Game Changers (9 page)

Fourth down.

Like they were down to their last out in baseball.

Coach O'Brien was smiling on the sideline as he sent in the play with Kevin Nolti, pumping his fist at the Rams. “Let's do this!” he yelled.

This play was called “Sneak 22.” Ben again. He was supposed to stay home and block while Shawn rolled to his left, the side of the field where Sam had lined up. But as soon as Ben threw his block, he was supposed to jog to his right, almost as if he wasn't even in the play.

Then Shawn was supposed to turn and throw him the ball and — if the play worked the way Coach O'Brien thought it would — Ben would run from there into the end zone.

Easy throw for Shawn to make, tough play for the defense to read. Ben thought:
It shouldn't have come down to one play. But if it had to, I'm glad the play is to
me
.

Shawn dropped back. Hewitt blitzed again. Coop leveled one of their tackles, Ben put a good low block on a linebacker. Then he was out in the right flat. All alone.

Now.

One of the Hewitt corners, the one covering Brian underneath the goalposts, had spotted him. But he was hanging back with Brian for now, not wanting to leave
him
wide open in the back of the end zone.

Shawn waited the way he'd been told to on this play, then suddenly turned toward Ben, brought his arm forward, Ben seeing the tight spiral come out of his hand.

Ben decided to give one quick look up the field and when he did he saw the cornerback on Brian starting to run toward him.

All it took. When he turned back for the ball it was already on him, and he wasn't ready for it. At the worst possible moment, Ben was the one who turned out to be too anxious,
wanting to start running before he had the ball, wanting to get to the end zone, wanting to win the game for his team.

Wanting way too much for this quarterback to throw the winning pass.

The ball went through Ben's hands, fell to the ground incomplete as the Rams fell to 0–2.

Ben didn't even remember dropping to his knees.

But there he was in the grass now, the ball in front of him, still not believing what had just happened, not believing the game had ended the way it had, that he'd lost it all by himself.

He always wanted the ball in his hands at the end of a close game, in any sport.

It just wasn't supposed to go
through
his hands.

Not like this, not now.

He was aware of a lot of yelling from behind him, knowing it was from the Hewitt Giants, who weren't the worst team in the league anymore.

Because we are
, Ben thought.

He stayed where he was, his knees on the five-yard line, hands on his thigh pads, still staring at the ball on the field in front of him.

“Hey.”

Ben looked up and saw Sam Brown. Next to Sam was Coop. His wingmen. That's what Coop said they were, even before they started calling themselves the Core Four.

Sam put out his hand. Ben reached for it. Sam pulled him to his feet, saying, “Come on, we're pretty much done here.”

Sam was grinning at him, helmet already off, holding it in his left hand.

“I can't believe I dropped it,” Ben said.

“It happens,” Coop said, “even to you, a guy who's a total dog most of the time.”

“Dog” to Coop was high praise. You just had to know that his vocabulary was sometimes upside down from everybody else's. “Stupid” was good, too.

“Today I was a mutt,” Ben said.

“Coop's right,” Sam said, “even though I don't believe I just said that. Happens to everybody and now it happened to you. What about the time your guy, Aaron Rodgers, coughed it up in overtime in the playoffs? The guy from the Cardinals ran it in and the Pack's season was over.”

“Rodgers got hit,” Ben said.

“His season was still over,” Sam said. “Ours isn't.”

“You sure?” Ben said.

“Who's the guy always saying we win as a team and lose as a team?” Coop said. “Wait, I know. It's
you
.”

“Not today,” Ben said. “Today it was all me.”

“Right, you're the worst player ever,” Sam said. “Now let's go shake hands and see how fast we can get out of Hewitt.”

Ben looked around for Shawn, wanting to apologize for dropping a sure game-winner. In a big spot, Shawn had stepped up and made the play. Been the player he wanted to be.

Ben wanted to make sure he knew it wasn't his fault that the Rams had lost.

Everybody else was already in the line. That included Shawn this time, up at the front, right ahead of his dad. Ben and Sam and Coop fell in, went through the motions even though they didn't feel like it, kept mumbling “Great game” and “Way to go” to the Hewitt guys, just wanting this part of the day to be over the way the game was.

Then go listen to Coach try to put a smiley face on this week's killer loss.

Shawn was about halfway to their bench when Ben caught up with him. “Dude,” he said. “I am
so
stinking sorry.”

Shawn stopped, took off his helmet now, staring at Ben at first as if he was just some random guy from the other team.

“Thanks,” he said.

“
Thanks
?”

“Yeah,” Shawn said. “You promised to be my friend, and just now you were.”

Ben said, “I don't get it.”

“No, I feel a lot better now,” Shawn said.

Ben starting to hear the sarcasm in his voice.

“Yeah,” Shawn O'Brien said, “I feel a
whole
lot better today knowing I'm not the biggest choker on the team.”

Ben opened his mouth, closed it, not sure what to say to that. Now the Bad Shawn wasn't just in at quarterback, talking to himself after a bad play, he was standing right in front of Ben.

Ben didn't know Sam and Coop were still with him, but heard Sam's voice now.

“Shut up,” he said.

Ben said to Sam, “Let it go.”

“No,” Sam said.

He stepped up so that he was on Ben's right shoulder. Coop was on the other side.

Sam said to Shawn, “You must be joking, calling somebody else a choker.”

“What, he didn't choke?” Shawn said. “What game were you watching? A five-year-old could have caught that ball.”

“I'm starting to think maybe a five-year-old threw it,” Coop said.

“You're a real team guy, O'Brien, you know that?” Sam said.

Shawn looked at all of them.

“Yeah,” Shawn said. “You should probably talk to the coach and get him to throw me off it.”

Then he turned and walked away. Sam started to go after him, Ben put a hand on his arm and stopped him, not wanting this to be any worse than it already was.

If that was possible.

“Let him go,” Ben said.

“I told you he was a jerk,” Coop said.

Ben wasn't sure what Shawn was right now. Or who he was. Or why the guy he'd been working out with all week had said what he said, acted the way he had. All Ben knew was that he'd come into the season wanting to get to know Shawn better and unfortunately, now he did.

 

It was only four o'clock when the bus Coach O'Brien had rented for the team out of his own pocket turned into the
parking lot at Rockwell Middle School. Even though most of the parents had traveled to Hewitt to watch the game, Coach still wanted the players to return home from road trips — even short ones — together.

“There are all kinds of ways to learn how to be a real team,” he said, “and one of them is on the ride home. Win or lose.”

Shawn sat with his dad in the first seat behind the driver. Ben and Sam and Coop were all the way in back.

Sam hardly ever lost his temper, it was why Ben was surprised to see him come at Shawn the way he did after the game. Usually it was Coop who acted like a hothead, and that was the Coop they had gotten for the whole ride back, Coop keeping his voice low, but still going on and on about Shawn, and finding different ways to call him a scrub.

If “dog” was the biggest compliment you could get out of Coop, “scrub” was the biggest insult. He was still at it even as the bus pulled to a stop.

“Total scrub,” Coop said as the guys started to file off the bus, “from the scrub Hall of Fame. If you want to grow up to be a scrub someday, you put his picture up on your wall.”

Ben said, “I think he just needed somebody to be mad at.”

Now Sam got hot all over again.

“For the last time,” Sam said, “stop defending this guy. He sold you out for one dropped ball.”

Ben could see how steamed he still was, so he let it go, but not before Sam said, “You know how Coach says you gotta learn to lose before you learn to win sometimes? It's
gonna be no problem for his son. Because he's a complete loser already.”

Before they got into their parents' cars, Sam and Coop asked Ben if he wanted them to come over once they got out of their gear. Ben said he'd give them a shout-out before dinner, or maybe right after, but right now he wanted to go chill by himself.

Not an option, as it turned out.

When he got home, there was Lily sitting on his front porch waiting for him.

From the backseat Ben said to his parents, “Okay, which one of you called her and told her how the game ended?”

Both his mom and dad swore they didn't.

“Then she definitely does have a sixth sense,” Ben said. “Or a
sick
sense. Girl's a freak.”

“Just speaking from the female perspective,” Beth McBain said, “I'm hoping you can find a better way to describe Lily's psychic powers if you mention them to her.”

Ben had taken off his shoulder pads and jersey and cleats in the car, was just wearing a T-shirt now, along with his football pants and socks. Lily was in sneakers and so when she came down the steps to greet him, she seemed even taller compared to Ben than she usually was.

Figures, he thought.

In the biggest moment of the season so far, he had come up small.
So
small.

“Okay,” Ben said, “who ratted me out?”

Lily smiled, making him feel better right away even though he didn't want to, he wanted to stay bummed.

“Ratted you out on what?”

“That I blew the game for us.”

“Oh,” Lily said, “
that
.”

“Yeah. That.”

Lily said, “I thought you meant somebody had told me something
major
, not the ending to some silly old football game.”

“Not silly to me.”

“Yeah,” Lily said, “it's a shame that your season had to end that way.” Still smiling. “Oh, wait,” she said, slapping her forehead now, “the season
didn't
come to an end. Or the world!”

“You didn't tell me who told you.”

“Well, if you
must
know, Justin's parents couldn't go to the game, but he needed to tell them when pickup was. So he borrowed a phone and called home and Ella” — Justin's sister — “answered. And Justin told her and she called and told me and here I am.”

“Here you are,” Ben said. “But I don't want to talk about the game.”

“Me
neither
!”

Ben couldn't help himself. She sounded so relieved it made him laugh.

“C'mon,” Lily said, pulling him by the arm, “let's go sit on the swings. I know that always makes me feel better about everything.”

“Just let me get out of these stupid football clothes,” he said. “Take me one minute.”

“Stupid clothes for a stupid game, if you ask me.”

Ben managed a smile now. “Just keep talking, Lils, you won't even notice I'm gone.”

He ran up to his bedroom, put on his favorite Packers Super Bowl T-shirt, shorts, sneakers, thinking to himself:

Maybe I didn't want to be alone nearly as much as I thought I did.

Or maybe he just wanted to be alone except for Lily.

They walked to the far end of McBain Field, stopped before they got to the basketball court, each of them taking a swing. Their moms had pushed them in these swings when they were little.

They each gave themselves a push with their legs, quietly rocked back and forth in the air.

When they took a break Lily said, “What?”

“I didn't say anything.”

“Didn't have to.
Never
have to. So go ahead and talk about whatever it is you're not talking about, even if it is the silly game you said you
weren't
going to talk about.”

He took a deep breath, let it out.

“Okay,” Ben said. “If we had won today, we'd have one win and one loss, and we'd be fine. But now we're not fine because we're 0–2 and might have no chance of playing in the championship game.”

“And it's all your fault.”

“Well,
yeah
, now that you mention it.”

“You really are such an idiot sometimes.”

“No argument. Clumsy one, too.”

“I don't know anything about your idiotic game and I know
that your team probably wouldn't have had any chance to win without you.”

“Doesn't matter why you lost. Just that you lost. A famous coach said that one time.”

“Blah blah blah,” Lily said with a wave of her hand. “Now what else aren't you telling me?”

Why fight it? Girl was a total mind-reading freak.

At least with me she is
, Ben thought.

“Actually, there is one other thing,” he said, and told her what Shawn said to him when the game was over.

“He really said that?” she said. “To
you
?”

Ben nodded.

“The guy you tried to help not be so much of a choker himself?”

“Sam and Coop didn't want to hear it, but I said he just needed to be hacked off at somebody and picked me. Guys do that sometimes.”

“You don't.”

“Sure I do,” Ben said, grinning at her. “I just don't try it in front of you.”

“No, McBain,” she said. “You don't. You're a boy, everybody knows boys are a little slow sometimes. But you're not mean. You're
never
mean. And what he said to you was plain old mean.”

Then Lily Wyatt said, “Something I am going to point out to
that
boy on Monday.”

“No,” Ben said. “Sam and Shawn nearly went at it after the game. But this is between him and me.”

“Why
were
you so nice to him in the first place?” she said, cocking that eyebrow like she could.

“I already told you.”

“Right. I know what you
told
me.”

“I was just trying to help a guy out, help him get better.”

“How's that workin' out for you so far?”

“Hey,” Ben said, “nobody wants to get called a gagger. But it's not like he was lying, at least today. You can see he's all worried about letting his dad down and today he snapped after I let him down.”

“You just dropped a ball,” Lily said.

“Can
we
drop
this
?” Ben said.

“Done,” she said.

Then she gave him her best smile so far and said, “See how easy it is to drop stuff?”