Pop

  “A threat?” Marcus repeated bitterly. “Troy’s like God in this place. If Coach tried to bench him, he’d be lynched!”

  Ron shook his head. “Not a football threat.”

  Marcus followed Ron’s gaze to the sidelines, where Alyssa was practicing with the cheerleaders. There was something about the way the uniform hung on her. It was exactly the same as what the other girls wore, yet it wasn’t—almost as if sheer attitude could fill out a sweater and miniskirt. Spying Marcus, she winked and waved.

  Marcus turned back to Ron. “Alyssa said they broke up.”

  Ron snorted. “You could set your watch by their breakups.”

  Marcus was torn. He didn’t want to chase away the hottest girl who had ever been interested in him. On the flip side, it was hard enough to be the new guy with a tight-knit unit like the Raiders when the team captain’s ex wasn’t hitting on you.

  “Hey, stranger!” Alyssa greeted him. “Nice moves out there.”

  He grimaced. “They still drop my passes unless Coach is on their necks.”

  She looked him up and down. “I wasn’t following the ball.”

  Marcus shuffled uncomfortably. “Listen, maybe we should keep a low profile around practice when—you know—the guys are watching.”

  She regarded him pityingly. “When you throw off your back foot, you can’t get any zip in your passes.”

  Summer practices ended by noon. That day, driving with one hand and wolfing down his sandwich with the other, Marcus headed straight for Three Alarm Park as his new routine dictated. Whatever Charlie had meant by “the usual,” the newest Raider didn’t want to be late for the more important half of his football education.

  As it happened, “the usual” seemed to mean “whenever I show up—if I show up.” There were days when Marcus would have to kill three hours before Charlie came jogging down the path. There were days when the man never turned up at all. And there were times when Marcus would kill the motor on his bike to find Charlie already draped over the Paper Airplane, genuinely miffed at being kept waiting. “Where were you?” he’d say. “Having lunch with the president? I’ve been here forever!”

  At first, Marcus had tried to formalize their schedule, but it just didn’t seem to work. Charlie would readily agree to meet at twelve thirty, and then the next day, he’d roll in at quarter to four without so much as an excuse. Plan? What plan?

  It was annoying, but waiting to see if Charlie was going to show up soon became Marcus’s personal reality TV show. In an odd way, the introduction of this random factor somehow made his life richer. Charlie wasn’t boring, that was for sure.

  Of course, now that Marcus trained with Charlie, he had very little enthusiasm for running down his own passes when he was training alone. The solitary workouts got lamer and lamer until they began to resemble vigils for the missing fifty-something man.

  He was more than happy to stop what he was doing when a voice from outside the park called, “Hey!”

  “Charlie?” This was new. One of the few predictable things about the man was that he usually entered Three Alarm Park from the west path.

  “Are you Marcus Jordan?”

  Marcus peered through a gap in the greenery. A tall, cadaverous man in dark green coveralls was waving for his attention. One of Barker’s assistants? he wondered. Who else knew him in Kennesaw?

  “That’s me.”

  In reply, the man simply turned on his heel and marched away, disappearing behind the foliage.

  Confused, Marcus ran after him. “Wait—I’m Marcus!”

  But by the time he could make it to a park exit, the man was gone. Instead, standing thirty feet in front of him was Charlie.

  “Hey, Mac—you going to stand there all day, or are you going to throw me the ball?”

  In their evolving parlance, that was actually an invitation to drill it at his face. Marcus cocked back and unloaded with full power. Charlie got his quick hands up and caught it a split second before it would have pushed his nose out the back of his skull.

  Charlie could opt for a return missile, but he generally lobbed the ball back high and slow. The old guy had the timing down pat so he could charge Marcus and level him the instant his fingers touched pigskin.

  The pain was unbelievable, but there was something about these workouts that Marcus couldn’t duplicate anywhere else. No one on the Raiders could hit like Charlie. It wasn’t just the brute force he used but the technique. When Charlie made contact, he didn’t just knock you down; he sent you in a specific direction, propelling you exactly where he wanted you to land. He used his own body as a piece of equipment, the way a tennis player used a racket. It jarred your teeth, but it also opened your eyes.

  Back in Kansas, Marcus had always looked upon the physical contact as a necessary evil—something to be avoided and occasionally endured in the course of the pure passing game. For Charlie, the contact was the game. Not only did he love the “pop,” he understood it, the way Einstein understood the space-time continuum. It was like the guy was a professor of tackling. And in the same way a good teacher can transmit his love of the topic to his students, Charlie’s enthusiasm for smashmouth football was beginning to rub off on Marcus.

  A hit used to mean failure and heading back to the drawing board. Now Marcus was starting to anticipate the contact, analyze it, and make split-second adjustments so the collision could be advantageous to him. And once he saw that there could be advantage in it, the fear faded, and he began almost to look forward to it. The pain was still there—doled out by Charlie, there was pain to spare. But it was exhilarating. It made him feel totally in the game and in the moment. It made him feel alive.

  Mom had begun asking about the profusion of cuts and bruises. “When you played football in Olathe, you didn’t come home all beat up every day.”

  “That was JV—junior.” There were many words to describe Charlie, but junior wasn’t any of them.

  Anyway, Charlie seemed to be as good at administering first aid as he was at creating the need for it. They were constantly leaving the park for ice, bandages, and rubbing alcohol. And Gatorade in large quantities.

  In town, everyone they met greeted Charlie by name and seemed genuinely happy to run into him. For his part, Charlie was affable, friendly, even charming. But he never stopped to talk to anybody.

  At the pharmacy, Charlie loaded his arms with drinks, PowerBars, and first-aid supplies. Then he breezed blithely out the door, not paying a cent for anything, as usual.

  The man at the register just chuckled and made a note on a ring-bound pad. “Have a good one, Charlie!”

  Marcus must have looked bewildered, because the cashier explained, “His wife comes by over the weekend and settles up. Don’t sweat it. You get used to Charlie.”

  Okay, Charlie had a wife. Marcus tucked away that piece of information and hoped to be able to add to it.

  The end of a workout was just as unpredictable as the beginning. Charlie might suddenly say, “I’ve got to go,” or “See you tomorrow.” A couple of afternoons, he headed for the park exit without a single word.

  At first, Marcus wondered what triggered the impulse for his training companion to leave. It didn’t seem to be the hour. Charlie wore an expensive-looking gold watch, but he never once consulted it. Maybe the guy went by his stomach—when he got hungry, it was time to go home for dinner.

  That afternoon, though, it was Marcus who shut things down. “Listen, I’d better head home. My mom gets nuts if she thinks I’m AWOL.”

  Charlie nodded sympathetically. “Yeah, mine, too.”

  Marcus laughed. “Your wife, you mean.”

  “Right…,” Charlie said and walked away.

  In the parking lot, Marcus packed up his gear, slung his duffel over his shoulder, and mounted the scooter.

  “Marcus Jordan?”

  He wheeled to face the same cadaverous man, tall and skinny, with a long pointy nose. K.O. PEST CONTROL was embroidered on the breast pocket of his coveralls.
Standing beside him, blocking the Vespa’s exit, was a uniformed cop.

  “Here,” Marcus said.

  “I told you it’s him!” the man in coveralls exclaimed. “He’s the one who vandalized my car!”

  Marcus was aghast. “It was an accident! I left a note!”

  “He admits it!” crowed the exterminator. He reached into one of his many pockets and drew out a folded piece of paper. He opened it to reveal the letter Marcus had left on the dashboard of the Toyota.

  Sorry for the damage. Will pay to fix.

  Marcus Jordan 555-7385

  “Very funny, kid,” the needle-nosed man growled. “You know how many times I called that number? The teachers at the preschool were ready to kill me!”

  “I’m sorry!” Marcus was chagrined. “I messed up my number. We just moved here.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  “It’s the truth!”

  The officer sighed. “All right, Marcus. Looks like you’re coming with me.”

  Barbara Jordan rushed into the police station and joined her son at the officer’s desk.

  “This is all a misunderstanding,” she tried to explain. “Marcus has never been in any trouble.”

  “He still hasn’t,” the officer assured her. “I think we’ve got it sorted out. Broken car window, wrong number on the note. It also clears up a crank call complaint from Growing Minds Preschool. The gals over there don’t have much of a sense of humor when the phone rings during naptime.”

  “It was an honest mistake,” Marcus pleaded.

  “Sounds like it,” the cop agreed. “Just pay Mr. Oliver to fix his window and we’ll forget the whole thing.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” promised Mrs. Jordan. “We just moved here. We really don’t want to get off on the wrong foot.”

  “Smart.” The officer swiveled in his chair to face Marcus’s mother. “Guess I’m not much of a welcome wagon. Mike Deluca.” He held out his hand.

  She shook it. “Barbara Jordan. I work at the Advocate. And Marcus just made the Raiders. He plays quarterback.”

  The officer smiled. “We’ve been looking for someone to back Troy up. Just keep those passes on target. Lot of car windows around town.”

  Outside the station house, Mrs. Jordan let out a long breath. “That could have been a lot worse.”

  Marcus flushed. “I feel bad about the wrong number, but that guy Oliver’s a jerk. He wanted to press charges! Thank God that cop was cool about it.”

  “He’s nice,” his mother agreed. “The last thing you need is a bad reputation in a new town. I hope you’re watching your speed on that rocket sled Dad bought you.”

  “I keep a line of grannies riding up my tail,” Marcus promised.

  “How did you break this man’s window, anyway?”

  Marcus shrugged uncomfortably. “Playing football in the park.”

  “Why would you throw a football at a parked car?”

  “Another guy threw it,” Marcus admitted. “It went through my hands.”

  “Another guy?” she repeated. “You’re moaning and groaning about how the team hates you, and all this time you’ve been meeting a friend to play football?”

  “He’s not a friend,” Marcus said quickly. “He’s just some guy I ran into in the park. I really don’t know much about him.”

  She digested this. “Well, if he threw the pass, shouldn’t his mother be writing the check?”

  A mirthless smile twitched Marcus’s lips at the thought of Charlie’s mother, undoubtedly a little old lady in her seventies or eighties, paying for her son’s share of the damage.

  “We’ll split it,” he decided. “Fair enough?”

  She put an arm around his shoulder. “Fair enough. Do you want me to call over to his house, or can you handle it?”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  But could he? Never once had he seen Charlie handing over money—not even for a lousy bag of ice or a bottle of Gatorade. Could Marcus get him to pay for half a car window that had been broken more than a week ago?

  And more important, if Charlie stonewalled him, what did that mean for the workouts in Three Alarm Park?

  The blond cocker spaniel jumped off the porch and bounded over to greet Charlie, tail wagging.

  He reached down to pet the animal. “How’re you doing, Boomer? Good boy.” He followed the dog to the screen door.

  A teenage girl was there to let them in. “Hi, Daddy,” she said, kissing Charlie on the cheek. “What did you do today?”

  “Threw a ball around,” her father replied.

  “With who?”

  Charlie shrugged. “The cops came and arrested him.” He headed into the kitchen.

  Fifteen-year-old Chelsea turned to her brother. “Troy, did you hear that?”

  Troy looked away from the Aldrich Raiders playbook. “I try not to listen to Dad anymore.”

  She looked worried. “Do you think it’s getting worse?”

  Troy’s All-American features tightened. “Worse than going crazy?”

  “He’s not crazy. You understand exactly what’s happening to him. It’s not his fault.”

  Troy turned back to his playbook. “Like that makes any difference.”

  Chelsea sighed. “Yeah, I know what you mean.” She filled a bowl with dry dog food and whistled for the spaniel. “Come on, Silky. Here’s your dinner, girl.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The classroom numbers at David Nathan Aldrich High School defied the laws of science.

  Marcus followed the progression: 238 … 239 … 240… B-611? Confused, he stared from the schedule in his hand to the number over the door and back to the schedule again. History was supposed to be meeting in room 241. Where was that? Up on the roof?

  “Very hot—kind of Lost Puppy meets Dumb Jock.”

  Alyssa appeared at his elbow, all sympathy.

  Her presence brought out a definite nervousness in Marcus. What could you make of a girl who could flirt with you one minute and criticize the cadence of your snap count the next? He could still feel her arms around his midsection from their Vespa ride—or was that just wishful thinking?

  “I’m having a little trouble with the layout of the building,” he admitted.

  She nodded in understanding. “All the new kids stall out at B-611. I figured I’d find you here sooner or later.”

  “Are you going to tell me where to go or what?”

  She laughed. “I’ll leave that to Troy. He’s dying for the chance to tell you where to go.”

  “Yeah, thanks for that,” Marcus muttered.

  Alyssa shook her head. “Don’t blame me. Football’s a zero-sum game. More wannabes than positions. Your success always costs some other guy his job.”

  “Yeah, well, Troy is job security personified,” Marcus complained. “The players take their orders from Troy, not from the coach. And even he wishes I’d play JV and make everybody’s life easier.”

  “You don’t know what it was like last season.”

  He was disgusted. “Sacrilegious as it may seem, the Raiders aren’t the only high school squad that ever won a championship.”

  She was patient. “When you love a team—I mean really love it—your whole life is about two words: if only. If only Kevin could get bigger; if only Luke could get faster; if only Ron could stop fumbling. Some of it’s coaching, but mostly it’s an act of God. Last year, the Raiders hit the if only jackpot. All our potential cashed in at the same time—especially Troy. He rewrote the record book. Even better, most of our if onlys were juniors, so ninety percent of them are back. Now enter this kid on a goofy scooter, saying he’s better than the team that went eleven and oh—”

  “I never said that!” Marcus interrupted hotly.

  “In their minds you did. These guys have put so much pressure on themselves that everything is about them and their season.”

  Marcus was already sick of hearing about the Raiders’ chance at history. Wasting precious Alyssa time on the subject was a crime
against humanity. “So where is Troy? You’re with me, so I assume he’s watching from a distance. Or is it enough if he hears about it from a third party?”

  She bristled. “Is that what you think this is?” She pulled him into room B-611, stood up on her toes, and kissed him.

  “There,” she breathed. “No P.R. value at all.”

  The lights came on suddenly, and someone entered the room, catching them with their arms wrapped around each other.

  The girl glared at them in disapproval. “You have got to be kidding me!”

  “This is none of your business, Chelsea,” Alyssa said defensively. “You know Troy and I broke up.”

  “For which minute?” Chelsea sneered. “Oh, sorry—it only takes you that long to find somebody new.” She looked scornfully at Marcus. “Do you know who you’re dealing with? Or can’t you get past the pom-poms and the short skirt?”

  “You’re someone to lecture me on the rules of dating,” Alyssa accused, “considering you’ve never gone out with anybody in your life.”

  “Yeah, and if being like you and Troy is what I have to look forward to,” Chelsea shot back, “then I never want to.” She wished Marcus a sarcastic “Good luck—you’ll need it!” and stormed out.

  “Who’s that?” he asked.

  “Chelsea Popovich.”

  “Troy’s sister?”

  She nodded grimly. “Not one of my fans.”

  Chelsea was obviously just showing loyalty to her jilted brother. Marcus thought back to what Ron had said that day at practice: You could set your watch by their breakups.

  “Are you and Troy really broken up, or is this—you know—part of the dance?”

  She reddened. “It did happen that way a couple of times. But a few months ago, Troy changed. It wasn’t only with me. He got just as weird with his friends. Troy’s house used to be the hangout spot. Now he’s always on his own. Maybe it’s the stress of trying to repeat this season....” She made a face. “You know, Marcus, you’re a dope. Do you really think talking about this is going to get you any action?”

  The second bell rang. They were both officially late.

  He had to ask. “Action…?”