A Time to Dance/A Time to Embrace (43 page)

John cast a quick glance at Nathan. The boy was doodling again.
He doesn’t know I saw the notebook
. Otherwise wouldn’t he have sat back in his chair, covered the skull and crossbones, and hidden the horrible words? This wasn’t the first time John had suspected Nathan might be a problem. Given the boy’s changed image, John had kept a close eye on him since the school year began. He strolled by Nathan’s desk at least once each day and made a point of calling on him, talking to him, or locking eyes with him throughout the hour. John suspected a deep anger burned in the boy’s heart, but today was the first time there’d ever been proof.

John remained still but allowed his gaze to rove around the room. What was different about today? Why would Nathan choose now to write something so hateful?

Then it hit him.

Jake Daniels wasn’t in class.

Suddenly the entire scenario made sense. When Jake was there— no matter where he sat—he found a way to turn his classmates against Nathan.

Freak . . . queer . . . death doctor . . . nerd . . . loser.

All names whispered and loosely tossed in Nathan’s direction. When the whispers carried to the front of the classroom, John would raise his eyebrows toward Jake and a handful of other football players in the class.

“That’s enough.” The warning was usually all John had to say. And for a little while, the teasing would stop. But always the careless taunting and cruel words hit their mark. John was sure of it.

Not that Nathan ever let Jake and the others see his pain. The boy ignored all jocks, treated them as though they didn’t exist. Which was probably the best way to get back at the student athletes who picked on him. Nothing bothered John’s current football players more than being looked over.

That was especially true for Jake Daniels.

No matter that this year’s team hadn’t
earned
the accolades that came their way. The fact that the team’s record was worse than any season in recent history mattered little to Jake and his teammates. They believed they were special and they intended to make everyone at school treat them accordingly.

John thought about this year’s team. It was strange, really. They were talented, maybe more so than any other group of kids to come through Marion High. Talk around school was that they had even more going for them than last year’s team when John’s own son Kade led the Eagles to a state championship. But they were arrogant and cocky, with no care for protocol or character. In all his years of coaching, John had never had a more difficult group.

No wonder they weren’t winning. Their talent was useless in light of their attitudes.

And many of the boys’ parents were worse. Especially since Marion had lost two of its first four games.

Parents constantly complained about playing time, practice routines, and, of course, the losses. They were often rude and condescending, threatening to get John fired if his record didn’t improve.

“What happened to Marion High’s undefeated record?” they would ask him. “A good coach would’ve kept the streak going.”

“Maybe Coach Reynolds doesn’t know what he’s doing,” they would say. “Anyone could coach the talent at Marion High and come up with an undefeated season. But losses?”

They wondered out loud what type of colossal failure John Reynolds was to take a team of Eagles football players onto the field and actually lose. It was unthinkable to the Marion High parents. Unconscionable. How dare Coach Reynolds drop two games so early in the season!

And sometimes the wins were worse.

“That was a cream puff opponent last week, Reynolds,” the parents would say. If they had a two-touchdown win, the parents would harp that it should have been four at least. And then John’s favorite line of all: “Why, if
my
son had gotten more playing time . . .”

Parents gossiped behind his back and undermined the authority he had on the field. Never mind the fact that the Eagles were coming off a championship season. Never mind that John was one of the win-ningest coaches in the state. Never mind that more than half of last year’s championship squad had graduated, placing John in what was obviously a rebuilding year.

The thing that mattered was whether the sons of John’s detractors were being used at what they believed were the proper positions and for enough minutes each game. Whether their numbers were being called at the appropriate times for the big plays, and how strong their individual statistics appeared in the paper.

It was just a rotten break that the biggest controversy on the team had, in a roundabout way, made Nathan’s life miserable. Two quarterbacks had come into summer practices, each ready for the starting position: Casey Parker and Jake Daniels.

Casey was the shoo-in, the senior, the one who had ridden the bench behind Kade up until last year. All his high-school football career had come down to this, his final season with the Eagles. He reported in August expecting to own the starting position.

What the boy hadn’t expected was that Jake Daniels would show up with the same mind-set.

Jake was a junior, a usually good kid from a family who once lived down the street from John and his wife, Abby. But two years ago, the Danielses split up. Jake’s mother took Jake and moved into an apartment. His father took a job in New Jersey hosting a sports radio program. The divorce was nasty.

Jake was one of the casualties.

John shuddered. How close had he and Abby come to doing the same thing? Those days were behind them, thank God. But they were still very real for Jake Daniels.

At first Jake had turned to John, a father figure who wasn’t half a country away. John would never forget something Jake asked him.

“You think my dad still loves me?”

The kid was well over six feet tall, nearly a man. But in that instant he was seven years old again, desperate for some proof that the father he’d counted on all his life, the man who had moved away and left him, still cared.

John did everything he could to assure Jake, but as time passed, the boy grew quiet and sullen. He spent more hours alone in the weight-room and out on the field, honing his throwing skills.

When summer practices came around, there was no question who would be the starting quarterback. Jake won the contest easily. The moment that happened, Casey Parker’s father, Chuck, called a meeting with John.

“Listen, Coach—” the veins on his temple popped out as he spoke— “I heard my son lost the starting position.”

John had to stifle a sigh. “That’s true.”

The man spouted several expletives and demanded an explanation. John’s answer was simple. Casey was a good quarterback with a bad attitude. Jake was younger, but more talented and coachable, and therefore the better choice.

“My son cannot be second string.” Casey’s father was loud, his face flushed. “We’ve been planning for this all his life! He’s a senior and he will not be sitting the bench. If he has a bad attitude, that’s only because of his intensity. Live with it.”

Fortunately, John had brought one of his assistants to the meeting. The way accusations and hearsay were flying about, he’d figured he couldn’t be too careful. So he and his assistant had sat there, waiting for Parker to continue.

“What I’m saying is—” Chuck Parker leaned forward, his eyes intent—“I’ve got three coaches breathing down my neck. We’re thinking of transferring. Going where my kid’ll get a fair shake.”

John resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Your son has an attitude problem, Chuck. A big one. If other high-school coaches in the area are recruiting him, it’s because they haven’t worked with him.” John leveled his gaze at the man. “What exactly are your concerns?”

“I’ll
tell
you my concern, Coach.” Chuck pointed a rigid finger at John. “You’re not loyal to your players. That’s what. Loyalty is everything in sports.”

This from a man whose son wanted to toss his letterman’s jacket and transfer schools. As it turned out, Casey Parker stayed. He took snaps at running back and tight end and spelled Jake at quarterback. But the criticism from Casey’s father had continued each week, embarrassing Casey and causing the boy to work harder to get along with Jake, his on-field rival. Jake seemed grateful to be accepted by a senior like Casey, and the two of them began spending most of their free time together. It didn’t take long to see the changes in Jake. Gone was the shy, earnest kid who popped into John’s classroom twice a week just to connect. Gone was the boy who had once been kind to Nathan Pike. Now Jake was no different from the majority of players who strutted across Marion High’s campus.

And in that way, the quarterback controversy had only made Nathan’s life more miserable. Whereas once Nathan was respected by at least one of the football players, now he didn’t have a single ally on the team.

John had overheard two teachers talking recently.

“How many Marion football players does it take to screw in a light bulb?”

“I give up.”

“One—he holds it while the world revolves around him.”

There were nights when John wondered why he was wasting his time. Especially when his athletes’ elitist attitudes divided the school campus and alienated students like Nathan Pike. Students who sometimes snapped and made an entire school pay for their low place in the social pecking order.

So what if John’s athletes could throw a ball or run the length of a field? If they left the football program at Marion High without a breath of compassion or character, what was the point?

John drew a salary of $3,100 a season for coaching football. One year he’d figured it came out to less than two bucks an hour. Obviously he didn’t do the job for the money.

He glanced at the clock. Three minutes of seatwork left.

Images from a dozen different seasons flashed in his mind. Why was he in it, then? It wasn’t for his ego. He’d had more strokes in his days as a quarterback for University of Michigan than most men received in a lifetime. No, he didn’t coach for pride’s sake.

It was, very simply, because there were two things he seemed born to do: play football . . . and teach teens.

Coaching was the purest way he’d known to bring those two together. Season after season after season, it had worked. Until now. Now it didn’t feel pure at all. It felt ridiculous. Like the whole sports world had gone haywire.

John drew a deep breath and stood, working the tendons in his bum knee—the one with the old football injury. He walked to the chalkboard where, for the next ten minutes, he diagramed a series of nutritional food values and meticulously explained them. Then he assigned homework.

But the whole time there was only one thing on his mind: Nathan Pike.

How had a clean-cut student like Nathan once was become so angry and hateful? Was it all because of Jake Daniels? Were Jake’s and the other players’ egos so inflated that they couldn’t coexist with anyone different from them? And what about the words Nathan had scribbled on his notebook?
Death to jocks.
Did he mean it?

If so, what could be done?

Schools like Marion High grew from the safe soil of Middle America. Most did not have metal detectors or mesh backpacks or video cameras that might catch a disturbed student before he took action. Yes, they had the red-flag program. Nathan had already been red-flagged. Everyone who knew him was watching.

But what if that wasn’t enough?

John’s stomach tightened, and he swallowed hard. He had no answers. Only that today, in addition to grading papers, inputting student test results in the computer, holding afternoon practice, and meeting with a handful of irritated parents along the sidelines, he would also have to talk to the principal about Nathan Pike’s scribbled declaration.

It was eight o’clock by the time he climbed into his car and opened an envelope he’d found in his school mailbox just before practice.

“To whom it may concern,” the letter began. “We are calling for the resignation of Coach Reynolds . . .”

John sucked in a sharp breath.
What in the world?
His gut ached as he kept reading.

“Coach Reynolds is not the moral example we need for our young men. He is aware that several of his players are drinking and taking part in illegal road races. Coach Reynolds knows about this but does nothing. Therefore we are demanding he resign or be let go. If nothing is done about this, we will inform the media of our request.”

John remembered to exhale. The letter wasn’t signed, but it was copied to his athletic director, his principal, and three school district officials.

Who could have written such a thing? And what were they referring to? John gripped the steering wheel with both hands and sat back hard. Then he remembered. There had been rumors in August when practice first started up . . . rumors that a few players had drunk and raced their cars. But that’s all they’d been: rumors. John couldn’t do anything about them . . .

He leaned his head against the car window. He’d been furious when he’d heard the report. He’d asked the players straight out, but each of them had denied any wrongdoing. Beyond that there wasn’t a thing John could do. Protocol was that rumors not be given credence unless there was proof of a rule violation.

Not a moral example for the players?

John’s hands began to tremble and he stared over his right shoulder at the doors of the school. Surely his athletic director wouldn’t acknowledge a cowardly, unsigned letter like this one. But then . . .

The athletic director was new. An angry man with a chip on his shoulder and what seemed like a vendetta against Christians. He’d been hired a year ago to replace Ray Lemming, a formidable man whose heart and soul had been given over to coaches and athletes.

Ray was so involved in school athletics he was a fixture at the school, but last year, at the ripe age of sixty-three, he retired to spend more time with his family. The way most coaches saw it, much of the true heart of Marion sports retired right alongside him. That was especially true after the school hired Herman Lutz as athletic director.

John drew a weary breath. He’d done everything possible to support the man, but he’d already fired the boys’ swim coach after a parent complaint. What if he took this absurd letter seriously? The other coaches saw Lutz as a person drowning in the complexities of the job.