Million-Dollar Throw (20 page)

Nate ate some cookies, washed them down with a glass of milk, went upstairs to grab the ball, and went outside to do what he did every single day now, whether he had practice or not:

Take dead aim at the SportStuff target. Try to turn himself back into what his mom still called him, even now.

The boy with the golden arm.

The Valley Patriots had two regular-season games left before he went to Foxboro on Thanksgiving night, and needed to win them both to finish second in the league and qualify for a spot in the championship game, on the second Saturday
after
he made his throw in Foxboro. Nate didn’t know if he was going to get the chance to use his arm in those games, had accepted the fact that he might end up doing more to help his team win the title by catching the ball rather than throwing it.

Nate knew he had no control over that, and Coach always said to worry only about the things in sports that you could control.

Out here in the backyard, though, alone with his ball and the target, Nate was in control. He was a quarterback again, trying to get his head and his arm right—maybe even his heart right—to make his Brady throw at Gillette.

And the only way to get himself right again, he’d decided, was to stop complaining about the pressure of it all, even to himself. He wasn’t going to talk about pressure or whine about it. Or run from it. He was going to accept it, same as he had being a wide receiver for the rest of the season if that’s the way things were going to roll out. He was going to remember the way he used to throw and the player he used to be, the guy who
wanted
the ball in his hands when it was all on the line.

Nate didn’t care about being the boy with the golden arm again. He just wanted to be that guy.

His mom didn’t complain about having to hold down two jobs, and lately his dad was back to being his old dad, even without his old job, out there every day trying to sell houses, trying to get just one sale on somebody else’s house so they didn’t lose theirs.

Abby’s world was shrinking one day at a time and yet she
never
complained.

Nate thought about her now, between throws, heard her telling him that on the bus ride home today:

“I can’t say ‘why me,’ Brady. That’s one of the big no-can-do’s. Because if I do that now that bad stuff has happened to me, why didn’t I say it about all the amazing stuff that happened to me before? Including having a total goofball as my best friend on the entire planet.”

It was right then that Nate had decided to ask himself a different question, from now until Thanksgiving night:

Not, Why me?

Instead:
Why not?

Why not make the throw?

Why not win the money and feel like he’d won more than all of Tom Brady’s Super Bowls combined?

So he was out here today and every day, the kid they all called “Brady,” pretending that he really was. Some days he’d make the first throw he tried. Sometimes it would take him half an hour. Or more. Sometimes he wouldn’t be able to get out here until after practice and after dinner and he’d be trying to put the ball through that twenty-inch hole using only the porch lights and, on really clear nights, the light of the moon.

Sometimes he brought out a bag of balls, firing them one after another at the target. Sometimes he brought out just the one, the way he had today, telling himself this was his money ball, but making himself chase it every time he missed.

Today he told himself he wasn’t going back inside until he made a total of five, even if he was still out here when Malcolm’s mom pulled into the driveway.

He kept saying to his mom that maybe he should try to find himself an after-school job.

Now he had.

N
ate,” Coach Rivers said. “Go in for Eric.”

They were a minute into the fourth quarter, Valley ahead of Westboro 14-7. And suddenly Nate was the Patriots’ quarterback again.

Eric had hit his passing hand on a Westboro helmet early in the third quarter, actually completing a pass to Nate that became his first touchdown as a wide receiver. The cornerback covering him had tried to take an amazingly dumb chance going for the interception—dumb because it was just him and Nate alone on the sideline—and totally missed the ball. Nate didn’t.

He looked the sucker right into his hands, turned around, and saw all this green grass ahead of him, like a stretch of open road. Thirty yards later he had his first touchdown.

It was after LaDell had run it in for the conversion that Nate noticed Eric holding his right hand in his left, telling Coach it still stung a little but just needed some ice. Nate would have said the same thing, knowing that Eric didn’t want to come out, not just because of the way he was playing, but because
he
was the Patriots’ quarterback now.

Except Eric hadn’t completed a pass since he’d gotten the stinger on his throwing hand. And even though Valley’s defense hadn’t let Westboro’s Falcons cross midfield in the second half, it was still just a one-touchdown game. So when Eric got sacked on first down all the way back on the Valley 15-yard line and came up shaking his right hand again, Coach Rivers gave Nate the call.

Nate, who’d just come out of the game for a one-play breather, tipped his helmet back now for a fast swig of Gatorade. Then he pulled down so hard on his face mask he was afraid it might come off in his hand.

“You ready?” Coach said.

“You know something, Coach?” Nate said. “I am.”

Coach Hanratty told him the play. Nate sprinted toward the huddle. Right before he knelt down to tell the guys what they were going to run, he gave a look into the stands, to where his parents were sitting, Abby between them.

He didn’t think she could see him. But she was here, that was what mattered. She was in the stands, and he was about to be under center again.

The way things used to be.

Malcolm spoke before he did.

“Welcome back,” he said to Nate.

The Patriots ran a neat draw on first down, Malcolm knocking over their nose tackle as easily as if the kid were an inflatable toy, enabling LaDell to run for twenty yards. Just like that, they were out to their own 35. Then they ran Ben on a sweep around Bradley’s end and got ten more. Nate was fine with them running the ball this way, didn’t care how they racked up first downs. He just loved being the guy calling the signals again, loved standing behind Malcolm, loved the feeling of them moving the ball.

Loved being back, even if he hadn’t really
gone
anywhere.

If they didn’t throw the rest of the game, he was down with that as long as they won, won their chance to beat Dennison the next week and get into the title game.

First-and-ten from the 45.

Nate looked over to Coach Hanratty for his hot read.

It was “P-Square.”

Nate smiled. This wasn’t some kind of math problem Coach Hanratty was sending in. Wasn’t even a square-out route for Pete. It was just the official new playbook name for the Hutchins-and-Go.

Pete would line up tight to the line of scrimmage, would make a square-out move to the outside, even look back at Nate and wave for the ball as he did. When he did, Nate was supposed to deliver a pump fake that was good enough to win an Academy Award, and then Pete Mullaney was supposed to run down the sideline as if bad dogs were chasing him and wait for Nate to deliver the goods.

And if he still
could
deliver, they were going to be two touchdowns ahead of Westboro.

Not just a good kind of pressure now, he told himself.

The
best.

Nate took the handoff from Malcolm, faked one to LaDell, stood tall in the pocket again, watched the play begin to develop, seeing it all in slow motion, the way he used to in moments like this. Saw Pete making his sharp cut. Saw Pete’s hand shoot into the air. Then Nate brought the ball forward, squeezing it as he did, making sure not to sell the fake so well that the ball squirted out of his hand.

The cornerback bought it like popcorn at the movies.

As soon as he did, Pete was gone.

For the first time in a long time, in a place other than his backyard, Nate didn’t worry about how much air to put under the ball or how hard to throw it. Didn’t worry about missing or getting intercepted. Didn’t worry period.

All he knew was this: ball and target.

Nate didn’t hesitate, just threw what turned out to be a spiral tighter than old sneakers.

He watched the ball only briefly. Because he knew. Sometimes you just did. He stepped outside the pocket now, out from behind Malcolm, put his right fist in the air and began pumping it hard, like he was trying to punch a hole in the top of the sky.

Money ball.

When he looked down the field again, Pete was crossing the goal line with the touchdown that made it 20-7, Valley. The home crowd erupted behind him. Nate turned and saw Abby high-fiving his mom, because in this moment she didn’t have to see anything.

All she had to do was listen.

It was the only throw Nate needed to complete the rest of the game, even though he completed a couple of key third-down passes to keep control of the ball and the clock. Final score: Valley 21, Westboro 14.

They were now one win away now from playing for the league championship. But Nate already felt as though he’d won some kind of championship today. Maybe of himself. When it was over, Coach Rivers presented him with the game ball in front of the team. Nate put it under his arm, imagining himself running all the way home with it. Instead he walked over to where his parents were waiting for him at the bottom of the bleachers with Abby.

Nate knew she’d brought her cane with her, but he didn’t see it in her hand now, which meant she’d persuaded Nate’s mom to let her leave it in the car.

After his parents hugged him, Abby said, “You were great today, Brady.”

“Probably because you were here to see it,” Nate said, not even worried about saying it that way, not knowing how much she really
had
seen.

“Nothing I hadn’t seen before,” she said. “It was like a movie I’d watched over and over again.”

They started walking toward the parking lot, Nate’s parents leading the way. Nate reached over with his free hand and gently took Abby’s arm. She let him.

In a quiet voice he said, “Did you really see, Abs?”

“Everything,” she said.

He wanted to believe her. And so he did.

N
ate felt good about football again. At least he had that going for him.

He wasn’t kidding himself, wasn’t living in some kind of dream world. He didn’t think that everything had turned around because he had completed a few passes in an eighth-grade football game. He knew he still had work to do.

But at least his arm seemed to be working again. Not just in the game, but also when he returned to practice Tuesday night. Eric was still the starter, that hadn’t changed. But when Nate got his snaps, he moved the team again, and did so with sharp, accurate passes. It made him feel as if his head were screwed on right again, at least when a helmet was attached to it.

The doorbell rang after school on Wednesday. Nate was alone in the house and thought it might be some kind of delivery. It wasn’t.

It was Abby.

This time she had her cane with her. She smiled at him when he opened the front door, but the smile had nothing behind it.

“Care to donate to the blind?” she said.

Weak joke, told in a weak voice.

“Hey,” he said.

“That wasn’t funny, was it?” Abby said.

“Well, let’s just say it wasn’t up to your usual standards.”

Nate stepped out on the porch, looked around. “How’d you get here?”

“I was out walking,” she said, “and I finally realized I was walking straight over here.”

“By yourself?”