Kid Owner (5 page)

The rest of lunch I sat in silence. Izzy and Jackson didn't really talk to me much about the kid owner stuff—they were worried about our English test later in the day—and I couldn't muster up the strength to care. Bryan's reminder had me unsettled. He was right. Later that day we would put the pads on for the first time that season. All the kid owner excitement had allowed me to forget, but Bryan's reminder filled my bones with terror. And not even my kid owner status could make that go away. I really hadn't hit anyone yet in practice; so far, we'd only been able to run around in helmets and shorts. Even a team in Texas had to have a couple weeks of practices to get in shape before the real hitting could begin.

The armpits of my polo shirt were damp and ripe by the time the final school bell rang. The image of the Dallas Cowboys line waiting for my direction was nowhere to be found.
My breath came in short gasps and my head spun lightly as I pushed through the locker room door, to be struck in the face by the stench. Many of my teammates were already half geared up. Just the odor of the pads—even the new ones with their fresh, clean, plastic smell—made my stomach turn. There was Jackson, his locker right next to mine, already fully dressed.

A sheen of sweat glinted on Jackson's honey-colored face, outshone only by his grin. “Here we go, Little Man. The big dog's gonna eat today.”

“What dog? Eat what?” I fumbled with the padlock on my locker, spinning the black dial back and forth and missing the numbers I needed to open it. I didn't mind Jackson calling me “Little Man” because I knew he meant it in the friendliest of ways. He'd called me that the day we met, when I had invited him back to swim in my pool after practice. We'd laughed so hard fooling around in the pool that he threw up the two bottles of red Gatorade he'd consumed, and we'd laughed even harder when we called it the red tide.

Jackson chuckled. “Me. I'm the big dog. Gonna eat today. Pads on.”

“Oh. Yeah.” I finally got it right and the lock clicked open. I took out my own gear—tiny next to Jackson's—and began to pull it on.

Jackson just sat and continued to chuckle, delighted with the state of the world and himself.

“Can you get your big butt out of the way?” I nudged him with my own skinny rump so I could sit and tug on my padded pants.

“Oh, you got that fire in your eyes, Little Man. You're gonna eat, too, huh?”

“Eat?” I spat the word with disgust. “How about you eat a booger?”

I wanted to be grumpy in case Jackson ended up hating me by the end of the day, but he just laughed and slapped my shoulder pad so hard my arm went numb. He still didn't get that I was scared to death.

“I'll see you out there, Little Man. You're gonna bring the sting, I bet. It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the
fight
in the
dog
. I know you got that bite, bet you're gonna make people bark.”

I hated that Jackson was so excited for hitting, hungry for it, and I muttered to myself so no one else could possibly hear as I trembled and sweat and finished putting on my gear. “Dogs and bites?
Little
man? You big
doofus
.”

If I wasn't so scared, I'd have been raving mad. But I was terrified because Coach Hubbard and his assistant, Coach Vickerson, might not be as understanding as my youth-league coaches had been about my yellow streak. My seventh-grade coaches were a little over the top. Coach Vickerson couldn't utter a complete sentence without flecks of spit flying from his mouth like buckshot. And Coach Hubbard got so excited his face turned different colors. He would actually burst little blood vessels in his cheeks, where they'd lie like tiny little red worms on the surface of his skin. Not only could I be sure they wouldn't allow me to avoid the contact drills, I suspected they might
demand
I participate.

After all, one of Coach Vickerson's favorite things to growl:
“You're only as strong as your
weakest
link, boys!”

The locker room emptied and finally, I had all my equipment on. I'd run out of excuses to delay the inevitable. I marched out of the locker room, the last to arrive on the field. Coach Hubbard gave his whistle a blast and we took off on a warm-up lap, stretched, and ran through agilities. All the while, I kept my eye out for Bryan, hoping maybe he'd forgotten about his lunchroom promise.

In the line for the shuffle run, I heard a strange noise behind me. I turned and looked and saw Jackson's sweaty face beaming like a stoplight. He shook and jiggled, laughing to himself with great delight.

“
What
are you laughing at?” I was furious.

“Hittin', hittin', hittin',” he said. “It's on.”

And then he began laughing to himself again. “Jackson, what—”

“All right, get in here!” Coach Hubbard called. “Circle up. We're gonna do bull in the ring.”

The team launched into screams of excitement, and Bryan Markham dashed out into the middle of the ring without even being told.

Coach Vickerson grinned. “Now
that's
a leader.”

“Yeah! You
want
to hit, don't you, Markham?” Coach Hubbard slapped Markham on the shoulder pad and blasted his whistle. “Get those feet going!”

We all chopped our feet. Coach Hubbard called out numbers, and one by one my teammates broke from the circle, bolted at Markham, and received their punishment. Markham was having a swell time, and I began to think that just maybe
my youth-league coaches had given Coach Hubbard a heads-up about me. Maybe Hubbard would let me slide.

Jackson, on the other hand, waved his hands and jumped up and down—which looked ridiculous as he chopped his feet in place—and grunted like he needed to use the bathroom. “Ooo. Ooo. Ooo. Me, Coach. Me. Ooo. Ooo. Ooo.”

Finally, Coach Hubbard barked out his number and Jackson took off for Markham.

Jackson roared as he accelerated toward Markham, and when he hit, it was terrifying. In fact, Jackson didn't hit Markham as much as he went
through
him. Markham's body flew into the air. His feet flailed. His arms pinwheeled. He landed on his back with a thud and a bark of pain. Jackson laughed like a total maniac. He loved it. Hubbard loved it. Vickerson loved it. Everyone loved it.

Only I was horrified, but that horror was nothing compared to what happened next.

Laughing, Hubbard barked out, “Twenty-three!”

I looked around as I chopped my feet. Everyone stared at me. I looked down at my own jersey because in my fright I'd lost all sense of time and place.

I
was number twenty-three.

“Twenty-three!” Coach Vickerson shouted.

“Twenty-three. Twenty-three!” Hubbard screamed.

I didn't move. I couldn't. Jackson was slobbering with delight, chopping his feet in the middle of the ring, motioning to me to have at him . . . or try.

“Come on, Zinna!” Coach Hubbard's face was purple. “Get
your mind back into your team. Now! I said
twenty-three
, that's
you
!”

And still I stood, my mind flooded with all the excuses I could use when I quit the team. Maybe the fact that I was kid owner of the Cowboys would be the only excuse I needed.

Then the unthinkable happened. As I chopped in place, stuck in my spot, Jackson took off, running straight at me, a charging bull elephant, with his pads lowered.

I closed my eyes.

Jackson hit me so hard, I really didn't feel it. I actually didn't feel anything. I was simply airborne, floating, until the ground punched me from head to toe with its infinite fist.

Jackson burst into laughter and immediately held out a hand to help me up. “Get up, Ryan. Come on! You gotta hit me.”

“I . . . I . . .” All I could do was take his hand and allow him to yank me upright.

“You can't just stand there, little buddy.” Jackson talked like it was just the two of us, but the entire team was watching and listening.

In that moment, I realized I owned the Dallas Cowboys and Jackson was making me look like a fool.

“Stupid!” I screamed.

“Hey.” Jackson took a step back.

I shoved him. He stumbled, then recovered. I crashed into
him with all my might, bouncing back as if from a boulder, but he stumbled again and I went at him, smashing him with my shoulder, head, and hands.

“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” I pummeled and screamed, screamed and pummeled. I was out of my mind. Jackson was hitting me back now. Recoiling and crashing into me. Our pads popped and our metal face masks clanged. We were like two stags clashing horns.

Suddenly, there was a blizzard of whistles and both coaches were on us, pulling, pushing, and shoving us apart.

“Okay, okay, okay!” Coach Hubbard huffed. “Now
that's
hitting.
That's
how we play this game.”

Jackson and I stood breathless, glaring at each other.

“Boys,” Coach Vickerson announced, looking around with this wise and serious face, “dancing is a contact sport. Football is a
collision
sport.”

“Okay,” Coach Hubbard barked, “linemen with Coach Vickerson, skill players with me for individuals. Hit hard and often today, boys. Hard and often.”

Coach blew his whistle and the group fell apart, big hogs going one way, the smaller, more athletic group going the other. I turned but was yanked back around by the arm only to see Jackson's big, shiny, grinning face squeezed into his helmet.

“Hey, Ry. You okay?”

“I just . . .” I faltered for a moment. “I've never really
hit
like that before. You were so hyped up about it that you didn't even care about the Cowboys, and I was, like, nervous.”

“Ry, it's gonna be fine. Hey, you recovered, didn't you? You hit—hard!”

“Just because I got so mad at you for talking to me like I was an idiot.”

“I was only trying to help, Ry.” I knew by Jackson's face that he meant it.

“Well . . . thanks.”

“You were great. Keep it up.” Jackson slapped me on the shoulder pad. Best friends again, and I realized that in his mind, we never stopped being best friends, not for a single instant. In fact, it hit me that what he did was not make me look like a fool, but save me, not just from never being a real football player—a player in a sport I truly loved—but from being a wimp for the rest of my life, off the field as well as on.

“Hope I didn't hurt you.” I mustered as much bravado as I possibly could.

“Ha-ha! That's it!” He winked and smacked me again and turned his gleeful face toward the rest of the linemen, jogging up toward the rear of the pack, a dog ready to dig into a pile of bones.

As I loped along on an easy jog with Coach Hubbard and the other skill players, my feet barely touched the grass. I floated to the next drill. When Coach Hubbard growled and snorted and pointed to a narrow swatch of grass between two lines of cones and shouted, “Oklahoma, boys!” I jumped right out there in the middle of the drill along with two fellow defenders. Three other players took up their position in an opposing triangle facing us, the one in the back accepting the football Coach Hubbard flipped to him.

I was at the rear of my triangle with two thick running backs in front of me. Facing us were two wide receivers and Jason
Simpkin, starting quarterback and all-around meanie. In fact, while Simpkin had tolerated me as one of the kids in the neighborhood growing up, over the past several years it seemed his disgust with me had grown with every inch he put on his own frame, and he'd grown pretty tall. And I'm sure the news about me and the Dallas Cowboys wasn't going to help our friendship.

Now Simpkin leered at me with a mocking smile and slapped the ball he held tucked into his other arm before doing the same to the side of his helmet like some kind of mad ape. I smiled right back because I knew the secret now. The secret was that if you
hit
someone with football pads on, it was nothing like
being hit.
Even smashing into a behemoth like Jackson hadn't really hurt, and even if it did, it was counterbalanced by the thrill of hitting him as well.

My hands shook, not with fear but rage, as I bent my knees and crouched into a position where I might blast up through that stupid smirk behind Simpkin's face mask. Before I had time to think anything else, Coach blew the whistle. The four players in front crashed like cymbals, shivering with noise. Simpkin faked one way, then launched himself into the small seam between his blockers.

I attacked, head low, barreling my shoulder into his midriff, driving my legs as I exploded up through him, wrapping my arms as I'd so ineffectively done to blocking dummies the past three years but never to a live person. Simpkin went up into the air and then screwed sideways into the dirt with me on top of him.

Coach blew his whistle. As I started to rise, Simpkin gave me a cheap shove.

All I did was laugh.

He could shove all he wanted.

He could call me names.

None of it mattered because every time I had the chance to smash him or anyone else on the football field, that's exactly what I intended to do.

As excited as I'd been about suddenly owning the Dallas Cowboys, this may have been even better.

Because I was finally a football player.

Even though it was a new beginning for me, if I was going to be a real football player instead of just pretending, the position I
really
wanted to play was quarterback. I mean, quarterbacks are the ones who get all the glory. Also, I knew I was never going to be one of the bigger guys on the field, and players like Drew Brees and Russell Wilson gave me hope that I could still play a key spot on the team.

My best assets as an athlete were my smarts and my speed. Some guys who get As in school aren't always the ones who are football smart. Football IQ is more than just knowing your favorite NFL teams' and players' stats. It's about knowing the strategy of the game and, even more important than that, being able to make the right decisions
fast.
A quarterback has to see all other twenty-one players on the field (his teammates as well as his opponents) and make sense out of the mishmash of bodies.
He has to see a pattern, to know what will happen next, and how he can alter that pattern since he's the one with the ball.

So, suddenly feeling like a real football player and armed with the new title of Kid Owner, I announced to Coach Hubbard during our first water break that I'd like to switch from receiver to the quarterback position.

“Yeah, sure, Ryan.” Coach Hubbard barely gave me a glance. “You'll be behind Jason and Estevan, though. I can't promise you many reps.”

My face burned when Simpkin snickered my way.

So, while Coach Hubbard tolerated me calling myself a QB and let me throw passes and give handoffs during the individual periods, he didn't give me a single chance during any of the meaningful drills for the rest of practice. I wanted to scream at him. I knew this was the position for me. And I
owned
the Dallas Cowboys; shouldn't that count for something?

When it was time for the offense to play scout team for the defense, Coach Hubbard told me I really should take some turns at wide receiver. “That's probably where you're gonna end up anyway, Zinna. I think it's gonna be tough for you to see over the line to throw a pass.”

So, even though my outlook had changed entirely and I suddenly saw myself as a very capable football player, it was obvious that because of my size Coach Hubbard regarded me as not much more than a movable tackling dummy. But I wasn't going to accept that.

I ran my routes hard and fast on scout team offense and banged into defenders as best I could on the running plays. When I played free safety on the defensive scout team, I threw
my body around like a missile. Bryan Markham never got his chance to wipe any smile off my face, because I'd already replaced it with a snarl. When we ran sprints at the end of practice, even though I was dog tired, I finished first in almost every one of them, second only a couple times to Jackson.

It wasn't perfect, but it was a good beginning.

I was done with being pushed around. I wasn't going to be anyone's dupe again. I was suddenly strong and confident, and I intended to be that way in everything I did. I'd soon learn that sometimes that attitude can get you into serious trouble.