The Underdogs (13 page)

Hannah smiled, one of her big ones. “Thank you,” she said. “And just so you know, I'm not afraid of getting hit. If I was, I wouldn't have tried out.”

“You may not be afraid,” Will's dad said. “But I am. Not everybody in this league is my son's size.”

“Hey,” Will said.

Grinning as he did.

“And there are going to be some jerks who are going to want to put it to you just to show how tough they are, or show you how much they don't want a girl playing
their
game. Like it makes them feel less like guys somehow. So they'll be looking to, I don't know . . .”

“Compensate?” Hannah said.

“Exactly. Smart girl.”

“Smarter than most boys,” she said.

Unable to help herself.

“Most girls are,” Will's dad said.

“Hey,” Will said again.

“Facts are facts, son.” To Hannah, Joe Tyler said, “I'll need to talk to your parents. I assume this is all right with them, or you wouldn't be here.”

“My dad a lot more than my mom,” Hannah said. “You'll see when you talk to them. But they said if I wanted to do this, they wouldn't stand in my way.”

Will's dad shook his head.

“I may be crazy,” he said. “No, check that. I
am
crazy or I wouldn't be here myself. But we started this day with ten players and now we've got one more, as far as I'm concerned.”

“Cool,” Hannah said.

“But there's one thing: we gotta get the other guys on board with this.”

“Wait a second, Mr. Tyler,” Hannah said. Like she was digging in. “
You're
the coach. And there'd be no team without
him.
”

Nodding at Will again.

“You're right, there'd be no team without Will,” Joe Tyler said. “But on every good team I was ever around, it was all for one.”

He shrugged at Hannah, smiled.

“Now we gotta see how that theory holds up when you're the one,” Will's dad said.

C
onvincing his dad about Hannah turned out to be a piece of cake compared to convincing his teammates.

The most vocal of them, surprising Will, was Tim LeBlanc.

Not surprising Will by being the most vocal—that was a given with his best friend. The only time he would shut up was when a teacher would threaten him with a lunch detention.

No. The surprise here was just how much Tim, the closest thing Will had to a brother, was dead-solid set against the idea of putting Hannah on the team.

“Why don't we just change our name to the Poodles?” he said.

Everything he was saying before practice was directed at Will. Not Will's dad, the coach of the team.

Just Will.

“That's not funny,” Will said.

“For once, I'm not trying to be funny,” Tim said.

Will tried to be, just wanting to chill him out a little. “It must be a struggle,” he said.

“No,” Tim said. “But what
is
a struggle for the rest of us is looking at a whole season of being the butt end of jokes because you came up with the genius idea of us adding a girl to the roster.”

“She can help us,” Will said. “Do you really think I'd do something, after we've gotten this far, to
hurt
us?”

Tim ignored the question. “I thought this was supposed to be the West River league,” he said. “Not
A League of Their Own.
”

It was a movie they'd watched one time about a women's professional baseball league. The one where the manager said there was no crying in baseball.

“You haven't seen her yet,” Will said, “but you've already made up your mind. That's not right.”

“What's not
right
is her jamming up the rest of us and making us look pathetic,” Tim said.

They were in a circle at midfield. Every time Tim stopped talking, the rest of the Bulldogs were staring right at Will.

Now he went at them.

“What do the rest of you guys have to say?” Will said. “LeBlanc may be the loudest voice on the team, but it's not the only one.”

Chris said, “I didn't sign on to play with girls.”

Jeremiah said, “Same.”

“Same,” Wes said.

“It's not a bunch of girls,” Will said. “It's one girl.”

“All it takes,” Chris said.

“One girl who seems to be, like, dominating you,” Tim said.

“Are you joking?” Will said. “She wasn't even speaking to me until today.”

“But I'll bet she was fine as soon as you gave her what she wanted,” Tim said. “Just flat-out promised her a spot on the team before you even talked to the rest of us.
Sweet.
”

“If I'd promised her a spot,” Will said, “we wouldn't be having this conversation.”

Thinking: he and Tim had never seriously fought about anything, until now. Fighting over a girl. Just not the way guys usually did.

“The only thing I promise,” Will said, “is that she can help us.”

Johnny Callahan said, “In what? A flag football league?” Will said, “Dude, I hear you. Hannah knows this better than anybody: the first time she told me she wanted to play on our team, I shot her down big-time. She wouldn't even talk to me.” He shrugged. “But I'm telling you, I was wrong about her.”

“Why?” Tim said. “Because she's talking to you again?”

“You know how much I want to win,” Will said. “In everything. You know I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think she could help us win.”

He looked over at his dad now, the look basically saying this:

Jump in anytime.

He did, just not the way Will expected.

“I agree with the guys,” Joe Tyler said.

Will stared at his dad, trying to keep his face calm, hoping the other guys couldn't
hear
all the air coming out of him the way it did when you popped a balloon.

“When I was your age, I would've quit before I lined up with a girl,” he said. “Are you kidding? In this town in the old days, when we thought we were the toughest guys around? They wouldn't have just wanted to change our name to the Poodles; guys from other towns would have been asking us why we weren't playing in
skirts.
”

He put his hands up, like surrendering.

“I told Will we'd put this to a vote, and we don't even have to do that; I'm feelin' you guys on this,” Joe Tyler said. “So the best thing is to call the whole thing off now. You can drop your equipment off at the house in the morning. I'll call the league. Will should probably be the one to call New Balance.”

Tim hadn't seen
that
coming.

“Wait a second, Mr. T.!” he said. “Nobody said anything about the rest of us quitting. We just don't want a girl on the team.”

“But you see, that's a problem, Timmy. Not for you, but for me. Even though I told Hannah that we'd have to hear from the rest of you guys, I frankly didn't expect this kind of reaction. So she left my house feeling as if she was on the team. And I let her think that. As far as I'm concerned, that's the same as if I gave her my word. The same as when I gave Will my word that I'd coach the team. Once I do that, I never go back.”

“But, Coach,” Chris said, “
you
just said that you would've quit rather than play with a girl when you were our age.”

Joe Tyler smiled now, at Chris, at all of them.

“Yeah, son, I did. But that's only because I was a whole lot dumber at your age than I am now. About almost everything.”

“Not wanting to play with a girl doesn't make us dumb,” Tim said.

“Didn't say it did,” Will's dad said. “It just makes you a guy. And now I want you to listen to this guy.” Poking a finger at his own chest. Backing up, so he was talking to all of them at once.

Now he was pointing to his left shoulder.

“Whether you can see it or not,” he said, “there's a chip on that shoulder. It's there tonight, it's gonna be there for our first game, it's gonna be there all season. There's a chip on my shoulder, and Will's, and Tim's. Everybody's on this team.”

His voice was rising. He had their attention now. Will's, too. Looking at his dad and maybe seeing him as his coach for the first time.

“And this girl, whether you want her with us or not, has that same kind of chip. She doesn't just want to show other teams. She knows she's gonna have to show her
own
team. She wants to help us show everybody that a team from a nowhere town like this—and you know that's what other people think about Forbes now—can take on anybody.”

Joe Tyler was out of breath, the way he was sometimes just climbing up the stairs.

“So I'm gonna ask something now,” he said. “I'll ask Timmy first. You with me?”

There was just a slight hesitation, then Tim LeBlanc looked up at Will's dad, nodded.

“I'm with you, Coach,” he said.

“Chris?”

Chris Aiello had been kneeling. Now he stood up.

“With you,” he said.

The rest of the Bulldogs stood up.

“I think we're all with you,” Will said.

Then Will saw his dad looking past them, toward the arch, Hannah Grayson walking through it, ball under her arm, what must have been her own helmet on her head, shoulder pads showing under the oversized sweatshirt she was wearing as a practice jersey.

As she got closer to them, Will could see the number she'd obviously drawn on the front of the sweatshirt herself.

Will had to admit:

As cocky as she was, the girl did have style.

“Yeah,” Joe Tyler said, pointing to his own shoulder again. “Here comes a girl with a chip on hers.”

A
wkward,” Tim said loud enough for only Will to hear.

Will said, “Just pretend she's one more person hanging on every word you say.”

“What do you mean
pretend
?”

But it was awkward at first, the guys introducing themselves by their first names one by one, even though they all went to the same school with Hannah Grayson.

Hannah was still on her best behavior, taking a minute to tell them she understood how this was probably weirding them all out but that she was sure she could help the team and, besides, it wasn't like she was taking somebody else's position.

Then she said to the rest of the Bulldogs what she had said to Will.

“I
can
play,” she said. “I know I'll have to prove it at every practice and at every game. But I can play.”

Tim said, “That all looks like new equipment. You sure you're not gonna mind getting it dirty?”

Testing her right away.

Hannah gave him her best smile.

“Watch me,” she said.

A lot of the night's practice was putting all eleven of them in their offensive positions, walking them through the plays that Will's dad had put in already, then running them at full speed through the orange cones that Joe Tyler had set up as ghost defenders. Trying to give them a general sense, he said, of where the defense would be when they tried to run these plays in a real game. Against real players.

Will couldn't tell whether his dad really wanted to school them on the plays or whether he was purposely avoiding any contact drills, not wanting Hannah to get flattened at her first practice.

Joe Tyler just kept lining her up at wide receiver. Chris Aiello finally threw her way on the third pass play of the night, a simple sideline pattern.

Ball went right through her hands.

“Great,” Tim said, standing next to Will in the backfield. “Girl's got hands like feet.”

“Shut it.”

“Truth hurt?”

“You know that all-for-one thing my dad always talks about?” Will said. “I'm pretty sure it's supposed to last longer than one series of downs.”

Joe Tyler's only reaction to the drop was to say, “Run it again.” When Hannah took her position, Will's dad said, “This time hold on to it.”

It was the kind of thing he said to the rest of them when they messed up.

They ran it again. Chris's throw was high this time. Hannah Grayson reached up, made a terrific hands catch, even managed to keep both feet inbounds as she did.

“Better,” Will's dad said.

They had been at it for two hours, Shea getting dark now, when Joe Tyler said, “Okay, let's scrimmage for a few minutes. Like we do. Five on offense tonight, six on defense. Chris can snap it to himself. Two guys in front of him, Hannah and Johnny at wide receiver. Empty backfield. Ball on the twenty. Pretend like it's overtime in college football and the offense wins if it scores a TD, defense wins if it gets a stop.”

Tim was the one who asked the question.

“Full contact?” he said.

“Tackle football, boys,” Joe Tyler said. “And girl.”

Wes and Gerry Dennis rushed the quarterback. Ernie Accorsi was the one linebacker; Jake Cantor said he'd roam as free safety. That left Will and Tim as the cover guys.

“I'll take her,” Tim said.

“No,” Will said. “I will.”

“So you can go easy on her?”

“Do I ever go easy on you, big boy?”

Tim said, “If she catches it and you get the chance to put her down, you're saying you will?”

“Hundred percent.”

Will wishing he was as sure of that as he sounded.

Hoping that Chris kept throwing to the other side of the field.