Losers Take All (5 page)

She studied my face. Her hazel eyes sparked in the bright sunlight. “Wow. Muhldinger's not going to like that at all.”

“I haven't told him yet. Not looking forward to it. But whatever. A lot of people have more serious problems than whether to play on a stupid football team.”

“That's probably true,” Becca admitted and fell silent. We floated near each other for a while. We had worked together at Burger Central all summer and had never had more than a thirty-second conversation. Now at least we were sharing a deep silence.

Wind rippled the water, and I could hear the lifeguard's whistle all the way from the town beach. A dragonfly looked us over as possible landing pads and whizzed past. “It's nice out here,” she said, and I couldn't figure out why she suddenly sounded uncharacteristically nervous. “That stupid book gave me a headache.”

“What were you studying?”

“Would you like to go to a movie sometime?” she asked.

“What?”

“Multivariable equations,” Becca said quickly. “They're the most common algebra problems on the SAT. The whole trick to them is isolating the variable—”

“Wait a minute,” I said, cutting her off. “Did you just ask me out?”

“No big deal. I've been studying a lot lately. I thought it would be fun to see a movie, but if you don't want to, no problem.”

“How's this Friday night?” I asked, maybe a little too quickly.

Becca gave me a shy smile, and it was one of the prettiest things I'd ever seen. Who knew that such a serious girl had a smile like that hidden away? “Friday's great. We can go right after work. You pick the movie—I'll see anything.”

She turned and glanced toward the beach, and I thought she was going to swim off, but then she looked back at me and said: “I'm glad you're not going to play football, Jack. What's happening at our school is disgusting, and making us all join sports teams is … fascistic.”

“Right,” I said, trying to remember exactly what “fascistic” meant.

“Somebody needs to tell them to shove it.”

“If there's one thing I never wanted to be, it's a rebel.”

But she was busy giving me advice. “When you tell Muhldinger, don't try to reason with him. These people are total wackos, and he's off the scale. Just say your piece and get out of there fast, before he eats you alive.”

She wasn't exactly making me feel better. “Believe me, I'm not planning to get into a debate with him on the value of football.” To change the subject, I asked her the question that had been bothering Dylan and Frank: “So what team are you thinking about going out for in September?”

Becca didn't hesitate. “The one that's going to cost me the least time and effort. I saw on the school Web site they may start a C-team for soccer.”

“What's the criteria?” I asked.

“At the C-level they'll take anyone with a heartbeat,” she said. “But it'll probably never happen because they need to find a coach and dig up enough other teams for us to play. If they get it together, it will be a Dumpster team for nonathletes, which suits me just fine. See you on Friday.” Then Becca dove under, and she must have had lungs to match her long legs because she didn't surface again till she was all the way back to our cove.

I floated on alone in the middle of Hidden Lake, smiling for the first time since I had gotten my face mashed. Friday night was not far away. I was kind of in shock at the idea of taking Becca to a movie, but I also found myself thinking about soccer—a sport I had fooled around with. We'd played in gym class, and with my speed I'd always been more than decent at it. I had a surprisingly strong shot with my right foot, but I'd never thought about joining a team. I'd watched some MLS games on TV with my dad—he'll watch any sport known to man. But he had a football player's dislike of soccer, and after a while he'd mutter, “One hour and the score's still zero to zero. I'd rather watch ice melt,” and switch the channel.

At Fremont, with its crazed cult of football, soccer was barely tolerated. The varsity boys and girls rarely won any trophies to contribute to the Fremont case on New Trophy Day, and the JV teams were invisible. Becca was right—a C-team would be a joke, if anyone noticed it at all.

But that probably meant we could control things a little bit—I was pretty sure Frank and Dylan would join up if I did, and Becca could get her best friend, Meg. If we found the right coach, I could spend the fall hanging out with friends and not worrying about setting records or crushing opponents or getting crushed myself.

I licked my tongue over my messed-up teeth. Becca might also be right that, like it or not, my new role was to tell Muhldinger to shove it. There was probably no better way of doing that than turning down the mighty Fremont football team in order to play on a remedial soccer squad with a bunch of slackers.

 

7

A tall secretary with what looked like orange hair told me to wait in a sitting area. There was a table with some magazines, but I was too nervous to read any of them. After about ten minutes she came back and told me to follow her. We walked through the administrative offices and reached a closed door, on which she rapped three times. The door was brand new, and so was the gleaming bronze nameplate on it that proclaimed in large letters:
BRIAN MUHLDINGER
—
PRINCIPAL/HEAD FOOTBALL COACH
. Muhldinger had wasted no time putting his name on the door, and I guess he was working through the summer getting ready for the school year, now that he was running the show.

“Come on in,” a deep voice ordered. The secretary opened the door and I stepped in, and then she pulled it shut behind me.

I had been in this large, sunny office a few times when it had belonged to Arthur Gentry, and I noticed the changes. Gentry had loved sports, and on the walls of his office he'd hung photos of great athletes who'd used courage, speed, and skill to upset brute force or beat the odds. Growing up in my family had given me a pretty good knowledge of sports history, and I'd recognized many of the classic pictures: Billy Mills coming from behind to win the gold medal in Tokyo, Muhammad Ali towering over a downed Sonny Liston, Joe Namath with his arm cocked on the day the Jets upset Baltimore, and Michelle Kwan spinning lightly on the ice.

But Gentry had been a Princeton graduate who loved to read, and his office had also been crammed to the bursting point with books. They had overflowed his shelves and been stacked up on his desk and even on the window ledges—educational journals, literary and historical classics, and a few trendy teen novels he'd read to stay connected with his students.

Muhldinger had taken down Gentry's pictures and hung photos of his own. His new pictures were all football related and captured moments of jolting impact: linemen slamming into linemen, free safeties demolishing receivers, and pass rushers crushing quarterbacks. High above his desk I saw a large framed color photograph of Arthur Gentry crouched at a starting line, eager to begin a race. A caption gave his name and the dates of his birth and death, with a quote from Thomas Jefferson: “If the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong.” In the photo Gentry looked very alive and eager to go for it. For a moment I remembered his brave final sprint down the stretch, and the way he had sunk to his knees and then collapsed onto his back.

Gentry's books were all gone. It was like they had been sucked out with a giant vacuum, the bookcases along with them. I did a quick scan and only saw three books in the whole office—a dictionary, a James Patterson murder mystery, and a biography of Lawrence Taylor. On the right side of the desk was a whiteboard with an intricate pattern of X's and O's, no doubt charting a complex new top secret play designed to win our first game of the season.

Muhldinger was seated at his desk, which looked out a large picture window at emerald lawns and playing fields. He was wearing a short-sleeve shirt that showed off his biceps, and was flipping through some papers with a scowl. When he glanced up and saw me, he put down the papers gratefully. “Meetings,” he growled. “Meetings about meetings.” He stood up and walked over to me and held out his enormous right hand. My own hand disappeared into it, and Muhldinger gave me a handshake firm enough to squeeze oil from a walnut. “Good to see you, Jacko,” he said. “How're you feeling?”

“Better.”

“All done with the dentist?”

“I hope so.”

“Smile,” he commanded.

I drew back my lips.

“You're not going to win any beauty contests, but then you probably weren't going to before you got hit,” he said with a laugh.

“Probably not,” I agreed, trying to find a way to start the real conversation that had to take place. “But I've had some time to recover, and—”

“Injuries suck when they happen, but a young body heals and you move on,” he said. “I bet you don't even remember the worst of it—am I right or am I right?”

I glanced up at the photo of poor old Arthur Gentry. “Actually, I remember all of it.”

He seemed a little surprised. “Well, that's good,” he said. “You can use that for motivation. Sit down, Jack. I've got something to show you.” He waved me to a chair, and then he walked over to the whiteboard and rummaged around behind it. He soon found what he was looking for and came back holding a box. I didn't know what was in it, but suddenly I felt an urge to get this over with as quickly as possible.

“I have something to tell you—” I started to say.

“And I have something to show you,” he said, opening the box. “A special order. Check this out!” He pulled out a red-and-gold Fremont football jersey. It had a lion on the front, its mouth open as if preparing to devour someone. He turned it around, and with a sinking heart I saw the number—32—and the name.
LOGAN
.

“I gotta tell you,” he said, “when I saw it I choked up. I couldn't help remembering your dad. I was a freshman when he was a senior and had his state championship year. Undefeated, untied—the Lions dominated at every position. That was the best team we've ever had at Fremont.”

I didn't know what to say, but I had to say something. “Principal Muhldinger, I'm afraid I—”

He cut me off with a smile. “No one could fill his shoes, Jack. And I don't expect you to. The important thing is what's here,” and he tapped his heart. “And you've got it there—you showed it to me that day when you bled for Fremont. And you don't know how much that meant to me. Because if you can do it, anyone else at this school can do it, and I don't mean that in a bad way. It was inspirational.” He handed me the shirt, and I didn't know what else to do so for a moment I took it and held it in front of me. It felt light in my hands, and hung down well below my hips. Number 32.

“The same number your dad wore,” Muhldinger said reverently.

My hands shook and the shirt rippled. “I can't take this,” I told him.

“I thought of retiring his number as one of my first official acts,” he told me. “But I don't believe in sacred ground. Wear it with pride.”

“No, you don't understand. I can't—”

“I understand perfectly,” he said. “But there's nothing to worry about. He loves it that you're going to be wearing his number. I checked in with him this morning, and he told me he thought it was a great idea.”

“He said that this morning?”

“His exact words were ‘Love it!' I left him a message, just to make sure it was okay with him,” Muhldinger said. “He texted me right back.”

So my dad hadn't told Muhldinger that there was no point in giving me his old number because I wasn't going to join the team. He had left it up to me to break the bad news, and had made it harder by approving this new wrinkle. If I rejected the team, I would now also be rejecting his number and legacy. Anger came to my rescue. “My dad should have called you back and told you—” I started to say.

“A text was fine.” Muhldinger cut me off with a smile. “Your dad and I go way back. Lord knows we've had our differences over the years, but when it comes to football I've never respected anyone more. I was suited up and on the sideline the day he scored the winning touchdown against East River. It looked like half the East River team was trying to drag him down, and there was your father somehow taking step after step as time ran out. I don't mind telling you that I cried that day.”

His eyes were shining, like he was remembering the moment as a young man when he had seen the face of God. Becca was right—he was a total wacko. Watching him, I felt something welling up deep inside me. At first I thought I was going to break down in his office and have a little cry myself. Then I realized that something much worse than tears was coming, and I had to find a way to get out of there fast.

“I've only cried three times in my life,” Muhldinger went on softly. “When my father died. When I had to put my dog to sleep. And when the Logan Express scored that winning touchdown against East River.”

I put my hand over my mouth but I couldn't stop it. A laugh burst out.

Muhldinger looked confused and a little offended. Then he relaxed and his face softened as he broke into an unexpected smile. “Yeah, I know. It's a little corny, but, Jack, I've never seen anything like what your father did that day. He refused to lose. What it meant to me was that if he could do it, any of us could, if we just dug deep enough.”

I laughed harder—I just couldn't stop.

Muhldinger began to chuckle himself. It was some kind of weird bonding thing, except that he thought he was laughing with me and I knew I was laughing at him. “So maybe I get a little emotional sometimes,” he said, and he waved his hand in a “what the hell” gesture. “I'm proud of those tears, Jack. They were manly tears. Say what you want about your father, but he went to war that day.”