End Zone (13 page)

“Oh, no!” Ronde moaned. That made four key Eagles who were out of the game. With five minutes left to play, could the defense stop Abingdon one last time?

The Angels' strategy was to run the ball, using up all five minutes of clock, so that the Eagle offense wouldn't get
possession again. It was a gamble—a field goal wouldn't be enough, so they'd have to score a touchdown. But Abingdon's coaches obviously felt they could do it.

And why not? They'd only scored two TDs, but they'd moved the ball well all day.

There was nothing Ronde could do about it. No sense rushing the quarterback if the Angels were running the ball. He had to stay with his man, just in case, so he was not available to help stuff the runs that kept coming, tiring out the Eagle defense.

Ronde noticed that Rob Fiorilla was sucking air, his hands on his hips, bending over to catch his breath.

Ronde pointed to him, and to the sidelines, signaling Coach Pellugi to send in a replacement. Rob was a great player, but he was out of gas. The Eagles needed fresh blood on the D-line to stop the relentless Angel running game.

With under a minute left, and Abingdon at the Eagle seventeen yard line, Ronde started to feel the panic rising inside him. He knew it was the same for every Eagle defender. Their whole season depended on keeping Abingdon out of the end zone right here.

The only thing going for the Eagles was that they had less ground to cover in the backfield now that Abingdon was so close to the end zone. It meant the Eagles' backs could bunch up near the line of scrimmage. That made it harder for the Angels to run straight at the Eagles' line. Their drive slowed, and the Angels had to spend their time-outs.

With twenty seconds left, it was third down and goal to go at the four yard line. Both teams were out of time-outs now. If the Angels ran, and didn't get into the end zone, the clock might run out before they could run another play.

That meant they'd be throwing for sure. Ronde only hoped he got a crack at the ball. Surely, the Angels would go to the opposite side of the field.

Thinking along the same lines, Coach Wheeler called for a safety blitz. Alister charged through a gap in the line, chasing the quarterback out of the pocket. Now all the receivers had to abandon their original patterns and try to get free.

Ronde followed his man toward the center of the end zone.

The Abingdon quarterback ran first toward one sideline, then the other, desperately trying to find a target. Since there was no daylight between him and the goal line, he couldn't take a chance on trying to run the ball in for the winning score.

He could either run out of bounds, saving a precious few seconds for one last play, or he could fire the ball at one of his receivers, knowing that if they dropped it, the clock would stop.

All he had to do was make sure the ball wasn't picked off. He fired it low, so that it couldn't be knocked up into the air, a free ball for anybody to snag.

What he didn't see coming was Ronde Barber.

Quick as lightning, Ronde dove low, reaching out one hand and grabbing the ball just before it fell into the hands of the receiver. He held the ball against his helmet as he fell, keeping it off the ground. Somehow, he didn't lose control of it.

The whistle blew, and the ref signaled interception!

Five seconds later, after Manny took a knee, the game was over!

The Eagles had handed Abingdon its first defeat. Ronde and his teammates were Western Regional Champions—make that
undefeated
Champions—and they'd done it with Tiki on the sideline!

“What did I promise you?” Ronde exulted as he hugged his twin. “What did I say?”

“You did, you did,” Tiki admitted.

“Never mind those silly superstitions,” Ronde said. “They've got no power over us—we are Eagles, bro!”

It was only when they arrived in the visitors' locker room that they got the bad news: All three of the Eagles' wounded—Justin, Paco, and Adam—would be out for the State Championship game!

“Man,” Ronde breathed, suddenly joyless. “Tiki, you'd better be back for that game, or everything we've done so far is going to go up in smoke.”

TIKI AWOKE WITHOUT A HEADACHE.
That made it three days in a row now. He'd already forgotten what it was like to wake up with them. Thank goodness he'd been cleared to play by the doctors!

The big game was tomorrow morning, and he felt like his old self again. Later, after school, he and the rest of the Eagles would board their bus for Richmond. They would sleep in dorms at Richmond University, same as last year. And tomorrow, the Eagles would take the field to defend their crown against mighty Richmond Prep.

Most
of the Eagles, that is.

Adam Costa, their all-world kicker, would miss the big game with a sprained ankle. That meant the Eagles could forget about field goals. They'd be going for two points after every touchdown as well.

Once before, during last year's regular season, they'd been forced to play without Adam, and Tiki had filled in. The Eagles had survived, but just barely. Tiki would have to do the kickoffs and punts tomorrow, but he wouldn't be kicking for points.
No way.

The team would also be without Paco Rivera, their all-league center. At the moment, his left ankle was in a soft cast. Without him, would Manny be protected from the Richmond Prep pass rush? Would the snaps go smoothly—especially the long ones on third down, and to Tiki on punts?

As if that weren't bad enough, Justin Landzberg, the team's other cornerback, was down with a broken wrist. Rio Ikeda would substitute for him, but that just made the Eagles' pass defense thinner and weaker.

The three injured Eagles would travel with the team, and cheer them on from the bench—but that was all they could do, against a Richmond Prep team that was coached by former NFL players, ranked number one in the entire Southeast—and, of course, undefeated.

So even if Tiki's own headaches were gone, he and the Eagles still had plenty of headaches to deal with.

It was the last Thursday before Christmas. After the game, there would be no school for almost two weeks! By the time the new year rolled around and classes resumed, the football season would be history.

If the Eagles won, of course, there would be a celebration planned in the gym or the auditorium, and the whole school would turn out to cheer their football heroes.

If they lost, though, the whole season would be a painful memory. It would be ancient history, and everyone would try to forget the miserable way it had ended—so
close and yet so far!
If only those three key players hadn't been injured
, they'd say, and shake their heads. A perfect season, ruined.

Well, not altogether—they'd still be League Champions for the third year in a row, and Western Regional Champs two years running.

Tiki remembered, back when he and Ronde were in seventh grade, riding the bench for the Eagles. That year, the team had lost in the State Semifinals. Quarterback Matt Clayton, who'd been the big hero of the school up to that point, had pretty much disappeared all that spring. Now he was a star in high school, but his fame at Hidden Valley Junior High was over the minute the Eagles lost that game.

Would it be the same for Tiki, Ronde, and the rest of this year's team?

No
, Tiki reasoned, it would be
worse
—because this year, everyone was
expecting
them to win. If they didn't—well, he didn't even want to
think
about that. They
had
to win. They just
had
to!

•  •  •

That night, he and Ronde were sharing a dorm room. It was almost lights-out time when Ronde said, “Hey, let's go hang out with Paco and those guys. They're probably feeling like crud on toast.”

“Good idea,” Tiki agreed.

They walked down the empty hallway. Most of the
doors to the dorm rooms were closed. The team members were tired—it had been a long trip to Richmond. But the door to Paco's room was open.

Inside, he, Adam, and Justin sat silently, their faces wearing identical expressions of misery.

“Hey, guys,” Tiki said. “How's it going?”

Paco looked up from the floor. “How do you think?”

“This stinks,” Adam said, then sighed wearily. “I don't know why we even bothered to come here. It's just gonna be torture to watch us get killed.”

“Hey!” Ronde objected. “Who says we're gonna get killed?”

“Face it,” Justin said. “Without Adam, how are we gonna keep up with those guys? They score, like, forty points a game or something. Adam's our biggest scorer.”

“Hey, what am
I
, chopped liver?” Tiki asked.

“They're not scoring any forty points off
us
,” Ronde vowed. “I guarantee you that.”

“I don't know,” Paco said, shaking his head. “It just seems like we've been pushing our luck for the past six weeks. Maybe this is the last straw. Maybe our luck has finally run out.”

Tiki swallowed hard. The image of the broken mirror flew into his mind's eye. The black cat crossed the path of his imagination.

He shook his head violently, to get the images out of his mind. Luckily, even that didn't give him a headache,
or he would have wound up kicking himself for being so stupid as to shake his head hard after a concussion.

“Listen, you guys,” he said. “We're a
team
. One or two of us—or even three—can go down, and the rest of the team can step up and take over for them.”

“Even Adam?” Justin asked. “Who's gonna kick field goals for us?
You
?”

Tiki had no answer for that one, but luckily, Ronde stepped in.

“Yo, listen up,” he said. “None of us would have gotten this far without all the rest of us pulling for him.”

He looked each of the stricken players in the eye, then added, “We've come all this way. And we are
not
going back home without that trophy. You hear me?”

One by one, all three injured Eagles nodded. Ronde put out his hand, and they all covered it with one of their own. “Go, Eagles!” they shouted together, not caring whether they woke up their teammates.

•  •  •

It was a cold but sunny day that Friday, as the teams took the field for the State Final. Tiki scanned the packed stands, filled with more than ten thousand people from all over the state. TV cameras were everywhere—the game was being broadcast on local stations throughout Virginia.

Tiki knew that his mom was not in the stands. Although she came to nearly every one of their home games, and many of their road games too, she could not take the day
off from work to travel all the way to Richmond. She worked at two jobs. Once, she'd even held
three
jobs at the same time!

Tiki knew that, even at work, she'd have a TV rigged up somewhere, somehow, and would be checking on the game every chance she got.

He forced himself to refocus. It was important to not get carried away by the huge crowd and all the media people. You still had to focus on your game, and especially on your opponent.

Tiki thought back to what Coach Wheeler had told them in the locker room. “The Renegades have won fifteen straight games this year,” he said. “They didn't do it by being soft, or slow, or weak, or dumb. They did it the old-fashioned way—they
earned
it. They averaged forty points a game, and gave up an average of only sixteen.

“But look at it this way—
so what?
We've
won twenty-something straight games, dating all the way back to last year's regular season!”

A cheer went up from the Eagles—even the three who were injured.

“So I hope there's no fear in this room,” Wheeler went on. “There shouldn't be. We're missing some of our best guys, sure—but each and every one of you has had your heroic moments this season. All we have to do is bring that same intensity to
this
game. If we do, we'll win—and that's a
promise
.”

Another cheer rocked the walls of the locker room. Several of the Eagles pounded on the metal locker doors for added effect.

“We're gonna have our hands full,” the coach continued. “They're bigger than we are, and probably stronger. Definitely richer and better-equipped.” This got a laugh from the assembled players. “But we're
faster
—remember that. And in spite of the fact that they've got great coaches, I say we're
smarter
!”

The cheering got even louder, and only died down a little as Wheeler finished his speech:

“Besides, look at all the ups and downs we've been through together. If we focus our energies as a team, for just one measly little hour, we can walk away State Champions, with a perfect season we'll all remember for the rest of our lives!”

•  •  •

“Holy jumpin' Hannah!” Rio said as the Eagles stood on the sideline and watched the Renegades run onto the field. “They're even bigger than they looked on video!”

“I didn't know they made Junior High School kids
that
big,” Tiki said, shaking his head. “What are they feeding them, anyway?”

The Renegades roared, made pumped-up muscle poses, and threw one another around, just to show the Eagles how strong they were.

It
was
a little intimidating, Tiki had to admit. But he
didn't care how big or strong they were. The Renegades were not going to steal the State title he and the Eagles had worked so long and hard to win.

The coin toss went to Richmond Prep, and Tiki lined up to kick the ball. He had to concentrate really hard because, due to his concussion, he hadn't practiced with the team all week. In fact, this was the first kick he'd tried since last season—and he hadn't been very good back then!