First Team Read online

  Coach didn’t seem to find it funny or interesting. He looked at Brock’s feet. “You’ll have to get him some cleats, but he can run through the noncontact stuff with us this morning in his sneakers and it’ll count as a practice. He’ll need three practices before I can give him pads.”

  “Mind if I watch?”

  Coach shrugged and pointed at the bleachers. “It’s a free country.”

  Brock’s dad didn’t blink. “Nice.”

  Coach pinched the whistle hanging from his neck between two sausage fingers, brought it to his mouth, and blew it loud. “Let’s go! Line it up!”

  Mak tapped Brock’s arm. “Come on.”

  His dad said, “Good luck.”

  Brock muttered a thanks and hustled along behind Mak as the team fell into five lines across the goal line facing the field. Without fanfare, Coach Hewitt began tooting his whistle, and every time he did, another row of players would march off down the field, knees high reaching for the sky. Brock kept up and ignored the stares. He’d grown used to them. The new kid always got stared at. He let the looks pass through him like light through a window. From active stretching they went to agility stations. That’s when Brock realized there were two more coaches, one even shorter than Coach Hewitt and who smiled even less.

  “That’s Coach Van Kuffler,” Mak whispered.

  Coach Van Kuffler wore the face of a mean chipmunk, something Brock didn’t think possible.

  “Get on the line,” Coach Van Kuffler snarled, and it took Brock a second to realize the coach was talking to him.

  He jumped like he’d stepped in hot lava. “Sorry.”

  “Flatty.” Coach Van Kuffler’s disgusted mutter hardly qualified as a word, but Brock was nearly certain he’d said “Flatty.”

  Brock ran through the row of bags, in and out, chopping his feet until he cleared the last one, grunting with effort and nearly tumbling when his sneaker slipped out from under him on the grass.

  “What’s that mean? Flatty?” Brock whispered to Mak at the back of the line.

  “Don’t call me Flatty.” Mak glowered.

  “I didn’t. I just asked what it meant,” Brock said.

  Mak’s face relaxed, then his lips puckered. “Flathead. A dummy. A boob. Someone from the Flats . . .”

  “From . . . oh,” Brock replied, realization creeping into his head.

  “Don’t take that junk from nobody.” Mak lowered his voice to a growl. “You let people push you around ’cause you’re new, and you’re dead meat. Stick up for yourself. Smash them right in the mouth.”

  “Easy, Mak. It wasn’t a kid.” They were nearly back to the front of the line as the players ran back through the row of bags in the opposite direction. Brock shot a nervous glance at Coach Van Kuffler. “It was the coach.”

  Mak clenched his teeth. “He wouldn’t say that junk around my dad, I’ll tell you.”

  “It’s so bad?” Brock asked.

  “It’s the worst.”

  “Get the lead out, Koletsky,” Coach Van Kuffler snarled.

  Mak turned and worked his way through the bags. Brock took his turn and did his best, but slipped three times.

  “New kid looks like a clod.” Coach Van Kuffler grinned at a couple of the players in front, showing off his long yellow front teeth. “You ever play football before, New Kid?”

  Brock stayed silent, but shook his head.

  “Ha. How’d I know?”

  A couple of the kids in the front of the line snickered.

  “It’s just my shoes.” The words slipped free from Brock’s mouth before he could think.

  “You back-talking me?” The coach’s little face turned red. His front teeth pushed out from under his top lip like the sideways peak of a roof.

  Brock shook his head.

  “I say you were, New Kid. TAKE A LAP!” Coach Van Kuffler’s voice hit a hysterical high as he pointed toward the far goalpost.

  Brock took off at a jog.

  “FASTER!” the coach screamed at the top of his lungs.

  Brock ran faster. On his way back, he glanced up and saw his father frowning from the bleachers. Brock shrugged at him and raised his hands, palms up.

  “Don’t talk back.” His father’s voice floated down on him like a chilly mist, stern, but too quiet for the others to hear. “This isn’t baseball.”

  Brock clamped his teeth together and wondered if leaving this place after a few months might not be so bad after all.

  14

  The rest of the practice, Brock kept his mouth shut and tried his very best to do everything right. Still, whatever set Coach Van Kuffler off against him, no matter how small or silly, it seemed to be permanent. Even though Coach Hewitt was the head coach and ran the defense, he gave complete control of the offense to Coach Van Kuffler. So, when the team broke into skilled and strength positions on offense, Coach Van Kuffler laughed out loud when Brock tried to go with him and the quarterbacks, receivers, and running backs.

  Coach Van Kuffler stuck a finger in his ear and worked it around before he pointed toward the other end of the field. “Go on, get down there with Coach Delaney and the line. You’re a lineman. If you’re anything at all.”

  Brock looked down toward the other end of the field. Mak and the rest of the big guys were gathered around who he guessed was Coach Delaney along with Coach Hewitt and some yellow blocking dummies.

  “Can I just show you how I can throw, Coach?” Brock didn’t consider a harmless question talking back at all, but Coach Van Kuffler’s face twisted up and he leaned toward Brock.

  “You got a problem with me?”

  Behind the coach, the skill players stood in a small half circle. Brock knew that the one with the football in his hand was likely the quarterback, and he wore a smirk on his face that was less than nice. The boy was nearly as tall as Brock, but not as thick. Brock studied the quarterback’s pale-green eyes for some indication if the coach was serious, or just kidding around. The quarterback didn’t even blink.

  Brock shifted his stare into Coach Van Kuffler’s yellow-brown eyes. The left one had a ragged edge around the inside of his pupil and it gave the coach the look of a mad dog.

  “I got a good arm, Coach.” Brock dressed his words in a simpering tone of apology.

  “There’s an orangutan in the Columbus Zoo with a good arm,” Coach Van Kuffler said through clenched teeth. “You think I’m gonna have an orangutan play quarterback for me?”

  Brock could only shake his head and turn to go. Behind him, he heard Coach Van Kuffler barking orders to the remaining players, telling them the formation he wanted them to line up in. When he got to where the linemen were, Coach Hewitt, Coach Delaney, and the rest, even Mak, ignored him. They were too busy. Brock couldn’t wait to get the pads on and be a part of it. At least he’d be able to take his frustration out on someone. He watched with envy as Mak lined up and smashed people around, knocking half the other linemen to their backs when he blocked them.

  When the whistle blew, Mak would trudge back to the line, red-faced, glazed with sweat, and grinning like a fool. Once he winked at Brock, which made Brock feel at least a little better. There was someone who wanted him around, anyway.

  At the end of practice, they ran sprints until a third of the players lay retching in the grass. Brock held up, but he wondered how he would fare once he had to do all the contact work before the sprints. Coach Hewitt blew his whistle and called them all together.

  “We’re not working hard enough.” The coach glowered at his team. “Guys falling down? Puking themselves because we run twenty wind sprints? Is that what you’re gonna do in the fourth quarter? We open in less than three weeks against Moravia and I promise you, they are outworking you guys.”

  Brock looked around. Everyone hung his head.

  “All right. Don’t forget, tonight is the Mom’s Club meeting in the cafeteria for their bake sale. It’s not just the seventh-grade team, it’s for eighth, freshman, JV, and varsity, so make sure your moms ar
e there and I don’t get a call from Coach Spada asking what’s wrong with the seventh-grade team. You all got that?”

  Brock looked around. Everyone seemed good with this Mom’s Club thing. He wanted desperately for someone to raise his hand and ask—like he wanted to—what they should do if they didn’t have a mom. Brock couldn’t believe he was the only one. He kept looking, but no one spoke. Brock’s stomach knotted, and when everyone broke up, he walked toward Coach Hewitt, but veered off when the head coach stopped to talk with Coach Van Kuffler.

  Mak put a hand on his shoulder. “So, what’d you think? Hey, can I ride back with you guys?”

  “Sure.” Brock watched his dad walking down out of the bleachers to meet them.

  “Yeah,” Mak said, cheerfully. “I heard that stuff about quarterback. You better forget that, though, and just get ready to play the line with me.”

  “I got a really good arm. No one’s even seen it.”

  “Yeah, but that don’t matter.” Mak chuckled in a friendly way. “You could have an arm like Ben Roethlisberger, but you won’t play QB on this team.”

  Brock frowned and stopped Mak in his tracks. “But why not?”

  Mak angled his head back toward the field. “Is anyone throwing pass patterns with a couple of the receivers back there?”

  Brock looked around his new friend and saw a small handful of guys getting in some extra work after practice. “Yeah. A couple of them, and Coach Van Kuffler. I can stay after too. That’s no big deal.”

  “Yeah,” Mak said. “Coach Van Kuffler. You know who the first-team quarterback is?”

  15

  Brock shook his head. “No idea.”

  “Wally Van Kuffler. The coach’s nephew.” Mak took Brock by the arm and led him toward the bleachers. “It’s not polite to stare.”

  Brock dug in his heels to look back. Mak kept leading him away.

  “That’s his nephew?” Brock stopped again to watch Wally throw a corner route to Xaviar Archangel, one of the wide receivers. His uncle stood beside Wally, two inches shorter, with his arms folded across his chest and his Calhoun Football cap pulled down tight on his head. Wally’s pass wobbled and arced through the air. He missed the receiver by three yards. The ball hit and bounced, then rolled to a stop right at Brock’s feet.

  “Which is why you better set your sights on lining up at guard, right next to me.” Mak tugged at him again and talked with enthusiasm. “They’ll call us the Big Bang Theory. We’ll mangle people!”

  Brock shook free and scooped up the ball. Coach Hewitt had been talking to another player and he was on his way toward the school, already ten yards beyond Coach Van Kuffler and his nephew.

  “Coach Hewitt!” Brock hollered, and the head coach stopped and looked back.

  Brock was fifty yards from the coach. He took a step and rifled the football. It arced up into the air, spinning in a tight and perfect spiral. Coach Hewitt’s hands shot up in front of his face and he caught the ball. Brock smiled to himself, turned, and walked toward his father without saying anything else. Mak caught up to him.

  “That was like, fifty yards! You’re a lefty?”

  “I told you,” Brock said.

  “You got some arm,” Mak said.

  “He does.” Brock’s dad patted him on the shoulder and the three of them headed for the car.

  “How far can you throw it?” Mak asked. “That was like a perfect spiral.”

  Brock shrugged. “I have no idea. I never really tried. I’ve mostly just thrown a baseball except for fooling around a little with a football.”

  “Let them chew on that.” Brock’s dad unlocked the car and they all got in.

  Mak chattered excitedly as they drove back through town.

  “Hey, the library.” Brock’s dad slowed the car and turned into the parking lot of a tall old brick building with a clock tower. Since the clock read 2:35 and it wasn’t yet noon, Brock knew it was broken.

  “I could use a couple books,” Brock’s dad said. “Brock?”

  “Yes.”

  “You read, Mak?” Brock’s dad looked up into the rearview mirror and locked eyes with Mak.

  “Uh, sometimes. Kinda.”

  “Got a card?” Brock asked.

  “Not yet,” Mak said.

  “You can get one with us,” Brock said.

  “I got all this smelly equipment,” Mak said.

  “Come on.” Brock climbed out and opened the rear door. “They won’t care. You might want to take your helmet off, though.”

  “Yeah, my dad says that too.” Mak removed his helmet and laid it on the backseat. “He says I shouldn’t wear it in public places. My dad says manners are very important.”

  Brock stared at the purple indentations on Mak’s forehead.

  “What are you looking at?” Mak raised an eyebrow.

  “Doesn’t that hurt?” Brock pointed.

  “What, these?” Mak touched the marks. “Adaptable. That’s me. You can get used to anything. That’s what I’m doing. Making my equipment part of me. My dad says the human race only exists because we’re adaptable. Pretty cool, huh?”

  Brock couldn’t even reply.

  They all went inside and signed up for library cards, accepting temporary ones that would work until they got permanent ones in the mail. The librarian had a fiery head of curly red hair. She wore a purple dress with pink flowers that matched her lipstick, but Brock decided he liked her smile and the soft way she spoke. She did sniff suspiciously for a minute when she handed Mak his card, but then smiled, pretending he didn’t smell like spoiled milk, even though he kind of did. Brock’s dad thanked the librarian and disappeared in the grown-ups’ section while Brock led Mak into the corner where the librarian said they kept the middle-grade books.

  “Check this out.” Brock pulled a book by Gordon Korman from the shelf and handed it to Mak.

  “Ungifted?” Mak wrinkled his brow.

  “It’s hilarious.” Brock took down two books he’d been meaning to read, When You Reach Me and—for a laugh—Jon Scieszka’s Knucklehead.

  “Hey.” Mak pointed to When You Reach Me. “That looks like a girl book.”

  Brock twisted his lips. “There’s no ‘girl’ books or ‘boy’ books. Come on, Mak. You sound like a caveman.”

  “Well, I don’t know.” Mak looked around the empty library. “People here are kind of . . . old-fashioned, in a way.”

  “Like calling people flatheads?” Brock asked.

  “That’s different.” Mak’s face grew dark and his hands clenched.

  “What’s that all about?”

  Mak relaxed a bit and shrugged. “Just garbage. Some people think they’re special ’cause they live this side of the river. It’s not everyone, but a lot in football.”

  “Why football?” Brock sat at the reading table and Mak sat down across from him.

  “This town lives for football. I told you, the kids start playing at five.”

  “Five years old?”

  Mak nodded. “There’s a bunch of travel teams from the time kids are five until middle school, when you can play on the seventh-grade team. They’re expensive.”

  “Can’t you sell magazine subscriptions or something, though?” In Oklahoma, Brock and some classmates sold magazine subscriptions to pay for a trip to the Grand Canyon, a trip he never got to go on because they moved.

  “I guess, but they don’t. The fathers who run it are crazy. They try to keep kids out, I swear. Kids from the Flats. They make you fly all over and if the parents can’t go because of work or the money, well . . .”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “My dad says that’s life.” Mak nodded wisely.

  “Anyway, we’re in the school now,” Brock said.

  “It’s still political. Wally Van Kuffler has been QB since the age of five.”

  “They can’t have that much money. His uncle is a teacher.”

  “His dad’s an accountant. They live right off Main Street, but more than that, ev
eryone knows he’s the nephew of one of the middle-school coaches. The fathers on the travel teams just roll over when they see one of the real coaches coming, or their kids or family.”

  “So, Wally Van Kuffler is gonna be the quarterback because of his uncle and where he lives?”

  “In Calhoun he is.”

  Brock shook his head. “If this place is all about winning, they’re gonna play the best player. You’re on the first team. You live where I do.”

  “Sure, but you gotta be way better if you’re from the Flats. They don’t expect you to be first team. They expect the kids who’ve been in the program all their lives. And if you are that good, they’re not gonna make you quarterback. Maybe running back, but not QB. They save that for the rich kids.”

  Brock pointed at the book in Mak’s hands. “You ever really read a book before? A whole book, first page to last? Be honest.”

  Mak’s face reddened and he shrugged. “Not really.”

  “Well, you know what they say, right?”

  “What?”

  A grin crept across Brock’s face. “There’s a first time for everything.”

  16

  Brock got up and Mak followed him to the checkout counter in the front of the library. The long wooden counter stood empty. A small fan whirred, pushing warm air across their faces before it rotated away. A notice about a summer book club fluttered on the wall, struggling to free itself from the pushpins holding it to the corkboard. Brock stretched his neck and looked around for a sign of the librarian. When no one appeared, Brock reached out and struck a chrome bell with the palm of his hand, and the ding cracked the silence.

  From the doorway behind the counter, a girl emerged. Brock caught his breath. A pink headband pulled the long blond hair off her face and it fell behind her ears, straight to her shoulders, shiny as gold. Her big blue eyes sparkled in a friendly way and the whiteness of her smile was enough to make Brock’s eyes blink while his heart raced. She might be his age, but she might be older. She stood tall and straight, like a track athlete, maybe a basketball player. She wore white shorts and a pink sleeveless shirt that matched her hair band.