Strange Country Day (4 page)

Flab grunted and gently put Dex down on the ground. He turned and jogged back to his group of linemen, who slapped him on the butt and laughed like hyenas.

“Sorry I didn’t warn you fast enough,” I said to Dex. We walked toward the mass of yellow and crimson bodies that made up the team. The other ninth-graders leered at us, ready to sprinkle our remains all over the turf.

A whistle blew three times. Immediately, a tall, blond-haired kid walked forward and turned to face us. I had never seen him before, but I didn’t have to be a genius to figure out who he was: Jimmy Claw.

His name was spoken in hushed whispers by everyone, boy and girl, at Strange. I heard his name before English class, in line at the cafeteria, while waiting for the bus. He was exactly what you’d expect of a starting quarterback: the best-looking, smartest kid who carried himself like the president of the United States. Girls wanted to be with him. Boys wanted to be him. It was that simple.

But it wasn’t. The Legend of Jimmy Claw was that he was a gunslinger who came trotting into town to bring Strange its first state championship trophy since 1987. The sheriff who brought him in was the same guy who first found him and molded him in Texas. Coach Schmick informed Claw’s parents that he was taking a job up north and wondered if Jimmy’s destiny to start for a college team would be derailed if he started playing under a different coach. Weeks later, the Claws (born-and-bred Texans for five generations, I heard someone say) removed James Daniel Claw Junior from his hometown and plunked him down here. Funny, we had a similar uprooting in common.

Who knew how much of that tale was true? It didn’t matter. All I knew was that the team had taken to his drawl almost immediately. They called him “Hick.” He called them “Yanks.” So of course, when he began leading the stretches, I followed him without question.

After ten minutes of warm-up, Coach Schmick blew the whistle again and divided us into groups. He had warned Dex and me before practice that we’d be in a small group of seventh graders, separate from the first- and second-stringers, and working with Coach Carson. That was his job: to prepare us for the day when we’d move up to be starters. That was fine by me. Just to wear the uniform was plenty right now.

I stood at the sidelines and watched as the seventh graders ran plays on offense and defense against each other with the backup quarterback taking snaps. Carson told me I’d get a few reps as I began learning the playbook and he’d tell me which receiver I would throw to on a certain pattern until I was more comfortable with plays. So while I stood there, I began flipping through the hefty tome. It read like a foreign language of letters and numbers. Some plays had special names like “Firecracker” and “Eagle.” I recognized some of the X’s and O’s from playing video games for so many years. See, Mom? Playing for hours
did
finally pay off! But it was going to take a miracle to learn the whole thing in under two weeks.

“It looks impossible,” Dex remarked, looking over my shoulder. He hadn’t been called in for any plays either.

“Ptuiac! Get out here!” Coach Carson called, becoming the first person at school to pronounce my last name correctly. I grabbed my helmet and looked back to see Dex smile and give me a thumbs up. I trotted out to Coach Carson, who said, “Number five will run a go route. Snap comes on two.” Then he barked out the name of a play to the rest of the offense. I nodded and got up to the line. I looked down between the legs of the center to see a freckle-faced kid peering up at me. I stood over him, about to take the snap when I heard him say, “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting ready to throw a pass. What does it look like?”

He got out of his squat and turned around. “Don’t you know anything about being a quarterback?”

“Of course I do!” I replied. I still had no clue what he was talking about.

That’s when he, turned around, bent over, grabbed my hand, and put it under his butt so the back of my hand was touching … his jock strap. “
This
is what you’re supposed to do to get the snap, idiot. And if you move your hand an inch in front of there, I’ll turn around and kill you. Got it?”

I was too petrified to move, so I simply looked around to see the entire third-string team laughing at me. Fine. Relax. It’s your first day. Just throw a pass and earn respect. I took a deep breath and felt my shoulders get looser.

“Twenty-three, Twenty-three-
SET-HUT
!” I took a few steps back like in gym class and threw what I thought was a decent pass to the receiver streaking down the field, beating his defender by a few yards.

Nope. The ball was woefully underthrown. I figured that part out when I saw the cornerback intercept the pass and run past me. Out of nowhere, right as Carson blew the whistle, someone from the defense knocked me down with a blindside block. Ow. Carson ran over and, instead of chewing out the defender for hitting me that hard, started to berate me. I couldn’t really hear what he said over my ears ringing. Something about not being afraid to fling it.

The next few plays were even worse. I got sacked twice—quarterbacks aren’t supposed to take hits; if a defender gets close, the play is blown dead—threw a pass that was blocked by a defender at the line, and twisted my ankle as I tripped over my own feet when I tried to scramble on a broken play. Geez! Why couldn’t I repeat what had happened with Dex and me in gym class? As I got up slowly on one knee, I heard a different whistle blast. I looked up to see Coach Schmick staring down at me through those mirrored sunglasses. I guess he was wondering the same thing I was.

He stared at me for what felt like an hour before he said something at almost a whisper. I craned my head and motioned with my palm to the right earhole of my helmet that I couldn’t hear him. The next second, he grabbed my jersey and lifted me up with surprising strength so we were face to face.

“I said: ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE A FOOL OUTTA ME?”

“N-n-n-n-n-o,” I squeaked out.

“I didn’t give you a tryout to make a fool outta me!” I didn’t think it was possible for him to draw me closer but he did. The entire team hooted with laughter. He said, “I saw what you did in gym class. That wasn’t human, what you did. I want to see you do that again. In front of everybody. Prove me right. Can you do that?”

I was too afraid to respond. I found myself shaking my head at him.

“No?
NOBODY TELLS ME NO
.” His voice was starting to increase in volume. With two beefy hands, he picked me up and moved me toward the main part of the field where the first-stringers were practicing. “Jimmy! Take a breather,” he called to Claw. Coach Schmick dumped me on the ground in front of the center, who happened to be a certain heavy-set individual whose nose I had bloodied and whose girlfriend had flirted with me.

I barely heard Schmick call out a play. But Schmick wasn’t finished with me. He grabbed my jersey one more time and pulled off those mirrored shades.

I heard gasps behind me. This must be bad. I stared right into his beet-red eyes. There were veins popping out all over the place. From underneath his baseball cap jutted out random stray hairs. The sight of him up close, staring at me, was horrifying. It didn’t help that the next thing out of his mouth nearly deafened me.

“NOW, THROW THE DANG BALL DOWN THE DANG FIELD OR I WILL PHYSICALLY THROW YOU OFF THIS DANG TEAM!”

As Coach Schmick let go of the jersey, I felt the rush of water through my body, marshmallows filled my nostrils, and all I could hear was screeching.

Squeeeeeeeee

I saw the image of the play Coach had called out in front of me, like it was a page in the playbook: “Eagle PA Trips Right 684 H-drag on three.” Three receivers to the right and a running back behind me. I didn’t even have to think as I jumped up, put my hand under the Flab’s butt, and barked for the snap. I faked a handoff to the running back and turned to look to my right. There he was, number eighty-two, running a ten-yard out pattern to the sideline. I threw a strike right to the spot he was heading toward. Sure enough, he caught the pass right as the green of the turf turned into the white of the sideline chalk. If it had been third and ten in a game, that would definitely have been a first down.

The whole thing happened automatically, like I’d pushed a button and switched on autopilot.

I shook my head as my heartbeat began to return to normal and looked around. Coach Schmick nodded at me and put his glasses back on. The entire third-string squad stood there with their mouths wide open in shock. I heard Flab mumble under his breath, “Let’s see him do that twenty-five times a game.” Then I felt a pat on my back as none other than Jimmy Claw passed by and said, “Nice throw, kid.” He stuck his helmet back on just as the whistle blew again.

“Ptuiac! You’re back with us,” I heard Carson call. In a daze, I jogged back over to his group, where Dex waited for me. Funny, he was the only one who didn’t look surprised at all.

“Nice pass.”

“I couldn’t tell you anything I did out there,” I replied.

That’s when he cocked his head at me and smiled.

“How’d you do it?”

I stared wistfully at the first-stringers running plays.

“I have no clue.”

When I heard the bell ring at the end of my visual arts class I was relieved—it was lunchtime and my canvas didn’t exactly scream genius to anyone. As I headed down the hall, I heard a static hiss coming from a few doors away. No one else seemed to notice, but I walked over to see what it was—it sounded like someone welding. When I got to the door to peek inside, the window was covered, though I saw flashes of light. I was still curious, so I decided to open the door and look through the crack.

I put my hand on the metal doorknob. I yelped out in pain and everything went dark.

“Alex? Alex! Wake up!”

I felt someone shaking me and I opened my eyes.

Sophi.

“What happened?” I croaked. My hand felt hot and my head throbbed.

“I … was soldering some metal for my sculpture, and I must have … overheated the metal on the door or something. I heard you yell, and you were passed out when I found you,” she responded.

That didn’t seem right. I sat up and rubbed my head. “I’ll be okay.”

Sophi looked relieved. She got up, grabbed a cup near a sink in one corner of the room, and filled it up with water for me. I looked at the sculpture she was working on—it was a female form made of shiny metal with her left hand held out. There was a zigzag coming out of the palm.

“It’s lightning,” she said. “She’s supposed to be a goddess.”

“Right. Cool.”

We stood silently as I stared at it some more.

“So, were you going to ever talk to me again or not?”

“I mean, sure, but—”

“I was under the impression that we had a nice conversation in your notebook. I don’t appreciate being ignored.”

“It wasn’t my fault. I was told not to talk to you.”

Wrong answer. She narrowed her gaze at me. “And you listened to this authority on talking to me?”

“It was your boyfriend. Flab.”

She put her face in her hands and shook her head. “What a jerk.”

That was enough for me. I started walking toward the door, but Sophi grabbed my arm.

“Why are you leaving?” she asked.

“You called me a jerk!”

“No, not you. Flab … I mean, Jared.”

His real name was Jared. And he was the jerk. Yes! He was!

“That boyfriend thing is just a misunderstanding,” she said.

“He’s not your boyfriend?” She shook her head. I secretly did a series of cartwheels in my head but tried to keep a straight face. “What happened?”

“I told you, it was a misunderstanding. Let‘s leave it at that.”

Sophi grabbed her long hair and pulled it over her shoulder, twisting it nervously. I only had twenty-five minutes left of my lunch period. I had to try to fix this.

“I’m sorry I asked.”

She sighed. “I know he’s trying to make your life a living hell.”

“Can you make him stop?” I asked hopefully.

Sophi shook her head at me, her dangly earrings moving with her. “Jared’s always been like that, even in grade school. He always wanted to be a football player and run the school.”

“And I have to deal with him every day, now that I’m on the football team.” For the moment, anyway.

She looked surprised. I guess her not-boyfriend hadn’t told her. “You don’t seem too happy about it.”

“It’s always been my dream to play football. But Flab—I mean, Jared—isn’t too happy about it. I’m sure he’ll figure out a way to get me off the team, out of the school, and moved to another town.”

“Boys are such jerks,” she replied. “But you and I have the same problem. We can’t get him to stop hounding us.”

We both laughed. I glanced up at the clock in the room. I had a quiz in American history that I needed to cram for. “Sorry, but I gotta run. I’ll see you tomorrow in math?”

“Maybe you’ll sit next to me again,” she said with a smile.

“Let’s keep this quiet for now so we don’t get into any trouble.”

Uh-oh. She looked furious. “You’re going to let him decide who you get to talk to or hang out with? I told you, he’s not my boyfriend; it‘s not right to let him stop you.”

“It doesn’t matter. He’ll torture me anyway.”

“You’re just like all the other football players! Go to lunch. I hope he beats you up,” she said. She picked up her hammer, pointed it at me, and motioned toward the door.

“But you understand why I’m doing this, right?” I said, my voice reaching its highest pitch.

“Leave!” she yelled.

When I walked into math the next couple of days, Sophi didn’t even look at me. She blew right by me when the bell rang. I tried to find her in the art building again, but she wasn’t there. And I wasn’t about to open mysterious blacked-out doors again to find her.

Between the drama with Sophi and seeing Flab every day at practice, I needed someone to hang out with and talk to. After a long practice on Friday, during which Coach Carson tried to teach me the correct way to hand the ball off at least eight times (it still didn’t quite stick—it’s not my fault the seventh-grade third-string running back has such tiny hands!), I pulled Dex aside and asked, “Want to hang out tonight?”