Strange Country Day (12 page)

“That’s what you think. My nanobot-powered arm is too powerful to keep me on the bench!” I joked.

Frank put his fingers to his ear and listened for a moment. “This is three-oh-five … they’re safe … ”

He grimaced and gritted his teeth.

“I understand, but my kid fell from a damn tree. I had to make sure he was … ”

The three of us heard loud squawking from his earpiece.

“Roger that.” Frank put his hand down. “Guys, as much as I’d like to stay, I’ve got to take my position again. Dex, see you at home.”

He walked over to where his rifle lay near the entrance of the clearing, put his helmet back on, and disappeared into the forest.

“Eagle far slant ten on three. X receiver.”

I called out to the pass-catching robot and watched it process the command. “You got it,” the ‘bot responded with Peyton Manning’s Louisiana drawl. I had just relayed one of the formations in the playbook and asked it to run the pattern for one of the receivers, a modification Dad made recently to help me as I recovered from my broken finger.

I called out my cadence and watched it run a quick slant down our empty street. I timed my throw perfectly and hit its outstretched gloves. “Solid spiral, great timing,” it squawked, tossing the ball back to me.

Dex and Sophi, standing nearby in my front yard, applauded.

“This machine is amazing,” Sophi said.

“That’s nothing,” I replied. “Watch this. Dex, line up and run a play.”

He tentatively walked over to my right and waited.

“Bear PA hitch thirty-three shuffle. On one. Cornerback,” I said.

This time, the robot looked at Dex and lined up across from him, ready to play defense. Dex’s eyes widened as it squawked, “You got nothing, kid.” Yes, my robot talked trash, too.

“One-eighty! Set-
HUT
!”

Dex ran about ten yards as I ran play action, faking to an unseen running back. When I looked up, he had made his cut toward the corner of the hypothetical end zone. The robot matched him stride for stride, but I threw the pass, hoping Dex would use his speed to outrun the taller electronic defender.

Instead the ball was underthrown. Dex knew it and began slowing down. The robot put its arms up to intercept my pass.

Dex had a different idea. As the ball came down, he jumped on an outstretched metal arm, leaped into the air, and caught the pass. As he fell back to the pavement, he ended his performance with a backflip and an emphatic spike of the football.

The robot stopped in its tracks. Its chest opened and out flew a yellow flag that landed in front of Dex. “Pass interference, offense.”

A mechanical arm picked up the flag while the three of us doubled over laughing. Dex jogged back and tossed me the football.

“Dex! You have to be careful. What if somebody sees you doing that?” I said.

“We can relax. My dad said we’re safest in around your house.”

“Really?” Sophi said. “Can I try something?”

“Go for it,” I said.

“Call out a play.”

This time, Dex threw out something designed for the robot to make a couple of cuts. I called out my cadence and stepped back to throw. As it zigzagged, I saw two lightning bolts hit its shiny head before I could make my toss.

We watched as it stopped in its tracks, and the metal body went slack. A small message popped up on its chest screen: “Power Surge. Restarting … ”

“I would’ve done the same thing if I could control my powers,” I said. I’ll admit I was jealous.

“Nothing’s happened since that night with Jared?” Sophi asked. I shook my head. My finger throbbed almost as if it were responding to her.

“I have no idea how to control any of this.”

Sophi rubbed my arm in sympathy.

ZZSST!

“Ow!”

Sophi apologized, but then a smile crept onto her face.

“Dex, call out a play.” The robot’s head snapped up as its restart finished.

“Why?” he asked.

I think I knew what Sophi was getting at. I started backing away. “No way. You can’t!”

“Alex,” she said sternly as she kept walking toward me. “You know I can get you even if you run. Let’s try it.”

I stopped. My heart started to pound. “What if you knock me out like you did with Flab?”

“I’ve been practicing. Dex—do it.”

“Hawk mid seventeen deep six on three. X receiver,” he said. We’d try that pass at about the opponents’ thirty-yard line for a touchdown. It was a long one, something I’d struggled with. The robot lined up next to me. I swallowed hard and closed my eyes as I pretended I was under center.

“Fifty-seven, fifty-seven, set-hut,” I said, barely above my normal speaking voice. My heart was thundering now.

I dropped back, right to where Sophi stood. She put a hand on my shoulder, and a second later, electricity shot through me and all my muscles seized. I tried to keep my eyes on the robot, and as I inhaled, about to let out a scream, the smell of toasted marshmallows wafted in. She let go.

SQUEEEEEEEEE
went the high-pitched sound through my ears.

I felt my muscles unclench and I automatically let go of the football.

The ball spiraled through the air and right into the “fingertips” of the robot’s hands. A perfect throw. I heard it exclaim, “Dang!” as I came out of my mini-trance.

Dex, who had never seen me do that up close, started babbling. “OhmyGod, that’s amazing. Your body got all huge for a second, and then you looked like a real quarterback, even though you are a real quarterback, but wow, I can’t believe … ”

I felt my cellphone buzz in my pocket.
Downstairs in five
read the text from my dad. Uh oh. I told Sophi and Dex I had to go.

I walked through the underground passages as Dad opened them one by one. As I entered his laboratory, I found him reading numbers on a giant screen. They looked a lot like the same readouts on the sensor I carried with me.

“What do you see?” I asked as I sat next to him at the console.

He didn’t speak for a moment and took off his glasses.

“I’ve got some bad news for you,” he began. “Sophi was right. Pain has helped you activate recently, but I’ve got a very specific theory behind it.

“It looks to me like it’s taking more effort for the nanobots to activate. Weeks ago, all it took was adrenaline combining with your fluctuating hormones to produce an activation. But like anything foreign in your body, your immune system has started to fight off the nanobots’ effect. So now it takes serious pain to make things happen.”

I felt my heart sink.

“If it continues to get harder for the reactions to happen, at some point soon, it means … they’ll stop happening altogether.”

I sat there silently.

“I know it’s disappointing, but remember, you didn’t want to use it for football. Quite frankly, it‘s safer.”

Dad hit a few buttons to shut the screen off, got up, and tousled my hair. “Listen, this is for the best.”

It was all I could think about for the next few days. I tried to distract myself by putting in more time at the gym, figuring I’d need all the help I could get. My broken finger limited me, but I found myself setting personal bests on the treadmill.

One afternoon, I came into the locker room to grab my backpack and head home. I passed by the row belonging to the offensive line. Of course, Flab had to be sitting there.

Something had changed in him since that night in the woods. There hadn’t been a single incident with Dex, Sophi, or me. He wasn’t his usual chatty, trash-talking self on and off the field.

When I walked in, Flab had just emerged from the shower and was in the middle of putting on his extra-large school uniform. We were completely alone. I guess he didn’t hear me arrive, so I waited until his pants and shirt were on.

“Hey.”

Flab didn’t even look up at me. “Freak,” he responded as he slipped a belt through the waistband on his slacks.

I gathered all my courage and sat down next to him as he pulled on his socks and shoes. “I’m really sorry about what happened after Homecoming. I didn’t know that was going to happen.”

That got a dirty look. “So you didn’t know you had a Taser you were going to use to put, like, five million volts in me?”

Right. That was the story. “It’s called self-defense, Flab. And you’re the one who followed us.”

“Let me review the history for you,” he said as he began to knot his tie. “You hit me in the face during Fresh Meet Friday, you somehow find your way onto the football team, and you steal my … ”

Flab looked down and trailed off. In the silence, he finished knotting his tie. We could hear a steady drip coming from the showers.

“I hate to say this.” This seemed like a bad idea. “But she was never your girlfriend.”

Flab paused for second. He sat back down and looked me right in the eye.

“Listen, Ptuiac,” spitting the “P” on my sweaty Strange Athletics Department T-shirt. “Except for the officers that came that night, I haven’t told anybody about what happened in the woods. Not one person.”

He lowered his voice and leaned in. “I don’t know what really happened. But what I do know is that wasn’t a Taser.”

My stomach churned and my hands started to shake a little. I tried to keep my composure. “So what do you want from me?”

His trademark toothy grin appeared. “You and I have some unfinished business from earlier this year.”

I held up the auto-splinted pinky. “What do you call this?”

“Collateral damage. I’m talking about something in front of everyone. It’s time … for the Duck Walk.”

That’s how I found myself in the locker room after school the next day surrounded by every boy in school. There were guards at the door as Flab stood up on one of the benches. Dressed in my football uniform, I watched from behind the facemask of my helmet. Dex stood near me and looked as nervous as I felt.

“Gentlemen of Strange Country Day,” Flab shouted. “We have gathered here today for a special event. Something we’ve never done before at our beautiful institution of higher learning.”

He paused for effect. The room hung on his every word, especially the ninth graders who knew what was coming. It was clear Flab was back in his element.

“We have finally convinced Mr. Ptuiac over here that Strange tradition is not to be messed with.”

I tried to remind myself that what I was about to do would hopefully keep the secrets of my friends and family under wraps.

“While nothing would make me happier than to give Mr. Ptuiac what he was supposed to get on Fresh Meet Friday, I decided we needed something a little more … memorable. So, I tore out a page from initiation at my summer camp. Let this be a warning to any seventh grader who thinks he is above the traditions of the decades of Strange graduates who have come before him.”

He swept his hand toward me. “Gentlemen and gentlemen: I present to you Alexander Ptuiac performing … the Duck Walk.”

I swallowed hard as every eyeball swept toward me. There were nervous laughs, some hoots, but most of all questions as to what the Duck Walk was. “Come on!” Flab hollered. The entire room echoed him.

Okay, here it goes.

I pulled my pants down. Underneath, I wore nothing but my jock strap and cup.

The sound that came out of that locker room felt like it shook the entire school. Half the boys covered their eyes, while the other half pointed and laughed. But my act was far from over. I began walking—shuffling, actually, with my pants around my ankles—and singing the school’s fight song at the same time. “Hail to thee, Strange Coouuuntry Day,” I sang as loud as I could over the roar.

“Louder, Ptuiac!” Flab shouted as the mob cleared a path so I could walk the length of the locker room. “We fight for you, coooommme what may!” My voice cracked in the middle of the line, which sent about seventy-five boys to the floor in fits of laughter.

As I continued to sing and shuffle, I looked up at Flab. He was getting high fives and claps on the back, looking satisfied. I reached the last line of the song as I reached the door at the end of the locker room. The same door through which the locker room stranger had escaped weeks ago.

I peered into the glass at my reflection to see how ridiculous I looked.

Instead of seeing myself, a pair of eyes stared back.

I blinked and rested my helmet against the glass to try to see who it was.

Nothing. The eyes had vanished, and all I saw was the set of stairs leading to the gym.

I shuddered, quickly pulled up my pants, turned around, and took a bow to thunderous applause.

“Finger is healed.”

The morning after the Strange’s final regular season win, I watched the clock on my auto-splint tick down and announce its work was done. With a hiss, it loosened and fell off. I rubbed the finger and found it perfectly healed. The skin was also moisturized and clean, not looking at all like it hadn’t seen air in five weeks.

My broken finger hadn’t impeded learning how to quarterback from the sidelines. Every game, I picked up something new from quarterback meetings with Coach Carson as he reviewed what Jimmy had to look out for from the defense or something technical in his throwing motion. As Jimmy helped us breeze through two playoff games in the cold December air, I started believing I wouldn’t need any special power to be a quarterback in another year or two. I spent extra time watching tape of our opponents with Jimmy and Jesse.

I increased the toughness of my workouts as we won two playoff games, and I actually made Coach Carson whistle out loud when he watched me throw once. “That’s what I’m talking about, Ptuiac,” he said.

Next week was the state championship game against Harmon High School, and the entire town was buzzing about it. Strangers—what students jokingly called our school’s supporters in town—saw my varsity jacket and shook my hand, wishing me luck.

The one thing that hadn’t happened was another activation—not that there was anything to scare me or inflict pain—and I found myself wishing I’d get to be a superhero again.

“This is Kenny Lupino.” I snapped out of my daydream as Coach Carson laser-pointed at the projection on the screen. I sat alongside Jesse and Jimmy in a darkened classroom as Carson ran the quarterback meetings. With the championship game coming up in a few days, the team took every moment it had to practice, study the Harmon Hogs, and prepare mentally for what was sure to be an epic battle.