by Mike Lupica
Usually Scott would have been getting a ride home from Mrs. Conlan, because it was her night to pick up. But she and Chris were making a quick trip to the mall to get him some new pants for school since he’d already grown out of the ones she’d bought him in the summer.
So Scott’s mom was coming to pick him up. She just hadn’t shown up by the time Mrs. Conlan and Chris were leaving.
Chris rolled down the window of his mom’s car and said, “You sure you’re gonna be all right?”
“My mom will be here any second.”
“I meant about what happened out there tonight.”
“I’m good,” he said.
He wasn’t.
He sat down on the curb and waited, head down, replaying his block on Jimmy Dolan again and again until he looked up and saw the three of them standing over him.
Bren Mahoney, the team’s middle linebacker and Jimmy Dolan’s best friend on the team. Charlie Grow, another linebacker. And Quinn Kellogg, who played nose tackle on defense and center on offense.
Bren spoke first.
“You happy now, brain?”
“No,” Scott said, not making any move to get up. “Actually, I’m not.”
Charlie said, “You know how this could mess us up totally, right? If Jimmy’s out for the year?”
“He twisted his ankle, is all,” Scott said.
“Oh, now the brain is a doctor,” Quinn said.
Scott looked around. It was just the four of them in the parking lot. Everybody else was gone. He seemed to remember Bren saying one time that he lived practically across the street and could walk home.
“Get up when we’re talking to you,” Bren said.
Scott stood up, not wanting to make this any worse than it already was. “I’m not looking for any trouble,” Scott said.
“That’s ’cause you made enough already tonight,” Bren said.
“We were talking about it after,” Charlie said. “How if you weren’t a dirty player you wouldn’t be any kind of player at all.”
“It wasn’t a dirty play, and you know it,” Scott said.
“I saw the whole thing,” Quinn said, “and that’s exactly what it was.”
In a quiet voice, Bren said, “It should’ve been you that got hurt, not Jimmy.”
He was as close to Scott as he could get now without actually touching him. Charlie was to Scott’s right, just as close. He could feel Quinn behind him.
“We were all wondering,” Bren said, “just when you’re going to stop pretending you’re a football player?”
Charlie said, “You’ve got one friend on the whole team, and that’s probably just Conlan doing it out of pity.”
It was like they were taking turns pushing him around, even without laying a hand on him.
“And if Jimmy can’t play,” Quinn said, “even he’s not gonna want you around.”
They all heard the car horn then.
Scott looked between Bren and Charlie and saw his mom’s Volvo pulling into the back parking lot.
Still nobody moved.
“I gotta go,” Scott said. “My mom’s here.”
Bren moved back. So did Charlie. Scott started walking toward the car.
“That’s it, run to Mommy,” Bren said.
Scott kept walking.
“But since you are such a brain,” Bren said, “why don’t you go home tonight and think of a way to really help this team?”
FIFTEEN
They were all in the living room after dinner, television sets off, no calls to be answered on the house phone, his dad’s cell phone turned off. Those were the rules for family conferences, and Scott had asked for a family conference once his dad, who’d worked late, had finished his dinner.
Now his parents sat on the couch, waiting.
“I don’t want to be on the team anymore,” Scott said. “And I don’t want you guys to try to change my mind.”
His dad smiled. “Doesn’t sound like much of a family conference to me. Sounds like a brief opening statement from the president, then no questions.”
“Dad, I didn’t mean it that way.”
His mom said, “Do we at least get to hear why?”
“I was going to,” Scott said, and then described what had happened at practice. He tried not to rush through it, wanting to make sure he got it all in so they’d understand what it had been like after Jimmy got hurt, how Chris had tried to stick up for him, how Mr. Dolan had just walked away from him finally, after saying the only thing Scott had done all year was get somebody hurt.
He wasn’t going to tell them about what Bren and the other guys had said after practice, because he wasn’t going to tell anybody that. There was no way to do that without sounding like the biggest baby in the world.
When he was done telling the story he’d decided to tell, his dad stood up, his face red, saying, “Okay, the conference is over, I’m calling that guy.”
But Scott’s mom put a hand on his arm and said, “Let’s talk about this a little bit.”
Scott knew it was her polite, Mom way of telling him he wasn’t going anywhere.
Scott said, “We can talk all you want, Mom. I’m still quitting.”
“But you’ve worked so hard,” she said.
Scott was standing in the middle of the room, feeling a lot more nervous here than he did when he had to get up in front of the class and say something. “You didn’t see how the rest of the guys were looking at me,” he said. “Like they all believed Jimmy that the only way I could ever get him down was if I did something dirty. I’m not sure even Chris thought I had it in me to throw a decent block.”
“Chris said he believed you, in front of the team,” Hank Parry said. “Sounds like at least he told the truth, that you don’t lie.” He was leaning forward, squeezing both knees with his hands, face even redder than before. “The only people who wouldn’t know that are ones who haven’t taken the time to find out anything about you, other than deciding you’re not going to play for the real Eagles someday.”
“Dad, it doesn’t matter. If this is all he thinks of me and this is all the other guys—maybe except Chris—think of me, then what am I doing on this team in the first place?”
“Honey,” his mom said, “you don’t know that the rest of the players think that. And by the time Mr. Dolan calms down a little—”
“He seemed pretty calm to me,” Scott said.
His mom smiled, as if smiling away the fact that he’d interrupted her, and said, “I’m sure twisted ankles happen all the time in sports and don’t have to be anybody’s fault.”
“He probably just wanted to act hurt because he was embarrassed that you finally got the best of him,” his dad said.
“Dad, you’re not listening,” Scott said. “This isn’t about Jimmy. It’s about me. I’m turning in my uniform tomorrow night.”
His parents looked at each other, as if deciding which one would go first. Then Scott saw his mom give his dad the tiniest nod.
Mr. Parry took a deep breath. “I’ve always taught you to finish what you started, haven’t I?”
Scott nodded, not liking where this was going.
“We talk about that a lot, right? Even when it’s something like cleaning your room?”
“Dad—”
“Let me finish, okay?”
Another nod, Scott looking his dad in the eyes, because that’s what his dad had taught him to do, from as far back as Scott could remember.
Even if you didn’t like what they were saying.
“But I’ve always told your mother I was never going to force you to play sports,” he said. “And I certainly don’t want sports to ever make you as miserable as you are right now.”
Scott just waited.
“But I do want to ask you a question, pal. Are you quitting because you are this miserable, or just because you got your feelings hurt tonight?”
“I’m doing it because this is a lost cause,” Scott said.
“The season’s not ov
er.”
“For me it is.”
“You can’t let this coach run you off, whether you like him or not,” his dad said. “I had plenty of coaches like this Dolan guy, believe me.”
“Dad,” Scott said, “I’m not you.”
His dad looked at his mom, then back at Scott. “That’s not the problem, son,” he said. “The problem is that tonight you’re not being you.”
Hank Parry stood up, as if saying the conference was over.
“Sleep on it,” he said. “If you still want to quit tomorrow, I’ll come home early and drive you over to the practice field myself.”
Scott hadn’t changed his mind by the time he got up in the morning.
All day at school he felt as if he was keeping this huge secret from Chris, but he wasn’t ready to talk about it with him, especially not at school, where somebody might overhear them. Not that anybody on the team would really care.
He decided to tell Chris when they were studying together—Scott’s house today—later.
They took Chris’s bus after school so they could pick up Brett, then Mrs. Conlan drove them all to Scott’s, telling Chris she’d see him after practice.
His practice, Scott thought, not mine.
Up in his room, with the dogs running around in the backyard, Scott put off telling him a little more. They were working on math today, using a game Scott’s mom had bought for them, called “24.” Not from the TV show 24. This was like a board game, with all these different cards, four numbers on every one of them, in different combinations. You had to figure out how to use some combination of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division so that you ended up with a total of twenty-four.
Scott was having Chris work without a pencil and paper, saying it would help him organize things better inside his head.
“Just another exercise for his brain,” Scott’s mom had said.
Sometimes he thought she was into this as much as he was. Like she was the real head coach in this and Scott was just her assistant.
Scott had turned the whole thing into another competition, him against Chris this time, making it more fair by giving himself the hardest combinations, but still doing the thing that Chris understood best: keeping score.
Sometimes Chris would struggle. Sometimes he’d give up entirely and start firing his cards across Scott’s room like Frisbees and saying this was a stupid game and math was a stupid subject and he was stupid.
“You want to stop?” Scott said the first time Chris got frustrated today.
“Nah,” Chris said. “You know our deal. I just need a twenty.” Then he made the motion basketball coaches made, tapping their shoulders with their fingers, when they wanted a twenty-second time-out.
“There’s never one easy day,” Chris said. “You get that, right?”
“Dude,” Scott said, grinning at him, “who ever said this was going to be easy?”
They went back to playing “24” until Chris said his head was going to officially explode and couldn’t they please go outside and throw the ball around for a while?
It was the last thing Scott wanted to do today, be anywhere near a football or a football field, but he relented.
On their way through the woods, Scott said, “Don’t you ever get tired of playing football?”
“Never.”
“You love it that much?”
“That’s why you play, dude,” Chris said, running toward the field. “Love of the game.”
Now, Scott told himself.
You have to tell him now.
When he came out of the woods, Chris was running crazy patterns on the field, the dogs chasing him, barking away as usual. Chris seemed happier to be out here than the dogs, maybe because it meant he was through studying for the day.
Scott walked over to him when he finally stopped and said, “Hey, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Chris looked at him, as if he knew something. “Please don’t tell me you’re quitting studying with me.”
“No,” Scott said, “I’d never do that. But I am quitting football.”
Then he went right into why, doing it the way they had with Chris’s parents that time, not giving him a chance to say anything. Scott didn’t tell it the way he had last night with his own parents—he skipped a lot of parts because Chris had been there—yet still left out what had happened in the parking lot. He knew that if he told Chris about what Bren and Charlie and Quinn had done, it would just rip the team apart.
“I’m turning in my uniform tonight,” Scott said. “It’s not like anybody’s gonna miss me. The only way Coach ever noticed me was when I got his son hurt.”
Then he started running, like he was going out for a pass, putting an arm up the way you did when you were open.
Or maybe he was running away from what he’d just said.
When he was about twenty yards away, Chris Conlan threw a pass so hard that Scott felt like the ball took a couple of fingers with it as it went sailing through his hands.
“Wow,” Scott said, forcing a smile even though his hands really hurt, “where did that missile come from?”
Chris didn’t smile back. Just continued to stare at him.
“I don’t like quitters,” Chris said. “That’s where it comes from.”
This wasn’t Chris his friend now. This wasn’t even the Chris who’d called him “brain” in front of Jimmy Dolan.
This was the quarterback.
Scott was getting the kind of look he’d see from Chris on the sidelines after he’d messed up or somebody else on the offense had messed up and the Eagles had either turned the ball over with a fumble or interception or just not made the yardage they needed on fourth down.
A look that made you want to duck.
“Can I say something?”
“No.”
“I’m not allowed to explain?”
“You just did. Mr. Dolan and Jimmy hurt your little feelings and so now you’re taking your ball and going home.”
Maybe it was the tone of his voice, the way he seemed to be mocking the whole thing, but now Scott got mad.
“What are you,” he said, “my father?”
“I’m your friend,” Chris said. “And I thought you were mine.”
“What, I’m not good enough to be your friend now because I’m not a good football player?”
“I’d rather be friends with someone who’s not a good player than with a stinking quitter.”
“If this is your way of trying to talk me out of it, forget about it,” Scott said. Yelling now. “My parents couldn’t do it, and neither can you!”
“Who’s trying to talk you out of anything?” Chris said. “You do whatever you want, you know everything.”
“Fine!” Scott said.
“Fine!”
Scott figured that if they stayed at this for another minute they were going to start making faces at each other.
Or calling each other names.
Chris was the one who broke it off, whistling for Brett as he started walking back toward the woods.
“How are you going to get to practice?” Scott called after him. “My mom was supposed to take us.”
Without turning around, Chris said, “What do you mean, us?”
Before Scott could say anything else, he was already in the woods, Brett following behind him.
Right behind Brett was Casey.
Like somehow even Casey knew what was going on, and even he didn’t want to hang around with a quitter today.
Scott thought Casey would come back right away.
He didn’t.
He kept waiting for his mom to come walking on the field, wanting to know what had happened.
She didn’t.
He’d left his watch up in his room when he and Chris had been studying, so he didn’t know what time it was, just knew the sky was starting to look the way it usually did when it was time to leave for practice.
Except there was no practice today.
Scott decided to practice kicking anyway, do something fun, have football be fun the way it used to be out here, before he kidded himself into thinking he could be a real player.
He walked over to the middle of the field, extra-point distance, trying to pretend he was Doug Flutie. Ready to try the Flutie dropkick.
Then he couldn’t help it, he could hear his dad’s voice inside his brain, telling him for what felt like the thousandth time that no matter how many people tried to tell Flutie he was too small to be a great football player, even when he was in high school, he never gave up.
The way Rudy never gave up.
He kicked the ball now.
Wide right.
No Casey to get the ball. He went and got it himself. Then he walked toward the woods alone, wondering if Doug Flutie or Rudy ever felt as low as he did right now.
He was in his room, door closed, when he heard the car in the driveway, looked out the window and saw it was his dad, coming home early like he’d said he would.
Scott heard the front door close.
Heard his dad calling out in his singsong way, “Honey, I’m home,” the way he always did. He had explained that’s the way dads did it on TV when he was growing up.
Finally, Scott heard his dad coming up the stairs, then knocking on his door.
“You in there?”
“Yeah.”
“All right if I come in?”
“Yeah.”
His dad opened the door and as soon as he saw Scott, he broke out into the biggest smile he had, like it was two or three for the price of one.
Scott wasn’t only dressed in his uniform, he even had his helmet on.
“I’m ready for practice,” he said.
SIXTEEN
In the end, Scott had worked it out for himself, decided it wasn’t about Mr. Dolan, or Jimmy, or Chris, or even his parents.
He was playing for himself.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t want to get out on the field in a real game. Scott still wanted that in the worst way, even if he was the worst player on the team.
But if it didn’t happen this season, well, he could live with that more than he could live with being a quitter. It wasn’t just Chris who didn’t want to hang around with a quitter.