line, Marichal is on the field. Against Inglemoor, Coach McNulty lifted Clarke and had Marichal play the entire second half. Even though Lincoln lost the game, Marichal's speed and strength held Inglemoor star running back J. D. Dieter in check. In fact, had Marichal played the entire game, many observers believe Lincoln would have won.

  Offensive players like QB Horst Diamond garner the headlines in the Seattle Times, but ask any coach and he'll tell you that it's defense that wins championships. Marichal's speed and strength make him an intimidating presence. Don't be surprised to see Marichal play more minutes in the future. With Horst Diamond leading an explosive offense and Angel Marichal spearheading a suffocating defense, this is a team that could still make it all the way to the Tacoma Dome.

  When the second Lincoln Light finally came out, a spotlight would be shining right on Angel. There'd be no more playing Mr. Anonymous at school, no more hiding in the shadows.

  12

  ONCE I FINISHED THE ARTICLE, I changed into sweats. For the first time in four days, it wasn't raining. I was about to head out to do my run when Kimi called. "Did you see today's Times?" she said. "No Angel."

  "I saw it."

  We talked in circles for a while, getting nowhere. Finally I mentioned that I was about to go running. "I was, too," Kimi said. "How about we run Green Lake together?"

  I agreed, but after I hung up I wasn't so sure. The thought of running the lake with Kimi was scary. Could I keep up? I was running more and walking less all the time, but Green Lake...

  When I drove up to her house, she came out wearing her John Lennon cap, a white T-shirt, and black shorts. Tucked under her arm was the envelope containing Angel's records.

  I drove to the parking lot by the pitch-and-putt golf course. Just as we got out of the car, a couple of the guys from school—Brandon Moyer and Ian Suzuki—came flying around a turn and slowed to a stop, their run over. Both looked from me to Kimi and then back to me again.

  We stretched a few minutes before starting. Kimi was light on her feet, almost as if she were gliding. I didn't pound as much as I did when I'd first started running, but I didn't
glide.

  One lap around Green Lake is about three miles. I counted the yellow stripes that mark off every quarter mile. One ... two ... three ... four—or was that really five? Had I missed one? Just keep moving, I told myself.

  I could see our starting point, but I wasn't sure I'd make it, when Kimi slowed. "I use the last quarter mile to cool down," she said, lacing her hands together behind her head. "You go ahead."

  "No," I said. "I like to cool down, too."

  She'd hardly broken a sweat; I was drenched. But I'd done it. In the trunk I had a clean shirt and a towel. I went to the bathroom by the crew house, splashed some water under my armpits, dried myself off, and put the fresh shirt on.

  "How about we go to Jamba Juice?" Kimi said when I returned to the car. "We can talk there."

  We both ordered raspberry smoothies and carried them to an empty booth. She placed the envelope onto the table between us. "I want to show you something."

  She was about to take Angel's records out when I stopped her. I'd been thinking about how Brandon and Ian had looked at her and then at me, as if she were matter and I were antimatter: the slightest touch and the whole universe would explode. "I think I should take it alone from here," I said.

  Her eyes flashed. "I thought we were partners."

  "We are partners, only..."

  "Only what?"

  "Kimi, if we prove Angel and McNulty are cheating—and I think we will—the entire football season will go up in smoke. You know how excited everyone is. Parents, teachers, and kids—they'll all hate you for blowing the whistle on Angel. They'll say that he was second string, that he didn't play much, that you're just out to make a name for yourself."

  "They'll say the same about you."