Football Hero (2008) (20 page)

USING THE SAME TECHNIQUE
Thane had shown him on the blocking dummy, the same technique he’d stalked Calvin West with, Ty coiled and sprang at Lucy, both hands striking him dead center in the chest at the same time. With one foot on the escalator and one foot in midair, Lucy tipped back, grasping empty space with one hand and instinctively swinging the crowbar with the other. The weapon whistled past Ty’s head. It struck the opposite handrail; a shriek tore free from Lucy’s throat as he fell.

Lucy’s head hit the escalator steps with a thump just as his feet circled over him in a horrible cartwheel. As his crumpled legs hit the stairs, his battered head came up, arms still flailing, only to go back down again. Tumbling this way, Lucy bumped and
banged his way to the very bottom, coming to rest in a broken heap at the base of the escalator just as Mike staggered up between two policemen with their guns drawn.

The FBI agents wanted statements from everyone immediately. Nearly two hours passed before Ty climbed into Thane’s Escalade and remembered he had a football game.

“You’ve been pretty busy,” Thane said, navigating the SUV out of the parking lot at the federal office building.

Ty’s muscles felt drained of energy, but the idea of Coach V getting canned fired him up.

“My stuff’s in Uncle Gus’s truck,” Ty said. “It’s at Lucy’s.”

Uncle Gus had been scooped up by some other agents at Lucy’s and was still inside the federal office building, answering questions.

“Does he lock it?” Thane asked.

“It’s in the back with the cleaning stuff,” Ty said.

“The lock’s broken.”

Thane stepped on the gas to make a traffic light. They retrieved Ty’s uniform and raced to the game. As they rode down the street to the football field, the scoreboard came into view. Halpern was down 21–10 with only six minutes to go. Sickness exploded inside Ty’s stomach like a cherry bomb.

“You’ll have to hurry,” Thane said, pulling up onto the curb. Ty grabbed his equipment.

“I’ll tell the coach so he knows you’re coming,” Thane shouted as Ty sprinted across the blacktop behind the school, toward the locker room.

Ty tried to slow his frantic breathing and quell the tremble in his fingers as he laced, buckled, and yanked on his gear. Finally, he burst through the locker room door, heading for the field, throwing on his helmet and snapping his chinstrap into place. Parents filled the small set of bleachers on the Halpern side of the field, but the Brookfield crowd spilled out of their bleachers, blanketing the hillside and surrounding the field like an invading army.

Two of the six minutes in the final quarter had already expired. Halpern had the ball, but the scoreboard said they faced a fourth down with eight yards to go. Coach V saw Ty and called a time-out.

Ty arrived, breathless, at the little group of players surrounding Coach V. Thane stood near the bench, giving him a thumbs-up.

“You ready?” Coach V asked, looking from Poyer, the quarterback, to Ty.

They both nodded yes.

“We can still do this,” the coach said, then called a midrange pass play that would send Ty on a twelve-yard hook. “Get the first down and then we’ll go for the end zone.”

Ty went to the huddle, accepting hand slaps from several teammates before listening to the play and lining up. When the center hiked the ball, Ty shot forward, startling the cornerback with the distance he covered in a split second. He ran by at full speed, the cornerback turning his hips and starting to sprint, desperate to keep up.

At twelve yards, Ty planted a foot and hooked back toward the quarterback. Poyer zipped the ball before Ty even spun. There it was! With the speed of a frog’s tongue, Ty snatched the ball from the air but got hit from both sides.

He felt the ball come loose as he crumpled to the ground.

TY HUNG ON. THEY
had the first down they needed. As promised, Coach V sent Ty for a long bomb on the very next play. He beat the defenders to the goal line by nearly ten yards, catching Poyer’s pass and closing the gap to 21–16. The team swarmed Ty, and the Halpern sideline erupted with joy. They kicked the extra point to make it 21–17, but they’d need another touchdown to win. When Ty returned to the sideline, Thane collared him and bent down to whisper in his ear.

“They won’t let you get that deep again,” Thane said. “I watched their coach grab the free safety when he came off the field. They’ll put him deep over the top of you every play, all the way to the goal line if they have to. The long bomb won’t work.”

“How about a comeback pass?” Ty asked.

Thane nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”

Ty grinned at him and went in search of Poyer.

The Halpern defense struggled to stop Brookfield. When they finally held, it was within field-goal range. Brookfield made the kick, widening their lead to 24–17. Halpern’s running back returned the kickoff to the forty, but as Ty jogged out onto the field, less than a minute remained.

Coach V called for Ty to run an out-cut, sprinting twelve yards up the field and breaking for the sideline. If he could catch the ball and get out-of-bounds, they’d close in on the goal line and stop the clock, too. It worked! The next time they tried the same thing, but there were three players guarding Ty now—one lined up inside, one outside, and one over the top to protect the end zone.

On third down, a Brookfield linebacker got through on a blitz and sacked Poyer. Fourth down would be the team’s last chance. Ty ran to the sideline.

“The comeback,” he said to Coach V. “Send me deep. Poyer knows what to do.”

A comeback pass would send Ty into and then back out of the end zone, with Poyer throwing the pass shorter than the last bomb he’d thrown.

Coach V jabbed his finger at the clock on the scoreboard. Only fifteen seconds remained.

“We’re out of time-outs!” the coach said. “You don’t get into the end zone, we can’t stop the clock and it’s over.”

“I’ll get in,” Ty said.

Coach V sucked his lower lip under his teeth but nodded and sent him back out onto the field, then signaled the play to Poyer. Ty lined up, eyeing the trio of defenders waiting for him. At the snap, he rocketed forward, sprinting for the end zone. The free safety took off for the goal line with a fifteen-yard head start. Ty left the two closer defenders in his dust, but the safety had turned and was waiting for him on the other side of the goal line, expecting the deep ball. Ty took two steps into the end zone, then suddenly stopped and darted back, the ball already in the air and coming down somewhere around the two-yard line.

Ty caught it, but the two lagging defenders caught up and hit him instantly, one high, one low. He twisted and pumped his legs. The safety, recovered from the deep fake, burst out of the end zone and launched himself at Ty’s head. Ty ducked, never stopping his feet, driving through the low tackler, dragging the high tackler with him another foot, then falling to the ground, the ball in his hands like a precious egg, his arms outstretched.

Touchdown.

In the riot of the celebration, Ty had the wind knocked out of him by his own teammates. Just five seconds remained. The score was 24–23. Coach V waved Ty and Poyer to the sideline, removed his glasses so they could see his eyes, and hung his arms around their shoulders.

“We can’t kick the extra point. We’ve got to go for two,” he said. “One play. Three yards. A fade route to Ty. They’re going to be looking for it. Poyer, you’ve got to throw it high into the corner.

“Ty, you’ve got to outjump them all. This is it.”

The two of them ran to the huddle. As the offense lined up on the ball, the crowd of parents and spectators from both sides rose to their feet, roaring so loud it made the quarterback’s voice difficult to hear. Four defenders surrounded Ty this time. He looked over to the sideline at his brother. Thumbs-up.

The center snapped the ball. Ty dodged the first defender but took a shot from the second. He stumbled, breaking inside, head faking the third before he broke back out for the corner of the end zone. The fourth defender was waiting for him. Ty got to the corner, turned, and leaped with all his might. The ball was already arriving in a blur, a forest of fingertips groping for it.

Ty stretched with every ounce of energy he had. It wasn’t enough. A Brookfield defender tipped the ball, knocking it off its path before Ty could get his hands on it. The ball flipped end over end, wobbling and falling toward the ground.

Ty watched it as he fell, knowing it was out of reach. Everything slowed and he heard a whisper from the past.

“YOU DON’T EVER QUIT,”
Thane said, flicking off the TV with the remote so that the two of them sat in the total dark with only the ghost of the TV screen anchoring them to their place in the universe. “That’s the rule. You never give up.”

“But the game was over,” Ty said, quiet in the emptiness.

“It’s not over until it’s over,” Thane said, speaking slowly, the way he did when he wanted Ty to remember. “You want to be a champion, you have to think that way, in everything you do. You never stop. You let yourself start to think that way, then the one time you could pull out a win because of some freak luck, you’re not ready for it. Maybe it’s only once in a lifetime, but that’s one win you’d never have, and who knows what that one win could do.”

It was over.

The ground came up fast, gravity snapping him into place, pounding his ribs and lungs with a powerful stroke, but his eyes stayed with the ball. He couldn’t quit. So, when the ball bounced off a defender’s shoulder pad and screwed sideways, his hands went with it. The ball dropped again, but his fingers stayed between it and the grass. Through the jolt of pain and shock, his fingers tightened and held on and he lifted his hands—with the ball—into the air. The referee looked down at Ty with an open mouth. He stood straight, lengthening the black-and-white stripes of his sleeves skyward to signal the score.

Two points.

Halpern 25, Brookfield 24.

They raised him up off the grass, his teammates. Then Coach V and his own brother each took a leg and raised him even higher. They paraded him around the field, a hero, as the Brookfield fans dispersed like a broken wave.

THE HAPPY BANTER OF
victory between Thane and Ty didn’t end until they pulled up to Uncle Gus’s later that day. A dark sedan with two serious-looking men in suits stood guarding the entrance to the drive. Inside the house, Aunt Virginia emerged from her bedroom with a suitcase in each hand, struggling under their weight. Uncle Gus pulled back the curtain every few seconds to peek out the picture window.

“You think those guys out there could stop a delivery truck?” he asked. “’Cause Big Al owns a truck line, you know.”

“You’re fine,” Agent Kline said, checking his watch.

“We’ve got you all on a six-thirty flight to Atlanta. The drive to Jacksonville is about five hours from there, but that’ll be best. They’ll take some evasive action out on the open highway. They’re pretty thorough.”

Mike walked in from the kitchen, carrying the stack of three square plastic milk cartons containing Ty’s worldly belongings.

“You got another suitcase for the kid’s things?” he asked Aunt Virginia.

Ty felt his jaw go slack. His skin prickled with panic. He felt as though he were suddenly peering over the edge of a cliff. He couldn’t see what waited beyond the edge, but he could sense the vast emptiness of it. Whatever waited out there, he knew it didn’t include his new football team, being on the sideline with the Jets, and Friday evenings out with his big brother.

Aunt Virginia frowned and shook her head. “I could double up a couple trash bags. That’d hold it all pretty good.”

“Where am I going?” Ty said.

Both agents, Aunt Virginia, and Uncle Gus stared at him.

“We’re not gonna just leave you,” Uncle Gus said.

“No matter how much you eat.”

Ty couldn’t bring himself to look at Thane. He could feel him, standing there, rigid, beside him. His older brother’s silence felt like a stranglehold on Ty’s throat.

“It’s time to tuck your uncle away someplace safe,” Agent Kline said.

“Do you think one of Lucy’s guys still might try to hurt Thane so he can’t play?” Ty asked the agent.

“I
would
have thought that,” Agent Kline said, “except Big Al heard about Lucy and he must have
put two and two together. We heard him on the wiretap betting the same amount of money he had on the Dolphins back on the Jets. So his money is safe.”

“Won’t they be mad at Thane?”

“Thane didn’t do anything to them,” Mike said, looking up as he dumped Ty’s things into the doubled-up plastic garbage bags. “He never cut a deal with anyone. Trust me—he’s as safe as the NFL comissioner.”

“Okay, let’s get it going,” Agent Kline said as Mike knotted the ends of the garbage bags, slinging them over his shoulder like a bizarre, oversized Santa.

Uncle Gus checked the window before hefting his own enormous suitcase and making for the door. Charlotte appeared from her room, wearing her school backpack, a pink plastic suitcase in one hand, and her iPod in the other. When her eyes met Ty’s, he thought he saw a flicker of sadness.

Ty felt Thane’s hand on his shoulder, but then Agent Kline tugged on his arm and Thane’s hand fell away. Outside, they loaded their things into the Crown Vic’s spacious trunk. Uncle Gus slid into the car and gripped the headrest of the seat in front of him. Aunt Virginia climbed in and rested her head in her hands. Charlotte went in last, closed the door, and rolled down the window so she could peer up at him.

“You can sit between us in the front,” Agent Kline said to Ty. “It’ll be a little tight, but the airport’s not that far.”

It was all happening too fast. Ty needed to catch
his breath, but there was Mike’s enormous paw on his other shoulder, leading him toward the car. And there was Thane, staring with his mouth hanging open, blinking in the late daylight, raising his hand in a feeble wave of good-bye.