“You were great for Daddy,” she whispered. “And he loved you.”
It was no consolation. Words—even those words—would never undo what had happened.
“I—I should get going,” he said finally.
She nodded. “Thanks for coming.” Then she paused. “See you at school.”
“Definitely.” Marcus was surprised to find himself looking forward to that moment.
He decided to walk home, even though it was a few miles in iffy weather. He needed to clear his head. Charlie’s death had seemed so huge, it was easy to forget that the sun was going to rise tomorrow. Marcus would go to school, resume his life, find something to do now that football season was over. Maybe he’d even join Mom on one of her shooting trips into the Gunks. She deserved a little family time that didn’t incur lawyer’s fees.
He was about to let himself out the door when he heard the sound of a TV coming from a small study off the front hall. It wasn’t very loud, but there was no mistaking the roar of a sports crowd and the excited chatter of a color commentator.
Who watches a football game at a funeral reception?
Curious, he poked his head in the doorway. The blinds were drawn, and the light from the monitor danced across the face of the room’s lone occupant.
Troy.
Quickly, he tried to retreat, but Troy had already seen him and was waving him inside.
All right, Marcus thought with resignation. Only because he’s Charlie’s son. If it’ll ease his grief today of all days to punch me out, then it’s a small price to pay.
He entered cautiously. “You know how sorry I am about your dad.”
Troy gestured to the TV. “Take a look at this.”
Marcus walked over and examined the screen. It was a football game all right, although the picture quality was poor, the uniforms were unfamiliar, the helmets smaller and shaped wrong somehow.
Then he realized that this was the NFL, but from nearly three decades ago—the Bengals against the 49ers.
“… There’s the handoff to Craig … whoa! Hammered by Popovich for a loss! No wonder they call him the King of Pop! What a wallop!…”
Mesmerized by the action on the screen, Marcus sat down beside Troy, and the two took in the rest of the Bengals’ defensive series.
Number 55 was all over the field, his energy boundless, his desire for contact evident. His performance wouldn’t have appeared on any highlight reel by today’s standards—he made no sack, forced no fumble, created no interception. But he could be seen on every tackle, an arm wrapped around the ballcarrier’s ankle, a hand slapping at the pigskin, even a fistful of jersey, slowing up the runner so a teammate could make the stop. He was the kind of blue-collar player who never got the glory yet without whom no team could be successful.
“He was amazing,” Marcus said reverently.
“Amazing,” Troy agreed soberly. “I’ve been watching these old films ever since he got sick. And all I can think of is which hit was the one that did it to him? Was it the helmet-to-helmet in Cleveland? The punt-return cover in the Meadowlands? One of his six concussions? And how many concussions were there that he didn’t admit to? Where he climbed right back into the meat grinder because ‘you’ve got to be tough to play in this league’?”
I love the pop.... Charlie’s own words echoed in Marcus’s head as he watched number 55 get up from another collision. The poor guy on the screen had no idea that the very same pop that had become his trademark was also silently planting the seeds of his destruction.
Aloud, Marcus said, “I never thanked you for keeping me out of the Poughkeepsie West game.”
“I never thanked you for taking my dad to EBU.”
Marcus had entered the study anticipating a punch in the face or worse. Instead, he left with his first-ever handshake from Charlie’s son.
The weather improved during the walk home. By the time he reached Three Alarm Park, the sun was peeking out from behind the clouds, and the rain seemed to be gone for good.
The park was deserted, just as it had been only three months ago when new arrival Marcus Jordan’s solo football practice had been crashed by a mysterious middle-aged man. It felt like a lifetime, and in a way it was—the rest of Charlie’s life.
Across Poplar Street, the big metal cockroach loomed above the entrance to K.O. Pest Control. Marcus fought off an irrational compulsion to buy a bag of sugar and pour it in through the mail slot.
A tribute to absent friends.
EXTRAS
POP
An Interview with Gordon Korman
This is a departure from the subject matter of your previous books—what gave you the idea to write about football?
The original idea for Pop didn’t start out with football—it was the notion that someone with dementia could become unstuck in a few generations. That came from my grandmother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease in the nineties. In her confusion, she thought I was her brother, even though I was sixty-two years her junior. It fascinated me that she had placed me in more or less the correct position as a family member, but had messed up the generation. So when the news stories first began to appear about NFL veterans developing dementia/Alzheimer’s/Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) as a result of concussions sustained over a long career, that became my “what if.” What if a retired linebacker, in the throes of early-onset Alzheimer’s, began to mistake a teenage football player for his own high school buddy—and, by extension, came to believe at times that he himself was a teenager?
Humorous elements—funny plots, interesting characters, your writing itself—feature prominently in your books. Why is humor so important to you?
Humor has always held an almost gravitational attraction for me. Supposedly, when I was two years old, my favorite cartoons were the ones that made me laugh. I think that comes from growing up in a funny family. As long as I can remember, I had huge admiration for the guy who could get a big laugh around the dinner table. And as a kid, I always wanted to be that guy. So it was pure instinct—rather than an “artistic” choice—to write humor. When I was getting started, the very definition of a story, for me, was a fictional framework to give myself opportunities to be funny. I’m more experienced today, and I weave many elements into my novels, but humor will continue to be one of them.
Who, or what, was your inspiration for the character of Charlie?
Not my grandmother! She was four foot eleven and very unlinebacker-like. I guess Charlie was a combination of a lot of archetypes from the NFL and the wider world of sports: the super-aggressive linebacker, the locker-room prankster, the workhorse player who never grabs headlines but has a huge impact, the local hero and retired athlete. And don’t forget that some of Charlie’s most endearing qualities are the things that make him kidlike. Pop is, above all, a buddy story—even though the two buddies are sixteen and fifty-four, respectively. That’s the essential role Charlie’s illness serves in the story. It’s almost a time machine, allowing him to be—in a way—sixteen again.
Why did you feel passionate about writing on the topic of sports-related injury and head trauma in particular?
One of the reasons I’m passionate on the topic is that I still haven’t quite made my peace with it. As I was researching Pop, there were moments that I thought, No one should ever play this game. And at the same time, the counter-thought would materialize: I hope they don’t ever stop playing this game. Over the years, I’ve written a number of books in which football was a factor. No other American sport is as deeply rooted in the culture of a school or a community. There are many kids who are awesome at baseball or basketball or hockey, yet that’s not quite the same as being a football hero. Obviously, there’s an athletic component to playing youth football, but there’s also a kind of feudal nobility to it. The football team is made of up of dukes and princes who embody a school’s identity and pride and represent it to the outside world. That special status doesn’t go to the kid who won the state spelling bee.
/> After Marcus moves, he must adapt to life in a new town where he doesn’t know anyone. Did you move when you were younger and have a similarly difficult experience?
I’ve moved a few times, but that wasn’t really the model for Marcus. More important were the times in my life when I seemed to be on the outside looking in. It’s a very acute emotion, and when I write about it, I’m amazed how it can still sting decades after the fact. I’m forty-six now, and it’s crazy how many situations continue to arise in my day-to-day experience that are distinctly high school-like. I have to add, though, that in order for the story of Pop to make sense, Marcus had to be a newcomer. Any kid who grew up in Kennesaw would know about Charlie Popovich, the retired linebacker.
As someone who started writing very young—you were fourteen when your first book was published—what advice do you have for aspiring writers?
Here’s what I say to kids who ask for advice: First off, I can’t tell you the Secret. It probably doesn’t exist. What I can do is let you know what worked—and still works—for me. The best way to become a writer is to write. A lot. And read a lot, too. Those two activities help you develop fluency with language. Your writing will go down more smoothly, and I guarantee it will read more smoothly as well. (It also makes writing easier, and what could be wrong with that?) Pick a topic you like. Your teachers might assign stuff that bores you, but this is your project. Write about something that interests you. If you can’t entertain yourself, you won’t have a prayer of entertaining total strangers. Don’t be too lazy to plan out your story. If you think that, you’ve got it backwards. You should plan out your story because you’re lazy. You’ll save a lot of effort and aggravation in the end. You don’t have to stifle creativity; changes are, of course, permitted. But you must know where you’re headed. Don’t let anyone discourage you: Friends may think writing is uncool; parents may have always wanted a dentist in the family; carpal tunnel syndrome may not be as glamorous as a torn ACL. Whatever. Tune out the peanut gallery. A final word: It’s true that anyone intelligent can write intelligently. The trick is to write something that someone else will want to read. I’m not sure, but I think the ability to do that is what people call “talent.” I believe that writers who are determined to tell a story against all odds are the ones who have what it takes. Read. Write. Revise. Edit. Write more. Never give up! And when you’re out there in print, the first fan letter welcoming you to the club will be from me.
The football scenes are incredibly real in this book. How did you write those so well?
I grew up in Canada—hockey country—so I never played football at a high level. But I am a huge fan of sports writing, and a lot of my knowledge base came from that. I guess what really fascinated me for Pop was the culture of collision in the NFL. Even in a tough game like hockey, contact is technically incidental. (It just happens to be an extremely common incident.) But in football, hitting and getting hit is your job. And many players believe that, at a certain point, it actually starts to feel good. Not that football players actually enjoy pain, but they begin to associate it with the work ethic and success. And because of that positive connection, they begin to crave that contact.
What is your biggest concern about how teens play, practice, and live football in today’s environment?
I’m not a neurologist. So obviously the medical side of this is best left to the experts. What I think is dangerous is the pressure on kids to play injured and to play through the pain. From the research I’ve seen, the greatest health risk comes when a player sustains a new concussion while not yet fully recovered from the last one. The cumulative effect is almost exponential—i.e. that second concussion is the equivalent of fifty new concussions if you’re not fully healed from the original. So perhaps the best course for players and coaches is always to err on the side of caution when it comes to head trauma. In the heat of battle, a teenager—or an NFL professional—would be inclined to say, “I’m fine, coach! Put me back in!” But that’s actually the riskiest thing to do.
How did you go about researching a book on this topic, and what was the most interesting thing you learned while writing it?
What was unique about the research for Pop was the fact that the study of sports brain injury is so new that the science changes from week to week. In fact, what was known as early-onset Alzheimer’s disease while I was working on the book, now has its own medical name—Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE. It was certainly tricky writing about a field of medicine that was changing so rapidly, but that also made it exciting. I’ve been in contact with some of the people who were on the vanguard of this issue, which made Pop feel particularly timely and relevant.
Can you identify any similarities between Troy and your other characters? Do you find there’s a particular type of character that you like to explore?
I do a lot of school visits, so one thing I enjoy is populating my novels with an interesting and believable cast of characters—and I have a pretty large experiential base, both from my own childhood and from the thousands of kids I meet on the road. Troy was a great character to write because, at first glimpse, he’s such a jerk. Yet, as the reader gets a fuller understanding of what’s going on in his life, he really is one of the most sympathetic people in Pop. One of the biggest decisions that both Marcus and Troy have to make is whether or not they’ll continue with football, despite knowing what happened to Charlie. I played around with this a lot in my own head. In the end, it made perfect sense to me that Troy would quit and Marcus would play on. But I doubt many readers would predict that in the first half of the story.
Was it difficult to write Charlie’s story and show readers both sides of his illness, from Marcus’s and Troy’s different perspectives?
Probably the most challenging part of Pop was writing the scenes from Charlie’s perspective. Obviously, no one really knows how a person suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia perceives the world. But having observed my grandmother during her years with Alzheimer’s, I had a notion that I used as my starting point for Charlie. A lot of the world is confusing for him, so he naturally follows the things that make the most sense to him. Since his older memories are clearer than the more short-term ones, that path leads him to Three-Alarm Park, a place he frequented as a child and as a teenager. And when he sees a sixteen-year-old playing football there, it’s very natural for him to see his high school buddy, Mack. Marcus was a much more familiar character to me as an author. What made him really cool to write was the fact that, for a lot of the story, he was solving the mystery of what was wrong with Charlie. So I could play it as a game, keeping Marcus—and the reader—guessing at the reason why a fifty-something NFL veteran would behave like an impulsive and irresponsible kid.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GORDON KORMAN has written more than fifty middle-grade and teen novels. Favorites include the #1 New York Times bestseller THE 39 CLUES: ONE FALSE NOTE, SON OF THE MOB, and SCHOOLED. Though he didn’t play football in high school, Gordon’s been a lifelong fan and season ticket holder. He says, “I‘ve always been fascinated by the ‘culture of collision’ in football, and wanted to explore it—not just from the highlight films, but from its darker side as well.”
Gordon lives with his family on Long Island, New York. You can visit him online at www.gordonkorman.com.
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CREDITS
Cover art © 2011 by Paul Bradbury
Cover design by Polly Kanevsky
COPYRIGHT
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Pop
Copyright © 2009 by Gordon Korman
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Korman, Gordon.
Pop / by Gordon Korman.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“HarperTeen.”
Summary: Lonely after a midsummer move to a new town, high-school quarterback Marcus Jordan becomes friends with a retired professional linebacker whose erratic behavior confuses him, until Marcus discovers that the player is actually suffering from a neurological disease.
ISBN 978-0-06-174261-3
EPub Edition © MAY 2012 9780062218599
[1. Football—Fiction. 2. Alzheimer’s disease—Fiction. 3. High schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Moving, Household—Fiction. 6. Divorce—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.K8369Pop 2009
2008052106
[Fic]—dc22
CIP
AC
* * *
11 12 13 14 15 CG/BV 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First paperback edition, 2011
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