by Mike Lupica
CHAPTER 14
Valley didn’t score in the third quarter. But they didn’t have to, because the defense continued to be everything on this day that Nate was not: confident, aggressive. Almost arrogant. Coach Burnley always told them that there had to be a level of arrogance in sports, not acting like you were better than the other guy or showing him up, just believing that you were, on every single snap of the ball. That’s the way Malcolm and Sam and all the up-front guys were playing today, and when they weren’t, the guys in the defensive backfield kept coming up and making big stops themselves.
On offense, Nate was content to put the ball in LaDell’s belly, hand it off to him or Ben or even Eric when Coach Hanratty would have three backs lined up behind Nate. He wasn’t taking any chances with his play calls, protecting a fourteen-point lead that seemed twice that much the longer the game went on.
Nate hadn’t forgotten why the television crew was at the game. He saw the Sports Illustrated writer hanging around their sideline. Nate felt them watching every move he made even as he tried to ignore them, reminding himself it was only going to be like this for this one Saturday, that he just had to deal with it until the end of the game.
He told himself that Tom Brady’s whole life was having cameras and reporters all around him, all eyes on him, even when he went to visit his girlfriend in New York City, even when he was bringing her flowers.
But there were times when he was standing with the coaches, when the Valley defense was on the field giving Manorville another three-and-out series, that Nate had the urge to turn around, look right into the camera and say, “You’re following the wrong guy.”
But he didn’t.
He just kept cheering on his defense, then running back on the field with the offense, killing a little more clock, getting deeper into the game, never letting on to anybody how much it was killing him inside to play football this way, as if the forward pass hadn’t been invented yet.
Valley finally faced a third-and-one. Only a couple of weeks ago, Nate would have loved a moment like this, knowing the defense would be afraid to stack the line on him, knowing that if they did, the best thirteen-year-old quarterback around could go to a play fake and put the ball in the air and end the game right there.
But not today.
Everybody knew Valley was going to run the ball again. So the Rams did stack the line, and stuffed LaDell for no gain, and Valley was forced to punt.
And then Manorville’s punt returner, the smallest kid in the game, broke off a return that seemed to go for about 150 yards because of the way he kept crisscrossing the field. Even Nate felt a cheer rise up inside him when he crossed the goal line and promptly sat down in the grass, as if he was too exhausted to do anything else.
If that wasn’t enough of a shock, Nate watched as Manorville lined up to kick the conversion, and watched their kicker drill the ball through the uprights for two points, and just like that it wasn’t 14-0 for Valley anymore, it was 14-8.
A one-touchdown game, with three minutes left, and with Manorville believing in themselves again. All of a sudden Nate knew the Patriots couldn’t be content to just run the ball three times and kill a couple of minutes of clock before punting. The Rams still had all of their time-outs. If the Patriots didn’t want to give them the ball back, give them a chance to win the game, the Patriots had to make first downs.
Even if it meant throwing to do that.
“We’re not going to sit back,” Coach Rivers said before Nate went back out with the offense. “I probably did that for too long today, just because your old coach fell in love with his defense.”
Nate tried to act more confident than he felt. “You know our deal, Coach,” he said. “You call the plays and I’ll run the suckers.”
“We’re going to play like it’s tied,” Coach said. “That means for the rest of this game, we’re going to play to win.”
“Like you always say,” Nate said. “Hit them with the whole playbook if we have to.”
Except Manorville hit them first. LaDell got stuffed for a five-yard loss on first down, the Rams’ middle linebacker walking right into their backfield as if somebody had given him a hall pass. So on second down and fifteen, the play called for a quick crossing route to Bradley, with Nate hopefully hitting him in stride. The throw wasn’t horrible—but it was behind Bradley, who tried to reach back with his right hand and control the ball, yet couldn’t.
The game clock stopped with the incompletion.
Third-and-fifteen.
Nate looked over for the hot read on Coach Hanratty’s board.
It said, “Big Ben.”
It meant Ben Cion on a great big fly pattern. All the wide receivers would be on the right side and Ben would line up in the right slot, between the receivers and the offensive line. He would wait as Nate dropped back as though he were staying in to block, then run across the line of scrimmage toward the left sideline before turning it on, flying down the sideline, flaps down.
Nate loved the call. Let’s do this, he thought.
He couldn’t do anything about the other throws today.
Yet he could make this throw.
He took a deep breath before leaning down into the huddle with the play, looked past his own bench, past the TV crew and the Sports Illustrated writer standing right next to them, up into the stands where Abby was sitting between Nate’s mom and dad.
Nate wasn’t sure anymore what she could see from long distances, what she could see period, but she seemed to see him just fine right now the way he could see her.
Smiling and patting her heart.
Nate did the same.
He called the play and told the guys the snap count. Then he took the snap and faded back into the pocket, stood in there as long as he could under a ferocious rush because Ben needed time to get across to the other side of the field before making his cut and flying up the sideline. Manorville seemed to bring everybody on the blitz except their two coaches.
Nate waited as long as he could before looking over to Ben’s side of the field, saw him with a good two steps on the Rams’ safety, and let the ball go right before somebody put him on his back.
There were at least two blue uniforms on top of him when he heard the cheer, what sounded like a home-field cheer even though he couldn’t be sure. He managed to roll out from underneath the pile just in time to see Ben handing the ball to the ref at the 50-yard line, and saw the ref take the ball from him and then signal first down.
Malcolm was standing over Nate, reaching out with his hand to pull him up.
“What just happened?” Nate said.
“What just happened was this,” Malcolm said. “Our quarterback put it just over the defender’s outstretched hands, like the TV announcers say, put it over the defender and over Big Ben’s outside shoulder, threw it about thirty-five yards on a dime before their safety got over and nudged our man out of bounds.”
Malcolm tipped back his helmet so Nate could see the happy look on his face.
“Is all,” Malcolm said. “Now let’s go finish the bad dudes off.”
They did. Nate didn’t have to throw another pass, the game ending with the Patriots at the Manorville 5-yard line. Valley 14, Manorville 8.
Four days later, the day after the Brodie family received the FedEx’ed advance copy of the Sports Illustrated with Nate in it, the story about Nate ran on Today.
And at the end of it, after they’d shown the pass to Ben, after they’d shown the short interviews with Nate and his parents and Coach Rivers, the reporter showed the pass one last time, in slow motion.
As he did, Nate and his parents heard the reporter say this:
“Nate Brodie, the boy from a small town with the big arm. And maybe, just maybe, if dreams come true, a million-dollar arm.”
Not anymore, Nate thought.
Not anymore.
CHAPTER 15
The Valley eighth-graders had the next Saturday off because of a conflict with the Valley High team
. So they would be playing on Sunday afternoon this week, just like the pros.
At breakfast on Saturday, Nate’s mom told him she had good news and bad news.
As soon as she did Nate said, “How many people?”
“Three couples, first one a little after two.”
Nate nodded. She meant three couples would be looking at their house today. Which, technically, was good news, because it meant one of them or maybe even all of them might like the house enough to make an offer on it.
The bad news, for Nate, was strangers in the house. Strangers in the house again, even if they were the first strangers they’d had in a couple of weeks.
“Dad must be happy,” Nate said.
His mom got up and went to get herself another cup of coffee. With her back to him she said, “As happy as he can be.”
Nate’s dad was already off to work at Big Bill’s for a half shift today, one that would get him back home before the first couple arrived. Nate heard the car door slam a few minutes after he woke up. He went to the window and saw the red Big Bill’s shirt behind the wheel of the Taurus as he backed out of the driveway, Nate still expecting to look out there and see the red Cherokee.
His dad had explained how important these “showings” were, making a sports analogy out of it for Nate, saying you never knew if today was the day that might change everything. Nate didn’t care. He hated the showings, hated the idea of having to move, always made sure he found reasons to be out of the house when more strangers came walking through the front door. Moving through his world. Looking at his stuff.
The very worst was when he didn’t have somewhere to go, Abby’s or Malcolm’s or Pete’s or the library, anywhere besides 127 Spencer Street. And he would be in the house when one of the couples would bring along a boy or girl his age. Then it wasn’t just having to put on a fake smile for the adults, but having to make fake conversation with a kid who might end up with Nate’s room someday.
He didn’t know how his dad, the real estate salesman, did it, acted as phony as he did with these people, trying to act as if they were the most interesting and important people in the world. Like there was no one else in the world he’d rather be spending time with.
Nate couldn’t help himself—every time he knew his dad was going to bring these potential buyers around, he put the Brady ball in a box in his closet. Sometimes he wanted his mom to take down all the stuff she was always taping to their refrigerator, photographs and notes and even the occasional clipping about Nate from the Valley paper, the Advertiser. Because that stuff wasn’t meant for the eyes of people they didn’t know. It was just meant for Nate and his parents.
Today his mom said, “I hope your room is clean, by the way.”
Nate said, “Mom, if it’s gonna take my room to seal the deal for Dad, we’ll never sell this house.”
When she turned around, Nate was relieved to see she was smiling.
“I don’t expect it to look like a showroom,” she said. “But I’d prefer if it didn’t look like the twister in The Wizard of Oz just blew through it.”
“I always hated that movie,” he said. “Those flying monkeys still skeeve me out.”
“But I think you get my point.”
“Toto?” Nate said. “Toto, have you seen my football socks?”
“Socks off the floor would be a good start,” she said. “Would, in fact, be kickin’.”
Nate put his head down and said, “Please don’t try to speak eighth grade. Or ninth . . . or tenth . . .”
“What’s the matter?” she said. “That skeeve you out a little, too?”
The two of them had a laugh over that and Nate finished a second stack of pancakes, told his mom he was going to ride his bike into town later and meet up with Pete and Malcolm so they could see the new Batman movie, and promised to do an official room check before he did.
“Haven’t you guys seen it twice already?”
“Mom,” Nate said. “It’s Batman.” As though that explained everything to her, not just about the movies, but about half the secrets of the universe.
“You should memorize school assignments the way you do dialogue from your superhero movies,” she said. “By the way: Do you have any homework you could be working on?”
“Sort of,” Nate said.
“Sort of?”
“Yeah,” he said. “In fact, I think I’ll go get on the computer and sort of start doing it right now.”
“That sounds a little mysterious.”
“Just trying to get smarter,” Nate said.
“Always a good thing,” she said.
Or maybe even a great thing.
Abby was always telling Nate that knowledge was power, and Nate hadn’t been feeling powerful at all lately, on the football field or anywhere else.
He went upstairs and turned on his computer and got on the Internet and started looking for his own good news.
He stayed on the computer for a couple of hours, chasing one false lead after another, ending up feeling as if he were a dog chasing his own tail. But, he told himself, at least he was doing something, wasn’t just sitting back. He was trying to make something happen the way he once did in games.
Even if it was just throwing one of those Hail Mary passes.
When he was finished, after he’d made his room look the way it used to when they still had a cleaning lady, he called Abby and asked if she’d changed her mind about going to the movies.
“I get a lot of things about you, Brady,” she said. “Most things, actually. But the whole dark crusader thing you and the boys have got going for you, that I most definitely do not get.”
“Caped crusader,” he said. “Dark knight.”
“Him too,” Abby said.
Then she said that after he spent two and a half depressing hours with the dark caped guy, she’d meet him at Joe’s for pizza and cheer him up.
Which is where they were now, Joe’s, in their favorite booth in the front, having an early dinner. Between them was their usual, half pepperoni, half plain, and Abby was giving him a major pep talk about tomorrow’s game against Ridgefield.
“You talk a much better game than I play right now,” he said.
“Speaking of talking,” she said, “there’s something I need to tell you.”
Nate saw that she had her serious eyes on. “What?” he said.
“I might be going away to school,” Abby said.
Nate stopped eating then, felt a little bit as if he’d stopped breathing at the same time.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” she said. “I might, possibly, nothing final yet, still in what my folks say is the discussion stage, be going away for school second semester.”
He was hearing her just fine, of course. Just didn’t want to be.
“Where?” Nate said.
“This place where I’d feel a little less different,” Abby said. “Where everybody can’t see.”
CHAPTER 16
The Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts, was the most famous school of its kind in the world, according to Abby.
Nate just sat there in the booth like he was in the front row at school, listening to one of his teachers, listening to all these facts about Perkins, not touching the slice of pizza on the plate in front of him. He wasn’t hungry all of a sudden, just trying to take it all in like it was some kind of class and if he missed something it might really, really cost him down the road.
“Helen Keller even went there for a while in the late eighteen hundreds,” Abby said.
“Who’s Helen Keller?”
“You know,” Abby said. “Helen Keller from The Miracle Worker.”
Nate put his hands out, shook his head, as if telling her: no clue, none.
Abby said, “She wasn’t just the first famous blind person, she was deaf, too. She had this great teacher named Annie Sullivan, way before she went to Perkins. Helen Keller, I mean. Annie Sullivan was actually the one they called the miracle w
orker, for getting through to Helen Keller and finding out how brilliant she was even if nobody knew it back then. And”—Abby took a deep breath, the way his mom did sometimes in the middle of a speech about something—“to make a really long, interesting story short, Helen Keller ended up at Perkins and later on became a writer and speechmaker and political leader and had pretty much become one of the most admired women on the entire planet by the time she died.”
She was trying to smile her way through this, giving Nate a crash course on the famous blind woman from the front booth at Joe’s Pizza.
All Nate heard was this: Abby might be leaving.
“It’s only a semester, Brady,” she said. “Even if I do leave, it’s not as if I’d be leaving you forever.”
“But . . . you’re not blind,” he said.
“Yet.”
“Okay,” he said. “You’re not blind yet.”
“Listen, I know I could wait to start learning the stuff I need to learn,” she said. “But we finally decided, or we’re just about all the way decided, that the stuff I could learn at Perkins while I still can see, what they call ‘life skills’ there”—Abby put air quotes around the words—“would be easier than if I tried to learn them after the lights go out.”
Making it sound like a switch somebody was going to throw. Nate thinking: And I’m worried about making a throw in football.
“Say something, Brady.”
“I’m not smart enough to say the right thing. Or know what the right thing is.”
“It’d be one semester,” Abby said. “Think of it as if I was going off to boarding school and then coming back in time for summer.”
“You make it sound like some kind of vacation,” he said. “But I am smart enough to know it’s not.”
“Okay, it’s not,” she said. “So from now on we’ll think of it as boot camp for blind people.” She brightened then and said, “Hey! Maybe we could get somebody to do one of those TV series about me going to Perkins the way they do those dopey training-camp football shows you make me watch with you. What’s it called?”
“Hard Knocks,” he said.