On the one hand, I’ve never been on a real sports team before. I didn’t even know all the rules of the game yet. And I’m not exactly the most muscley, football-ready jock you’ve ever seen.More like the opposite. Don’t get me wrong—I love playing sports, as long as it’s with a controller in my hands and a couch under my butt.
But on the other hand, I figured this was still less risky than ticking off Miller. And Jeremy. And Tug.
Put it this way: If flag football was a five on a danger scale of one to ten, then those guys were somewhere around… oh, I don’t know.Like a seventeen.
And when I thought about it like that, then I guess the answer was yes. I “wanted” to play football (aka stay alive) very, very much.
“Take this,” Coach told me, and gave me a permission slip, plus some other papers to look at. “Have an adult sign the slip, and bring it to the next practice. And don’t be late!”
Flip was flashing me all kinds of thumbs-ups by then, and Miller was looking at me like I’d just figured out a way to cheat death, which I guess I had.
But there were still a few more technicalities to go. Starting with one very big one.
I still had to get through Mom.
GIVING MOM THE SLIP
That night at dinner with Mom, I felt like a real two-face. Or at least a one-and-a-half-face.
I didn’t want to lie, exactly, but if I told Mom the whole truth about why I needed to join the football team, she probably wasn’t going to sign that permission slip. She’d give me a big lecture about my “choices.” And then she’d go talk to Coach Shumsky or Mrs. Stricker—or even worse, Miller’s parents. All of that was just a one-way ticket back onto Miller’s hit list.
So I had to think creatively.
“This is so sudden,” Mom said. “You’ve never expressed an interest in football before.”
“I’ve never had a best friend on the team before,” I said. Which was true.
“What about school, sweetie? You’ve got all your classes, plus Learning Skills—”
“Flip is in Learning Skills. And he plays football,” I said. Also true.
Mom was looking at me the way a detective stares down a shady suspect. “I don’t know, Rafe. Why do I get the impression there’s something you’re not telling me?” she asked.
I wanted to say—BECAUSE THERE’S TWO MORE TONS OF STUFF YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT! I wasn’t telling her about my stupid deal with Miller, but I also wasn’t telling her how dumb I felt in Learning Skills. Or how invisible I was to girls. Or how most of the kids at HVMS still thought I was just as big a loser as Loozer.
I don’t know how long I could have lasted with Mom staring at me like that, but luckily, I didn’t have to find out. That’s when the doorbell rang. Talk about saved by the bell!
“I’LL GET IT!” Georgia yelled, and practically threw her chair across the room trying to get to the door first. My sister just loooves to answer things. Doorbells. Telephones. Math questions. It doesn’t matter—she’s an all-purpose answering machine.
A second later, she was back. “Rafe, your teacher is at the door.”
“Huh?” I said, and I got this lumpy feeling in my stomach. A teacher coming all the way to your house is never a good sign. All I could think was, What did I do now?
I wondered if it was Ms. Donatello, but when Mom and I went to see, Mr. Fanucci was standing on the other side of the screen door.
“Hey, Rafe,” he said, and held up my Learning Skills notebook. “You left this in my room today.”
I don’t know if he saw I’d crossed out the first S in Skills, but he didn’t seem mad, anyway.
“Well, that was awfully nice of you,” Mom said. “You shouldn’t have gone to the trouble.”
“It’s better if Rafe keeps up with the notebook every night,” Mr. Fanucci said.
Then Mom gave me one of her looks. The told you so kind.
“We were just talking about keeping up in school, weren’t we, Rafe?” she said.
“Okay, well, thanks a lot, Mr. Fanucci,” I said. I was trying to move this along, but Mom kept talking.
“In fact, I’m glad you’re here, Ed. Rafe was asking about playing football, and I was saying I didn’t think it was such a good idea.”
I knew what Mom was doing. She was looking for some backup—but then Mr. Fanucci really surprised me.
“I think most of my students can benefit from extracurricular activities,” he said. “And football could be a great outlet for you, Rafe. But not if your mom thinks it’s a bad idea right now.”
“It’s not that,” Mom said. “I just don’t want him falling behind at school.”
Mr. Fanucci gave this big smile. “That’s what I’m there for,” he said.
Mom smiled too. I just kind of stood there.
“How about if we make it provisional?” Mr.Fanucci said.
“What’s that mean?” I asked him. It felt like we were moving in the right direction, but you know what they say about chickens and counting and hatching, right?
“It means you play only as long as your grades keep up. If they slip—no more football. And I’ll work with you to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Mr. Fanucci said.
“I can live with that,” Mom said. “How about you, Rafe?”
“Sounds like a deal,” I said, because what else was I going to say?
I’d already dug my way into a hole with Miller the Killer. The only thing to do now was keep digging, not look back, and hope for the best.
’Cause, you know… what could possibly go wrong?
ALL THE HAIRY DETAILS
Okay, so this next part is awkward, even to write about. There were a few more things that needed to happen before I could play football. Stuff that has to do with science.
Well, okay, biology.
Well, okay, puberty. (There, I said it. Now you can just skip to the next chapter.)
See, I don’t know about your school, but at HVMS they have these Tanner Scale tests. They tell whether you’re ready to do stuff like play football against kids who are bigger than you. And by bigger, I mean more mature. And by more mature, I mean the guys whose voices have already started changing. Or who have hair under their arms. Stuff like that.
So if I wanted to play football, I had to take the tests. Whatever that meant, exactly.
I’m not going to go into details about what happened in there, but the nurse told Mom I was okay for playing football, anyway. At least that part was taken care of. Check!
But I wasn’t done yet. There was still one more totally embarrassing thing to go.
After that, Mom took me over to What’s Up, Sport? That’s the big sporting goods store at the mall where we could buy a mouth guard and… some other things. Trust me on this one. If you can ever possibly help it, you DO NOT want to shop for this stuff with your mom.
When we got home from the mall, Mom asked if I had any questions about how to put those things on, but I told her I was all set. I just took that bag and headed for my room so fast, you would have thought I was trying out for the track team too.
The truth? I wasn’t 100 percent sure about how that cup thing worked, but if I couldn’t figure it out myself, I’d ask Flip later. Like when no one else was around.
And even then—maybe not.
MILLER-FREE ZONE
It wasn’t all bad.
The next morning when I was at my locker, Miller walked right by me. He didn’t knock my books out of my hand, or shove my face into the locker, or anything. He just kept right on walking.
And in case you don’t know how amazing that is, just imagine a lion in Africa somewhere. He’s moving along the plain, looking for something to eat, and there’s a gazelle hanging out by his locker—I mean, by the watering hole. That lion is hungry—you can see it in his eyes—and usually there’s nothing he likes better than starting his day off with a couple of gazelle kebabs cooked extremely rare.
But not today. Today, that lion just keeps right on going, like ma
ybe he’s more in the mood for zebra. Or springbok. Or whatever else. And the gazelle just about passes out, he’s so surprised.
That’s how weird and unnatural it felt.
Still, I wondered if maybe it was just a fluke. Maybe Miller didn’t notice me or something.
But after Learning Skills, it happened again. I was coming out through the library, and Miller was sitting at his usual computer. I was feeling a tiny bit lucky by now, so I tested it out.
“Hey, Miller,” I said.
“Hey,” he answered. He didn’t even call me Khatchadorkian. He just kept on looking at the pictures on the screen in front of him. (Or maybe he was reading something, but I doubt it. This is Miller we’re talking about.)
At lunch, I ate with Flip and got all the way through my fries without someone stealing them off my tray.
In the boys’ bathroom, I was able to walk out with my underwear still where it was supposed to be.
In gym, Tug Vincent picked me second-to-last for another round of Mr. Lattimore’s famous dodge ball. Second-to-last… but not last! I think even Mr. Lattimore was surprised.
It was like the best, easiest day of middle school I’ve ever had. And I thought—I could get used to this. Now I just needed to make sure things stayed that way. Whatever it took.
ME REALLY, REALLY TIRED! PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
The day of reckoning came: my first real football practice. Flip told me some of what to expect, but I was still pretty nervous.
And it turned out I was right to be nervous. Those were two of the toughest, sweatiest hours I’ve ever had.
For the “warm-up,” Coach had us do a bunch of jumping jacks. Then stretches. Then push-ups. And then we had to run four times around the track. That’s one mile—which is a long way to go. I may be fast, but not for a whole mile. By the time I was starting my fourth lap, most of the team had already finished theirs.
And the problem with that is, when you bring up the rear, everyone else is already waiting to move on to the next thing. So the guy who needs the biggest break is the one who doesn’t get one at all.
After that, we did “starts and stances.” I never knew there was so much to know about standing. I learned the two-point stance, the three-point stance, the four-point stance, and how to take off running from all of them. Flip said I’d get the hang of it, but mostly I was just getting tired and hungry.
We weren’t done yet either. After that, Coach split us up into offensive and defensive squads. Since I was a runner, I got put on offense, and I spent the rest of practice trying to learn how to take my stance… start running… navigate around a whole bunch of moving bodies… watch for a ball that was coming from behind me… and more than anything, NOT let someone grab a flag out of my belt.
For any of you who don’t already know, flag football is like regular football except for this belt you have to wear, with two flags on it. Getting one of those taken off of you is the same thing as getting tackled, but less painful. (Still, that didn’t mean it was easy! Just the opposite.)
The first time I actually caught a pass, I was so excited, I forgot to run. Half a second later—FWIP!—someone grabbed one of my flags.
The next four times I tried, it didn’t go so well. I dropped the ball. Then I took one in the face. Then I dropped it again. Then I missed it completely.
When I finally caught another pass, I was ready.
I turned around fast. I dodged once and got past Simon Bradtmiller. Then I got in two more strides downfield, right before—FWIP!
Coach blew his whistle. “All right, all right, let’s go again,” he said.
When I turned around, Miller was holding my flag in his hand. He was also giving me the Miller Glare. It’s the thing that usually comes right before something even worse, like the Miller Fist.
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” he said. “A whole lot better, and right away. Else the deal’s off.” But he had his mouth guard in, so it sounded more like “Yoth gon’ haf doo be’ah’n’at…. Who’lot be’er uh’rah’weh… elf fa dee’s off.”
Still, I knew what he meant. This whole thing was going to get a whole lot harder before it ever got easier.
I mean—if it got easier.
And right now, that was looking like a mighty big IF.
A LITTLE HELP?
Whaddja think?” Flip said. “Was that awesome, or what?”
He smacked me on the back in the school parking lot, and it practically knocked me over. I was so wiped out. I already felt like one big rubber band from all that practice, but I didn’t say so. I just tried to keep walking in a straight line.
“It was definitely… something,” I said.
“So you’re getting into it now, huh? I knew it,” he said.
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s go with that.”
I didn’t tell him about the whole deal with Miller. It was too embarrassing. Plus, Flip still kind of thought he was the reason I joined the team.
“You want to stay over next Friday?” he said.
“Seriously?” I asked him. I’d never actually had a sleepover at anyone’s house before. I’d barely had a best friend before, unless you count Leo, who’s awesome but also, you know, imaginary.
“Sure,” Flip said. “We can do extra training. You know—agility and catching and stuff.”
That was his nice way of saying I was fast, but maybe not so good at everything else. Or anything else. Flip knew I needed extra practice. And now so did I.
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
“Bring Junior too,” he told me. “I’ve got an idea.”
“What kind of idea?” I said.
“You’ll see.”
“All right,” I said. “And, Flip? Thanks.”
“No sweat,” he said. But that was easy for him to say. Flip Savage was one part regular kid, one part machine.
As for me, I was pretty sure there was going to be sweat.
Lots and lots of sweat.
BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD
When I got home, even though I was worn out from practice, I still had to walk Junior. Then we had dinner. Then I had to do my homework and show Mom that I’d marked it off in my Learning Skills notebook. She wanted to see my art report for Ms. Donatello too.
Yeah, that’s right. Ms. Donatello was making us do written reports—for art! That’s kind of like making someone climb a rope for math class, if you ask me. But Ms. D didn’t ask.
We were supposed to pick an artist, write a report, and then do an “art-class-worthy” cover for the whole thing. Ms. D was going to give one grade for the report and one for the cover.
I chose this guy named Jackson Pollock. He’s one of Mom’s favorite artists. I like how his stuff looks like a big mess, but everyone says he was a genius anyway. His most famous paintings are just drips and spatters of different colors, and they’re also worth jillions of dollars.
For the report cover, I drew the guy’s face with a soft pencil, just dark enough to see. Then I dripped different colors of paint for his eyes, his hair, and that kind of thing, to make a portrait.
And even though I was so tired I wanted to fall asleep in my tray of carmine red, I really enjoyed making the cover. I guess if you love something, it never gets to be a chore. The best part was, when I showed it to Mom, she knew who it was right away. That made me feel good. Really good.
“I’m proud of you, Rafe,” she said. “You’re doing really well. And I’m glad Mr. Fanucci talked me into letting you play football. I can’t wait to see a game.”
“Uh-huh” was all I could say to that.
“You must be excited with the season getting ready to start,” she said.
“Coach already told me he wasn’t going to put me in the first game,” I said. “Don’t get your hopes up. I’m still kind of playing catch-up.”
“Oh, you’ll be in there before you know it,” Mom said. “Don’t you worry, sweetheart.”
“Uh-huh,” I said again, because I didn’t
know what else to say. I mean, I was worried, but not in the way she thought. The idea of actually playing in a real football game made me want to shake right out of my socks… and then throw up inside them.
Maybe I was wasting my time. Maybe it was crazy to think I could pull off this stupid “arrangement” with Miller. Maybe the only thing that was going to get rearranged in the end was my face, either by Miller when I failed or by the other teams that were going to clobber me on the field.
The problem was—as usual—I had no idea what the right thing to do was. Even though I wasn’t really enjoying football, I couldn’t just quit it. Not when it was basically a Get Out of Punches Free card from Miller. But I couldn’t really imagine ever liking it.… It didn’t make me feel happy the way drawing did, just worried. I’d never be a jock like Flip. Or even half the jock he was.
And since I’d already decided I couldn’t talk to anyone else about all this, I did something I hadn’t done in a while. I waited until I was alone in my room, and then I had a long talk with my original, number one best friend.
Good old Leo.
GOOD ADVICE
I know Leo’s not real and all that, but I’ll tell you what else. Some of the best conversations I’ve had in my life have been with him.
The sad part of that story is that the real Leo is my brother who died a long time ago. But I always kept him around anyway, at least inside my head. Mom says Leo’s my muse now, which means he’s good for ideas. Mostly, I’ve been putting him into my Loozer comics, but it doesn’t matter how long it’s been since we talked. He’s always right there when I need him.
“Okay, so am I totally messing up?” I asked Leo. “Or is this a good thing?”
It didn’t even take a second for him to answer. He always just knows stuff.
“It’s a good thing,” Leo said. “Miller’s going to leave you alone now. That’s huge.”