Strange Country Day (8 page)

“What happens when I press the button?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about that. And don’t even think about testing it,” he said. “There is one last thing you need to know. If you encounter anyone who approaches you and tells you we’re in trouble, or that you need to come with them, there’s a question you need to ask them. They’ll give you the correct answer, and you’ll know they’re one of us.

“You will ask them, ‘What’s the fastest way down?’ And they will say, ‘Quicksand.’ Got it?”

“‘What’s the fastest way down? Quicksand.’ Where’d you come up with that?”

Dad didn’t want to answer. “It doesn’t matter. Any other questions?”

Too many to count. But after my eventful first date with Sophi, one had been bugging me for days: “Are there other kids living around here with nanobots in their blood?”

He looked over his glasses at me. “For your safety and for everyone else’s, I can’t answer that.”

But he didn’t say no.

“You gotta find, like … an image or something.”

After my final class on Friday, I walked to the gym, where I’d disappear into the locker room for a few hours and emerge a football player in full pads, helmets, and spikes. I told Sophi a million times she didn’t have to come. I wouldn’t make it into the game for a single snap, even if we were up 59-0. Still, she insisted on coming. I also made my parents swear they wouldn’t go over and introduce themselves to her.

Even if I wasn’t playing, I had to be prepared. But there was a huge problem. Dad mentioned that his tests revealed my nanobots couldn’t be used too often. He thought the respirocytes needed time to restore their oxygen but wasn’t sure until he got more information from my sensor.

I opened the door to the locker room, expecting to see that bizarre combination of skin, sweat, and dirt, and hear the sound of nonsensical chatter. Instead, the place was empty. A constant drip from one of the showers made the only sound. I looked at my watch and realized I was at least two hours early. With nothing better to do, I walked down the rows to find my locker and use the time to read over the scouting report.

When I got to my locker, I found a surprise: a gleaming nameplate with PTUIAC in capital letters. At last, I was officially a member of the Griffins.

A package wrapped in brown paper sat on the floor below my locker. I opened it to find a brand new dark red and yellow jersey with the number eleven on it. I turned it around to see PTUIAC stitched on the back.

I put the uniform down and entered the combination on my lock. Dad had created a special lock programmed to work only when my fingers touched it. Anyone else would receive an electric shock.

I heard a sound nearby that made me jump. I closed my locker walked around the corner to find the source. There, sitting in front of his locker, was Jimmy Claw. He had an empty Snapple bottle in his hand, and a giant lump protruded from his bottom lip. He seemed startled to see me; probably the only time I’d ever seen him rattled by anything.

But then he got that cool “I’m Jimmy Claw” expression on his face. “Hey, man,” Claw drawled. With whatever was stuffed in his lip, it sounded like, “Heh mah.”

“What’s up?” I responded. I understood why so many students were in awe of Jimmy. Even when he was surprised by something, like being caught in the locker room, he still appeared confident and laid back. Yet, he exuded this sense of being an outsider, a Southerner who wasn’t used to wearing a uniform in a snotty private school. Headmaster Hoyer, who’d run Strange since 1991, walked around the school and regularly told uniform violators to correct their mistakes. “Tuck in that shirt, Mr. Franks … Ms. Appleton, what have I told you about your skirt? Move it down.” Sophi told me she’d been caught a few times and would ignore his stern orders. But Jimmy had his own style that Hoyer never seemed to correct, or at least that’s what I’d heard. At that moment, his tie wasn’t pulled all the way up to his collar, and he wore sneakers instead of loafers.

“Nuthin’. Just gettin’ my head in the game,” he said. Claw held up the Snapple bottle and let loose a dribble of something brown into it. Yuck.

“Same here.”

“This is mah ritual before games.”

“What is it?”

He smiled as best he could through the giant lump. “It’s called packin’ a lip. You take tobacco and stuff it in there. Keeps you calm. Used to do it all the time back home.”

I made a face of disgust, and Jimmy got defensive. “Well, it ain’t illegal!” he said, spitting again into the glass container.

“I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”

His face relaxed, and he smiled at me again. “You’re a good guy. Thanks. And you got a cannon for an arm.”

“Thanks.”

“Just keep workin’ at it and Coach’ll reward you someday. That’s how it was when I was a seventh grader in Texas and he was my coach.”

“I’ll try.” There was something I had to know, given what I now knew about my, uh, situation. “How do you stay so calm? Besides the, um, tobacco.”

Jimmy rolled that one around his mouth for a moment before responding. “Being prepared is one thing that helps. But you gotta find, like … an image or something. A go-to moment that keeps you from thinking too much. When I’m on the field sometimes and it’s a big moment, I like to think about … well, there was this view from my daddy’s farm, on the roof, that reminds me of bein’ back home. Try somethin’ like that.”

Before I could respond, we heard noise coming from the direction of the doors. Our teammates were about to pile in.

Jimmy quickly put the bottle to his lips and, in one motion, spat out what looked like a ball of mud. He grabbed the Snapple cap next to him and screwed it on. Then, with the doors about to swing open, he spun around on the bench and threw it at a garbage can at the end of the row. Swish.

He turned back to me and flashed that smile that girls around the school would have paid to see. Naturally, there wasn’t a trace of the tobacco anywhere.

“Jimmaaaayyyyy! It’s game daaaay!” That was Dan Zewberry, the kid tasked with protecting Claw’s blind side as the left tackle. He was also there the day Flab cornered me by my house. I nodded to Jimmy and walked back to my locker before Zewberry found him.

An hour and a half later, after warm-ups and stretches outside, we were back in the locker room, which filled with the sound of clapping when Coach entered. We gathered in front of Schmick, and I felt a tug on my arm. Who else would it be but Dex, swimming around in his oversized uniform.

“You ready?” he said

“I’m not going to play a snap, right?”

“You never know.” He was serious.

“Well, then I’m ready.”

“Same here. Your parents here?”

I nodded. “Yours?”

Dex shook his head.

Coach blew a whistle and asked us to take a knee. Somehow, I found myself behind the entire offensive line but was able to crane my neck to see Schmick pacing in front of us, his mirrored sunglasses looking even more polished and reflective than usual.

“Gentlemen,” he began, and I swear I saw him smile for a half-second. “Welcome to game day.” The team roared back in unison.

“Who’s gonna make a play for me today?” A saw a few hands go up in the front row. Everyone else shouted back at him “I am!” “Me, sir!” “I will!”

Schmick yelled back, “Who’s gonna make a play today!”

More of the same yells drowned out our head coach. Then, weirdly enough, he slammed his clipboard down, silencing the entire room.

“Do you hear yourselves? ‘I will.’ ‘Me.’ ‘I.’ That’s not what this is all about.”

Coach got quiet again.

“You are a group of individuals at the moment. What you gotta do is start thinking like team. When I ask you questions like who’s gonna make a play, you’ve gotta start thinking collectively. You’ve got to support each other, think for each other, protect each other, and win for each other. The individuals become one entity.”

Everyone nodded.

“This ain’t like what you’ve seen in the movies. This ain’t some football game that’ll change the rest of your life or make you more of a man. No, this is about playing a game the right way. You have to prove that you’re responsible enough as individuals to go out there and make plays
TOGETHER
before I can trust you. Force me to trust you. Play the right way. Show me who’s going to step up and make a play. So who’s gonna make a play for me today?”

I heard Jimmy’s voice. “We will, coach!”

“Who’s gonna make a play?” Coach got up from his squat.

“We will!!” the entire team shouted back.

“Let’s go get ‘em!”

Minutes later, we were out on the field, barely able to hear Jimmy over the crowd.

“ … It doesn’t matter what we’ve done ‘til now. All that practice was preparation for battle. You need to fight for each other. You need to play like you’re protecting your family. You ready to fight for each other?” Jimmy yelled.

The entire team howled.

“Griffins on three! One! Two! Three!”

“GRIFFINS!”

Our captains, including Jimmy, ran out to the field to take the coin toss while I walked over to sit down next to Dex on the end of the bench. Before I did, I looked up at the crowd. After a few seconds, I located that shock of red hair, mostly covered by a hoodie. Sophi. About three rows down were my parents. They looked nervous, but they waved.

“I know we’re not going to play at all, but this is pretty awesome,” Dex said.

“Yeah. I still can’t believe we’re a part of this.”

It was easy to see why Jimmy was such a star. We were playing another local private school, Lansdowne Prep, which had beaten us three of the last four years. They tried blitzing us, with pressure on our right side, but Jimmy moved to his left and made some incredible throws. He led us to a 14-3 lead after the first quarter and didn’t even look like he was tired.

While our defense was on the field, I jumped in on meetings with Jimmy, our backup quarterback Jesse Jarvis, and Coach Carson, who shouted various instructions about trends he saw from the defense and how Jimmy should adjust (there wasn’t much he needed to do). Then it was back to the bench, where Dex and I tried to dissect how we’d handle Lansdowne’s aggressive defense.

“If you see pressure from the left side and I’m lined up on that side, you’re supposed to look my way since I’ll probably be one-on-one with space. Just don’t make it obvious,” Dex explained.

“I understand,” I replied. I had played enough video games to know the rule of thumb most of the time is to throw into pressure. “But they’re probably moving their safeties up, figuring a quick throw is coming.”

“So if you see that, you wait the extra second, and hit the other receiver, who’s going deep. That, of course, depends on the formation we use.”

That extra second would mean I’d be pancaked, but that’s how the pros do it.

Halftime arrived with the Griffins leading 23-6. Coach Schmick gave us a quick speech in the locker room about keeping our focus and continuing to put the pressure on our opponents.

Just as the band struck up our fight song outside the tunnel, Dex tapped me on the arm. I looked down, and he said something I couldn’t hear. Then he pointed to his helmet. Shoot. I forgot my helmet in the locker room. I told him I’d be right back.

I walked back into the musty locker room to grab my helmet, which was sitting near a set of lockers past my row.

I began walking toward it, and as I passed by the row with my locker I saw someone out of the corner of my eye. Someone with his back to me.

He was standing at my locker.

I felt my heart jump into my throat as I plastered my back against the row, where the stranger couldn’t see me. I could hear myself breathing quickly and heavily and covered my mouth to stop the noise. But the band’s brass and drums were loud enough to cover up everything, including my breathing and the clicking of my cleats on the locker room floor.

I looked down at my ankle, where the panic button was strapped. Did this count as extreme danger? Don’t I have people watching my every move? Is this person one of them?

I also wondered why I hadn’t automatically activated my powers when I panicked. I was as scared as I’d ever been, but there was no food smell, no high-pitched sound, and no feeling of strength running through me. Perhaps that was a good thing. What if I had attacked him and he turned out to be one of my protectors?

I peeked around the corner to the person at my locker. From what I could see, he was tall and built, with a baseball cap pulled down to hide his face. He was dressed in a light brown jacket and jeans and looked like any ordinary parent watching our game. He was examining my locker from all different angles. He fingered the plate with my name on it and touched the locker’s slats.

There wasn’t much of importance in there, except for the cellphone-sized device that registered my powers when they activated. I also knew he’d eventually try the lock, which was supposed to shock everyone except me when touched. If that didn’t work, maybe then it was time to hit the panic button.

Finally, he went for it. He reached out to take the lock in his hand. I heard the lock emit a beep, and the tall stranger grunted, pulling his hand back. He let out a curse as the lock beeped again.

Another movement caught my eye. It was someone else coming into the locker room. It was Coach Carson, carrying the whiteboard he’d been using to diagram what the opposing defense had been doing. He looked at me standing there with my back against the row of lockers and held his finger to his lips to keep me quiet.

He put the whiteboard quietly on a bench and reached behind him with his other hand, pulling a gun out from underneath his sweatshirt.

I wanted to scream. Whose side was he on? Was he here to capture me or protect me?

Just then, the band stopped playing and Carson’s shoe squeaked on the floor. I heard the intruder’s footsteps going down the other side of the row as Carson raced past me to the other side of the locker room, which exited into the rest of the athletic center.

“Ptuiac, you okay?”

I nearly leapt up the side of the lockers as Coach Carson ran back toward me. I began backing away, toward the tunnel. “Relax, it’s just me,” he said as he put the gun into the back of his pants. That reminded me … the panic button. I reached down and pulled up my football pants to reveal it. I pulled up the plastic cover on top and pointed to it.