“Well, you’re putting it all on me, and that’s not cool.”
I thought of my dad. Of Coach Williams. Of math. “I know you wouldn’t do that shit, but when is it all enough? When is it too much?”
He studied me, a question in his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“Everything. This whole school. The team. Sometimes it seems like it’s just all fake. Like a pretend world. Like we’re something better than all the dregs. Isn’t that what Coach tells us? That we’re better than everybody else?”
“Weekend that bad?”
Mike knew about my dad. The real dad. Not the greatest, most cool sports dad to everybody in the outside world. “Let’s just say that Coors Light stock isn’t going down.”
The next day, Coach Williams’s massive frame darkened the doorway from his office into the gym. His voice bellowed over the screeching tennis shoes and bouncing balls. “Patterson, in my office. Now.”
I looked up, midshot, the ball frozen in my hands. I watched him disappear into his office, slamming the door shut. Mike pivoted inside, stole the ball, and landed a crazy weird hook shot. Free period was almost over, and I hadn’t even broken a sweat. Not until I heard those words.
Mike laughed. “C’mon, Stick, stay on the ball, man.”
Most seniors had a free period, and instead of going to study hall or the library, I shot hoops to get my mind off things. “Crap.”
Mike dribbled the ball around me and landed a perfect layup. “Go, man. He’ll have you cleaning his toilet with your tongue if you don’t.”
I walked across the gym, knowing Mike was right. I reached the door and knocked.
“Get in here.”
I opened the door. Coach Williams sat behind his desk, hands clasped over his fat belly, Nike visor perched high on his forehead. He’d played three years for the Dolphins back during the Stone Age, coached like an ex–NFL player on crack, and didn’t take crap from anybody. He lived and breathed football, and I would have bet a thousand dollars his DNA code was strung together with pigskin. “Hey, Coach.”
He pointed to the chair. The chair could be either a good place or an incredibly bad place, and I had a feeling today it would be the latter. I sat looking at him. He picked up a piece of paper, crumpled it, and threw it at my chest. I flinched as it bounced to the floor. Silence.
Coach Williams, besides being the best yeller I had ever known, could intimidate a person even more with the opposite. Utter, stone-cold, piss-your-pants-because-you-know-something-really-very-bad-is-going-to-happen silence.
I looked at him, and his black eyes swallowed me whole. “I can bring my grade up, Coach. I can.”
His answer was the muscles of his jaw pulsing as he clenched his teeth.
Resigned, I looked down. “Whatever.”
His hand slamming on his desk made me jump as high as the penholder, stapler, coffee mug, and team picture of the Miami Dolphins did. His voice came low and sharp. “Tell me the first rule of football at this school, Brett, and by the way, if you ever say ‘Whatever’ to me again, I’ll run you till you puke your lungs out.”
Coach had no tolerance for two things. One was weakness; the other was anybody daring to mouth off to him. I’d seen him cut a first-string running back for calling him an asshat. First-string. Off the team. Done.
Coach pointed to the sheet of grades crumpled on the floor. “We’re not talking calculus or physics or honors, Patterson. We’re talking math. Plain and simple math. Count-on-your-fingers-and-get-an-answer math. So tell me the first rule of football at this school.”
“Grades, sir.”
He continued. “You know what happens when you fail math at this school?”
“Yessir.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Then why don’t you tell me, Mr. Brilliance? Tell me what happens.”
“It means I don’t play football.”
He clenched his teeth. “If it were that simple, my life would be a piece of frickin’ cake, Patterson. I know you can catch a ball, but why don’t you put whatever brain you have to use and tell me what it really means.”
I shrugged.
He shook his big head, took his visor off, and threw it on the desk. “You fail math, you don’t play. That’s the easy part. The bigger part is that you let down your team, you let down your school, you let down your dad, and you let down the game itself. You’ve got a chance at a full-ride scholarship this weekend with the scout from UCLA visiting, and we’ve got a chance at another state championship at the end of the season.” He paused, staring at me. “You going to blow your future because you can’t count on your fingers?”
“I’m not stupid. Math is just hard for me. I try.”
He blinked, intense and unrelenting. “Is your dad made of money? You got, like, a money tree growing in your backyard? I’ve known him for twenty-five years, and I’ve never seen one in your yard. Am I missing something here?”
I met his eyes. “I said I’m not stupid.”
He jabbed a finger at me. The same finger he’d jabbed at me since I was a freshman. “You don’t tell me what you think you are or aren’t, Patterson. You are exactly what I say you are, and nothing else. People pay over a hundred thousand dollars to get an education at UCLA. And they want to give it to you for free, and you can’t pass caveman math. That…,” he said, hitting his desk again, “is stupid.”
“I talked to my teacher. He said I could—”
Coach slammed his hand down loudly for the third time. “You know what, Patterson? I don’t care what you have to say, and I don’t care what your teacher has to say. As long as you’re on my field, you don’t fail. You got that? And it also means you play by my rules and my rules only. We’ve worked the snap into eternity, and you were late on it. So make your decision. Right here, right now, make it. You pull your head out of your ass and get your game on, or you walk.”
I looked at him and he looked at me, and I knew in an instant he could see right into my soul. He could see the truth. I studied his face. “You’re afraid, aren’t you, Coach? You’re afraid that I’m not afraid of you anymore, huh?”
His face hardened. “Don’t go down that road, Brett. You don’t want to see where it ends.”
Right then I knew what I was to him. I was a pair of hands and a ticket to his glory. That’s all that mattered to anybody. Winning, and winning at all costs. This was insane. My dad, the team, Mike, and that football field under the lights flashed through my mind. But it was now. It was here. I was tired of being afraid, and for some reason, the kid with the egg splattered all over him looked up at me and grinned through it all. “Maybe I do want to see where it ends.”
He picked up the phone, threatening me. “You want this? You want me to drag your father in here so we can hash it out? See what he says? Because right now, you’re one smart-assed word away from sitting the bench for a game.”
My heart slowed, and a clarity came over me. It was so simple. I’d spent so much time sweating this, but it was really that simple. “You won’t bench me.”
His eyes widened for just the slightest moment before his bluster came back.
I saved him a response. “You can’t win state without me.”
He smiled, an ugly smear crossing his face. “You think I haven’t been leveraged before, son?”
I shrugged, my eyes meeting his. “You can’t win without me.”
He took a moment, the little mice in his head turning his wheels. “This game isn’t about one person, Brett. It’s about working as a team. It’s about trust and dedication and hard work. It’s about accomplishing a goal.”
I almost laughed. Football was about power and control and fear and intimidation, but more than anything else, it was about winning. And Coach Williams had proved it for years. I’d seen him play injured guys. I’d heard him tell players to target opponents. He’d do anything to win, and he’d use anybody in order to do so. I stood.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m walking down that road.” Then I left.
Sixth period dragged on and I got the call to go to the office after class. The wheels had begun to spin, and I knew what I was in for.
I looked at the kid sitting across from me in the office and my stomach crawled. Donny Dorko. Egg-splatter man. The kid I didn’t want to think about because he reminded me of what I hadn’t done.
I shifted uncomfortably as I waited for my counselor. I knew I could thank Coach Williams for being called in. “Hey.”
He said nothing, just sat there. Hunched over a bit, his elbow on his knee and his palm under his chin, he stared at the floor.
I thought of what Mike said. He hadn’t had anything to do with it, and I hadn’t either. Just happened to be there when it happened. Not a crime. I took a breath. Somehow, that was a lame excuse. I did feel like I was a part of it, and I knew why. “I didn’t have anything to do with yesterday.”
He bit his lip, studied the floor, and then looked up at me without straightening his hunched shoulders. His eyes were big and brown, his skin pale. “Biologically impossible.”
I frowned. “Huh?”
His voice was lower than I thought it would be, and tinged with sarcasm. He reminded me of a frog. He went on. “Unless you can suddenly not exist for a period of time, all matter that existed yesterday had something to do with yesterday. Rocks, trees, dirt, people. All matter.”
I sat back, slouching my shoulders. Great. Weird on the outside and weirder on the inside. “Whatever.”
He kept those eyes on me but said nothing.
I clenched my teeth, frustrated. “I was just saying I didn’t have anything to do with yester— With the egg thing.”
He turned his head down and stared at the floor again, methodically drumming his fingers against his lips.
I sat, waiting, and he said nothing. I tried again. “It was uncool.”
When he finally spoke, his voice was deadpan, completely unemotional, and awkward. He blinked. “Is this some kind of sad and pathetic way to apologize while admitting nothing while at the same time making me think you’re saying sorry for something you apparently had nothing to do with?” He looked at me. “Or are you gay and this is your way of hitting on me?”
“No…No! Jesus, I was just saying I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know what was happening.”
He nodded, then resumed his hunched-over position. “It’s fine to be gay, but I’m not a homosexual. Sorry.”
I looked at him, and I could tell, for some odd reason, that he wasn’t being sarcastic. “I’m not gay, and I am sorry. I should have stopped it.”
“Stopped what? The hands of time? The sun from rising? Idiots from being idiots?”
I propped my head back against the chair, closing my eyes. “So, what’s your name?”
“Preston Underwood.”
“Why’re you here?”
“I’m an undercover agent. There’s a drug ring here at the school. I’m giving the principal a report.”
I blinked, then looked at him. “I hear drug rings are a real problem here. Mexican cartel?”
He looked across the office at the receptionist. “No. They use idiot football players as mules to traffic their product.”
I laughed.
“Most people don’t recognize a sophisticated sense of humor like mine. Why are you here?”
“I’m here because I made a decision.”
“First time for everything.”
“Funny, funny.”
“I wasn’t joking.”
I smiled. “You do know you’re weird, right?”
“Yes,” he said. “And I know you’re an ignorant asshole. Weird versus ignorant asshole, weird always wins.”
“I said I was sorry.”
He shrugged and sat up. His fingers were long and slender, and he slowly tapped his knee with his middle finger. “And I accept your apology. But that doesn’t not make you an ignorant asshole.”
I felt better for some reason. At least he was honest. “Fair enough. So, why are you really here?”
“My counselor thinks she needs to counsel me.”
“About what? Your sophisticated sense of humor?”
“No. She needs to think she’s doing her job, so I come twice a week. I don’t like disappointing people, because I have an abnormal trait called empathy. Why’d you make a decision?”
I didn’t know where to start with this kid, so I didn’t. I slouched in my chair. “I don’t know. Just tired of everything. Coach was busting my balls because I’m failing math, which means I can’t play ball, which means it’s a big pity party for him and my dad.”
“Why’re you failing math?”
I frowned, wondering why he was interested in the least important thing about this whole deal. “Because I suck at it,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about it, because of all the things I could do well, math truly wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t that I was slacking. The numbers just didn’t fit in my head right. “So, who are the drug smugglers if they’re not a Mexican cartel?”
“I was joking.”
“Yeah, I know. It was a way to change the subject.”
His eyes went to the clock. “Nine minutes thirty-seven seconds.”
“What?”
He looked at the clock again. “How long I’ve been sitting here. I’ll miss the bus.”
“Where do you live?”
“Downtown.”
The only people I knew who lived downtown were homeless, crazy, or drug addicts. “Huh.”
He frowned. “Huh, what?”
“Where downtown?”
“The River’s Edge.”
“Where is it?”
He stared at me for a moment. “You are stupid, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“Never mind. It’s on the river between Maple and Monroe.”
I wondered what this kid was all about. “I’m seeing my counselor, too. He’s going to try and convince me to un-decision my decision, even though I’m not really sure what I decided. If you’re done when I am, I’ll give you a lift home.”
He looked at me, and there was a shadow of caution in his eyes. “No thanks.”
Mr. Reeves came out of his office, saw me, and motioned. I stood. “See you around,” I said, then went inside.
I didn’t know Mr. Reeves that well. He’d taken care of a few class changes for me, and overall he sort of came off as the kind of guy who didn’t have much to say about anything. One of those ghosts in the hall who made an occasional appearance. “You wanted to see me?”
“Coach Williams called me after your meeting today. He’s concerned.”
I sat down. “I know.”
He studied my face. “He relayed to me that he’s worried about your attitude.”
“No, he’s not.”
“He’s not?”
“He could give a shit about my attitude.”
He looked down at his desk, and I gave it a seventy-five percent chance that the next words out of his mouth would be for me to watch my language. No matter how rotten the core of the apple, keeping the outside bright and shiny was the most important thing. He took a breath, his eyes returning to me. “Then what is he worried about?”
My respect scale rose. Maybe he was cool. I hitched my head toward his door. “That glass case out in the office.”
“The trophy case.”
“It’s the only reason I’m sitting in here.”
He sat back. “Coach Williams told me you are failing math. That, to me, is a concern.”
I laughed. “I suppose if me failing math were a concern, my math teacher would have called you. But he didn’t. Coach did.”
“Coach Williams also told me you’ve become…rebellious.”
I looked around the room, searching for the usual signs. They were there. A poster of the basketball team. School colors on the walls. An old picture of him playing college football. Two framed newspaper articles from last year highlighting a win
of some sort. I smiled. “You played ball?”
Satisfaction spread across his face. “Actually, I was a receiver for the Oregon Ducks back in the day. Second-string, but it was the experience of a lifetime.”
“I’ll bet,” I said. “So, you’re here to convince me to do what I need to do to put another trophy in your sacred little case, too.”
The three-minute friendship we had disappeared, and his face hardened. “I think you’re making assumptions, Mr. Patterson. Coach Williams—”
I stood. “Coach Williams is a douchebag, and I’m done talking,” I said, then moved to the door.
“Yes, he is.”
I turned back to him. “What?”
He nodded. “Yes, he is a douchebag. Will you sit down, please, Brett? I’m not your enemy here.”
I gawked. “You do know that I could tell him you said that, right?”
“Coach Williams is well aware of how I feel about him. Yes, I played sports, but no, I don’t care about that trophy case.”
“Then why am I here?”
He gestured to the chair. “Why don’t you sit down and tell me?”
I closed the door behind me. Preston was nowhere to be seen. I stood there for a moment, tempted to wait, when his counselor’s door opened and Preston walked out. He looked at me. “What are you doing standing there?”
“I just got out.”
He hitched his backpack higher on his shoulder and walked past me. “All the world’s problems solved in twenty minutes,” he said.
I watched him go, this kid who was silent but had so much to say, then followed him out. He exited the building and walked to the edge of the parking lot, where he stopped and stared at his watch.
I came up behind him. “You sure you don’t want a lift?”
He turned. “Wow. I’ve got a fan club.”
“I got a car is all. You said you’d miss the bus.”
He looked at me. With those big wide-set eyes and small nose and chin, he reminded me of a cartoon character. “Do you know why most people give to charities?”
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