Game Changers (3 page)

It had been complicated between Ben and Shawn from the time they started playing together last season, even before Shawn's dad had started coaching the team.

There were no
huge
problems between them, even if Ben didn't always like the way Shawn acted on the field. There were other guys he wanted to tell to dial it down a notch once in a while when they got too excited after a good play or started acting crazy after a bad one. And there were other guys on the team who sometimes looked like blamers when something would go wrong. All part of being on a team. They all had the same goal — win the game — but they were all different.

Still: A year after Shawn had moved to town, Ben felt as if they really didn't know each other, almost like Shawn didn't care whether he got to know his teammates or not.

Shawn's dad wanted him to be a team leader, but as far as Ben could tell, he was anything but. Ben wanted him to be a leader, wanted him to act like a better teammate and a better guy. Wanted him to be the kind of player who made the other
players better, because Ben thought that's what a quarterback should do.

He just wasn't sure how to do something about it. Or if it was his place to do something about it. If his own father couldn't get him to act like more of a team guy, how could one of his teammates?

And this was about more than Shawn having the job Ben wanted. At least Ben hoped it was.

Once the games started last season, they actually got along fine. Ben knew it wasn't like that with other guys on the team, but he never tried to big-time Ben, not once. In fact, over the last half of the season, when their team won five straight games and just missed going to the championship of the Bantam Division — the two teams with the best record getting to play for the championship — it was Shawn who went to Coach Bucci and told him Ben should be running the ball more and he, Shawn, should be throwing it less, now that his hot streaks were coming less and less frequently, when he was missing a lot more throws than he was making.

Shawn was still the one who got under center and called the signals. But when they got hot at the end of the year, made their run, he seemed happy to call Ben's signal as often as possible.

Suddenly being a better teammate than he had been all season.

In their last game, when they were coming from behind against Harlan, Shawn even did something he'd hardly done at all during the season, changed the play that Coach Bucci had
sent in, calling for a short pass to Ben instead of a long one to Sam down the field.

“My call,” he'd said to Ben at the time. “Your ball.”

Coach didn't mind, as it turned out, Ben catching the ball in the backfield and running thirty yards to the end zone and Rockwell winning the game because he did. Afterward, he actually thought it was pretty cool, Shawn stepping out of the way when he could have looked like the star, pretty much tossing the ball and the game Ben's way. Fine with Ben. He
always
wanted the ball, in any sport he was playing. It was why he liked pitching and why he liked being a point guard.

Why he dreamed about being a QB someday. Someday and some
how
.

He wanted to be the one controlling the action in all ways, same as he did when he had the controls of a video game in his hand.

It was different with Shawn. Sometimes Ben thought that the real problem between Shawn and him, the thing keeping them from being friends, wasn't the position Shawn O'Brien played, it was that he just didn't seem to flat-out love football the way Ben did. That football was almost like an after-school job to him. It was one more thing about him that Ben didn't understand, almost made him angry sometimes, Shawn not seeming to appreciate having a job Ben wanted so badly.

It was why Ben finally decided to suck it up and somehow get to know Shawn better this season.

Before practice on Saturday morning, at the end of the second week, Ben told his mom he had to at least try to be friends with Shawn, mostly because it was the kind of thing you talked to your mom about.

She said, “Let me ask you this: What do the two of you usually talk about, when you
do
talk?”

“Football.”

“
Just
football?”

“Pretty much.”

Beth McBain laughed. “Men. I gave up asking your father, bless his heart, what he and the other guys in his foursome talked about when they played golf, because the answer was always the same.”

Ben grinned. “Football?” he said.

“Golf!”
she said.

“Boy,” Ben said, “I didn't see that coming.”

His mom said, “Listen, the only way for you to find out about this boy is to talk to him about something more than what you guys are playing on third down.”

“What kind of play we're
running
, Mom. Not
playing
.”

“You know what I mean,” she said. “Talk to him. But
really
talk to him.”

After practice, Ben did just that. Getting a minute alone with Shawn, asking him if he wanted to go get a slice of pizza in town.

“You and me?” Shawn said.

“Yeah. I figured we could go to Pinocchio's.”

“Why?” Shawn said.

“Best slice in town?”

Shawn said, “You know what I mean.”

Ben grinned and said, “I looked it up on my computer today. It's take a QB to lunch day.”

Shawn didn't say anything back right away, Ben wondering if the guy had any sense of humor. Or just had no interest in being buds.

Until Shawn finally said, “Let me go ask my dad.”

He ran over to where his dad was talking to one of the other parents, came jogging back with some money in his hand.

Shawn said, “He said he'd pick me up in an hour, and that I should pay.”

“Cool,” Ben said. “And
my
dad is always telling me that there's no such thing as a free lunch.”

Shawn O'Brien never smiled much on a football field. But Ben noticed a small smile on his face now.

“Hold
on
,” Shawn said. “You mean our dads
don't
know everything? Who knew?”

 

It was a short walk from Rockwell Middle School to the small downtown area in Rockwell. There were two pizza places in town, but the one Ben and his buddies like the best was called Pinocchio's, quiet by the time they got there, a little after two o'clock, only a couple of the booths filled.

Shawn asked what Ben liked and he said he usually got a half-pepperoni, half-plain.

“Same,” Shawn said.

Something in common besides football.

A start, maybe.

While they waited Shawn said, “My dad was surprised when I told him you and I were gonna do something. He's always been asking me why we don't hang out more together.”

“Same,” Ben said.

Ben noticed that Shawn looked big even sitting across from him in their booth. You might not know he was a quarterback just looking at him, but you knew he was some kind of player.

“How do you think we're looking so far?” Shawn said. “The team, I mean.”

They were going to start out speaking football to each other, maybe figure it out from there. Ben decided to go with it, just because for a change Shawn actually sounded like he was interested in other players on the team, not just himself.

“There's nothing we don't have,” Ben said. “You, Sam. Enough big guys up front. Bunch of fast guys. My dad always says that two things you can't coach in sports are big and fast.”

“And, we have you,” Shawn said.

Ben let that one go, just adding, “Plus, we have your dad coaching us. That must be pretty cool for you guys.”

“Oh, it's
awesome
,” Shawn said, really stepping on the last word. “Dad tells people he's been waiting his whole life to teach a son of his how to be a quarterback. Said he was afraid after two daughters he was just going to keep having daughters and never get the chance.”

“You guys are lucky,” Ben said. “My dad is threatening to coach my Little League team next season. It would be the first time he's been my official coach. The last couple of years he's been totally busy because with the renovation at the Y it's practically like they're building a whole new one.”

“Well,” Shawn said, “my dad's got nothing
but
time for football now that he doesn't have a real job anymore. So he's
totally
focused on the team. And me.”

“Yeah,” Ben said, “I check him out sometimes and he's smiling his head off, watching every move you make.”

“Tell me about it.”

“He seems like such a good guy.”

“
Great
guy,” Shawn said. “But, dude, trust me, we better be great this season, because he's gonna take it
hard
if we're not.”

“I'm not worried,” Ben said.

“You never did last year, no matter how badly we were losing.”

“My mom says the only word that's not in my vocabulary is ‘can't,'” Ben said. “But I tell her, only if she stops with the
c
's.”

Their pizza was ready. They polished it off at record speed, hardly any talking now. When they finished, Shawn said, “My dad said he had a good talk with you.”

“He didn't have to,” Ben said. “He's the coach, I'm cool with whatever he wants me to do.”

“Grown-ups love to have their talks,” Shawn said, putting air quotes around “talks.”

Before Ben could add anything to that, Shawn said, “He might not know how good you'd be at quarterback, but I do.”

Ben didn't know why, but he felt Shawn had gotten down to it now, the real reason why he agreed to have lunch. Ben almost smiled. He wanted to get to know Shawn better, maybe even be boys with him, not thinking that Shawn might want to do the same with him.

But this wasn't a “talk” — with or without air quotes — that Ben wanted to have with Shawn. The one about how much he wanted to be a quarterback, how much he wanted what Shawn had and was probably going to have for a long time.

“Oh, don't stress on that,” Ben said. “
My
dad tells me all the time that my real position is just football player. And everybody knows that you're a better QB than me.”

Shawn started to say something, then stopped, like a pump fake on the field.

“That first night of tryouts? I saw that play you made after you scrambled. Aaron Rodgers doesn't throw on the run better than you do.”

Everybody on the team knew how much of a Green Bay Packers fan Ben was. He had other teams he liked in sports. But even living a long way from Lambeau Field, the Packers were his favorite. And Rodgers was his favorite player now. He was a lot bigger than Doug Flutie. But Ben loved the way he played, especially every time he got flushed out of the pocket and had to improvise.

Ben drank some of his Gatorade and said, “Yeah, but I'm smart enough to know you can't do that on every down. Make
stuff up as you go along, like it's some fun play I drew up in the dirt.”

“You always seem to have fun,” Shawn said.

“What, you don't?”

Shawn said, “Not like you.”

“What's more fun than playing football?” Ben said.

“Oh, nothing,” Shawn said. “Nothing at all. My dad is always saying that the worst day he ever had in pads was great.”

“Pretty much my attitude,” Ben said.

“Yeah,” Shawn said. “You're lucky.”

Shawn pointed to the big clock behind the counter. It was three o'clock. Shawn said his dad would be there any minute to pick them up. He paid the check and they went outside to wait, Ben thinking this had been a good idea.

A good day.

Except.

Except Ben couldn't shake the idea, like a defender he couldn't shake, that there had been something else Shawn wanted to talk about at lunch today.

That there was something Shawn had wanted to tell him, but hadn't.

Their first game was the next Saturday, home at The Rock against Midvale, which had made it to the championship game last season before losing to Darby.

Ben woke up early, the way he always did on game day, even earlier than he did when he had to go to school. Any game day always felt like some kind of holiday to him, but especially the first game of the season. So he was wide awake by seven o'clock, not needing an alarm, already feeling as if one o'clock, when the ball would be kicked off, would never come.

By eight o'clock Sam Brown was with him, having knocked on Ben's door and just walked in.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

Sam wasn't a big talker, even when Coop and Lily weren't around. Maybe it was one of the things that made the Core Four work as well as it did. Coop loved to talk, loved to make himself the center of attention, loved being the funny one, even though it chafed him to death knowing that Lily was
actually much funnier, and without trying nearly as hard as Coop did.

So the two of them were always going at it, never in a mean way, like they were in some kind of competition that would last as long as they all were friends.

It was different when it was just Ben and Sam. Quieter. Sometimes the two of them could feel as if they were halfway into a conversation before either one of them had barely said a word.

“You ready?” Sam said.

“You know it.”

Ben was already dressed, so Sam picked up the football sitting on top of the dresser, turned, and walked out with it, both of them knowing they were going across the street to McBain Field right now to start throwing it around a little bit, like this was the beginning of pregame warm-ups for Midvale, just the two of them.

They loosened up their arms and before long Sam was running some of the pass routes he'd be running against Midvale. Ben did the same. Then Sam, who also punted for their team, dropped back and kicked a few to Ben, who felt like an out-fielder getting ready for a game by shagging fly balls during batting practice.

When they finished, and were sitting in the grass, Sam said, “Okay, now I'm good.”

“What's better than good?” Ben said.

“Your girlfriend showing up?” Sam said. Grinning the way he always did when he said that, casually pointing at Lily Wyatt riding her bike down the street.

“She's not my girlfriend,” Ben said. “No matter how many times you call her my girlfriend just to get under my skin.”

“Sorry,” Sam said. “My bad. Don't know what I was thinking.”

“She's
not
my girlfriend,” Ben said.

“‘Course not.”

Lily leaned her bike against the maple tree and came walking over to them, smiling as if she had a game to play, too.

“Look at the two of you,” she said.

“What?” Ben said.

“You look like it's Christmas morning and you're on your way to find out what's under the tree.”

She was standing over them, hands on hips. Lily was taller than Ben, but not nearly as tall as Sam, both of whose parents were tall, and whose own pediatrician said might grow to be as tall as 6-4 someday. It's why as good as Sam Brown was in football, his favorite sport was basketball.

Ben wasn't sure what his favorite sport was, at least not yet. Usually it was just the one he was playing at the time, whatever was in season.

“Wow, that's pretty disrespectful comparing Christmas to football,” Ben said, grinning at Sam, knowing Sam was way ahead of him. “Football's
way
more important than that.”

Lily sighed.

“Sometimes,” she said, “I think I should wait until after football season is over to have a normal conversation with you guys.”

“For a girl …” Ben said.

“Here we go,” Lily said.

“… you can speak football pretty well,” he said.

“For a girl,” she said.

Ben said, “It's just that you're not always willing to try.”

“Because I don't
care
enough to try,” she said.

“You coming to the game?” Ben said.

“Wouldn't miss it,” Lily said.