the Big Time (2010) (8 page)

“
I DOUBT YOUR MOTHER
will let me help,” Drew said.

“Why wouldn't she?” Troy asked, searching his father's face in the shadows.

“You see the way she thinks of me,” Drew said. “It's hard for people to blame themselves, and anyway, I'm sure Seth Halloway is going to push you to use his agent.”

“He actually mentioned it already,” Troy said under his breath.

“See?” Drew said. “That's how these things work. Clients know if they do their agent a favor, they get a favor back. That's one of the things I'm worried about for you. You don't know how long this is going to last, and you need a long-term deal that gets you the most you can possibly get.”

“What do you mean, ‘last'?” Troy asked.

“You see patterns that let you predict the outcome,” his father said. “The way I see it, it's all about tendencies. Well, people can break tendencies. Go against the pattern.”

Troy thought for a minute, then said, “But if they go against one pattern, wouldn't that just make another pattern?”

“In theory,” Drew said. “But what if they just randomize the play calling?”

“Well,” Troy said, “they might end up running a quarterback sneak on third and twelve. That wouldn't make sense, right?”

“I understand that,” Drew said. “Look, I don't know all the possibilities. I'm just saying that, right now, you're worth a lot of money, and I'd like to make sure that you get it. I don't want to see you pawned off to some agent just because he knows Seth Halloway.”

“Well, Seth's not my dad. He's my friend, but not my dad. Why can't you just do the deal for me?” Troy said, his heart galloping now. “You're a lawyer, and lawyers are even better than agents, right?”

“Believe me, I'd love to,” Drew said.

“Great,” Troy said. “Perfect.”

“I'm telling you, Troy,” Drew said, shaking his head. “She's not going to go for it. If I am going to help, we'll have to be smart about it.”

“We can do that,” Troy said. “You file the papers you
need to tomorrow and then she has to let me see you. That's the deal.”

“I thought you said if I told her I'd sue her she'd let you see me,” Drew said.

“Well,” Troy said, “she kind of figured out that I tipped you off. She wants to make sure you follow through.”

“That's easy,” Drew said. “I can draw up the papers in the morning.”

“Then I can tell her that I want you to do the deal for me,” Troy said, his voice rising up toward the stars. “She can't say no. It's my deal. I'm the football genius, right? What do you think?”

“I think that if we're going to have a chance,” his father said, patting Troy's shoulder and then standing up, “then we'd better get you back. I like your plan. It's smart. So, let's not give her an excuse to stop us before we even get started.”

They walked back down the tracks, and Troy assured his father he could get the ladder back on his own. Troy watched him climb up to the top of the wall and give him a salute before crouching down and lowering himself over the other side. Troy heard his father drop to the earth with a thud, and he flattened his hands against the cool concrete wall, sad to be alone.

“You okay?” he asked, shouting so his voice would carry up and over the wall.

“Yeah,” his father said, sounding far away. “I'll see you soon.”

“Tomorrow,” Troy said, nodding to himself.

“Don't worry,” Troy's father said, his voice moving away, “I'm not going anywhere.”

Troy grabbed the ladder. He lowered it slowly, then balanced it on his shoulders. By the time he dumped the ladder down behind the shed, he'd worked up a sweat. Using a thick piece of firewood as a step, he climbed inside through his bedroom window. After removing his sweaty clothes, Troy lay panting in his underwear. The wind in the pines and the dull thump of his own heartbeat did nothing to help him sleep.

He thought of all the important things that had happened to him in the past few months: the excitement of working for the Atlanta Falcons, winning a state championship, appearing on TV, the money he'd made already, and the huge money he was about to make. None of it compared to tomorrow, though. The thought of having his own father be an official part of his life—spending time together, taking trips, throwing a football, or even just talking—made everything else seem like Halloween candy compared to a Christmas present. The other stuff was good and seemed really exciting when he got it, but this was something deep. This was something he'd dreamed about so hard for so long that he felt something had shifted in his core.

The change was so dramatic that the very world around him seemed a different place.

The only problem was that, despite his father's words
of assurance and despite the deal he had with his mom, something gnawed at him, telling him that nothing was for sure. Maybe it was his mom's own doubts about his dad. She hadn't been shy about showing her dislike and even her contempt for him.

Troy sighed and rolled over in the sheets, knowing that if sleep came, it wouldn't come easy.

Everything hinged on tomorrow.

TROY LAY COMFORTABLY IN
his dream on a sandy beach with the wind slipping past. He knew it was a dream, and he didn't want to wake up, despite the sound of his mom's insistent voice. Finally, when he knew for certain she wasn't going away, Troy opened his eyes and realized that his finger felt better even though it was swollen and stiff.

“Wake up,” she said again. “I let you sleep late.”

“You did?” Troy asked, swinging his legs out of bed.

“Home Economics first period, right?” she said. “I'm sorry, but learning to bake a cake from a box when the kids in this country rank twenty-fourth in the world in math scores? That's ridiculous.”

Troy grinned but felt a pang of guilt for plotting with
his father to trick a mom cool enough to let him skip Home Ec.

“What? You like cake from a box?” she asked.

“No, I'm glad,” he said. “I was just thinking about everything.”

“Your father?” she said with a sigh. “I know. Come on, I made oatmeal.”

“Everything else, too,” he said, following her into the hallway. “The TV shows. A big contract. The agents.”

“I've been thinking about that,” she said. “The TV shows aren't going to go away. I think we get the agent thing worked out first. Whoever we choose will probably have some specific ideas on how we can work this to our best advantage. We need to use the media in this to help our negotiations. We need to get you the best deal we can, Troy. This is serious business.”

Troy followed her into the kitchen in his boxer shorts. At the stove, she took a metal spoon and began stirring a pot of oatmeal with vicious intensity. He was dying to tell her that she and his father were now thinking along the exact same lines, but for some unknown reason the harsh, scraping sound made him hold his tongue.

“What are you doing?” she asked, turning to dollop out the oatmeal into the pair of bowls she'd put on the table but stopping to stare. “Get dressed. It's going to be beautiful today, so you can wear shorts if you want. What, Troy? You're acting strange.”

Troy forced a smile and shook his head before scooting back down the hall to use the bathroom and dress. He sat down to a steaming bowl of oatmeal with raisins and banana slices and dug in.

When his mom dropped him off at school, she signed him in at the office. He hugged her tight before heading for his locker. He was in the hallway outside math class when Tate found him and asked where he'd been. Troy explained about his mom letting him sleep in before launching proudly into the newfound information he had on his father. Nathan joined them halfway through Troy's glowing report. When he'd finished, Nathan whistled low.

“Records at Auburn,” Nathan said. “That's sweet.”

“Wow. Who else does he represent besides G Money?” Tate asked.

“I don't know,” Troy said, his excitement riding high. He began to tell them the story of the night before—sneaking out, G Money's mansion, and his dad climbing the wall with him—but the bell rang before he could finish, and his friends had to stay in suspense until third-period study hall, when they all got library passes.

Troy got on the computer and, armed with his father's name, Googled the former college star turned big-time lawyer, proudly pulling up the Auburn University football record book.

“Look,” he said, pointing out his dad's name in the
record books, once for being third in total rushing yards in a season and another for tying for first with five touchdowns in a single game.

“The real deal,” Nathan said quietly.

“That's great, Troy,” Tate said.

Troy looked up and in a hushed library voice finished telling them the story about the night before. When he stopped talking, Troy noticed that Tate was gnawing gently on her knuckle.

“What's wrong?” Troy asked.

Tate hesitated, then said, “You don't really think you can fool your mom, do you?”

“I'm not ‘fooling' her, Tate,” he said. “I'm just…I don't know, playing out the situation.”

“Right,” she said, “manipulating.”

“Don't even listen to her,” Nathan said, swatting the air. “It's a great plan. Your mom will be happy, and you'll get a big-time contract
and
your dad back all at once. It's perfect. I'm happy for you, Troy. Can't you just be happy for the man, Tate?”

Tate scowled at Nathan, raised her voice, and said, “Telling someone what they want to hear might be your idea of being a friend, but it's not mine. I don't like it, that's all. I'm just telling him how I feel.”

Tate looked at Troy and Nathan, obviously wondering if they'd be heading back to study hall with her, but Nathan scooted his chair closer to the computer screen and put an arm around Troy's shoulder.

“Come on, Troy,” he said in a whisper, “let's Google his clients and see who else he reps besides you and G Money.”

Tate nodded for Troy to go ahead, then walked away. Troy turned eagerly back toward the screen, thrilled at the prospect of what he might find. G Money was as big as it got, though. The rest of his dad's clients—at least the ones he could locate from newspaper articles and websites—were names he had only remotely heard of, if at all.

“Hey, what's that?” Nathan asked, still hungry for more names he recognized. “Northlake Trust? That's a band, right?”

Troy's fingers danced over the keys as he refined his search.

“It's my dad's client, but it's no band,” he said, reading. “In fact, whoever they are, it looks like they're in some pretty big trouble.”

TROY LEANED TOWARD THE
screen, afraid that what he saw might somehow affect his mom's outlook on Troy reuniting with his dad.

“Stuff here with the IRS and the Justice Department?” Troy said, trying to talk lightly. “Man, I guess sometimes being a lawyer is going to get you mixed up with some suspicious characters.”

“So long as their money's green, right?” Nathan said.

When Troy looked at him, Nathan shrugged and said, “Hey, I saw it on TV.”

“Well,” Troy said, glancing at the clock. “Enough for now. I'm sure there are some other big-time people he keeps under wraps, you know, confidentiality and all that. A lawyer has to know how to keep quiet.”

“Yeah, that's for sure,” Nathan said. “Everyone knows that.”

 

At lunch, the talk about Troy's dad continued. Only a couple of times during the day did the three friends discuss the Border War game, but when they did Troy assured them both that his finger was so much better that he thought he might even be able to practice the next night if he taped it up tight.

“Awesome,” Tate said. “That scholarship money's got my name on it.”

“You and me both, sister,” Nathan said, slurping the last bit of milk from his carton with a straw. “My cousin says you can't go to college without a flat-screen TV and an Xbox Elite.”

“It's a scholarship, for books and tuition and all that, not video games,” Tate said.

“Hey, it's about the educational experience, Tate,” Nathan said. “That's college.”

“College is supposed to be a
learning
experience,” Tate said.

“Do you know how
hard
it is to learn all ten maps in Gears of War 2?” Nathan asked. “You think this algebra stuff is tough? Sheesh. You ain't seen nothing.”

The day couldn't pass quickly enough for Troy. When he got off the bus at the end of his driveway, he was surprised to see his mom's green VW bug waiting for him with its engine softly purring. He swung open the
passenger door, and his mom told him to get in.

“I've got a surprise for you, Troy,” she said, her face glowing.

No matter how hard he begged, she only grinned and shook her head as they spun down the dirt drive, kicking up grit and small stones. He could only imagine that it had to be his dad. His mom must have gotten the papers, then called him to work out the details for visitation; that's when she must have seen how closely his ideas meshed with hers. The two of them must now be united in their efforts to get Troy the best deal he could possibly get and to take advantage of the media frenzy.

His dream went up quickly, soaring like a lump of clay thrown into a towering vase the way his art teacher could do on a potter's wheel. He even dared to dream the ultimate dream that somehow, some way, his parents would end up back together.

When they turned the final bend in the road, the fragile tower of perfectly balanced clay wobbled violently, then crashed down into a mess of slimy mud.