The Underdogs (10 page)

At least he'd tried.

His dad turned and limped out of the room and a few seconds later Will heard the slow, painful walk up the stairs, Will sometimes not sure whether it was the old stairs creaking or his dad.

Will didn't move.

Until.

Until he heard, “Will.”

Got up and walked to the bottom of the stairs, and saw his dad at the top.

“You're right,” he said.

“I'm . . .
right
?”

“I'll do it,” Joe Tyler said.

Will stared up at him.

“I'll give it my best shot,” he said. “Don't ask me to love it. I stopped loving football a long time ago, mostly because I found out it didn't love me back. So don't think that because I'm doing this, I'm gonna love it the way you do. I'm not sure anybody does. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“But I'll do it.”

Then he spread out his arms the way he did when he came home sometimes, when he was standing down where Will was now standing. Only Will Tyler wasn't there for long. In the next moment he was running up the stairs to where his dad was waiting for him.

He knew how bad his dad's knee was. But his arms felt stronger than ever.

H
is dad said he would get in touch with Mr. DeMartini's office first thing on Monday. Will was in charge of getting the nine other players they had so far to e-mail the size of their jerseys, pants, cleats, even hat sizes for the new helmets.

The two of them sitting there at the kitchen table.

“I've got to come up with a practice schedule that doesn't cheat you guys and works for me,” Joe Tyler said.

Will grinned.

“Now, no missing assignments because of sports,” Will said, wagging a finger at his dad.

“Not a problem,” his dad said, serious again. “Those classes I'm taking are still my—
our
—ticket to a better life. I found out the hard way that it wasn't football.”

Will said, “You're sure you want to do this.”

His dad laughed. He didn't laugh a lot, but when he did, it was a good sound, at least to Will. A happy sound. That always made him wish he could hear more of it.

“Am I sure? Heck no!”

“I know I came at you pretty hard,” Will said. “But you don't have to.”

“Yeah,” Joe Tyler said, “actually I do.”

Then he asked Will what his best guess was on Toby, saying he thought it was important they have eleven players on the field for the first practice. Will told him the truth; going off his gut, he thought they had a real shot. But said at the same time he didn't want to put any more pressure on Toby than he already had; he was going to wait until school on Monday and then hope Toby would bring it up.

And then say yes.

“I remember that kid,” Will's dad said. “Something about him I liked, even knowing he drew the worst-possible cards, getting Dick Keenan as an old man. But he could play. I'm not even positive what his best position is, as big as he is. We could sure use him.”

The first time he'd said “we” when talking about the team.

Like they were officially in it together now.

“But we need more than him,” his dad said. “We
both
know that. When I give them the sizes and order the uniforms this week, I'm gonna order one for him, just guessing his sizes. And then three more different sizes on top of that. Just being an optimist.”

Will said, “I thought you were a pessimist.”

“Don't press your luck, junior.”

Some day,
Will thought. And it wasn't over. Still a couple of hours before dinner.

“By the way, we're having hot dogs on the grill to celebrate,” his dad said.

“What I'm talkin' about.”

“Because you know what they say about hot dogs,” Joe Tyler said.

They both knew the answer was one more inside joke between them, part of the secret language they shared, maybe because it had just been the two of them for so long.

“The hot dog,” Will said, trying to sound like a deep commercial voice on television. “America's most underrated food group.”

They high-fived each other.

Yeah,
Will thought,
some day.

Now he needed to run it off a little bit, blow off some steam. But in a good way. By himself. Run some sprints at Shea, just for the fun of it. And not totally for fun, because now he really was getting ready for a season.

He really did have to get in shape for football, not that Will Tyler was ever really out of shape.

He grabbed his ball from his room, told his dad he was heading for Shea, but that he'd be back in plenty of time for supper.

His dad by then was back on the couch, ice back on his knee, watching one of the first college football games of the season on television.

“Dad?”

“Yeah, bud.”

“You're sure you're sure?”

“Go.”

Then Will echoed what Toby had said to him a few hours ago and what already felt like something that had happened last week. “Thanks,” he said.

His father's arm came up from the sofa, and then he jerked a thumb toward the front door.

“Go.”

He thought about getting his bike out of the small garage, decided to walk to Shea instead.

After half a block, he started to jog.

By the time he got to Arch Street, ball under his arm, he was at full speed.

 

Football wasn't like basketball, where all you needed was a ball and a hoop to keep yourself entertained for as long as you wanted to be out there shooting around.

But even on a football field, even when he wasn't making up one of his imaginary games—and he wasn't doing that ever again, not if a girl might be watching—Will never had a problem keeping himself entertained.

Maybe because he was used to being alone. You had to put some effort into being alone. If you were going to do it, you might as well do it right.

So he ran his sprints, forty yarders at first, knowing that was the money distance in football, that's the one they were always timing at those NFL combines. He ran them with the ball at first and then without it. Took a breather. Ran a few more. He ran backward, knowing he was going to have to do some of that this season, that he was going to be dropping back in coverage as a free safety, that he probably wouldn't be off the field for a single play.

Then he went down near one of the goalposts and practiced his throwing, trying to hit one post, then the other, pretending they were skinny receivers. Doing that from ten yards, twenty, backing up to thirty, because he knew that was the limit for his arm. It was accurate; he could hit what he was aiming for. Definitely not a gun. Will knew that the way things were going, he might have to play some quarterback this season if there was nobody else, if only taking a direct snap in the wildcat.

He tried a few extra points, just goofing around—teams in their league only tried to kick extra points if they had a surefooted kicker; most of the time they went for two from the twoand-a-half-yard line.

Finally, some punts. Because they might need a punter, too. Bobby Carrington, the quarterback who was leaving town, had handled the job last season. Bobby, in fact, had been such a good punter for an eleven-year-old that he'd turned punts into a weapon for them, occasionally burying their opponents inside the ten.

Now Bobby wasn't just taking his arm with him to Ohio; he was taking that big leg of his, too.

The next-best punter they had was Will.

Will stood out at the forty, trying to angle kicks out inside the ten the way Bobby had. He started with some gnarly-looking knucklers and wobblers, but then he got into it, got into rhythm, got off some good ones, the last one a dead spiral that looked like a pass he'd thrown high and deep, one that hit the sideline right at the five-yard line.

“One out of twenty?” he heard a voice say. “Is that a good percentage?”

Her.

Hannah.

Sitting in the first row of the bleachers, her ball next to her.

“You shouldn't sneak up on people,” Will said. “And by the way? If you've been watching, you know that wasn't my only good kick.”

Hannah said, “Yeah, it was. Put it this way: if this was a punt, pass and kick contest and you needed a kick to stay alive, well, you lose, Thrill.”

“How do you know that's my nickname?”

“We go to the same school, remember?”

They were actually in three classes together and had been passing each other all week in the halls or seeing each other at lunch. Most of the time Will just nodded.

The most he'd said was, “Hey.”

He had enough going on these days; he didn't need Tim LeBlanc or Chris or Jeremiah chirping at him because they thought he was giving the new girl the eye.

Even if that's exactly what he was doing.

Even if he secretly thought that Hannah Grayson, as cocky and obnoxious and annoying as she was, was a kickin' girl.

All ways.

Will grinned. “I've been trying to ignore that fact,” he said. “And you.”

“You sure about that?”

“Right,” Will said, “that's how I spend my day now, checking you out.”

“Well, not the whole day.”

Smiling at him, like somehow she knew he'd been watching her make her way through her first week of school.

She stood up now and said, “Is this more fantasy football or would you like some company out there?”

“You mean you want to kick some?” he said.

“I want to play,” Hannah Grayson said.

She picked up her ball and motioned toward the end zone where Will's ball had come to a rest, said to him, “Go long.”

Will nodded and took off, getting up to full speed almost right away—he also had a
first
gear other guys didn't—and taking it right down the middle of the field, wanting more than anything to out-run the ball she was going to throw him, out-run her
arm,
be too far down the field for the ball to reach him.

“Ball!” she yelled as he crossed the twenty.

Will turned and looked up and saw the ball sailing over his head, landing at least ten yards ahead of him.

“I can see now you're not much of a kicker,” Hannah said. “But I sort of
did
think you could run.”

I got nothing,
Will thought.
She airmailed me.
So he just picked up both balls, brought them back to midfield. “Seriously?” he said. “Are you always this full of yourself?”

“Why, 'cause I bust on you a little bit?” she said. “You know what my dad likes to say? Everybody thinks it's funny till it's about them.”

“I give up,” he said. “If this is a trash-talking competition, you win.”

“Is it a competition?”

“Seems like it to me,” Will said. “Or should I say, sounds like it?”

“Okay,” she said, “I'll try to play nice.”

They played.

Will passing to her, Hannah passing to him. They had kicking competitions, punting mostly. Hannah won easily. The girl could kick like a madman. Or madgirl. They had some running races. Will won. Will the Thrill
totally
thrilled that he'd beaten her, thinking he would have had to take his ball and go home if he hadn't.

Especially since she'd said this to him when they were taking their marks: “Listen, if I beat you, it will be our secret.” Grinned and said, “Well, it will be between you and me and every other student at Forbes Middle.”

“Keep chirping.”

She held up a finger. One more thing. “And everybody who reads the
Dispatch.
”

“Not happening,” Will said. “'Cause you're not beating me.”

She didn't. But Will had to admit, she hadn't come up short in any of the other skill competitions. The girl was more than a kicker; Will had seen that with his own eyes now.

It killed him to admit this, too:

She was as good as she said she was.

Will knew it was getting close to dinner. He'd only come over here to work up a sweat and kill some time. But now he was in no hurry to leave, even though he knew he should.

One last thing he would
never
admit: he liked being with her. Here. Now.

It was when they took a rest finally, both of them stretched out in the grass in front of the bleachers, that she said, “I can play.”

“I can see that.”

“I mean,” Hannah Grayson said, “I can play on your team.”

“You want to play . . . on my team?”

“Is there an echo?” she said, whipping her head around.

“No, I'm just surprised is all. I mean, you kick like a champion . . .”

“Don't give me that, Mr. Thrill. You know I can do a lot more than that. I am, as guys like to say, a
playa.
And you need players, unless you've added a whole bunch since school ended on Friday. You're still sitting on ten and even a soccer girl knows you need eleven.”

“But you
are
a soccer player.”

“Bored with it. Been there, done that. But football with you guys? That would be a challenge. Big-time.”

Now Will wanted to go home.

“Hey,” he said, “even if I thought it was a good idea, which I'm not saying I do, my friends would never go for it. Neither would my coach.”

“Thought you didn't have a coach.”

“I'm wondering when you have time for school, being this much of a private detective.”

She was smiling again. One more thing about her that made him feel like he was backing up. “Who's your coach? Maybe I should ask him myself.”