“Need help getting those off?” I asked.
Dad shook his head and used his teeth to bite the gloves off, then set them carefully on a shelf. He still hadn’t looked at me. He grabbed a towel and wiped some sweat off his face. “You and your girlfriend asked me to do you a favor,” he said. “Against my better judgment, I made the call. But I asked you something in return—not to embarrass me.”
The heavy bag was still swinging from his last punch. I watched its shadow move slowly back and forth across the cellar floor. “That’s true,” I admitted.
“I can’t tell you exactly what I felt today,” he went on, “because I’ve never felt that way before. But it didn’t feel good, Jack.”
“I scored,” I told him. “Near the end of the game. I kept us from getting shut out. I looked for you but you’d left. I guess you were too disgusted to stay.”
“It wasn’t disgust,” he said. “I was afraid.” He finally looked right at me, and his words came out fast and angry. “Afraid I might run onto the field and grab someone and shake them and say, ‘Stop joking around and fight!’ I went for a drive and tried to calm down. I stopped up near Highland Lake and walked through the woods down to the water, and I kept thinking about my own father. He came to every game I played in. He was a damn good athlete and he gave me lots of coaching advice, but it always boiled down to the same four words: Have pride in yourself.” Sweat ran off Dad’s chin and dripped onto the floor as he looked at me piercingly. “What the hell?” he demanded. And then, with real fury: “I MEAN, JACK, WHAT THE HELL?”
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “My friends do have pride in themselves, but they don’t care about winning. Some of them even enjoy losing.”
“How can anyone enjoy losing?”
“I guess they’re in it for laughs,” I admitted.
“Yeah,” he agreed bitterly. “It was hilarious when Frank fell asleep in the goal. And your girlfriend also thought it was all one big joke.”
“Becca’s going through a tough time at home,” I told him. “This is her release.”
“We all go through tough times,” Dad muttered. “But she’s the one who came up with the idea of asking me to call Brian and get you your team.”
“I already tried to apologize for that, but I’ll say it again. I’m really sorry we embarrassed you. It’s not what I wanted.”
It was as if Dad hadn’t heard me. He kept right on: “I had to stand next to Brian and watch that display that I had caused. It was stomach-turning for both of us. I understand that your friends want to make a mockery out of Fremont athletics. But what I don’t understand is … why you’re doing this.”
“You mean why I’m doing this to you?”
“No,” Dad said, “why you’re doing this to yourself. I’m not surprised that you scored a goal. It was clear from the first whistle that you were the best athlete on the field.”
“They had a couple of players who were way better,” I said. “You’re seeing something that’s not there—”
“Jack, you have speed that’s God-given. I think you might have a step on your brothers, and they were quick. Do you think Brian was putting you on his varsity just as a favor to me? He’s no fool when it comes to football—he needs speed like that! You can burn. You don’t know what you could have done for them, or how far you could have gone.” Dad’s voice had gotten louder and faster, as if these thoughts had been tearing him up for weeks. “You earned a spot on varsity, and then you gave it away.”
“I earned a spot in a hospital room,” I fired back.
“I’m talking about pride,” he said.
“And I’m talking about my teeth.”
“Accidents happen in sports and in life. Part of becoming a man is facing them.”
And that was when it suddenly got much more serious and personal. “So you think I’m a coward?” I asked.
My father stood next to the heavy bag he had been walloping, and when he spoke he let me have it as if putting his full weight into a right hook. “I think you got hurt and it spooked you and you walked away from a great opportunity. And now you’re pissing away your senior year joking around with a bunch of jerks.”
“Don’t call them that. They’re my friends.”
“They enjoy losing. They don’t care about what we care about.”
“What you care about,” I told him.
“You’re part of this family, unless you make yourself not a part of it. The Logans aren’t the smartest family in the world, or the richest. But we’ve always been proud athletes and that’s our tradition. Why do you have to make a joke out of it?” He slammed the bag with his fist.
My first instinct was to back away, but now I was a little out of control and instead I took a step toward him. “You’re absolutely right,” I heard myself say. “Accidents do happen. You can’t let fear take over or you’re a coward. I’m sorry your knee got messed up and you missed your chance for a pro career—”
It was like a cold wind suddenly swirled through the basement. “That has nothing to do with this,” he tried to cut me off.
“It happened years before I was born, but it was right there today on the sideline when you were standing next to Muhldinger looking so furious, like you wanted to kill someone—probably me. You’ve always been angry with me. What have I ever done to you?”
“Stop,” he told me in a warning tone.
But I stepped forward and slammed the heavy bag with my bare fist. “When I got my teeth bashed in you said I’d made you proud. That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Watching me get my clock cleaned makes you proud? If you want to talk about who’s a coward in this family, why can’t you face the fact that you’re trying to live out the big-shot NFL career you never had through me and my brothers and the players on your stupid TV set—”
I’m not sure if he was trying to silence me or grab me and shake me, but he pushed me and I ended up flying backward. I crashed into a wall and went down hard, and lay there for a half second, stunned. He had never put his hands on me—or either of my brothers—before, and I couldn’t believe he had done it. He looked a little shocked, too, and reached down to me, but I knocked his hand away.
Then I was running up the stairs, bursting past my mom, who must have been listening from the kitchen. She called out and tried to grab my arm, but I ran past her and sprinted out the back door. I heard my father coming after me, but I turned on the speed he was so proud of and even the fastest miler in the history of Muscles High couldn’t catch me as I sprinted away into the darkness.
19
Dark streets twisted into each other, and the night shadows of houses flew by. I ran blindly, with no idea where I was heading. I kept seeing the narrow stairs to the basement, and hearing furious punches thudding into the heavy bag. Those angry punches became the desperate footsteps of my father running out of the house after me, and even though I was already far from home I imagined hearing his voice calling my name, and I sped up to a wild sprint, my arms pumping madly.
I finally fell on my knees, gasping, before a big house. After I caught my breath I looked around and realized I wasn’t far from someplace I really wanted to be. I got up and started walking.
Becca’s house was set back from the street, and above the trimmed bushes I could see that the upstairs windows were dark. I headed up the walk and climbed the steps. When I pushed the doorbell no one answered, so I rapped on the brass knocker. I turned and started back down the steps, and then I heard the door open.
Becca stood in the doorway, peering out at me. “Jack?”
I walked up to her.
She took one look at my face and pulled me inside. The door shut and then somehow we were standing in her kitchen and her arms were around me.
“Let me guess. Your dad was not pleased with what he saw at the game today.”
“He wanted to use me as a punching bag.”
“What! Did he hit you?”
“No, but he wanted to.”
Her h
ouse was warm and silent.
“Where’s your mom?”
“Upstairs in her room,” Becca told me. “Watching TV. Sometimes it’s hard to tell when she’s awake or asleep. Want some cold water?”
“Sure,” I said.
She got me a big cup of ice water, and one for herself, and said, “Come. There’s something you have to see.”
I followed her up a flight of stairs and we turned down a hall, past several closed doors. The upstairs was as neat as the first floor, and there were antiques everywhere. We passed an old grandfather clock, elegantly marking the hours. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“My room,” she said, and pushed open a door. “Voilà.”
I walked in after her and she pulled the door closed. There was a four-poster bed with a few stuffed animals on the pillows. School textbooks were neatly arranged on a shelf above her desk, and on higher shelves was an impressive library of novels, nonfiction, and plays, not to mention dozens of horse-riding ribbons and a photo of Shadow. I ran my eyes over the titles. “Have you read all of these?”
“No, I just looked at the pictures,” she said.
I couldn’t remember ever being in a girl’s bedroom before, not to mention alone and with the door closed. It smelled the way Becca’s hair smelled—clean, sweet, and tempting.
“Did you get my texts about what’s happening with the team?” she asked.
“You mean that we’ve been terminated?”
“Check it out,” she told me, pointing to the laptop on her desk. I sat down and clicked the screen to life. Her browser was already open to a YouTube page. Someone had posted a video called “The Losers at Muscles High—America’s Worst Soccer Team and Meanest Coach.”
I pressed Play. It started off with a close-up shot of Muhldinger standing on the back of the bus, spewing insults at us. Someone must have secretly filmed him with their phone. His face was scarlet and he was jabbing his finger into the air as he vented: “That was the single most embarrassing thing I have ever seen in my entire life. The word ‘losers’ doesn’t do it justice … The word ‘vomit’ comes a little closer.”
The video cut to a quick shot of Pierre running after a ball and then pulling up suddenly and puking on the sideline while Marion girls shrieked. With background music added it was pretty funny to watch.
Back to Muhldinger: “You’re wastes of your parents’ genes. Spastics. Morons. Garbage.”
Interspersed with his insults were quick shots of various players screwing up in horrible but hilarious ways. Chloe and Zirco’s collision looked like a clown routine, and there was a great shot of Frank sound asleep in the goal, with Percy trying to wake him. It was more than just the ultimate sports blooper video—it was a “we’re lousy and we don’t care” statement, and whoever had made it was really good at editing. Taken all together, it made our team look hopeless but hilarious, while Muhldinger came across as the ultimate jerk.
“It’s good,” I told Becca, smiling for the first time that evening.
“We’re not the only ones who think so,” she said. “Look.”
We’d gotten over ten thousand views in just a couple of hours.
She showed me how nysportsgod.com, one of the biggest sports blogs in the area, had already linked to the video and written a scathing post about Muhldinger and the insults he’d hurled at a bunch of high school students. When that blog post appeared, Becca said, the number of video views had jumped from the hundreds to the thousands in just fifteen minutes.
“Ten thousand people have watched us stink up a soccer field?” I asked Becca.
She glanced at the computer. “Four thousand in the last half hour. It’s getting attention on Twitter, too. And the second most tweeted-about part of the clip is your goal.”
It came near the end. First, Muhldinger thundered: “There’s no room for improvement because I’m pulling the plug on this pathetic experiment in losing.”
As if to contradict him, there I was, outrunning the defense and scoring the goal with a wicked low shot, and then turning to my team with both arms upraised.
“I hate to say it but you look just like your dad when he scored that touchdown in the state championship,” Becca told me. “Same eyes, same pose.”
“Very funny,” I told her. “So if I came in second, what’s the most tweeted-about part of the clip?”
She found the end of the video where Percy’s voice asked politely: “But we’ve made commitments to play five other teams. I realize you’re disappointed with our effort, but isn’t it in the spirit of Fremont High to honor those commitments?”
Muhldinger thundered back: “I run this school, not you! To hell with those commitments. Those teams will be better off without playing us. You call this the C-team. C is for cesspool and I’m flushing you turds.”
After the video was a little message identifying our school and naming Brian Muhldinger as the principal and football coach. A message read: “If you enjoyed watching this team and would like to see them finish their season, let the Fremont School Board know.” There was an e-mail address. “Tell them to honor their commitments and not to flush this team,” the message continued. “And come out and support the lovable losers of Muscles High in their next match against the Midwood Tigers this Tuesday.”
People from all over the state as well as Long Island, New York City, Connecticut, and Philly were tweeting that they planned on coming. They were posting back and forth to each other, as if making new friends, and a lot of them wrote that they’d had miserable high school sports experiences and horrible coaches like Muhldinger, and this was a chance to show that high school sports should be about fun.
I looked up from the screen at Becca. “What the heck is going on?”
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “We’ve tapped into something. We’re a social media happening. Look, it’s up to fifteen thousand hits.”
“Isn’t our season over?”
“Not if enough people e-mail the school board,” she said.
“I don’t think Muhldinger could care less.”
“He said some things he probably shouldn’t have,” she noted. “He can’t deny that he said them because thousands of people have seen it.”
I thought it over for a second. “Who posted the original video? It had to be one of us.”
“It’s anonymous,” she said. “There’s no way to find out.”
“It couldn’t have been any of the players who appear in the video,” I pointed out, “because they couldn’t film themselves. And that’s almost our whole team.”
“Unless two or three people got together on this,” she said. “Or maybe most of the filming was done by someone on the sideline.”
“I didn’t see anyone from our school there besides my father and Muhldinger.”
“There were dozens of people on the sideline, and lots of them were filming the game,” she noted. “I don’t think there’s any way to tell who’s behind this. But I bet Muhldinger would like to know.”
That’s when her cell phone rang. She glanced at the screen. “It’s your mom.”
“Don’t answer it.”
Becca hesitated. Then she whispered “Sorry” and clicked Answer. “Hello, Mrs. Logan? Yes, he’s here. I’ll ask him.” She looked at me and whispered, “Wanna talk to her?”
I shook my head. Becca nodded and said, “He can’t come to the phone right now. But he’s okay. Can we call you back later?” She listened. “I understand, but trust me, he’s fine. Yes, that’s right, but I really don’t think you need to.” Then she clicked the phone off.
“Why did you answer?” I demanded.
“I knew she was worried about you.”
“Is she coming over?”
“Probably,” Becca said. “She asked me to confirm my address.”
I stood up. “I’m out of here.”
“Where are you going?”
“What was it you said when we drove down to the Jersey shore? Away.”
Becca th
ought for a few seconds, and then asked: “How much do you weigh?”
“One forty. Why?”
“That puts us at a little over two fifty combined,” she said. “He’ll be able to manage that, easy.”
“Who?” I asked, although I already knew.
Becca was heading for the door. “Come on,” she said. “If you really want to get away, let’s go.”
20
I rode Becca’s father’s bike, which was old and squeaked when I pedaled too fast. I would have thought a dentist could afford a better one, but Becca said he never rode it. The night had grown cool, and the stars were out above us. Becca pedaled next to me, not talking much, as if she understood my need for silence.
I was trying to stay angry at my dad, remembering how he’d called me a coward and kept saying my friends were pathetic, and then had thrown me against the wall. But the truth was that I felt increasingly guilty. He’d been right—my friends were pathetic, at least when it came to playing soccer. The video had nailed it—they were funny but hopeless.
It was strange that thousands of complete strangers thought that we losers were worth rooting for, but I guess there are a lot of people out there who had miserable experiences with high school sports. My father sure wasn’t one of them. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that he had just been trying to grab me rather than punch me or hurt me.
We passed Wayne’s Driving Range, shut up for the evening, and Pancho’s Tacos with a half dozen cars still in the parking lot.
I sped up, gripping the rusted handlebars. In the distance, I saw the sign for Brookfarm Stables, but Becca turned off on a side road before we got to the main gate. We pedaled on gravel for a hundred yards, and then she hopped off and we walked our bikes on an overgrown path through the darkness. We were approaching the stable through a back route—one that Becca seemed to know well.
We reached a fence, and followed it to a small gate of chain mesh that was locked with a padlock. Becca hid her bike behind some bushes and fished a key out of her pocket.