The Underdogs

by Mike Lupica

  And maybe his best coaching was with Hannah, which was why what was supposed to be one of the big issues of the season—having a girl on the team—seemed to be getting smaller all the time.

  Will knew she didn’t get as many passes thrown her way as she would have liked, but even she knew that Johnny was a better receiver than she was, and that’s why more balls went his way. When a well-thrown ball did come her way, she held on to it. And showed she could take a good hit. And the other players on the team noticed that she never ran out-of-bounds to avoid a hit if she thought she could make more yardage.

  She got in on tackles, too, even made some of her own in the open field.

  “I was wrong about her,” Tim said to Will when they were warming up before the Merrell game. “Even though I will be forced to deny that if you ever try to tell anybody.”

  “Your secret is safe with me,” Will said. “You big phony.”

  Tim ignored the last part. “Not only can she play like a guy,” he said, “she’s as tough as most guys we know.”

  Will said, “She doesn’t look at it that way. She thinks we’re just trying to be as tough as her.”

  The Merrell game turned out to be the roughest of the season by far. And occasionally—on the part of the Merrell players—the dirtiest.

  There were a lot of penalties called in the first half. Just stuff, usually at the bottom of the pile when the refs couldn’t see what was going on. One time Merrell’s middle linebacker stepped on Will’s hand after Will had gained a hard three yards on third down, clearly doing it on purpose even though he said, “My bad,” when he made a fake show of helping Will up. There was another time, again at the bottom of the pile, when the last guy up for the Merrell Lions “accidentally” pushed Will’s face into the turf as he got to his feet.

  Will never said anything or tried to retaliate, just kept picking himself up, going back to the huddle, asking for the ball again, knowing the best way to answer them was with his legs and not his mouth.

  But he could see the Merrell Lions getting more and more frustrated when they couldn’t score against the defenses Joe Tyler kept throwing at them. It was why he didn’t think the second half was going to get any easier against these guys, was pretty sure the chippy stuff was only going to get worse, especially after Hannah caught her first touchdown pass of the season right before the end of the half.

  She’d beaten the cornerback covering her with a neat move and broke to the corner of the end zone, Chris delivering the ball perfectly. Hannah had just enough room to get both feet down inbounds, making sure to land on her toes, just like the pros did.

  The play should have been over, but it wasn’t. The cornerback clearly didn’t like being beaten that way by a girl. Hannah had slowed down after running out of the end zone but still hadn’t turned around when the cornerback went piling into her, sending her sliding into the chain-link fence that was close to the field at that end.

  Tim started to run at the cornerback, but Will grabbed him from behind before he did, pulling him toward where Hannah was already getting up and waving them off like it was no big deal.

  “You okay?” Will said.

  “Believe me,” she said, “I’ve run into bigger jerks than that guy.”

  But Will noticed her limping slightly on her left leg when she set up for the extra point, wincing as she tried to plant her foot, barely getting the ball through the uprights.

  Bulldogs 7–0 at the half.

  Right before Will went out to receive the second-half kick, his dad pulled him aside.

  “Listen,” he said to Will, “I’ll take the hit on this, but I’m not gonna play her very much the rest of the way. This has turned into the kind of game my old coach used to call a triple-chinstrap game and I’m afraid the next time she gets clobbered like that, she’s not gonna get up.”

  “She won’t be happy,” Will said. “Trust me.”

  “Trust me, her parents won’t be happy if their daughter comes home in a sling.”

  “I hear you.”

  The game stayed 7–0 until midway through the fourth quarter when Will took a pitch from Chris on 38 Toss, found a gaping hole and took the thing to the house, sixty-eight yards. On the extra-point attempt, one of the Lions’ outside linebackers got around Jeremiah, blocked the kick and kept running right through Hannah.

  She took even longer to get up this time than she had when she went into the fence after her touchdown.

  When she came off, Will’s dad said to her, “Now you’re totally done for the day.”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  He said, “There are times when you wait to fight another day, and this is gonna have to be one of them.”

  The Bulldogs eventually ran out the last five minutes of the game with a drive that took them from their thirty to the Lions’ thirty. Every once in a while, Will looked over and saw Hannah next to his dad, obviously trying to get back into the game.

  Sometimes he would smile and shake his head.

  Finally he just walked away.

  It had been hard fought, but the Bulldogs had evened their record at 2–2.

  The trip to Merrell was their longest of the season, nearly an hour. They didn’t get back to Forbes Middle until five o’clock.

  At six, the doorbell rang and when Will opened their front door, Hannah was standing there.

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  Will’s dad had gone to the gym as soon as they got home, saying he was going to torture himself, that he’d been slacking off lately.

  “It finally happened,” she said. “I got treated differently today.”

  “You got hurt today.”

  “So did Ernie,” she said. “Did he sit out the second half?”

  The Lions’ fullback had gotten called for a tripping penalty halfway through the third quarter when Ernie had a clear path to the quarterback. He rolled his ankle going down and let out a howl of pain, but when Will asked him if he needed to come out, Ernie grinned.

  “If I do, who buries that sucker on the next play?” he said, and played on.

  Will grinned. “The only pain Ernie feels is when he can’t come up with an answer in class.”

  “Your dad didn’t even think about replacing him,” she said. “But he treats me like a delicate flower.”

  “We can’t afford to lose you,” Will said.

  “Right.”

  “I mean it. You got crushed after the touchdown. And then you got crushed again on the blocked punt. And I know you got hurt both times even though you won’t admit it.”

  “It’s tackle football, remember? Everybody gets hurt.”

  “Why can’t you be happy that you scored a touchdown?”

  “How come he didn’t protect you?” Hannah said. “You took more hard hits today than you did all season. And you’re not as big as I am.”

  “Seriously?” Will said. “We’re gonna play that game?”

  “No,” she said. “We’re just replaying today’s game.” They were in the living room, at both ends of the couch. It felt to Will like they were fighters looking at each other from different corners.

  She shook her head. “A couple of jerks give me a couple of cheap shots and now I get treated differently.”

  Will took a deep breath. “You’re the one acting like a jerk.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I listened to you, now you listen to me,” he said. “Did you join this team to prove a point or to win the game?”

  “Win the game,” she said. “But that’s not the point.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “it is. We won the game today. You played great. Why did my dad sit you down? Because he doesn’t just coach one game, he coaches the whole season, and if you get seriously hurt, then we lose our kicker and one of our best receivers and a pretty good defensive back and we’re back to eleven guys.”

  She said, “Your dad thought we could get by with eleven guys in the second half today, didn’t he?”

  “Man,
you’re tough.”

  “You knew that already.”

  “You’re right, totally,” Will said. “You’re the toughest girl I’ve ever seen in sports, not that I’ve watched a lot of girl sports. And you’re the best by far.”

  “Woo hoo,” she said.

  Will said, “Do you always go out of your way to make it this hard for somebody to like you?”

  As soon as he said it, he wished he’d found another way. Anything but like. You could use that word anytime you wanted with a bud. With a guy. You could say how much you liked a video game or a song you’d just downloaded or a funny website or say how much you liked your favorite team.

  You never used like with a girl.

  Especially not this girl, who let nothing slide.

  “You like me?” she said.

  Will took a deep breath, let it out, smiled at her, ran his hands through his hair, pushed his chair back a little, the legs making a loud scraping sound. “Well, yeah, obviously,” he said. “I mean, I’m trying.”

  “You like me for real, or you just worried I might up and quit on you one of these days?”

  “I know you well enough to know you’d never quit,” he said. “You like playing too much. And I really like that.”

  She had her hair back in a ponytail. Was wearing cutoff jeans. And a T-shirt that read: “I’m Unique (Just Like Everyone Else).”

  “And besides,” Will said, “you need this team as much as it needs you.”

  “Wait a second,” Hannah said. “I need you?”

  “Yeah,” Will said, “you do. Unless you think that in four games you already proved you’re as good as you think you are.”

  Hannah smiled then. The kind of smile that first got Will to even think about liking her in a way he’d never thought about liking a girl before.

  “Not a bad point.”

  “One in a row,” he said.

  “Your dad did treat me like a girl today; don’t try to deny it.”

  Will couldn’t help it now; he laughed. As soon as he did, he put his hands up, as if in self-defense, and said, “You are a girl!”

  “Who wants to be treated like everybody else,” she said, stubborn to the end.

  “I get that,” Will said. “But more than that, you want to win as much as I do. As much as anybody on the team does. And my dad says that sometimes you’ve got to make sacrifices to win, whether you want to or not, for the good of the team.”

  She said, “You really buy into all that team stuff, don’t you?”

  “I do,” Will said. “But you do, too. I see how hard you compete. I see you try to make tackles even knowing you’re going to get run over. It’s why I know it’s more than you just proving your point about being as good as boys in sports. You want to do this as much as I do.”

  “You’re saying I’m like you?”

  Will nodded.

  “Well,” she said, “like you only taller.”

  “Here we go again.”

  She smiled. “Sometimes I can’t help myself.”

  Will said, “We can beat Castle Rock. I wouldn’t have said it at the start of the year. But I’m saying it now. We can get back to the championship game and beat them.”

  “You’re going to need me,” she said.

  “My point,” he said.

  They were silent after that.

  Then Hannah stood up suddenly. “I have to go,” she said.

  “We good?”

  She nodded. “Just tell your dad to leave me in there next time,” she said. “I can take care of myself.”

  “Deal.”

  Will stood up. They shook hands for the second time this season. Then he walked her to the front door.

  “See you at school,” he said.

  “And then practice,” Hannah said.

  “Cool.”

  He opened the front door for her.

  When she was halfway down the walk, she turned and said, “I like you, too.”

  Then she cut across the lawn like she was evading a tackler and sprinted up Valley Road, Will still smiling even after she had disappeared.

  CHAPTER 24

  When dinner was over, Will told his dad he was going to take a walk to Shea.

  “Don’t you ever get tired?” his dad said.

  “Yeah,” Will said. “But I’m like you. I don’t let anybody see.”

  “I wish,” his dad said, and told him to head out, he’d clean up by himself; when Will came back, they could watch the Saturday night college football game. Will asked who was playing and Joe Tyler said, “Who cares? It’s a game, we’re guys, it’s on TV, it’s practically our duty to watch.”

  Will wasn’t sure why he needed to be outside, move around, get some air. But he did. He took his ball with him, more by force of habit than anything else. He noticed on the way to Shea how quiet the streets were, even early on a Saturday night. He didn’t even see many cars on the road. It was one of those quiet moments in Forbes when you wondered if everybody had left.

  One more of his dreams for the end of the season? That there would be this huge crowd if they made it to the championship game, that the whole town would come out and cheer them on if they got their rematch against Castle Rock. Last year the championship game had been on their field. But it was a league rule, Will knew, that you couldn’t host the big game two years in a row, even if you had the best record the way Castle Rock did now, still undefeated.

  What would that be like, Will wondered now at Shea, looking at the empty bleachers and the empty field, having the whole town get behind them? What would it be like if they could give Forbes something to cheer about again?

  But tonight Shea was silent, nobody around. Will was halfhoping that Hannah would show up, had even thought about calling her, asking if she wanted to meet up with him. But he wimped out. It had been a good day with her already. No. A great day. And he decided to just leave it alone.

  I like you, too, she’d said.

  To Will it felt almost as big as the win over Merrell.

  Big day all around. One of the best he’d had in a long time.

  He put the ball under his arm and jogged straight up the middle of the field, no cuts or stops, then turned and came back the other way. It didn’t look like some field that football had forgotten anymore. It still wasn’t Heinz Field. It wasn’t Castle Rock’s turf field. Will knew there were still potholes waiting to trip him up when he least expected it. But with the new sod and the fresh chalk and even the new goalposts that New Balance had surprised them with, it looked like a real field again.

  Real field, real team.

  Their next game was here next Saturday. And if the Bulldogs could beat the Becker Falls Panthers, they were tied with them for second place in the league. And if they could win out the rest of the way, they were back in the championship game; the playoffs in the West River league were just one game:

  No. 1 in the standings versus No. 2.

  Will stood there in the end zone, smiling, thinking about how far they’d all come in a month.

  They hadn’t won anything yet. Even now, this far into the season, just four regular-season games left, Will was still trying to find reinforcements. Still worried about one of his teammates—Toby in particular—getting hurt.

  Or two guys getting hurt.

  Joe Tyler had checked with the league, just making sure: they could play with ten if they ever had to. But with every game the rest of the way feeling like a playoff game, that would be a total disaster.

  What if somebody went down next week against Becker Falls? Or against Castle Rock, if they made it that far?

  Stop it.

  Will thought of one of his dad’s favorite expressions: You want to make God laugh? Tell Him about your plans. His dad knew better than anybody, because the plans he’d had for his life hadn’t turned out anything like he’d expected them to, or wanted them to.

  For now, Will stretched out in the end zone, put his ball underneath his head like a pillow. It wasn’t dark yet, bu
t Will could still see the first stars in the sky.

  For tonight he wasn’t going to worry about what might go wrong; he was going to think about what was going right, what a great season it had been so far. Oh, he wished they could have beaten Castle Rock, no doubt, wished he hadn’t come up a yard short against those guys. But he knew he would have signed up for a record of 2–2 when the season started, signed up for the chance to go into second place next Saturday, knowing that a win would give the Bulldogs the tiebreaker on Becker Falls as long as they kept winning.

  Today they’d even gotten lucky with Toby’s obnoxious dad; he’d decided not to make the trip to Merrell.

  Yeah, life was good.

  And had he mentioned in the past few minutes that Hannah Grayson said she liked him?

  “Hey.”

  The voice startled him. But he recognized it right away.

  Tim.

  “Hey, Thrill.”

  As soon as Will sat up, Will could see from Tim LeBlanc’s face that something was wrong. Real wrong. Will thinking he looked the way he had the first time they’d watched The Express together, because Tim hadn’t known that Ernie Davis was going to die in the end, either.

  “Don’t worry,” Tim had said that day. “You’re never gonna see me cry.”

  Until now.

  “We’re moving,” Tim said.

  CHAPTER 25

  This wasn’t about losing a player.

  This was about losing the player who was his best friend, from the first day of first grade and every day since then.

  Losing him to Scottsdale, Arizona. In eight days. All because his dad had gotten a better job, a much better job, at a software company there.

  Tim explained it all to Will, how if his dad hadn’t said yes right away, somebody else’s family would be moving to Scottsdale. How the company had already found them a house to rent while they looked at one to buy. How it was already arranged that Tim and his sister could start at the best middle school in Scottsdale a week from Monday.

  “You think you’re fast, Thrill?” Tim said. “This all happened faster.”

  Will knew Tim’s dad was always sending out job applications, tired of having to commute to Pittsburgh, tired of living half his life in his car. And, according to Tim, never believing the job in Pittsburgh would last; that’s why Mr. LeBlanc hadn’t moved them there.