Game Changers Read online

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “Talk to him. But really talk to him.”

  After practice, Ben did just that. Getting a minute alone with Shawn, asking him if he wanted to go get a slice of pizza in town.

  “You and me?” Shawn said.

  “Yeah. I figured we could go to Pinocchio’s.”

  “Why?” Shawn said.

  “Best slice in town?”

  Shawn said, “You know what I mean.”

  Ben grinned and said, “I looked it up on my computer today. It’s take a QB to lunch day.”

  Shawn didn’t say anything back right away, Ben wondering if the guy had any sense of humor. Or just had no interest in being buds.

  Until Shawn finally said, “Let me go ask my dad.”

  He ran over to where his dad was talking to one of the other parents, came jogging back with some money in his hand.

  Shawn said, “He said he’d pick me up in an hour, and that I should pay.”

  “Cool,” Ben said. “And my dad is always telling me that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

  Shawn O’Brien never smiled much on a football field. But Ben noticed a small smile on his face now.

  “Hold on,” Shawn said. “You mean our dads don’t know everything? Who knew?”

  It was a short walk from Rockwell Middle School to the small downtown area in Rockwell. There were two pizza places in town, but the one Ben and his buddies like the best was called Pinocchio’s, quiet by the time they got there, a little after two o’clock, only a couple of the booths filled.

  Shawn asked what Ben liked and he said he usually got a half-pepperoni, half-plain.

  “Same,” Shawn said.

  Something in common besides football.

  A start, maybe.

  While they waited Shawn said, “My dad was surprised when I told him you and I were gonna do something. He’s always been asking me why we don’t hang out more together.”

  “Same,” Ben said.

  Ben noticed that Shawn looked big even sitting across from him in their booth. You might not know he was a quarterback just looking at him, but you knew he was some kind of player.

  “How do you think we’re looking so far?” Shawn said. “The team, I mean.”

  They were going to start out speaking football to each other, maybe figure it out from there. Ben decided to go with it, just because for a change Shawn actually sounded like he was interested in other players on the team, not just himself.

  “There’s nothing we don’t have,” Ben said. “You, Sam. Enough big guys up front. Bunch of fast guys. My dad always says that two things you can’t coach in sports are big and fast.”

  “And, we have you,” Shawn said.

  Ben let that one go, just adding, “Plus, we have your dad coaching us. That must be pretty cool for you guys.”

  “Oh, it’s awesome,” Shawn said, really stepping on the last word. “Dad tells people he’s been waiting his whole life to teach a son of his how to be a quarterback. Said he was afraid after two daughters he was just going to keep having daughters and never get the chance.”

  “You guys are lucky,” Ben said. “My dad is threatening to coach my Little League team next season. It would be the first time he’s been my official coach. The last couple of years he’s been totally busy because with the renovation at the Y it’s practically like they’re building a whole new one.”

  “Well,” Shawn said, “my dad’s got nothing but time for football now that he doesn’t have a real job anymore. So he’s totally focused on the team. And me.”

  “Yeah,” Ben said, “I check him out sometimes and he’s smiling his head off, watching every move you make.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “He seems like such a good guy.”

  “Great guy,” Shawn said. “But, dude, trust me, we better be great this season, because he’s gonna take it hard if we’re not.”

  “I’m not worried,” Ben said.

  “You never did last year, no matter how badly we were losing.”

  “My mom says the only word that’s not in my vocabulary is ‘can’t,’” Ben said. “But I tell her, only if she stops with the c’s.”

  Their pizza was ready. They polished it off at record speed, hardly any talking now. When they finished, Shawn said, “My dad said he had a good talk with you.”

  “He didn’t have to,” Ben said. “He’s the coach, I’m cool with whatever he wants me to do.”

  “Grown-ups love to have their talks,” Shawn said, putting air quotes around “talks.”

  Before Ben could add anything to that, Shawn said, “He might not know how good you’d be at quarterback, but I do.”

  Ben didn’t know why, but he felt Shawn had gotten down to it now, the real reason why he agreed to have lunch. Ben almost smiled. He wanted to get to know Shawn better, maybe even be boys with him, not thinking that Shawn might want to do the same with him.

  But this wasn’t a “talk” — with or without air quotes — that Ben wanted to have with Shawn. The one about how much he wanted to be a quarterback, how much he wanted what Shawn had and was probably going to have for a long time.

  “Oh, don’t stress on that,” Ben said. “My dad tells me all the time that my real position is just football player. And everybody knows that you’re a better QB than me.”

  Shawn started to say something, then stopped, like a pump fake on the field.

  “That first night of tryouts? I saw that play you made after you scrambled. Aaron Rodgers doesn’t throw on the run better than you do.”

  Everybody on the team knew how much of a Green Bay Packers fan Ben was. He had other teams he liked in sports. But even living a long way from Lambeau Field, the Packers were his favorite. And Rodgers was his favorite player now. He was a lot bigger than Doug Flutie. But Ben loved the way he played, especially every time he got flushed out of the pocket and had to improvise.

  Ben drank some of his Gatorade and said, “Yeah, but I’m smart enough to know you can’t do that on every down. Make stuff up as you go along, like it’s some fun play I drew up in the dirt.”

  “You always seem to have fun,” Shawn said.

  “What, you don’t?”

  Shawn said, “Not like you.”

  “What’s more fun than playing football?” Ben said.

  “Oh, nothing,” Shawn said. “Nothing at all. My dad is always saying that the worst day he ever had in pads was great.”

  “Pretty much my attitude,” Ben said.

  “Yeah,” Shawn said. “You’re lucky.”

  Shawn pointed to the big clock behind the counter. It was three o’clock. Shawn said his dad would be there any minute to pick them up. He paid the check and they went outside to wait, Ben thinking this had been a good idea.

  A good day.

  Except.

  Except Ben couldn’t shake the idea, like a defender he couldn’t shake, that there had been something else Shawn wanted to talk about at lunch today.

  That there was something Shawn had wanted to tell him, but hadn’t.

  Their first game was the next Saturday, home at The Rock against Midvale, which had made it to the championship game last season before losing to Darby.

  Ben woke up early, the way he always did on game day, even earlier than he did when he had to go to school. Any game day always felt like some kind of holiday to him, but especially the first game of the season. So he was wide awake by seven o’clock, not needing an alarm, already feeling as if one o’clock, when the ball would be kicked off, would never come.

  By eight o’clock Sam Brown was with him, having knocked on Ben’s door and just walked in.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.”

  Sam wasn’t a big talker, even when Coop and Lily weren’t around. Maybe it was one of the things that made the Core Four work as well as it did. Coop loved to talk, loved to make himself the center of attention, loved being the funny one, even though it chafed him to death knowing that
Lily was actually much funnier, and without trying nearly as hard as Coop did.

  So the two of them were always going at it, never in a mean way, like they were in some kind of competition that would last as long as they all were friends.

  It was different when it was just Ben and Sam. Quieter. Sometimes the two of them could feel as if they were halfway into a conversation before either one of them had barely said a word.

  “You ready?” Sam said.

  “You know it.”

  Ben was already dressed, so Sam picked up the football sitting on top of the dresser, turned, and walked out with it, both of them knowing they were going across the street to McBain Field right now to start throwing it around a little bit, like this was the beginning of pregame warm-ups for Midvale, just the two of them.

  They loosened up their arms and before long Sam was running some of the pass routes he’d be running against Midvale. Ben did the same. Then Sam, who also punted for their team, dropped back and kicked a few to Ben, who felt like an out-fielder getting ready for a game by shagging fly balls during batting practice.

  When they finished, and were sitting in the grass, Sam said, “Okay, now I’m good.”

  “What’s better than good?” Ben said.

  “Your girlfriend showing up?” Sam said. Grinning the way he always did when he said that, casually pointing at Lily Wyatt riding her bike down the street.

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Ben said. “No matter how many times you call her my girlfriend just to get under my skin.”

  “Sorry,” Sam said. “My bad. Don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Ben said.

  “‘Course not.”

  Lily leaned her bike against the maple tree and came walking over to them, smiling as if she had a game to play, too.

  “Look at the two of you,” she said.

  “What?” Ben said.

  “You look like it’s Christmas morning and you’re on your way to find out what’s under the tree.”

  She was standing over them, hands on hips. Lily was taller than Ben, but not nearly as tall as Sam, both of whose parents were tall, and whose own pediatrician said might grow to be as tall as 6-4 someday. It’s why as good as Sam Brown was in football, his favorite sport was basketball.

  Ben wasn’t sure what his favorite sport was, at least not yet. Usually it was just the one he was playing at the time, whatever was in season.

  “Wow, that’s pretty disrespectful comparing Christmas to football,” Ben said, grinning at Sam, knowing Sam was way ahead of him. “Football’s way more important than that.”

  Lily sighed.

  “Sometimes,” she said, “I think I should wait until after football season is over to have a normal conversation with you guys.”

  “For a girl …” Ben said.

  “Here we go,” Lily said.

  “… you can speak football pretty well,” he said.

  “For a girl,” she said.

  Ben said, “It’s just that you’re not always willing to try.”

  “Because I don’t care enough to try,” she said.

  “You coming to the game?” Ben said.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” Lily said.

  It felt like the whole Rockwell Rams team missed the game, at least the first half of it.

  They were behind 12–0 and it could have been worse than that if Midvale’s fullback didn’t fumble on the Rams’ five-yard line with thirty seconds left before halftime.

  “Put it this way,” Coop said to Ben as they walked off the field, “nobody would say we’re exactly crushing it so far.”

  “We’re gonna get crushed if we don’t step on it a little,” Ben said.

  “You think I should give a halftime speech and remind the rest of the guys that, like, this isn’t a scrimmage?” Coop said. “That the game counts?”

  “I have a feeling the Coach is going to point that out without your help.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Coop said. “This is not going to be pretty.”

  Coach was fine, though, mostly telling everybody to relax, that not once in his whole career had he ever won a championship in the first half of the first game of the season. And had never lost one.

  Coach O’Brien was actually smiling when he said, “We’re down a couple of scores in a Pop Warner game. It’s not like you’re all going to be held back a year in school if we don’t come back. Even though we are coming back.”

  He told them that he wasn’t going to change much on his substitution pattern, not just because league rules said that everybody in uniform had to be out there for at least eight plays, but because he wanted to see what they all could do in a real game situation. Especially now that Midvale had come at them pretty hard.

  “One of the greatest lines I ever heard in sports came from Mike Tyson, when he was still a great boxer and not in the movies,” Coach said. “Before a fight one time he said, ‘Everybody’s got a plan till they get hit.’ Well, we’ve been hit now. So we’re the ones who are gonna have a different plan in the second half. Okay?”

  They all nodded.

  “But the plan does not include anybody on this team hanging his head,” Coach said. “Got it?”

  Hardly anything had gone right for them in the first half. Shawn had missed all but two of his passes. And the Shawn that Ben had started to like and wanted to like after the two of them shared a pizza together had gone right back to being the Bad Shawn he’d see at practice. Grabbing his helmet when he’d miss a pass, or somebody would drop one on him, as Darrelle had in the open field. Staring with his hands on his hips after Conor Hale, their left tackle, missed a block and Shawn got sacked.

  But most of it was directed at himself today. One time, waiting for Kevin Nolti to bring in the play from the sidelines, Shawn walked a few yards away from the huddle, put his head down, and said to himself, “I stink!”

  Not only was Shawn playing tight today, he was making the other guys on offense tight. The more he missed with his passes, the worse it got. And once Midvale realized the Rams had no real passing game, at least so far, they started bringing more guys up close to the line of scrimmage to stop the run, one of the big reasons why Ben’s longest run from scrimmage had been four yards.

  The one time he did slip out of the backfield to catch a short pass from Shawn — one of Shawn’s two completions — Midvale’s middle linebacker dropped him after a one-yard gain.

  “You good?” Sam had asked Ben earlier in the day.

  Not even close, Ben thought, at least not so far.

  They had waited all summer for football season to start, even when they were having their summer fun playing All-Stars after the regular Little League season. Only now, even after a full half against Midvale, it was as if the season had somehow started without them.

  When Mr. O’Brien finished talking to them, Ben went over to where Shawn was standing by himself behind the bench. Looking a little bit as if he was hanging his head despite what his dad had just told the team.

  “We’re coming back, dude, no worries,” Ben said.

  Shawn said, “I stink.” At least he was consistent with that today.

  “And that would be a problem if the game were over,” Ben said. “Only it’s not. We’ve got a whole half to play.”

  “I stink and we stink,” Shawn said and walked away.

  Coop came over and said to Ben, “How’s the QB?”

  “Sketchy,” Ben said. “Very sketchy.”

  “Well,” Coop Manley said, “at least he hides it well.”

  Out of nowhere, though, Shawn got hot at the start of the second half. Got on one of those streaks where he did show off his arm. They had run a couple of plays on their first drive, but got into a third and ten, and Shawn hit Justin for a first down. Then Sam for a short gain, then Darrelle, then Sam again over the middle. Even the Midvale players acted surprised, like, where was this guy in the first half?

  Ben didn’t try to figur
e out why Shawn had found his touch all of a sudden, and maybe a little confidence, mostly because he didn’t care. All he cared about was that they were moving now. They were in the game.

  Finally Shawn threw a short pass to Ben, who caught the ball in the right flat and didn’t stop running until he was at the Midvale nine. Coach came right back to the play, and Ben was open again, but this time Shawn overthrew him. Badly.

  Ben came back to the huddle and tried to make a joke out of it. “I’m too short for a lob pass,” he said.

  “I am a total loser today!” Shawn said.

  Like all the passes he’d completed on the drive suddenly didn’t matter, like all it took was one bad throw to stop believing.

  “Dude, relax,” Ben said. “We’re still gonna score. Those guys on defense must feel like they’re a car going in reverse.”

  Ben thinking that he’d added one more position to all the others Coach said he was going to play this season:

  Cheerleader.

  “Dude,” Ben said, “it’s just football.”

  “To you, maybe,” Shawn said, and then told them the play his dad had just sent in from the sideline.

  It was a draw play to Darrelle. Even though a defense usually has to be expecting a pass for a play like that to work best, Coop opened up a huge hole and Darrelle ran through it and the game was 12–6, where it stayed after Darrelle got stopped trying to run for the conversion. At this level of Pop Warner, hardly anybody was a placekicker yet, so teams always tried to either run or pass for two points.

  But the Rams were on the board, that’s what mattered. As they lined up for the kickoff, Ben said to Sam, “Our stupid alarm just didn’t go off when it was supposed to.”

  Sam grinned. “Don’t you just hate when that happens?”

  It became a defensive game after that, neither team being able to move the ball, Midvale’s Eagles still ahead by a touchdown until the last play of the third quarter, the Eagles punting from their forty-yard line. But their kicker, who didn’t have nearly the leg that Sam did, hit this low, wobbly line drive that Ben read all the way, the way he did sinking line drives when he was playing the outfield. Got a great jump on the ball, caught it in perfect stride, already at full speed, just short of midfield.