The Extra Yard Page 2

But Teddy’s dad wasn’t going to live near his new office. He was going to live in Walton.

  “How does your mom feel about this?” Cassie said. “She can’t be happy.”

  “She wasn’t happy or sad or angry or anything,” Teddy said. “She just said that we’re all going to have to make this work. And that she hoped I would give him a chance. I asked her when he’d ever given me a chance.”

  “Well, then that’s what we’re going to have to do!” Cassie said.

  Somehow she had gotten off her back and was sitting cross-legged facing him.

  “We?” Teddy said.

  “Yup,” she said. “We. Because we are all in this together. Right?”

  Jack knew enough to say “Right.” When Gus hesitated, Cassie smacked him on the shoulder. “Right?” she said to him.

  “Right,” Gus said. “And ouch.”

  “Tell me again, how many times have you seen him since he and your mom got divorced?” Cassie asked. “Ballpark number.”

  Teddy said, “I think six times in eight years.”

  Cassie shook her head. “I get how far away he lived. But that’s like somebody pretending that airplanes haven’t been invented.”

  “Just about every time it was because he had to be back on business.”

  “And he doesn’t call?”

  “At first he did. Until he started to figure out that he didn’t have anything to say to me.”

  “What was yesterday like?”

  “He didn’t have much once he got past calling me ‘champ.’ Which I have now decided I like even less than Teddy Bear.”

  Gus sat up. Teddy knew that being from a close-knit family, Gus understood as much about growing up without a father around as he did about being an astronaut. It was probably why he had been so quiet today.

  “Does he send you stuff on your birthday, or Christmas?” Gus said.

  “He’s the league leader in Amazon gift certificates. I’ve got a nice collection of them saved up.”

  “You’ve never used them?” Gus said.

  “Nope,” Teddy said. “I could never figure out whether they were gifts or bribes. And then I decided they weren’t nearly big enough to be bribes. Now instead of a gift certificate, I’m getting him.”

  “Maybe he’s changed,” Jack said.

  “He’s changed jobs,” Teddy said. “He’s changed location. That’s it.”

  Jack said, “You’ve gotten through everything else; you’ll get through this. And like Cassie said, we’ll help you.”

  “You know what this doesn’t help me with?” Teddy said. “Making the Wildcats tomorrow.”

  “Shut up,” Cassie said.

  “Excuse me?” Teddy said.

  “Shut . . . up,” she said. “One has nothing to do with the other.”

  “Easy for you to say,” he said.

  “She’s right,” Jack said. He grinned. “As much as I hate saying that.”

  “You should be getting used to it by now,” Cassie said.

  “No,” Jack said, “I mean it. This isn’t going to get in your way, because nothing is going to get in your way.”

  “Then how come I feel like somehow my own dad has tackled me from behind?” Teddy said.

  Cassie smiled. “Because he did?”

  “No wonder you get good grades.”

  “Don’t you feel better now?” she said.

  “No!” Teddy said. Then he said, “Can we change the subject?”

  “No!” they all yelled back at him.

  The truth was, he didn’t feel any better today than he had last night about his dad moving back to Walton, moving back into his life, no matter how much his friends were trying to get him to laugh his way past the whole thing. He was still angry, he was still confused, he still hated his dad blindsiding him and his mom the way he had. He told Jack and Cassie and Gus now that knowing his dad, it really was a surprise that he’d told them in person, and not tweeted out the news instead.

  “Hundred and forty characters,” Teddy said. “He could have summed up our whole relationship in that many. The dad from Twitter.”

  “I thought you wanted to stop talking about this,” Cassie said.

  “Now I do.”

  And they did. The only thing that made him feel better was being with them. It didn’t matter to Teddy that Jack might look at Gus, or even Cassie, as his best friend. Or that Gus might feel closer to Jack. Teddy just felt close to all of them, never closer than he did right now. Over these last months, as he had become stronger and more confident—as much as that confidence had gotten rocked yesterday when he’d seen his father standing there, big smile on his face, on the porch—Teddy had figured something out:

  You kept score in sports, not friendships.

  On this day, more than ever, he was getting as much as he needed from his friends, and that was all that mattered. A few minutes later, they went for another swim. When they got out, Jack and Gus started to talk about tomorrow’s tryouts, and Teddy allowed himself to get carried along by their excitement about the next season starting for all of them.

  Before long, a lot of the afternoon sun was gone, and so was the afternoon. It was time for all of them to head home for dinner. They dropped Cassie off at her corner. Gus had left his bike at her house, so the two of them walked down her street together.

  Just Teddy and Jack now.

  “We’ve still got an hour,” Jack said.

  Teddy knew exactly what he meant.

  “You go get your sneakers,” Teddy said. “I’ll go get the ball.”

  He ran most of the way home, not sure whether he was running away from something or not.

  THREE

  Teddy and Jack played until Teddy’s mom called to him from the backyard that it really was time for dinner, even though today Teddy would have been willing to catch passes from Jack until it got too dark.

  “You’re ready,” Jack said as Teddy was leaving.

  “For anything?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “For anything.”

  When he got into the house, the first thing he said to his mom was, “Is he here?”

  “No,” she said, “he is not.”

  “Just the two of us for dinner?” Teddy said, feeling relieved.

  “You and me, kid.” She told him to go get cleaned up, their food would be ready in fifteen minutes.

  Once Teddy had decided to get into shape, his mom started cooking healthier meals, limiting red meat to once or twice a week, if that. Tonight was red snapper and green beans on the side and a salad. Teddy was happy to have it, even though there had been a time when he would have been happy eating cheeseburgers and fries every night.

  They spent most of the early part of their dinner talking about a letter that all school parents had received that day, telling them that because of budget cuts in Walton, various programs were about to be cut in the town’s public schools. The most serious in his mom’s mind was that Mrs. Brandon’s music department at Walton Middle School would be closed down at the end of this semester. There was even talk of canceling the big holiday show that Mrs. Brandon staged every year before winter break.

  “But everybody loves Mrs. Brandon,” Teddy said. “Even I like the holiday show.”

  “I went to school with her,” his mom said. “We even had a girl group back in the day.”

  “No way.”

  “Way,” she said. “We called ourselves the Baubles.”

  “You’re making this up.”

  “I wish,” she said, grinning. “There was a popular girl group back in the day called the Bangles.”

  “The secret life of Mom,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I have to think of something,” she said. “For kids who love music, this would be like cutting a sports team.”

  “What can you do?” Teddy said.

  “Something.”

  They ate in silence for a few minutes.

  “By the way?” Teddy’s mom said. “I still feel terrible about yesterday. I sh
ould have come out to the field and told you myself that he was here.”

  “What, and spoil his big moment?”

  “It’s who he is,” she said. “It’s who he’s always been. Maybe that’s why he’s such a good salesman. He thinks presentation is everything.”

  “He actually thinks that was the way to announce he was coming back here?”

  “He always loved drama, too.”

  “So now he’s brought it all the way across the country,” Teddy said. “Maybe we should have given him a standing O yesterday.”

  “You’re going to have to get used to it. We both are.”

  “I like things the way they are, Mom,” Teddy said. “I never felt cheated because I didn’t live with both parents. I had you.”

  “You’re sweet.”

  He grinned, feeling like himself for a minute. “Let’s not get carried away.”

  “I never asked you last night,” she said. “How did it go when it was just the two of you talking?”

  “Once he got past telling me how excited he was to be back, he pretty much had nothing. Other than asking me to give him a second chance.”

  “You have to,” she said.

  “No, I don’t,” Teddy said. “I didn’t get a vote when he left, I didn’t get a vote when he decided to move back. This is one thing I get to decide. He doesn’t get to play dad now because it will make him feel better.”

  “I’m more interested in what you’re feeling,” she said.

  “I don’t think you need to be a mind reader to figure that out.”

  There was a silence between them. Both of them were done eating. Neither made a move to clear their plates. It was as if they had reached some kind of standoff. Teddy just wasn’t sure about what.

  He said, “I can’t believe he shows up right before tryouts.”

  “I’m not asking you to be thrilled, Teddy. I’m not asking you to even like it right now. But what I’m asking you to do is try to make this work for me.”

  Teddy slapped his hand on the table. “I’m supposed to be nice to him for you?” he said. “When was he ever nice to you?”

  There was another silence. Usually he loved this time with his mom. He would tell her about his day. She’d tell him about hers. They were both good talkers. He felt like he’d inherited that from her, the way he’d inherited whatever else that was good in him.

  Alexis Madden would ask Teddy sometimes—though not so much lately—if he could remember things they’d done as a family when David Madden was still around. Teddy would answer truthfully: No. He really couldn’t. He didn’t know if it was because he was too little, or because he was trying to block those memories out.

  “Teddy,” she said, “I know it’s hard, but . . .”

  She reached across the table and covered Teddy’s hand with her own.

  “Promise me you’ll try to be open-minded,” she said. “And openhearted. I know it’s asking a lot. But this isn’t him asking. It’s me.”

  He stared at her, afraid she might start to cry. What he did remember, from the time his dad left, as young as he’d been? He remembered his mom crying a lot.

  “I’ll try,” he said. “I can’t promise that this deal is going to work out the way he might want it to. But I’ll try.”

  She told him she’d clean up; he should go upstairs and rest. He had a big day tomorrow.

  “I don’t know how many more big days I can stand this week,” Teddy said.

  • • •

  He thought about calling Jack when he got upstairs, but after the dock, and after dinner with his mom, he was talked out for today. As he lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, not even paying attention to the songs he was listening to on his speakers, he kept coming back to this one thought:

  Having a dad in his life was something that should have made him happy.

  He had real friends now, he had teammates, he had football, he’d been good enough in sports, in a pretty short time, to have been the starting catcher on a team that played in the Little League World Series. Now he had a shot at making the Wildcats, and if Jack Callahan was right—and he was usually right about sports—he had a chance to be the team’s starting tight end. Having a dad should have been like icing on top of a big old cake.

  Not everybody he knew at Walton Middle School had a full-time dad in their lives. A couple of other kids who’d be starting eighth grade with him had divorced parents. But most kids he knew, and most of the guys he played sports with, usually had a dad around to cheer them on.

  He’d never needed a dad before. He didn’t need one tomorrow at Holzman Field.

  He just wanted to make the team.

  FOUR

  Teddy was more grateful than ever that Jack had worked him out as hard as he had since the end of baseball.

  Because the tryouts were beyond intense.

  “I think this is what guys in the Marines call basic training,” Gus said to Teddy and Jack about an hour into it. “And we’re not even in pads today!”

  “No,” Teddy said, “I think basic training would feel like a vacation compared to this.”

  “Do I hear complaining?” Jack said.

  “Just making an observation,” Teddy said. “A very, very tired observation, and we’ve only been here an hour.”

  “You just think you’re tired,” Jack said. “Actually you’re about to catch your second wind.”

  “If I am trying to catch it,” Teddy said, “I hope it’s not moving too quickly.”

  They had just run sprints and intervals and laps so far, being watched and evaluated by parents from Walton Town Football who didn’t have a son trying out for the team. And they were being watched by the man who’d coach the Wildcats, Dick Gilbert.

  Andre Williams’s dad, Malik, an outside linebacker who’d gone from Walton High to Wake Forest to the pros for a few seasons, was observing from the stands. He wasn’t allowed to officially evaluate because Andre was trying out, even though Mr. Williams was going to be Coach Gilbert’s defensive coordinator. But everybody was pretty sure that Andre, who’d been a pitcher and outfielder on the Rays, was going to be a starter at outside linebacker—and a star at the position—the same as his dad.

  After all the running, they moved to agility drills. One was called the step over. Blocking bags were set up a few feet apart, and the players had to run through the bags, high-stepping over them the way they would a downed blocker during a game. Coach Gilbert told them that when he’d been a wide receiver at Walton High, getting over players who’d been blocked to the ground was called “getting through the trash.”

  “Of course, once the season starts,” he said, “the trash on the ground will be somebody else’s, not ours.”

  When they came back from a brief water break, they lined up and zigzagged their way through orange cones that were set up on the field, the parents and Coach Gilbert wanting to see how they could handle quick cuts.

  Finally they were separated out by size and the position they wanted to play. Teddy was surprised at how many of the bigger kids said they wanted to play in the line, either offensive or defensive.

  But he quickly figured out what was happening: kids really wanted to make this team, and not end up in Pop Warner. And even if they secretly wanted to run with the ball or catch it or throw it, they were going for the positions they thought gave them their best chance at making the Walton Wildcats. Coach Gilbert reminded them all, more than once, that the ultimate decision about where guys were going to play would be his.

  Gus went over with the wide receivers. Jack had predicted that Gus would probably end up being the kind of slot receiver Victor Cruz had been for the Giants before he hurt his knee.

  There were three other kids trying out for tight end with Teddy. One was Mike O’Keeffe, a good guy they’d played against in baseball.

  “Good luck,” he said to Teddy when it was time for the receiving drills, and Teddy knew Mike meant it.

  “Jack says it’s not about luck,” Teddy sai
d.

  “Yeah,” Mike said. “But he’s Jack.”

  Every boy trying out today had been given a blue mesh practice jersey with big white numbers on the front and back, to make things easier for the evaluators. By chance Teddy had been given number 81. Megatron’s number. Calvin Johnson of the Lions. Teddy didn’t care. He was a Giants fan, which meant he was an Odell Beckham Jr. guy.

  There were two other kids trying out for quarterback along with Jack. Danny Hayes was an eighth grader and had a good arm, but he was a better runner than he was a passer. And there was a seventh grader who’d just moved to Walton during the summer, a kid named Bruce Kalb. Bruce was almost as big as Teddy and seemed to have a pretty big arm himself. But if he did make the team, the best he could hope for was to be Jack’s backup. Nobody was beating out Jack.

  When Coach Gilbert walked them down to the other end of the field for the passing and receiving drills, Jack and Gus walked with Teddy.

  Jack said, “Just pretend it’s the two of us in the outfield.”

  “That’s going to be hard when you’re not the one throwing to me,” Teddy said.

  There were going to be three rounds; each quarterback would make the throws in one of them.

  “You can still pretend it’s me,” Jack said.

  “This is going to be cake,” Gus said, grinning as he added, “Not that you eat much cake anymore.”

  It wasn’t cake.

  • • •

  Coach lined up receivers on both sides of the field. Each receiver would get four balls thrown to him with nobody covering: first a slant, then a curl, a deep post pattern, a straight fly down the sideline.

  On the fifth throw, one of the other kids in the line would come out to cover, and you were supposed to do whatever you thought you had to do to get open.

  Teddy was hoping for Jack the first time through but got Bruce Kalb instead. Teddy caught the slant pass just fine, Bruce leading him beautifully. But then he missed the next three, the ball either going off his hands or through them all three times. It felt like his hands were on backward.

  When Mike O’Keeffe came out to cover him, Teddy gave him a good head fake to the outside and got inside position. He cut to the middle of the field, about twenty yards from Bruce. But the ball was slightly underthrown. Mike read it better—and sooner—than Teddy did.