“You don’t like cheese?” he asked.
“I like it on pizza,” she said. “But not on a hamburger.”
“Exactly,” Alex said, laughing. “I guess we have something in common.”
She actually blushed a little. “We also both like Mr. Hillier,” she said.
She reached down and picked up a notebook. “Is it okay if we start?” she asked. “I told my mom I’d get home in time to finish my homework before dinner.”
“Me too,” he said. “Another thing we have in common—tough moms.” He was happy to know he wasn’t the only one.
She asked him about his background, how much football he had played in the past, and then why he had moved to Philadelphia. When he told her, she shook her head.
“Sorry,” she said. “I know what that’s like.”
“You do?” he said.
She nodded. “But I was too young to really understand. I was only five. It was worse for my brothers. Seth was twelve and Danny was ten.”
“Where are they now?”
“Both in college. Seth’s a senior at Villanova; Danny’s a sophomore at Princeton.”
“Whoa, Princeton.”
“Yeah, that’s where my dad went. Seth got into Princeton too, but he got a full ride at Villanova. Plus, he knew my dad wanted him to pick Princeton.”
Alex smiled. “Where do you think you’ll go?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea. I’m just a freshman. I know I want to write. I love to write.… Can we go back to talking about you now?”
The answer turned out to be no because their burgers arrived. Alex understood after one bite why Stark’s had been famous since 1964. The burger was big and juicy and delicious.
“Good call on the restaurant,” he said as he reached for some French fries. “This place is great.”
“Yeah, and the good thing is it’s not too busy on Saturdays. It’s packed on weekdays for lunch. Everyone who works in Chester comes here. At least that’s what my mom says.”
“What’s she do?”
She smiled. “Back to talking about me again?” She took a sip of her milk shake. “Paralegal in a law office. She started working again after the divorce. She was in law school when Seth was born and didn’t finish. I think she’ll go back and finish once I’m old enough that she doesn’t have to drive me all over the place.”
Alex knew his mom was hoping to take on some private tutoring work now that the middle schools were starting classes. She had been an English teacher before he was born and had always talked about going back to work again. Now she was planning to work part-time until he and Molly “got settled,” and then she would look to get back into teaching.
Christine seemed to read his thoughts.
“Is your mom working?” she asked.
He told her and she nodded and asked what his dad did. “He works,” Alex said. “All the time, he works.” Then he realized that hadn’t really been the question. “He’s a lawyer,” he added. “He travels a lot.”
Christine didn’t answer, just nodded again. Maybe she could tell by his tone that this was a delicate subject. There was, for just a second, he thought, a sympathetic look in her eyes. She looked down and then pushed her plate aside, as if to regroup mentally.
“Okay,” she said, picking up the notebook and her pen again. “Tell me about last night.”
Alex told her what he remembered about the game, including his surprise at being put in for two final kneel-downs and how stunned he had been, literally and figuratively, when the kid from Mercer had clocked him. Christine kept asking for details on what he remembered when he came to, and he said—honestly—that he wasn’t ever really out. Finally she put her pen down and crossed her arms.
“Interview over?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “But I do want to ask you one more question.”
“I assume since you put your pen down that this is off the record,” he said.
“Yes, it is. Because I want you to tell me the truth.”
“Sure. As long as it won’t get me in trouble.”
“Did you mean what you said the other day, that you’re better than Matt Gordon? Or was that just bravado?”
“If you tell me what bravado is, maybe I can tell you if I did it,” he answered.
She laughed. “You really are kind of funny,” she said, and her dark eyes lit up for a second in that way that made him feel slightly faint. “Bravado is when you say something to get someone’s attention, to make it sound like you are very confident when perhaps you aren’t.”
He was shaking his head before she finished. “That wasn’t bravado, then,” he said. “Look, Matt Gordon’s very good. He’s a natural leader, and, seriously, he’s a really good guy. His mom must be the greatest, because he sure doesn’t get it from his dad.”
“But?” she said.
“But Matt really should be a running back or a tight end. He’s a little like Tim Tebow: Great athlete, strong, knocks people over all the time. But he doesn’t throw the ball all that well. I don’t think he can be a quarterback at a Division I college.”
“Tebow was. He won the Heisman.”
She did know her sports. “I said he was like Tebow,” he said. “I didn’t say he was as good as Tebow.” He shrugged. “But maybe he will be. He’s just a junior.”
“And you can throw the ball,” she said.
“I don’t think Matt nicknamed me Goldie because I can’t throw the ball.”
“Can you run?” she asked.
“If I see someone coming, I run just fine,” he said. “Kneeling down, going backward, I’m not nearly as good. If they ever give me a chance to do more than kneel down, you’ll see.”
She smiled again.
“I hope I get that chance,” she said.
“Me too,” he said. “Me too.”
Alex was rounding the corner onto his street when his cell phone began to ring inside the pocket of his shorts. Thinking that maybe Christine had forgotten something—or maybe she just missed him?—he pulled over and took the phone out.
He was disappointed when he saw that the number had a 717 area code. Still curious, he answered anyway, pushing his helmet back on his head so he could get the phone to his ear.
“Is this Alex Myers?” a voice said.
“Yes,” he said. “Who’s this?”
“David Krenchek. I’m the guy who hit you last night. I was calling to tell you I’m sorry for what happened and I wanted to see how you’re feeling.”
“Wow. It’s really nice of you to call,” Alex said. “I’m curious, though, how’d you get my number?”
David laughed. “I told my coach I wanted to talk to you, and he said he’d call one of your assistant coaches and ask for your number—because he really didn’t want to talk to your coach ever again.”
“He did run up the score,” Alex said. “I’m sorry about that.”
David laughed again. “Hey, man, you didn’t do it. You just got clobbered because of it. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was just so upset. We all were, actually. But that’s no excuse.”
“Forget it,” Alex said. “I feel fine and I understand why you guys were upset. I don’t think any of us felt great about it either.”
“So, no aftereffects?”
“My ribs are still kind of sore, but the trainer said they’re just bruised.”
“I was worried,” David said. “I’ve never done anything like that before. Of course, we never played anyone as good as you before. I don’t know what Coach was thinking when he scheduled the game. I guess it was part of the deal to play you in basketball.”
“We’re playing you in basketball?”
“Yeah, pre-conference, just like in football. Difference is, we’re good in basketball. Do you play?”
“Well, I’m just a freshman. I hope I’ll play, but I don’t know what the competition is like yet.”
“Hey, you’re on varsity football as a freshman—that’s pretty good.”
They both laughed at that one.
“Hey,” David said. “Stay in touch, okay? You’ve got my number. Let me know how things go.”
“You too,” Alex said.
He hung up. Just like that, he felt like he’d made a friend. Maybe, he thought, he should talk to his parents about transferring to Mercer. He knew he would start there.
On Monday morning, for the first time since he had arrived at Chester Heights, Alex didn’t feel invisible. Kids who had walked past him in the hall as if he weren’t there were looking him in the eye and saying hello. Others paused to say, “How you feeling?” Some even stopped to ask if he was okay. In class, kids who had sat next to him without so much as nodding for two weeks all of a sudden wanted to talk.
If Alex hadn’t known better, he might have thought he had thrown the winning touchdown pass, not just been knocked silly.
He was invited to no fewer than three postgame parties the next Friday night after the game against Cherry Hill Academy, a private school like Mercer but—according to the all-knowing Matt Gordon—a much better team.
The most impressive invite of all came from Hope Alexander. Hope was very tall, apparently a budding volleyball star, and had long blond hair. When she sat in the middle of the room for history class, it was as if there were a magnetic field around her desk, as boys, and girls too, scrambled to sit near her. Two weeks into school and everyone knew Hope.
As Alex and Jonas were walking out of history on Tuesday, Alex felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see Hope, who was looking him right in the eye. Alex wasn’t used to girls being anywhere close to his height ever since he’d grown to six one, so he almost did a double take—in part because of that but also because she wanted to speak to him.
“Alex, you know about the party I’m having after the game, right?” she said, as if it were a given that he knew all about it but she was just double-checking.
“No, actually, I don’t,” he said.
Clearly prepared, she reached into the pocket of her shorts and brought out what looked like a three-by-five card. “Here’s the address and the info.”
She looked at Jonas. “Do you want to come too, Jonas?”
Alex was relieved and happy that she had managed to both notice and acknowledge Jonas.
“Probably not, but thanks,” Jonas said. “I’ll probably just hang out with my family like I did last week.”
She nodded, put a hand on Alex’s shoulder, and smiled. “Well, I hope I see you there.”
Alex was semi-mesmerized as she walked away.
“Man, I scored two touchdowns in that game last week and you’re a hero for getting clocked in the head,” Jonas said, a big grin on his face. “Maybe I need to get carried off on a stretcher this week so I can get invited to some more parties.”
“Not worth it,” Alex said. “And I didn’t get carried off on a stretcher. And you are invited and you’re going.”
“I am?”
“Oh yeah. I’m not going alone and I am going.”
“You are?”
“Hope Alexander just invited me. Are you kidding—of course I’m going.”
“You’ve got Christine,” Jonas said. “Why don’t you point out to Hope that I’m the star wide receiver?”
Jonas had a way of saying things that were obnoxious without actually sounding obnoxious. Alex knew he was kidding—or at least half kidding. Plus, he was well on his way to being the star wide receiver.
“I don’t have Christine,” he hissed, looking around the crowded hall in case anyone was listening. He was beginning to regret telling Jonas about the Saturday lunch/interview. Jonas had been on him about it for two days now.
“Come on, she decides to do a story on a guy for getting knocked out?” Jonas said. “She likes you. Even with your head on sideways you should see that.”
“She said it was Coach Hillier’s idea.”
“Mm-hmm,” Jonas said. “Why don’t we ask Coach Hillier if that’s true?”
Alex thought that wasn’t a bad idea. “Let’s see what the story says when it comes out tomorrow,” he said. “Then maybe.”
Alex hadn’t gotten any scrimmage reps at all on Monday. According to Coach Hillier, this was because Buddy Thomas, after examining Alex prior to practice, had said he shouldn’t throw a ball much more than ten yards until Wednesday as a precaution against stretching his ribs in a way that might be painful. Alex was tempted to grab a ball during warm-ups and hurl it as far as he could to show that he was fine, but he’d already done something like that once and that hadn’t worked out so well.
Most of his teammates stopped at some point, either in the locker room or out on the practice field, to ask how he was feeling. So did the coaches—except for Coach Gordon. Apparently, whatever Buddy Thomas had told him was all the information he needed. The one noticeable change was in the training room: Buddy repeatedly called him either Myers or Alex, and instead of having one of the student assistants tape his ankles for practice, Buddy did it himself.
On Wednesday morning, Alex walked into school a few minutes early and saw stacks of the Weekly Roar next to the front door. Christine had told him the newspaper was printed late on Tuesday so it would be waiting when everyone arrived the next day.
He needed to find some privacy to read the story, so he headed for the one place it was guaranteed: the bathroom. The first bell was still fifteen minutes away, so it was empty. He locked himself in a stall and sat. The game got four pages of coverage in the eight-page paper, though two of the pages were filled with photos, including one of him being tended to by Buddy Thomas. The caption said, “Cheap shot.”
The headline on Christine’s sidebar was FRESHMAN QB CAN TAKE A HIT.
He was relieved that Christine had kept her word and hadn’t used anything he had said off the record. He had worried that in his quest to impress, he might have trusted her too much. She had actually talked to a number of other people including Mercer’s Coach Alan Hale and David Krenchek, the kid who hit him. Both had been very apologetic and had complimented him on how he had handled a difficult situation. Matt Gordon had confirmed that he had started calling Alex “Goldie” after first watching him throw a ball in practice. Only Coach Gordon was—surprise—less than gushy about him.
“He’s a freshman and has a lot to learn,” he said. “We’re all glad he wasn’t hurt seriously.”
The last quote was from Alex and it was accurate. “The next time I get that kind of attention, I hope it’s because of something I did rather than something someone else did to me.”
He read the story a second time and breathed a sigh of relief. He couldn’t see anything in it that would cause a problem. He sort of wished that Christine had written something that indicated he was a nice guy or that she liked him. She had mentioned they had talked while he “wolfed down a hamburger, proving that his appetite was unaffected.” But that was about it.
The most interesting story about the game was in the sports editor’s column by someone named Steve Garland. Mostly, Garland said it was hard to learn much from a 77–0 rout. But toward the end there was a paragraph that caught Alex’s attention:
It is difficult to question Coach Gordon’s record on any level and there is every reason to believe this might be his best team. But he should consider himself fortunate that Alex Myers, the freshman quarterback who has already been labeled “Goldie” by his teammates because of his “golden” throwing arm, wasn’t seriously hurt on the game’s last play. Coach Gordon’s decision to keep trying to score in the fourth quarter was the obvious catalyst for what could have been a very ugly incident.
The rest was about Cherry Hill being a more significant test, although only league play would decide how great this season might be. What interested Alex wasn’t so much that the sports editor would write a paragraph criticizing Coach Gordon but that the teacher who supervised the newspaper had allowed the paragraph to get into print.
; That teacher was Coach Hillier. Now he had two questions to ask him at practice that afternoon.
Buddy Thomas officially cleared Alex to take part in all practice drills that afternoon. After looking his ribs over one more time, the trainer asked if he’d had any other symptoms since Friday: headache, nausea, lack of appetite. When Alex shook his head no, Buddy looked at him closely.
“You’re sure?” he said. “I know you want to practice. But if there’s anything at all, you need to tell me.”
“Honestly, Buddy, I feel fine.”
Buddy nodded. “Okay, Myers, I believe you. You’re clear.”
Alex jumped off the table with a big smile on his face. Buddy gave him a pat on the shoulder. “You’re a tough kid, Alex,” he said. “Hang in there.”
Alex felt like he’d just been elected to the football Hall of Fame.
He spent most of practice at the defensive end of the field, mimicking the plays that Cherry Hill Academy was likely to run. He learned the third-string quarterback usually ran what was called the “scout team,” meaning that he ran the plays the defensive coaches expected the upcoming opponent to run, based on scouting reports. The week before, in part because Mercer hadn’t played a game but also—Alex suspected—because Mercer was so bad, there had been no scout team drills.
Alex loved running the scout team. He got a lot more playing time and Cherry Hill apparently had an offense that liked to throw the ball, so he got the chance to show off his arm on a few occasions—though none of the offensive coaches were watching. They were at the other end of the field running plays against the scout team defense.
After the scout drills were over, the team gathered at midfield to scrimmage, as it always did at the end of practice on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Thursdays were usually reserved for special teams, although both Matt Gordon and Jake Bilney had told Alex that if Coach Gordon wasn’t happy with what he saw on Tuesday and Wednesday, the offensive and defensive units might be on the field on Thursday too.
The Walk On Page 9