Million-Dollar Throw (21 page)

She held up the cane, waved it at him like it was a sword. “I go out and practice with this thing sometimes,” she said. “It’s why I’m getting pretty handy with it. I don’t use it every step of the way, but it helps me out with stuff . . . I don’t see so well anymore. Like curbs.”

“You have trouble even seeing
curbs
?”

Abby said, “Know how you’re on the beach on a gray day like this and you can’t tell where the water ends and the sky begins? It’s getting like that when I’m out walking. So I bring my trusty cane and I don’t stumble as much.”

“Does your mom know you came all the way here?”

“She probably doesn’t even know I went out. She and my dad . . .”

And just like that the girl who never cried, at least in front of Nate, started to cry now.

“Abs,” he said. “What happened?”

“My dad lost his job,” she said.

“
Your
dad? Lost
his
job. At the
bank
?”

She looked at him and nodded.

“He actually lost it two weeks ago, just without telling me,” she said.

“That’s terrible, Abs,” Nate said. “Listen, I know it would be terrible news for anybody. I know it was for us.” Trying to find anything that would make her stop crying. “But you guys aren’t us,” he said. “I mean, you guys have a lot of money.”

Abby said, “Not anymore.”

Her dad’s bank had been bought by a much bigger bank. Nate remembered Abby talking about that right after school started, but Nate hadn’t paid much attention. He just assumed that people like his dad could lose their jobs, but not somebody like Abby’s, who was always flying off to do business all over the country.

Only now the new bank had let him go, nice knowing you, good-bye.

“Can’t he just find a job with another bank?” Nate said. “Come on, Abs, my family worries about money, not yours.”

“He says there was a time when it would have been easy, hauling off and getting a job just as good as the one he had,” she said. “But things have changed, Brady. My dad says that the way things are going with the economy, pretty soon there are going to be about five or six big banks left and that’s going to be it.”

Nate wondered if there really was going to be a time, ever again, when
economy
didn’t make you think of a hurricane that kept blowing through people’s lives. You were going along, having what felt like a pretty cool life, and then all of a sudden came the
economy
trying to wreck everything.

“He tried to explain it to me until I just stopped hearing what he was saying,” Abby said. “But I get the picture. We had a lot of our money in stocks and now most of it is just . . . gone. Along with our health insurance.”

Nate realized now, like a dope, that they were still standing at the front door. He motioned for Abby to follow him in and closed the door behind them. The two of them went into the family room, Nate’s game-watching room. He asked if she wanted something to drink. She said no. He asked if she was hungry. She said no, telling him to stop trying to be the perfect host.

“I’m just saying,” he said. “Anything you want, you tell me.”

“I want to be with you,” she said.

“It’ll be all right,” he said.

She closed her eyes, squeezing them shut, a couple more tears managing to escape.

“I keep telling myself that,” she said. “I really do. And most times I can make myself believe it.” Even now, he thought, she wouldn’t give in to feeling sorry for herself, even now, when Nate wanted to throw a penalty flag at the whole world for piling on the person who least deserved it. “Just not today,” she said. “It’s just like . . .”

For once he could read her mind.

“One more thing,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said. “One more thing. And I can’t handle one more thing, Brady.”

He wanted to tell her so many things, wanted to tell her that she couldn’t worry about money, shouldn’t worry about money, that there were much more important things to worry about than that, that he’d finally figured out that worrying didn’t help anything or solve anything.

Mostly he wanted her to stop crying.

So he did something he’d never done before then: He put his arm around Abby McCall and pulled her close to him. She let him, resting her head on his shoulder. And the two of them just sat there, not moving, for what felt like a very long time, until he finally said, “It
is
going to be all right, Abs.”

She stayed where she was, pressed into his shoulder, and asked how he knew that.

Nate said he just did, that she was going to have to take that one on faith, told the girl going blind something his mom told him all the time, that sometimes faith was believing in things
nobody
could see.

B
ig-game Saturday, on the road, against the Dennison Browns.

Twelve days before Thanksgiving.

The Patriots were tied with the Browns for second place in the league. So the last game of the regular season was really like the first game of the playoffs. Win and you got to keep playing, got the chance to play undefeated Blair and old pal Willie Clifton, in the championship game in two weeks.

Lose and go home.

Lose and the next game they all got to play would be in freshman football next year, or varsity, if any of them were good enough to make the varsity as freshmen.

But that was next season. Blair was the week after next, if they could make it that far. All that mattered—in football, anyway—was this game, today. This Saturday afternoon.

Some week, Nate thought. Last Saturday he had become a quarterback again, even if he was still a backup, even if it had been only for a quarter. Wednesday he had found out about Abby’s dad.

Yesterday, on the bus home from school, Abby had told him she would be going back to Boston next week to spend a few days at the hospital, go through some new tests, see if there was anything they could do—in Abby’s words—to slow down the whole stupid process of Leber’s, a dirtier word to Nate than
economy
.

“Like an operation?” Nate had said.

“No, no, no,” Abby had said. “Just more tests, don’t worry. But when they’re done, they’ll probably decide whether it really is time for me to check into old Perkins for good.”

Nate had said, “Man, is there anything else that’s going to happen this week?”

“Yeah,” Abby had said, giving him the raised eyebrow. “We’re going to beat the living daylights out of Dennison.”

He was going to try his hardest to get that one done, try not to think about everything that was happening around him, everything that was
about
to happen.

For this one day, he would try to concentrate only on football, be the guy who’d always been at his best no matter how crazy the game got around him. He would feel like the game really was in his hands.

Except it wasn’t anymore. Even on a great football day like this, the stands full on both sides of the field, the game was still going to be in Nate’s hands only when Eric put it there.

Coach Rivers’ pregame speech today was the shortest Nate could ever remember. He gathered them all in front of the visitors’ bench maybe a minute before the opening kickoff and said, “Anybody here ready for it to be basketball season?”

“No!”
the Patriots yelled back at him.

“Didn’t think so,” Coach said. “I don’t even like basketball all that much, to tell you the truth.”

Coach liked the way the Patriots started the game even less. They had driven the ball down the field after the opening kickoff, made first down after first down, wound up first-and-goal at the Browns’ 2-yard line. But then LaDell, who hardly ever fumbled, got crossed up on a handoff with Eric, left the ball on the ground, and the Browns’ nose tackle fell on it.

At least the Browns couldn’t move the ball out of there and ended up having to punt out of their own end zone. It wasn’t a good punt, so the Patriots started their next drive at the Browns’ 20-yard line. On first down Eric tried to hit Nate on an out pass and didn’t put nearly enough on the ball. Nate didn’t even have enough time to turn himself into a defender and try to knock the ball away from the cornerback covering him. The kid was in full stride when he intercepted the ball. By the time Nate
did
manage to catch him from behind, feeling as if he were chasing the world’s fastest human, the cornerback had run all the way to the Patriots’ 20-yard line.

Three plays later, Dennison was ahead 7-0.

When the guys on defense came off the field, Malcolm took off his helmet, spit to the side and said, “Two turnovers in the first quarter. It’s like we’re all doing our community service hours for school right
here.
”

The Patriots made it three turnovers right before the half. They had moved the ball for the first time since their opening drive, throwing every down, Nate having turned into Eric’s favorite receiver, catching three passes, all for first downs, making the cornerback who’d made the interception more and more frustrated.

Then Coach Hanratty went to Nate once too often. The middle linebacker read Eric’s eyes the whole way on what was supposed to be a little curl pass, Nate running hard for ten yards, turning and looking for the ball. This time it was a big, fast linebacker who seemed to have a full head of steam as the ball ended up in his hands.

Nate started to chase, but ended up on the ground when the cornerback who’d been covering him cut him down with a perfectly legal block from his blind side. Nate watched from the ground as Malcolm missed the tackle, then Sam, and saw the kid with the ball make it to the sideline. Ben Cion had the last clear shot at him, but the linebacker was too strong, just shrugged Ben off and kept going, all the way to the end zone. After the conversion it was 14-0 for the Browns.

That’s the way the half ended, and the way the season was going to end if they didn’t change something, and fast.

So Coach Rivers changed quarterbacks.

He didn’t make the announcement in front of the team, just to Nate and Eric, pulling both of them aside.

“We’re gonna play this out the way we came in,” he said. “With Nate under center.”

Right away Eric said, “I’m good with that, Coach.” Then he turned to Nate, grinning, and said, “I’m a better receiver than you anyway.”

“True dat,” Nate said.

Coach Rivers told Nate to go get loose. The Patriots would be receiving the second-half kickoff and they were going to come out firing. Nate went and grabbed a ball and Eric went with him, the two of them behind the bench, Nate warming up fast, throwing the ball as soon as he caught it, like he was a pitcher warming up in the bullpen, runners all over the bases.

It was after he heard the ref ’s whistle that he heard Abby’s voice.

“Hey, you,” she said. “Hey, Brady.”

She was wearing a Patriots cap on her head, a gray Patriots hoodie.

“What are you doing down here?” Nate said.

“Getting a better view, silly.”

“Still trying to get into my head,” he said.

“I was never out of it,” Abby said. “Now go win the game.”

He started doing just that on the second series of the second half, after the two teams had traded punts. The Patriots had the ball on their own 49, and Nate went to work. They had been trying to mix passes and running plays for most of the game, but now Coach Hanratty called for five straight passes, to five different receivers.

Ben caught the first, then Bradley, then Pete and Eric and LaDell. The one to LaDell was a perfect screen, against a blitz, and he ran it all the way to the Browns’ 3-yard line. Nate took it in from there, rolling to his right, arm up like he was passing the whole time, freezing the linebackers, never planning to do anything except run it in. Nobody laid a hand on him, and after Ben ran off tackle for the conversion, it was 14-7.

The Patriots were back in the game. And Nate was feeling it.