Football Champ (2009) Page 2

  Peele emerged from the crowd, tall and thin like a crane bird, with pants short enough to show the black socks he wore with his sneakers.

  "How'd you get here?" Troy asked, unable to contain the question.

  "I'm a reporter," Peele said. "I've got my ways."

  Dipping his face down toward Troy's, he asked, "So, how is it you help the Falcons steal the other team's plays?"

  "What are you talking about?" Troy said. He looked around for help but saw only fast-moving adults in overcoats hurrying for their planes.

  "This team makes a turnaround too good to be true," Peele said, squinting, "and it is too good to be true. Same thing goes for Halloway. He was washed up last year, and all of a sudden people are talking Pro Bowl. He's no faster or stronger, same broken-down knees, but now he's always in the right place at the right time. Gee, how does that happen?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about," Troy said, squirming to get away.

  "Do you read the coaches' lips?" Peele asked. "What, you hack into the frequency on their quarterback radio?"

  "You're nuts," Troy said.

  "Where's your father?" Peele asked, looking around without loosening his grip.

  Troy's throat tightened. He had no father, not one he knew, anyway. His mother didn't talk much about the man who had abandoned them before Troy was born. This left Troy with a vague feeling of hatred for his father, but what bothered him even more was the contradictory feeling of wanting to one day find the man and impress him. So disturbing were these feelings that even the mention of his father by a stranger--someone he didn't even care about--cut Troy deep.

  "Leave me alone!" Troy shouted.

  "Easy now," Peele said, softening his voice. "You're just a kid. You're not doing anything wrong here, but the team is. I know just what they're doing, trying to keep people from suspecting by using a kid."

  "You're crazy," Troy said, loud enough to make a few people glance at him on their way past.

  "Not quite," Peele said, lowering his voice even more, "and if you keep shouting, someone's going to call the police. I don't have a problem with that. I'm a reporter after a story. What's your explanation going to be?"

  "It's a free country," Troy said.

  "Not for kids," Peele said.

  "Okay, okay," Troy said, going limp. "I'll take you to my dad. I'm supposed to meet him at the American Airlines desk."

  "American?" Peele said, frowning. "That's in another terminal."

  "Well, I don't know," Troy said, raising his shoulders before dropping them.

  "Come on," Peele said. "This way."

  Troy let the reporter steer him toward an escalator, riding it down with him. All the while Troy studied the signs to remember where everything was. Peele took him through a tunnel and up another set of escalators to the platform for the train that ran to the American Airlines terminal.

  "You want to tell me how much they're paying you?" Peele asked, his tone smooth and oily.

  Troy shrugged and said, "My dad will know."

  "You live in Atlanta?" Peele asked as the train groaned into the station. Its doors banged open, and a computerized voice told everyone to get on.

  "Not really," Troy said, quickly taking a seat facing the doors.

  Peele sat down next to him but kept a hand on the right sleeve of Troy's parka. Troy unzipped the coat and wormed his left arm out of its sleeve.

  The instant the doors beeped and started to shut, Troy stamped on the arch of Peele's foot, flew out of the parka, and launched himself toward the closing doors.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TROY DIDN'T STOP TO WATCH the train. He sprinted down the escalator and back through the tunnel into the Delta terminal and up again to the counter, turning this way and that in search of his mom.

  He walked the length of the counter and had just started back toward the other end when he heard his name above the noise of the crowded terminal. He spun and saw a hand waving frantically above people's heads.

  "Mom!" he shouted.

  She broke through the mob and hugged him tight. "Are you okay?"

  Troy glanced at the clock: 8:42.

  "The plane," he said. "Did it wait?"

  "Maybe. Are you okay?"

  "That guy grabbed me," Troy said, explaining what happened as they sprinted, hand in hand, through the terminal.

  His mom flashed him a grin when he told her about stomping on Peele's instep and she said, "You did good."

  As soon as Troy and his mom reached the security gate, a Delta supervisor in a red blazer and a TSA agent hustled them past the line and down several back hallways until they were outside in the foggy light of the tarmac. The smell of spent fuel turned Troy's stomach, and he plugged his ears against the scream of jet engines as they dashed across the grooved concrete. The Delta 727 charter sat by itself, away from the terminals. The team buses were chugging away, adding black clouds of diesel to the stench.

  Troy pointed to the stairway being tugged free from the plane by a small tractor and said, "They're leaving."

  His mom said nothing but dragged him toward the tail of the plane, where a narrow set of stairs still remained, like a forgotten toilet paper streamer. They dashed for the stairs, but with about twenty feet to go, the steps began to slowly retract into the tail of the plane. Troy's mom shouted and grabbed for the railing.

  A flight attendant hollered something at her from inside the plane above them.

  "We're with the team!" Troy's mom shouted.

  The flight attendant's mouth dropped open. She pushed a different button and the stairs began to grind back down. Troy's mom leaped up the steps, and he followed.

  "I'm sorry," the flight attendant said. "I thought we were supposed to leave without you."

  "The terminal was swamped," Troy's mom said.

  Seth was sitting only a couple seats from the back, wearing jeans, cowboy boots, and a white button-down shirt. The other players around him, big men who spilled over the edges of their seats and into the aisle, were already playing cards with one another. Seth set down his Coke and hustled into the galley, where Troy and his mom stood.

  "Peele thinks we're stealing the other teams' plays when they make their calls," Troy said.

  "Peele probably thinks he can win himself a Pulitzer Prize if he breaks a story and convinces people we're stealing plays," Seth said. "And if he can somehow ruin me in the process, all the better for him. The guy hates me."

  Troy said in a soft voice, "But we're not cheating. Why can't we just tell Peele it's me? That I know the plays from watching what they did before. That there's a pattern. Tell him it's the same thing that every team does with computers when they study game film to learn the other teams' tendencies? Tell him I'm like this football 'genius.'"

  "He'll laugh," his mom said. "He's not going to believe us."

  "I can show him," Troy said, his face growing warm. "No one believes me until I show them."

  "Except that Mr. Langan wants this to stay quiet, remember?" Seth said. "That's part of the deal. If he knows Peele is on to us, he might just shut the whole thing down."

  The pilot's voice came on the loudspeaker and told everyone to find their seats and buckle in because they were cleared for takeoff.

  Troy's mom said, "I better get up there with the rest of the staff. I won't say anything until we get a chance to talk more after we land."

  Even though Troy's mom and Seth were a serious couple, they tried not to let anyone on the team--players or front office people--know about it. Troy's mom had gotten the job with the team on her own, before she even knew Seth, and she didn't want people to think anything different. So she sat up with the rest of the team's front office employees. Troy, however, as a "ball boy" and well liked by everyone, got to sit in the players' section.

  "We can't let Peele stop us," Troy said to Seth after his mom had gone and the two of them sat in their own row, with an empty seat between them. "We can make the playoffs if we keep going. That's what everyone wants, espe
cially Mr. Langan."

  "They want that, yes," Seth said, "but they don't want trouble to come along with it."

  "I thought teams did anything to win," Troy said.

  "Some do," Seth said, "but not Mr. Langan. He doesn't have to win. He wants to win, but it's not going to make or break him if we do or don't. What he doesn't want is anything to hurt his reputation. That's even more important to him than winning."

  "How would I hurt his reputation?" Troy asked, buckling his seat belt as the plane lurched forward. "What if I can prove to Peele that what we're doing isn't wrong?"

  Troy remembered a time when no one except his grandfather believed him. It was only after he proved he could predict what plays the other team would run that the Falcons had let him help them win their last several games.

  "No. I'm sorry, Troy. People will twist this around," Seth said as they rolled toward the runway. "Especially someone like Peele."

  Troy clamped his mouth shut tight, thinking about what Seth said. The plane's engines began to roar. They lifted off the ground and an air pocket buffeted them sideways. Troy's stomach flipped, and he dug his fingers into the armrest of his seat.

  "But he can't say it's wrong when it isn't," Troy finally said. "I'm not doing anything wrong!"

  "Buddy," Seth said, looking over at him with a funny smile, "welcome to the NFL. They don't have to write the truth. They just want to sell papers. As soon as Peele can prove you're involved with calling the defensive plays, he'll be able to blow it up into a huge scandal. It'll be ten times worse than that mess with the Patriots filming the Rams' practice before the Super Bowl. No one is going to believe you can do what we know you can do. The damage will be done before the real truth ever comes out. It'll be the end for you, me, my career, and probably your mom's job, too."

  CHAPTER SIX

  "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, no football practice?" Tate asked on Monday, pounding a fist on the lunch table and glaring at Troy with her big brown eyes. "This is the playoffs, the semifinals. We win Saturday and we go to the state championship. We have to practice."

  Troy stuffed the rest of his ham sandwich into his mouth, chewed, and said, "My mom called the office, and we have to meet with Mr. Langan at seven o'clock tonight. Me, my mom, and Seth, too. It's important," Troy added, thinking about the ten thousand dollars a week the team was supposed to pay him, Seth's career, and his mom's job.

  "Well, we can't have practice without our star quarterback and our head coach," Nathan said, filling his own mouth with Doritos and crunching loudly. Nathan was the biggest kid in Troy's grade and the anchor of the Duluth Tigers' line. Troy and Tate also played for the junior league team.

  Jamie Renfro, a tall boy with dark curly hair, stopped behind Nathan with a lunch tray in his hands.

  "Star quarterback?" Jamie said with a mean smile. "You guys are a joke. You got lucky just to be in the playoffs, and even luckier to steal a couple games, but your luck just ran out. The Dunwoody Dragons are going to eat you for a snack on Saturday."

  "Snack on this," Nathan said, opening his mouth to reveal a smelly glob of chewed-up Doritos, letting it fall into his open palm, and offering it up to Jamie.

  Jamie's eyes went wide and he retched like he might throw up.

  "You're sick," Jamie said, walking away with a hand on his stomach.

  "He's just jealous," Tate said, watching Jamie go, "but you are kind of sick."

  "So? His dad shouldn't have quit as our coach before the last regular-season game," Nathan said as the glob slipped from his hand and plopped to the floor.

  "Gross," Tate said.

  Nathan's eyes went wide. He ran a hand over the stubble of his crew cut, scooped up the blob, and popped it back into his mouth with the rest of the mess.

  "Two-second rule," Nathan said, talking through his food, this time keeping it in his mouth.

  "Two-second rule?" Tate said.

  Troy shook his head and said, "If it's not on the floor for more than two seconds, you can pick it up and eat it."

  "I think I'm going to be sick," Tate said, her face rumpled in disgust.

  "It's a good thing Mr. Renfro did quit," Troy said. "Otherwise Seth wouldn't be our coach and we wouldn't have beaten anyone. We were lucky to get into the playoffs when Norcross got disqualified, but after that, it's been all Seth."

  "And you, too," Tate said. "Seth changed things around and made us a lot better, but Jamie couldn't have thrown all the touchdown passes you've thrown in the past three weeks. Good thing he walked away with his dad."

  "It's been all of us," Troy said to Tate. "You're the best kicker in the state, and Nathan's a monster."

  "I like that," Nathan said, grinning large. "The Monster. Did you guys know that this is the first time Duluth has ever had a team make it this far?"

  "That's why there's been, like, two thousand people at our games," Tate said. "Everyone's talking about us. We win Saturday and we get to play for the championship. You want to be a champ, don't you?"

  "Sheesh, I've never been a champ in anything," Nathan said, running his hand over his crew cut again. "How come you can't meet with Mr. Langan earlier?"

  "He stayed in Chicago on business," Troy said. "He won't be back until seven. My mom and Seth are pretty nervous about this Peele guy."

  On the bus ride to school that morning, Troy had already told them everything that happened over the weekend, filling in the blanks while walking the halls between classes.

  "I think it would be awesome to have this guy do a big spread on you in the newspaper," Nathan said. "Maybe a color photo or something? Fame is fame. Look at all the pop stars."

  "Nathan," Tate said, quiet, but serious, "half the pop stars' lives are like train wrecks."

  "Well, they drive nice cars," Nathan said.

  Tate rolled her eyes.

  "It's just one practice," Troy said. "It won't kill us."

  "But the Dunwoody Dragons might kill us," Tate said. "I heard Jamie talking in gym class right before lunch. His cousin plays on that team. He's six feet tall."

  "Six feet?" Nathan said through his food.

  "If he's as bad as Jamie, we'll be all set," Troy said.

  "If he's as mean as Jamie and that big and he plays on their defensive line," Nathan said, "you better be ready to scramble."

  "You're not going to protect me?" Troy asked. "What is that?"

  "I'll try--hit him low in the knees--but six feet? Sheesh," Nathan said, swiping his hand over his bristles of hair.

  "I'm more worried about our playbook," Tate said, "and Jamie's father giving it to the Dunwoody coaches."

  "Our playbook?" Troy said, alarmed. "That's cheating. Even with Seth changing things up, we use the same number system, and half the plays we run I call at the line. If they get our playbook, we won't stand a chance. He wouldn't do that."

  "Oh?" Tate said, raising her eyebrows. "Wouldn't he? Wait till I tell you what else I heard."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  TROY AND NATHAN LEANED toward her.

  "Sara Parks told Jamie in front of everyone that he and his dad were rotten to root for Dunwoody when we all live in Duluth," Tate said. "So then Jamie went all red, told her that his dad made the playbook and he could do what he wanted with it. He said if Seth Halloway wanted to have a team, he could make up his own playbook."

  "But Seth has us running some new plays," Nathan said.

  "We run a lot of old ones, though," Troy said, scowling and balling up the cellophane from his sandwich. "You can't learn all new plays in a week or two. He's the one who quit on the team.

  "We'll have to change our calls. It'll be like learning a whole new language. If we don't, they'll know where the ball is going every time we call a play at the line."

  Nathan frowned and said, "Yeah, didn't you call the play at the line last week on, like, every touchdown?"

  "That's because he can read the defenses," Tate said. "Have you been paying attention to everything going on here for the past month? The Falcons hired him because h
e can predict plays. He knows what the other team is going to do."

  "That's in the NFL, though," Nathan said, scratching at his crew cut.

  "Football is football," Tate said.

  "Sheesh, now I got a girl telling me about football," Nathan said, plastering his hand over his face.

  "Not just a girl," Troy said. "A girl who won the punt, pass, and kick contest against the boys, and a girl who kicked the winning field goal that got us into the playoffs after some big lug--I won't say his name--got a holding penalty that kept us out of the end zone."

  "Hey, that was an aggressive mistake," Nathan said.

  "Don't worry," Tate said to Troy, "he doesn't mean it."

  "How could somebody be that low?" Troy asked.

  "Who's low?" Nathan said.

  "No, not you," Troy said. "I'm talking about Mr. Renfro giving our playbook away."

  "Because the only person who hates you more than Jamie Renfro," Tate said, "is his father."

  "And I bet he hates Seth even more," Nathan said.

  "Like you said," Troy said, "he shouldn't have quit the team."

  "He thought he was getting back at us by making us forfeit after Tate's mom complained to the league about all his screaming and yelling," Nathan said, "but we got the last laugh."

  "Then let's work on it after school," Tate said. "We can go through the plays we run the most and start changing the names. And Troy, you can change the hot calls. We can write it all down and give it to Seth so he doesn't have to worry about it. He can just coach us on the football stuff."

  "Great idea," Troy said, smiling at her. "We can go to my house."

  "And I'll make the dip," Nathan said.

  "Dip?" Troy asked.

  "For chips and dip," Nathan said. "I love those blue corn things your mom buys, and I got a new recipe: sour cream, garlic, chives, and Tabasco sauce. A man's gotta eat, you know."

  When the school bus dropped them off, Troy and his friends walked the long dirt road to the small saltbox house where he lived with his mom, in a stand of towering pines by the railroad tracks. The gritty red clay lot in front where his mom parked the car stood empty except for a scattering of pine needles too stubborn for the wind. The old tire Troy used as a target for throwing footballs drifted gently back and forth in the pleasant November breeze, and the sky overhead blinded them with the brilliance of its blue.