Guys Read: The Sports Pages (4 page)

His gaze went back and forth between Bobby and Dirk Forester. Dirk went to IH. Like Bobby, Dirk lived in the apartment complex next to the Wal-Mart. Like Bobby, Dirk had been a wild man on the field, but Dirk was not as nice off it. Dirk was at IH. Bobby would be at IH. Jake's stomach twisted as he wondered where he would be.

He studied Bobby's face. It didn't look so mean. Bobby was fun, and funny, almost laid-back—but on the field? Jake rolled his eyes and picked at the dried blood crusted at the edge of his left nostril. Something happened to Bobby on the football field, or even in a stupid game of pool basketball. He was a different person, a person with fire in his belly, in his brain.

Jake looked at his own face in the picture, framed by the long, dark hair. He didn't see any fire. He put the picture back on the wall and went into his bathroom—would he have to share a bathroom in their new home? He stared into the reflection and his blue eyes, deep into the dark pits at their centers. He thought about staying behind, being left at Eastview and its mediocre high school football team coached by a gym teacher whom no one liked but who kept the job because his father was president of the school board. If Eastview's varsity had a winning season, it was considered a huge success. If IH didn't
win the state title
, its players and coaches hung their heads in utter defeat.

The thought of staying behind, or even of moving to a decent school like Lawtonberg, made him sick. He stared harder into his own eyes and thought he saw something. A spark.

Jake grit his teeth. A low growl crept up out of his throat.

Why should he have to stay behind? It made him sick. It made him … mad.

The spark became a flame. He sneered at himself.

“What am I going to do?” His voice sounded to him like a crying girl's. Daddy can't pay for IH. Boo-hoo …

“You big baby!” Jake snarled at himself. “No one says that scholarship belongs to Bobby Lemke. You want it? Take it!”

Jake couldn't concentrate on any of his lessons, even English, his favorite subject. The words seemed to spill from his teachers' mouths like drool, meaningless and unpleasant.

Jake couldn't get stuck in Eastview, playing for a varsity coach everyone knew was a joke. If the coach was a joke, the team was a joke, and the players were treated like jokes. Even moderately talented players moved into districts like Lawtonberg's—a team that was no stranger to the state play-offs—if they could.

Still, nothing compared to IH.

When the final bell rang, Jake mustered up his courage and walked into Coach Heath's classroom. Coach taught science. Jake didn't have him for a teacher, but they were doing the same thing in Jake's class: dissecting frogs. Coach stood bent over a lab counter next to a thin kid with pale skin, messy black hair, and a red NASCAR T-shirt. The kid looked up and blinked through thick glasses.

“Jake,” Coach asked, “what's up?”

Jake looked down at the frog, pinned to the tray on its back and sliced open down the middle of its belly. Jake swallowed.

“Can I talk to you, Coach?”

“I'm helping Gene with his lab, then I've got a minute before practice. Stick around. Did you do your frog yet?”

Jake shook his head, then nodded.

“Which is it?” Coach asked.

“We did it, but we worked in groups. I recorded the findings.”

“Like the group secretary, huh?”

“I guess.”

Coach nodded without trying to hide his disgust. “That's why I make everyone do their own.”

“Here, look.” Coach used his stubby fingers to peel back the frog's belly, exposing a maze of guts.

Vomit bubbled up into the back of Jake's throat.

“Yeah, see? You don't like to look, but that's how you learn. Here. See this? That's the heart. The center of it all. How can you understand how it all works if you don't see it up close and personal?”

Coach seemed to be enjoying Jake's discomfort. Gene poked the rubbery lungs with his own bare finger, then used tweezers to scoop up a strand of intestines that looked like a waterlogged worm. Jake turned away.

Coach chuckled and wiped his hands. “All right, come over to my desk. Gene, take out the major organs we talked about in class and label them. I'll show you how I want them weighed when we're done.”

Jake followed the coach to his desk and sat down in the chair off to the side. He clasped his left arm with his right hand and leaned forward so he could talk quietly.

“Coach, I want to move from guard to tackle.”

Coach Heath's eyes widened. A smile crept onto his face. “You sniff a little too much formaldehyde?”

Jake furrowed his brow.

“That's the embalming fluid they pickle those frogs in.” Coach nodded toward the lab counter. “Sometimes it makes people loopy.”

“No, I want to play tackle.”

“You mean the position I've been trying to get you to play for the past two years?”

Jake nodded. “Left tackle.”

“Left tackle?” Coach bit his lower lip, then he sighed and his shoulders slumped. “Jake, I know you and Bobby are friends, but are you really going to embarrass yourself like this just to help him get a scholarship to IH? Don't you have
any
pride, son?”

Jake squinted. “What? What do you mean?”

Coach tilted his head. “You think I don't know? That you'll lie down for Bobby in the scrimmage with the IH coach so he can walk all over you. It's just not right, Jake, for you to make a fool out of yourself. I don't think Bobby needs the help. He does a pretty good number on Collin Mettler as it is.”

Jake blinked. “I'm not doing it for Bobby, Coach. I want to do it for
me
. I want to go to IH, too. You said the head coach will be watching. I want to play there.”

“But you don't need a
scholarship
, son.”

Embarrassment burned Jake's face, but he shrugged it off. “You said I got to find my fire. Well …”

“So, you're gonna find your fire by having Bobby Lemke beat the tar out of you in front of the IH coach? You see what he does to Mettler every day.”

“I just think …” Jake's voice faded off.

“Think what?” Coach Heath dipped his head so he met Jake's eyes.

Jake hesitated. He looked up and directly into Coach Heath's eyes. “I can take care of him.”

“You can, huh? You feel confident about that? You'll be up against Bobby every day for the rest of the season.”

“I know I can.”

Coach chuckled again. “Well, I guess we'll see about that. Yeah, Jake, I'll move you to left tackle. That's where you belong anyway. But you're there for the scrimmage, too. If I make this move, I'm not going to change it. Mettler's not a great player, but no one deserves to be a yo-yo. Don't ask to switch back.”

“I want to be there for the scrimmage.”

Coach nodded. “Okay. Fine.”

Jake didn't chatter with his teammates in the locker room, and when Bobby slapped him on the rump on their way to the field, Jake said nothing. When the time came for one-on-one drills with the offensive linemen battling the defensive linemen, Jake took his spot at left tackle.

Bobby snorted. “What are you doing?”

“I'm left tackle now.”

Bobby gave him a confused look, then he shook his head and got down in his stance. “Okay, you asked for it.”

Coach Heath moved the big tackling dummy into position about five yards behind the center, then he walked over to where Jake faced Bobby.

“You two set?” Coach clamped his whistle between coffee-stained teeth and narrowed his eyes with expectation. “On your movement, Jake.”

As the offensive lineman, Jake got to make the first move. He swallowed back the flutter in his chest and took a smooth backward step, cutting off Bobby's outside angle to the quarterback. In the same instant, he coiled his arms for the two-handed punch he'd try to deliver to Bobby's chest.

Bobby barreled straight at him.

Jake saw stars at the collision. He stepped back again, and again, punching and keeping his hips low. Bobby's right hand found its way up and under Jake's face mask, clawing at the soft flesh of his mouth and nose. Instead of wincing and lilting, Jake punched hard and found a grip under the edge of Bobby's shoulder pad. He sensed the bag directly behind him. He'd given up as much ground as he could.

Jake roared, lifting and wrenching at the same time. Bobby crossed his legs, and he went over sideways. Jake followed him to the ground, free-falling on top of him with every ounce of his 244 pounds. The air grunted from Bobby's lungs. He thrashed beneath Jake, trying to get up. Jake accidentally got poked in the eye and cried out. Yesterday Jake would have skittered away from the pain.

Today he ate it up, growled, and kept Bobby pinned down. Coach's whistle split Jake's ears. Hands from all quarters grabbed at him and pulled him free from Bobby, who sprang to his feet, snorting and flailing and spraying sweat across Jake's face. Coach hammered the whistle and stepped between them.

“Enough! Good, I like it. Good battle. That's how you fight!” Coach gave them both a final shove, separating them even farther. “Next up.”

Bobby glared at Jake, growling while the rest of the linemen took their turns. When it was his and Jake's turn to go again, Bobby came at him like a maniac.

Jake won again. He lost the next round, though, when Bobby struck, then spun, disappearing like a genie and crashing into the bag. Jake struck his own helmet, and it was the last time that day Bobby beat him. During run drills, Jake got his pads lower than he'd ever done before. He fired out quicker, pumped his feet faster, and matched every bone-jarring hit with one of his own.

At the end of practice, Bobby waited until they were in the locker room, outside of Coach's hearing, before he grabbed Jake and slammed him up against a locker.

“What are you
doing
?” Bobby's breath was hot with tuna and onions.

Jake gripped Bobby's hands without tearing them free. He looked around at the rest of the team, who had stopped moving and were staring at them. “Playing football.”

“That's not how
you
play.”

“It is now.”

“You do that tomorrow, and I will kill you, Jake. I will smash your face in.”

Jake cast Bobby's hands aside and opened his locker. He ignored the stares and whispers and Bobby glowering at him from two lockers over. After he'd changed, Jake marched out of the locker room with his head high and biked back home.

He was in his room, just staring at the math problems in front of him, when his mom came in. “Bobby's here. He can stay for dinner if you like.”

“Where is he?” Jake studied his mom with suspicion.

“Out back.” His mom walked out as if nothing was wrong. To her, there obviously wasn't.

Bobby sat in a deck chair beside the pool with his arms folded tightly across his chest.

“What?” Jake didn't sit down.

“Seriously, what are you doing?” The edge and anger were gone from Bobby's voice.

“You make me look bad, and it's football.” Jake clenched his hands. “I make you look bad, and something's wrong?”

“I can't be messing around like this tomorrow.” Bobby's eyes flashed. “That IH coach will be here, and I need to look good. I can't have my best friend going all superhero on me.”

“So, stop me.” Jake folded his arms across his own chest.

“I thought we were going to IH together.” Bobby's voice softened. “Are you kidding? What's wrong with you? You've got everything.” Bobby nodded toward the pool, then the big house. “This IH scholarship is my ticket. You want to battle it out every day, compete with me to get better, fine. Do that
after
tomorrow.”

Jake looked out over the rippling water and blinked at the sparkles. He wanted to explain, to tell Bobby what his father had told him the night before, but the shame of it all tackled the words in his throat. “Just play, Bobby. No one said this scholarship was going to come easy.”

Bobby hung his head so that a curtain of blond hair fell around his eyes. “Remember Fritzgelden and Stinson? What they did to you, or tried to do?”

Jake felt his cheeks burn, and it wasn't from the last rays of sunlight. “So?”

“You were going to quit football. Remember? They had you so scared …”

“So, you helped me and we're friends.”

“I
saved
you. No one else would. They were going to tape you up and make you eat dirt.”

Jake tried to see through the curtain of hair. Bobby didn't have to say that Jake had cried. They both knew he had, and it made Jake sick to even think of the two eighth-grade bullies from last year.

“So, now you own me? I'm your puppet or something?”

Bobby looked up, and the sun's rays electrified his blue eyes. He stood. “No, just my friend. That's what I thought, anyway.”

Jake watched him go, slack shouldered and weighted down by disappointment and misunderstanding. At dinner, it was just he and his mom. His dad had to fly to Chicago. His mom asked him what was wrong.

“Everything.” He kept his voice down to avoid an alarm. He didn't need any drama. He needed to get to sleep. The scrimmage started at ten. He said good night and kissed her cheek. She squeezed his hand as he walked out of the room.

Jake tossed in a sweaty tangle of sheets most of the night. He woke up with the bright sun casting thick beams onto his bed, and he woke up tired. His mom made him breakfast and said, “Good luck.”

She had no idea.

Jake pedaled to the school—empty on a Saturday morning—and locked his bike. He kept his eyes on the ground and built a small fire in his gut, fueling it with anger and desire. Bobby walked into the locker room, and Jake sensed his presence like a dark and silent thundercloud creeping up over a hilltop. He taped his wrists, then wiggled his fingers into padded lineman gloves. His shoulder pads smelled of dried sweat and dirt. The snaps on his helmet sounded like the distant gunfire of a battlefield.