Showdown Page 4

  “And uh . . .” Eva looks away from me, like she’s suddenly embarrassed. “Let me know how this all turns out.”

  “I will,” I say. She smiles at me as she pulls away, and I head across the lawn and to the side of my house.

  Just as I’m about to climb back in my window, I remember my manure-covered shoes, which I slip off and leave outside. I’ll have to hose them down in the morning. There’s no way I can bring them into the house.

  Back in my room, I realize my clothes reek too. I take them off, spray them with some body spray, and shove them under my bed beside the clothes that have frosting all over them. I’m going to have to do a full load of secret laundry when Gram’s not home. I’m down to one clean pair of jeans.

  Just as I’m about to drift off to sleep, the phone in the kitchen rings. Two rings. Three rings. And then I hear Gram answer. My heart feels like it has stopped beating, and I’m suddenly having a hard time breathing. I know that a call this late at night never brings good news. Something must have happened to my mom.

  Chapter 13

  Gram knocks on my door and enters my room with the kitchen phone in her hand.

  “Your coach wants to talk to you.”

  I’m instantly relieved that it isn’t bad news about my mom, but that relief doesn’t last long. Now I’m scared to know why Coach is calling me this late at home.

  I sit up in my bed and pretend I’ve been asleep for hours.

  “Hello,” I say into the phone in a sleepy voice.

  “Toby?”

  “Yeah, Coach?”

  “You’re at home? In bed?”

  “Ahh, yeah,” I say, looking at my Gram standing in the doorway.

  “Good,” he says. “That’s where you should be. Now get some sleep.”

  He hangs up the phone.

  Gram sits down on the end of my bed and takes the phone from me.

  “Sounds like some of your teammates got into trouble tonight,” she says to me. “Do you know what they were up to?”

  I shake my head.

  She brushes the hair away from my forehead. And then she wrinkles her nose. “Why do you smell like the inside of a barn?”

  Chapter 14

  I tell Gram everything. I’ve felt so guilty lying to her these past few days, and it doesn’t seem worth it anymore. She’ll find out what happened soon enough, so I might as well let her know now.

  “You need to call your coach back,” she says. “Tell him what you just told me. It’s better to tell the truth and take the punishment right away than to let it simmer for too long and get worse.”

  She gestures to my cell phone and leaves the room, but instead of calling Coach, I text Walter.

  Me: You up?

  Him: Yeah.

  Me: Did you talk to Coach?

  Him: Yeah. Good thing we were home and in bed. Did you hear what happened?

  Me: No.

  Him: Neko, Cam, and six other seniors were caught breaking into the locker room. They set off some alarm, and the police came. They all got hauled down to the police station.

  Me: What’s going to happen to them?

  Him: It won’t be good.

  We agree to meet in the morning, and I crawl farther under the covers of my bed. I know I should call Coach, but I also know that he’s probably dealing with a lot right now. So I decide that I’ll talk to him in the morning. Besides, my mom has always told me it’s better to talk to someone face-to-face.

  I try to fall asleep, but I toss and turn. I hear Gram get up at five, but I just lie in bed wide awake, wondering what will happen to me when I tell Coach I was part of this whole thing.

  Chapter 15

  Walter and I walk slowly to school in the morning. I told him what Gram said and have convinced him to turn himself in with me. We’re both nervous. Walter isn’t even snacking on anything. We don’t know what will happen to the guys who were caught, and we don’t know what will happen to us.

  As we make our way through the parking lot at school, we see what the Wildcats were up to. In front of our school, a dumpster has been tipped over. Beneath the pile of garbage are the words Trash Edison, spray-painted in huge blaze orange letters on the sidewalk.

  “That’s not even the worst part,” one of the guys from our team says, coming up to us. “Check out what they did to our field.”

  We walk to the chain-link fence that surrounds our field, and I see big patches of dead grass. It looks like the Winfield guys poured some sort of weed or grass killer in the shape of a W on it last night. The grass is yellow and shriveled. We see Coach and our principal standing out there.

  “We should talk to him.” I turn to Walter.

  “Not now,” Walter says, and I know he’s right. Even from this far away, I can see that Coach is more upset than I’ve seen him before. He’s pacing back and forth. He’s kicking at the grass, and the principal shakes her head.

  Walter checks his phone as we head to class.

  “They’ve been suspended,” he says.

  “Who?” I ask.

  “Neko, Cam, and the others.”

  “From school?”

  “Not just that,” Walter says. “From our team. They aren’t going to state. The only two seniors left are Zander and Jason.”

  “What?” I say, shocked. “We’ve lost almost all of our good starters. How are we going to even play?”

  I look over at the spray-painted sidewalk in front of our school and get even angrier.

  “What about the Wildcats?” I ask as we walk into the building. “What about what they did? Did any of those guys get caught and punished?”

  “I haven’t heard anything. I have a feeling they got away with it.”

  It turns out that pretty much the whole school has heard about what happened—and a lot of people are angry at our team. We just threw away our chances at winning state. Those of us who weren’t involved with the break-in, who aren’t suspended, still get plenty of glares in the hall.

  “What were you guys thinking?” people ask again and again. Even my teachers seem disappointed in me. And I can’t act like I had nothing to do with any of it because I did. If it hadn’t been for Neko’s stupid comment about my mom, I might have been at Winfield High and gotten suspended too. I’d like to think I would have walked away with Jason and the others, but I’m not so sure I would have been able to.

  ***

  When the bell rings for lunch, I convince Walter that we should go down to Coach’s office. I don’t want to walk into the cafeteria anyway. I don’t want to feel all those eyes. I feel like our team has betrayed our school.

  My stomach is in knots as we walk to Coach’s office.

  I take a deep breath and knock on the door.

  “Come in!” he shouts.

  Coach is sitting at his desk. He’s scrolling through news articles on his computer. He looks exhausted and hurt. We’ve had such a great season. A winning season. He’s been so proud of this team, and now we’ve let him down.

  “Boys,” he says, not looking up.

  “We wanted to talk,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm and even.

  He points to two chairs in front of his desk. “Talk,” he says, looking at the two of us.

  “I wanted to tell you that I was in on the prank,” I say.

  “But we never went to Winfield High,” Walter interrupts. “We weren’t there for that part. We didn’t know they were going to break into the school. The original plan was just to go on the field.”

  “We filled bags with cow poop,” I say. “The plan was just to spread it on the field. That was all.”

  “I know you two weren’t there,” Coach says. “There’s video.”

  “We just wanted to say we’re sorry,” I say. “Really sorry. We should’ve stopped the whole thing, but we didn’t.”

  Coach doesn’t say anything. His silence is worse than yelling. He just stares at his computer screen.

  Walter and I look at each other, not sure if we should stand up and le
ave or just sit there.

  Finally Coach says, “You two are the only ones who’ve come in to speak to me today.”

  Walter and I both look down at the floor.

  “I’m not happy that you were part of this,” Coach continues, “but I’m glad you and some of the other guys were smart enough to walk away.”

  Coach stands up and moves to a window that overlooks the football field.

  “You two are going to have to work harder than you’ve ever worked before. You’ll be starting at state. We’ve lost our top players, so you and the rest of the team are going to have to step up. And because you two were the first ones with enough guts to talk to me face to face, you’ll be my team captains for the next few days.”

  Walter looks at me. I’m not sure what to say, so I just do what Gram told me to do when someone gives me something—stand up, stretch out your hand, and say, “Thank you.”

  Coach shakes my hand.

  Walter stands up and sticks out his hand too.

  I leave Coach’s office feeling as if we’re in over our heads. There wasn’t a lot of pressure just sitting on the bench. The winning wasn’t really up to us. We spent most of the year in the background, but now we’re both going to play at state. We’re going to have to lead. We’re going to have to try to get this team back on our feet after losing most of our top players—our biggest and best.

  “I don’t know how we’re going to do this,” Walter says as we head back to class.

  “I don’t either,” I agree. “But we don’t have a choice.”

  “Do you think Neko will murder us in our sleep?” Walter asks. I think he’s only half joking.

  “I don’t think he cares about us right now,” I say as we stop at my locker and I take out some books. “He’s been kicked off the team. He’s not going to state. He might even end up in jail.”

  Chapter 16

  Practice is tough. It feels like we just buried half our team, and as if losing our star players wasn’t bad enough, we have to run plays across the chemically scarred grass. Nobody is focused on practice or even state anymore.

  Everyone keeps asking, “How are we going to do this? How are we going to win?”

  Coach doesn’t even give us a pep talk. He’s too busy moving players to new positions, trying to come up with a new plan.

  “Get them focused,” Coach tells Walter and me before practice. “Get them running plays.”

  Walter and I try, but it isn’t happening. No one is even trying. The whole practice is a big fat mess.

  I call everyone together at the end of practice. “Team dinner. My house. Seven. Everyone be there,” I say with as much authority as I can manage.

  I’ve decided that if there is one thing this team needs, it’s a good meal. And maybe that will change everyone’s attitude. Gram always feeds people when things are bad, so I’ve decided I’ll use the same strategy.

  Coach catches my eye and nods. I guess he approves.

  I rush home to warn Gram that I’ve just invited the entire team over. Before I even finish my sentence, she’s opening cupboards and pulling out pans. She sends me into the basement to haul up some of her canned tomatoes and dried basil. Then she has me set up our giant card table and folding chairs in the garage.

  I’m not totally sure anyone will show up. Most of the upperclassmen are used to ignoring me. What if I’ve made Gram do all this work for nothing?

  But at seven the whole team arrives, including Coach. Everyone is quiet at first, but by the end of dinner, even Coach is smiling. The energy in the room is so much different than it was at practice earlier. We might just be okay, I think to myself.

  Everyone thanks Gram when they leave, and she gives everyone a hug. It’s a funny scene, all these big guys in Gram’s skinny arms.

  When it’s Coach’s turn he adds, “I’ve missed your cooking. The school cafeteria isn’t the same without it. Thank you for feeding us all tonight.”

  “Oh, this?” she says. “This is something I just whipped up. Imagine what I’ll feed you all if you win state.”

  ***

  The next day at practice, we slowly get it together. Play by play, we build up our confidence. Walter is faster than he was just a few months ago, and his height is an advantage. He’s able to pick balls out of the air.

  Halfway through practice, I see Neko’s truck parked next to a road overlooking the field. He and a few guys are watching us. It makes me nervous, and I mess up two plays. Coach calls me over.

  “You know this,” he tells me. “You can run these plays. You’re ready for this. Just have confidence in yourself.”

  I’m rattled by Neko and the others watching, but I don’t tell Coach. I’m hoping they’ll just go away, and sure enough, in a few minutes, they’re gone.

  After practice, while Walter and I are walking home, we know before we turn around that Neko’s truck is right behind us. We know the sound of the engine, the tires, the music he plays.

  Neko pulls up beside us. “Get in.”

  Chapter 17

  “Gotta get home,” Walter says. “I can’t be late.”

  “Get in,” Neko says again. “You two have some work to do.”

  I look at Walter and nod. I don’t think Neko is out to get us, but I’m not totally sure. I do know that I want him to see that I’m not afraid of him. I walk around the truck and open the passenger door. Walter follows, and we both climb in.

  Neko drives to the edge of town—to the empty field where we met to plan our first prank.

  “Get out,” he says.

  We slide out and he gets out too. A minute later, Cam and some of the other guys show up.

  “So you two are the new team captains?” Neko asks, looking us up and down.

  “Kind of,” Walter replies.

  “Are you or aren’t you?” Neko asks again.

  “Yes,” I say. “For now.”

  “Then you’ve got to be ready.”

  He grabs a bag of footballs and some orange cones out of the back his trunk, and we follow him down to the field.

  For an hour, Neko and the other guys coach us.

  “You have to be faster,” Neko shouts when I step back to throw the ball. “The Wildcats aren’t just fast, they’re mean. They’ll get in your face. They’ll try to rattle you. They’ll send their biggest linemen to crush you like a grape. So whatever you do, keep your eyes up, and don’t ever stop moving your feet.”

  We set up a formation. Cam snaps the ball, and Neko and two other linemen descend on me before I can even look for a receiver.

  They don’t hit me hard, but they push me to let me know they got to me.

  “Faster,” Neko says, and we run the play again.

  After a dozen times, I finally get faster and more accurate when forced to throw under pressure, and Walter gets better at knowing where to expect the ball.

  “Coach is going to want you to call a lot of lateral passes,” Neko tells me. “But I’m sure the Wildcats are going to expect it too, so you’re going to have to use that arm of yours and throw the ball long. You’ve got a good, tall friend who can catch whatever you throw. You two are a team. You’ve got this.”

  We practice for an hour and agree to meet again the next day.

  As Neko drives us back to our neighborhood, I ask about the Wildcats and about the guys who ruined our field and spray-painted the sidewalk in front of our school.

  “The school’s security cameras weren’t working. I guess they haven’t worked for months. Too expensive to repair. So they have no evidence and no way of proving which guys vandalized our school.”

  “We saw Lars’s BMW drive out of the parking lot,” Walter says.

  “Yeah,” Neko says. “That doesn’t matter. No one is going to believe you. You’re an Eddie with a grudge.”

  Neko drops off Walter and then pulls into my driveway. I see Gram at the window. She’s probably wondering where I’ve been.

  “Do you want to come inside?” I say. “On Thursdays my
Gram makes this incredible bread.”

  Neko sits there for a moment.

  “Come in,” I say. “Just for a slice.”

  “Sure,” Neko finally says. “What else do I have to do?”

  Inside, I introduce Neko to Gram. “He’s been helping me get ready for state,” I tell her.

  Neko looks embarrassed. “Least I can do,” he mumbles. “I’m the reason you’re carrying all this pressure.” I’m sure Gram knows he’s one of the guys who got suspended, but she doesn’t treat him any differently than she treats Walter. She just has us sit down in the kitchen and cuts each of us a huge slice of bread.

  He takes a bite, and a broad smile forms across his face.

  Gram pours herself a cup of tea and walks back to her room, leaving us alone.

  “I messed up,” Neko whispers when we’re alone in the kitchen.

  I study him. He doesn’t seem to look as big anymore. He used to stand up tall like he owned the place wherever he went, but now he shuffles along, head down, from place to place. It’s like he was a balloon and someone let all of the air out of him.

  “Yeah, you did. But it doesn’t have to be the end for you,” I say. “ Maybe what you need to do now to get past this is apologize. Apologize, fix what you can, and things will work themselves out.”

  “Yeah,” Neko says, looking at me. “I don’t know.”

  “I do,” I say. “You made a mistake. Just admit it. What do you have to lose?”

  Chapter 18

  On Friday we make the near-silent bus ride to state. It’s less than an hour to the city, but the ride seems to take forever. There’s an emptiness without Neko and Cam and the other guys on board. The usual energy on the bus before a game is gone. No one is joking around. All of us are lost in our own thoughts.

  Yesterday Neko apologized to Coach and to our team. Then he wrote a letter of apology and submitted it to the school newspaper—and the Winfield newspaper. It hasn’t run the papers yet, but it’s already spread all over social media. He talked about making amends for what he and the other guys had done.

  Instead of going to state, Neko, Cam, and the rest of the guys are spending the weekend scrubbing down the Wildcats’ locker room and repainting each and every locker with a fresh coat of paint, then digging up the dead grass and repairing our football field. It’s good to know that whatever happens at state, we’ll all have a fresh start next season.