4/WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30—ATHENS HIGH PRACTICE
My phone felt like a ticking time bomb. I hadn’t shown anyone the photo from Orlando, and at Monday’s practice I’d stuffed the phone inside my backpack where no one could snatch it. I’d done the same thing the next morning.
The team was starting to ask questions. Is Orlando sick? Is he pouting? Will he be back in time for Friday’s game against Bradbury? But so far, no one knew the terrible truth.
Except me.
The early evening air had a bite to it. I sat high up in the bleachers at Athens High School. Enemy territory. I had the hood of my gray sweatshirt pulled up, the bill of my Bengals cap pulled low. No way was I going to let one of the Raiders players identify me.
I’d left practice a bit early by telling Coach Z I felt nauseous. It wasn’t far from the truth. The whole drive from Troy to Athens, I’d kept the window down for fear I’d puke in the car.
I’d prayed that Orlando’s text had been a joke or maybe a look at an early Halloween costume. But he was out there on the field, wearing a red-and-black uniform, number 89. The Raiders were running offensive drills.
I watched as he ran a cross pattern, caught the ball, and broke for the sideline. The coach blew the whistle and slapped Orlando on the helmet while barking, “Nice catch!”
Orlando high-fived the Raiders’ starting quarterback, a kid named Jack Wayne.
As practice continued, I started to recognize a couple of plays, especially ones that featured the halfback. They ran a twenty-two red dog, a power option sweep that looked almost exactly like the one we ran. Their defense lined up in a pressure D, with eight guys near the line of scrimmage, as the offense tried to power the ball up the gut in a play Coach Z called a ninety-nine gold.
It was almost like the Raiders were working out of our playbook. Like they were trying to determine the best defensive formation against the Trojan running game.
Orlando and Jack Wayne jogged over to the sidelines, where the Raiders head coach stood with his clipboard. The trio discussed something, and I saw Orlando point down at the clipboard, as if he were doing the coaching.
When they hit the field again, the Raider offense practiced running a double reverse. Jack Wayne pitched the ball to their halfback, who flipped the ball into Orlando’s hands. Orlando ran wide around the corner, sweeping to the sideline. Coach Z had a trick play nearly identical to it in the Trojan book, but we rarely used it.
And then it hit me like a helmet to the gut: the Raiders didn’t just look like they were using our playbook. They were actually using our playbook.
What was Orlando thinking?
When practice was over and the Raiders had jogged off the field, I left the bleachers and waited in the parking lot. The sun had gone down, leaving the parking lot blanketed in deep shadows. I found Orlando’s car and leaned against the side.
He came out about fifteen minutes later, laughing about something with three other players. It was like he’d been a part of the team for more than, oh, I don’t know, one stupid practice. They split up when they hit the parking lot, high-fiving each other before heading off to their own cars.
Orlando didn’t see me until he was almost to his vehicle. He jumped back, surprised. When I dropped my hood, he relaxed. “D, you’re gonna give me a heart attack,” he laughed, punching me lightly on the shoulder. “I thought maybe you was somebody looking for a wallet to swipe.”
I was in no mood to joke around. “Orlando, what are you doing?”
“Oh come on, man,” Orlando said, rolling his eyes. “Not this again.”
“How can you betray us like this?” I asked. “And with Athens?”
“Yeah, I bet Coach Z flipped when he found out, am I right?”
I shook my head. “He doesn’t know yet.”
“For real? ’Cause I can’t wait to hear what he does when you tell him.” Orlando dug out his car keys, unlocking the driver’s side door and tossing his equipment bag across to the passenger seat. “You want to get something to eat?”
I shook my head.
“Cool. See ya, D.”
Orlando started to climb into the car. I grabbed the doorframe and stopped him. “Those were our plays, weren’t they?” I asked. “Trojan plays. Don’t tell me you gave these guys our playbook. If we have to face them again in the play-offs, they’ll know our every move. How stupid could you be, dude?” I wasn’t normally confrontational—the opposite, in fact—and Orlando knew it. I could see in his eyes that I was freaking him out a little.
“They’re just plays, man,” Orlando said, shaking his head. “It’s not like Coach Z invented them.”
“So you aren’t denying it?”
“Devon, you know how they say, ‘The grass is always greener’?” Orlando asked. “Well, over here, they respect me. They understand my talent and don’t drag me down for dropped catches and missed blocks. Over here? The grass is seriously green. You should think about seeing it for yourself.”
I released my death grip on the door, and Orlando swung it closed. He fired up the car, waved through the closed window, and peeled out of the dark parking lot, leaving me all alone again.
Orlando was getting really good at that.
5/THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31—TROY CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL
Shane knew.
He walked down the hall toward me, his fists clenched at his sides, his jaw locked tight. I had been making my way to history class, but all the sudden, I felt like I was going to be history.
I tried to act calm. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Shane’s latest girlfriend just found out he was only an overachiever on the football field. “’Sup, QB1?”
Shane grabbed me by the shirt with both hands and slammed me against the lockers. A handle jabbed me in the small of my back.
Yep. Shane knew.
“When were you going to tell us, Shaw?” he asked. Tiny flecks of spit shot out from between his teeth. Gross. “Orlando’s playing for the Raiders now?”
I pushed Shane back until I was clear of the locker. He released his grip. Around us, people had stopped to stare. The team was supposed to be a unit. Nobody needed to see us acting like a bunch of fools.
“Stop,” I said. “This isn’t the place.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Shane’s voice had dropped to almost a whisper. “We’re your team. You’re Big Six.” He shook his head. “Big mistake, Shaw.”
“Is there a problem here?” Mrs. Norwood, my language arts teacher, approached us. She carried a coffee mug in one hand and a stack of papers in the other. Like usual, she had a no-nonsense look on her face. She was one of the few who didn’t put up with all our football extracurriculars.
Shane flashed her a big QB1 smile anyway. “Not at all, Mrs. Norwood,” he said. “Just a couple of Big Sixers goofing around is all.”
Mrs. Norwood didn’t look very convinced. “Stop horsing around and get to class, boys,” she said.
Shane tossed a last, long glare at me, then walked away as if nothing had happened.
After school, while gearing up for practice in the locker room, nobody said a word to me. Not even Brian Norwood, who usually slapped my shoulder pads to amp me up. I jogged down the tunnel alone, helmet in hand.
Coach Z stood on the sidelines, his arms crossed on his chest. The rest of the team knelt in a semicircle around Coach Whitson in the middle of the field. I took a knee behind Terry and Truman as Z stepped up to the team.
I expected Coach Z to be furious. I expected swearing, yelling, spitting, thunderclouds clapping, and lightning overhead. What I didn’t expect was for him to be … calm.
“It’s simple,” he said. “Winners never quit, and quitters never win. I’ll give you one guess who said that.” We all knew. Coach Z had a tendency to quote Vince Lombardi every chance he got. “You all heard the news, no doubt. Orlando Green is gone. Defected to Athens. His ego is their problem now.”
Coach Z’s gaze met mine. Even though he didn’t seem angry, I still felt a chill do
wn my back.
“Our focus is on tomorrow,” Z continued. “Not on last Friday. Not on Benedict Green. No, the only thing that matters now is beating the Cyclones on their home turf. We persevere, because we are winners!”
The team let out a mighty cheer.
We ran sprints up and down the field, the dirt and grass grinding between our cleats. My lungs burned, and it felt good to worry about something other than Orlando for a while.
The team split into offense and defense, and we spent a good deal of time running plays. Right away, Shane, in his red mesh quarterback’s jersey, called for the draw play. He hesitated before handing me the ball, giving the line time to open a gap. Then he shoved the ball into my gut so hard, I coughed out my mouth guard.
Yep. Shane was still mad.
He wasn’t the only one. Toward the end of practice, we usually have a little scrimmage. There typically isn’t much tackling, for obvious reasons. We don’t need one of our starters to get hurt because of a silly scrimmage. During that day’s scrimmage, though, whenever I got the ball, the defense took me down. Hard. And Coach Z let them. I understood why. They were upset at Orlando, and he wasn’t around. So they needed someone else to hit.
And I was their punching bag.
When Shane checked down on a pass play and threw me the ball in the flat, the linebackers read it, and Norwood came at me low, smashing into my waist with his shoulders and knocking me to the ground. The ball fell from my hand and landed beside me. Like sharks attacking chum, the defense dove at it. I wound up at the bottom of a pile, fingers clawing at my helmet. My left hand was bent and pinned under me. I could feel pain shooting up my arm like pinpricks. But I couldn’t get up.
Coach Z’s whistle pierced the air, and the defense slowly pried themselves off one another. Brian came up with the ball, and the others patted him on the back. I was the last man on the ground.
Nobody helped me up. I wiggled the fingers of my left hand, rotating my wrist back and forth. It hurt like hell—was going to bruise for sure—but I gritted my teeth.
“You all right, Shaw?” Coach Z asked.
I nodded. “Tweaked my wrist a bit.”
“Shake it off,” Z said. “Line up. Run it again.”
6/FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1—TROY CENTRAL HIGH PEP RALLY
Every Friday during football season, the students and faculty of Troy Central High cram into the gymnasium bleachers for a pep rally instead of going to eighth period. The school band plays a few songs, including the Trojan fight song. The cheerleaders stand at the middle of the gym floor and perform a routine full of flips, high kicks, and shaking pom-poms. There’s even a section of chairs set up near the door for parents who took off work to join in the festivities, a section that’s always overflowing. And the football team sits together on a platform under one of the raised basketball hoops. It’s a thundering display of school pride.
We were just an hour or so from packing up and busing to Bradbury to take on the Cyclones. I sat in my usual spot—back row, hunched in my chair—massaging my bruised and swollen left wrist. It had kept me up the night before, chewing aspirin. My room got to smelling like Icy Hot. But I wasn’t going to say anything, not even to our trainer. Instead, I kept popping aspirin every couple of hours and wrapped it tight.
The band finished belting out a loud rendition of “We Will Rock You.” After the packed bleachers full of screaming students trailed off, Coach Z stepped up to a microphone stand.
“Students of Troy High,” he said, his commanding voice echoing off the gymnasium walls, “Are you ready to watch your football team kick some Cyclone butt tonight?”
Another roar. The gym rumbled like a low-grade earthquake as all the people in the bleachers stomped their feet.
Coach Z held up a hand, and just like that, the sound ceased. “Thought so. Now, how about we hear a few words from your captain, Shane Hunter!”
Shane stood up in his front-row seat as the crowd screeched. He took the microphone from Coach Z, who draped his arm around Shane’s shoulder all buddy-buddy.
“Thanks, Coach,” Shane said. “So … we’ve had a tough week. We not only lost a game but also an important member of our team.” A chorus of boos filled the gym. I heard one kid in the back of the bleachers shout, “Orlando sucks!”
Shane lowered the mic and turned briefly away from the crowd, toward the team. I could have sworn I saw a smile flicker across his face.
He spoke once more to his adoring fans. “I’ve got a question for you. Who here wants to go show Bradbury High what a championship football team looks like?!”
I didn’t think the cheers in the gymnasium could get any louder than they already were.
I was wrong.
By the time we’d gathered our things in the locker room and headed out to the bus, the crowd from the gym had migrated to the parking lot. They parted like the Red Sea as the team exited the locker room, led by Shane and Coach Z.
We rode to away games on a red-and-white coach bus. The fine folks on the Friends of Troy Football Board had paid for the custom paint job. Our bus was parked at the front of a line of other buses. The rest would caravan behind us, packed to the brim with our schoolmates. It didn’t matter how far away the game was. Trojan football fans filled the stands at every game. Coach Z always said, “There’s a reason they build bleachers on both sides of the field, and it isn’t so that one side stays empty.”
I was one of the last players on the bus. The rest of the guys sat or stood in the back, laughing and joking. Terry was doing an impression of Orlando that made my stomach turn. It was like they didn’t remember he was their friend and teammate less than a week ago.
I didn’t want anything to do with them. So I slid into a seat toward the front, just behind the coaches, who were already going over the game plan.
It was weird. For the first time since becoming a Trojan, I no longer felt like I was a part of the team. Even as one of the Big Six, I’d become an outsider. I thought back to what Orlando had said, about how green the grass was over at Athens.
Funny. I was starting to understand what he meant.
7/FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1—AWAY GAME AGAINST THE BRADBURY CYCLONES
Bradbury High sat on the outskirts of the town, surrounded by fields and open space and pretty much nothing else. Even though it was a fairly new building, the campus looked like a prison. There was nothing to block the wind and cold, and there were plenty of both by the time we took the field. A light drizzle started to fall.
I stood on the sidelines, watching my breath cloud in front of my helmet and rubbing my gloved hands together. The cold weather and adrenaline at least made the pain in my wrist disappear for a while.
The Cyclones won the coin toss and deferred, so we got the ball first. With Orlando gone, Dylan Davis had taken over his spot on special teams. He took the kickoff, found a seam, and ran straight through the Bradbury defenders until he was tripped up around the forty-yard line.
Nearby, Shane shouted, “Let’s go, offense!” He shoved his helmet on, slapped Dylan’s pads, and jogged onto the field. I followed.
The rain started to come down harder, which made things tougher on our passing game. That and the fact that Shane didn’t have his number one receiving target anymore. So we ran the ball. The first time Shane stuffed a handoff into my arms, it felt like he was giving me a cinder block. I drove forward for about seven yards before Bradbury defenders dragged me to the ground, which may as well have been a cement slab.
We worked our way down the field, chewing up both yardage and the clock. When we reached the five-yard line, Shane called for the ninety-nine-gold. He dropped back and slid the ball into my cradled arms. I lowered my head and plowed through a hole in the right side of the Bradbury line.
I felt my hand tweak, and suddenly, I couldn’t keep a grip on the ball. It tumbled to the wet, muddy grass. I twisted and spun, trying to spot it. The ball skidded across the field—right before a Bradbury player swallowed it up.
“Fumble, Trojans,” the announcer said as I walked back to the sidelines, cursing under my breath. “First down, Cyclones.”
“Way to go, Shaw,” Shane barked at me.
“Knock it off, Hunter!” Coach Z said. “Keep your head in the game and pray your defense can hold these yahoos to a three and out.”
They didn’t, though. The Cyclones quarterback—a lanky kid named Jamieson—had a great arm and a fast set of legs. He moved the chains in a quick, effective way. When the Cyclones were at the fifteen, Jamieson called a QB keeper and took the ball into the end zone untouched.
Getting a W was going to be harder than we thought.
Umbrellas, blankets, and raincoats started to populate the stands. Each raindrop felt like a needle jabbing into my skin. The cold, held off by adrenaline when the game started, was creeping in and weighing us down.
On our second drive, Coach Z only called my number a couple of times. Punishment for coughing up the ball. Our backup fullback Ian, a tank on two legs, handled most of the carries. Shane passed the ball a few times, as well, but it was clear to both us and to Bradbury that without Orlando, our passing game was weak. Bradbury overloaded the D-line, sometimes putting as many as eight players in the box, doing everything they could to stop our running game in its tracks.
Troy was only able to push the ball past the chalk once during the entire first half, a slant pattern pass in the middle of the field to Brian that gouged through their zone defense. When the buzzer sounded at halftime, the scoreboard read: CYCLONES: 17 TROJANS: 7.
In the locker room at half, we sat on the wooden benches. Dripping. Coughing. Thawing.
“Winning is a habit,” Coach Z said, quoting Lombardi. He paced down the line of us like a general rallying his troops. “And so is losing. We look sloppy out there. And it’s not just because of the weather. We lack confidence. I don’t know what’s gotten into your heads, but in order to succeed, you need to push past it. Dig deep. Be better than them. Be. Winners!” He ended by banging his fist loudly on the metal lockers.
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