Pop

  From force of habit, Marcus scowled in the direction of K.O. Pest Control, but the metal cockroach wasn’t there. It was the same row of shops, but the sign was different. He squinted to make it out:

  DINGLEY’S HARDWARE EMPORIUM

  Dingley—that was the name Charlie called Kenneth Oliver. It wasn’t just a misfire of a confused mind. It came from something real. There was even a man in the store window, scowling out at the festivities in the park. Old Man Dingley? It was easy to see how Charlie might confuse this guy with Kenneth Oliver. The two didn’t look much alike, but they shared the same sour face and aggrieved expression.

  The photograph was dated 1971. Charlie would have been sixteen or seventeen at that time.

  He sees me in the park, and I become his frame of reference. He relates everything to his memories of himself around my age—Charlie and “Mac,” playing football in the park....

  He was suddenly struck by an odd thought, something that had never occurred to him before this minute: He’d always assumed that Mac was a name you’d call anyone, like pal or buddy. But if Dingley’s Hardware Emporium was real, and Old Man Dingley was real, maybe Mac was real, too.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  On Monday morning, Marcus arrived at school to see a slender, athletic brunette slipping a note through the vent of his locker door.

  What was Alyssa doing? Was it so obvious that he wouldn’t have the willpower to stay away from her? And even if this note was totally innocent, Golden Boy might see her planting it—or someone who reported to him might see, and that was practically everybody.

  So much for “just friends.”

  He walked up behind her, reached around, and pulled her baseball cap down over her eyes.

  “Guess who.”

  There was a sharp cry of shock, and a bony elbow slammed into his gut. “Get away!”

  Chelsea Popovich.

  “Sorry!” he wheezed, rendered breathless by the shot in the stomach and the realization that Chelsea filled out a pair of jeans well enough to be mistaken for Alyssa.

  “I left you a note,” she said, studying her sneakers. Suddenly, her imploring eyes were gazing up at his. “How come you knew where to find my father when his own family didn’t?”

  Marcus hesitated, then told her how Charlie had crashed his solitary training sessions at Three Alarm Park, and how the two had begun to practice together. He’d done nothing wrong, yet for some reason it felt like a confession, a deep, dark secret. “It’s Alzheimer’s, right? Like the other NFL vets I read about?”

  Chelsea looked shocked. The family had worked so hard to keep this a secret. They had probably imagined the moment the truth would come out, dreading it.

  “I promise I won’t spread it all over town,” he added.

  Her nostrils flared in anger. “We’re not ashamed of him! It’s just nobody’s business—including yours.”

  Marcus nodded. “If he was my dad, I’d be busting with pride. I came to Kennesaw thinking I had football all figured out, but now it seems like everything I know about the game comes from these last few weeks of working with Charlie.”

  Her cheeks flushed. “Then you’re an idiot. You can’t wait for the chance to knock your head until you’ve got no more brain cells left than my poor father!”

  “I don’t see Troy quitting,” Marcus pointed out.

  “Yeah,” she snorted. “And there’s my mom every week, cheering on her firstborn while he plays Russian roulette with his own skull. No—worse. In Russian roulette, at least you know right away when you’ve lost. You don’t plant these tiny time bombs that go off over twenty-five years. So the next time you’re basking in the worship of the crowd, don’t expect to see me out there.”

  Who could blame her for being upset? “I understand,” he said gently.

  “Please. You figured out what’s wrong with Daddy. You learned from him. Maybe you even like him. But there’s no way you can understand this.”

  For the first time, it occurred to Marcus that Charlie wasn’t the only victim. It had to be just as hard on his family, maybe even harder.

  “Well, anyway, sorry about the hat. I thought you were someone else.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a pretty good idea who,” she told him.

  “What have you got against Alyssa?”

  She made a face. “I’ve already taken up too much of your time.”

  “I’m not in a hurry.”

  “She’s trouble,” said Chelsea. “For Troy or anybody else. Just my opinion.”

  “So what do you care if I suffer?” Marcus asked, amused. “You’ve already made it pretty clear what you think of me.”

  She looked away. “Maybe I was wrong. First impressions and all that. Thanks for bringing my dad home.”

  He shrugged. “It was easy. I knew exactly where to look.”

  “It isn’t about easy or hard. It’s about caring enough to do it. Do you think your girlfriend cares about anything beyond getting her jollies?”

  “She cares about football,” Marcus pointed out.

  “Wow—sainthood is right around the corner.”

  “Stop worrying,” Marcus assured her. “She’s not even my girlfriend.”

  Chelsea scowled at him. “Who said I was worried?”

  Coach Barker reclined in his chair, causing his big head to bobble backward and forward. “I’m loving your effort, Jordan. You put a body on a man as good as any kid I’ve ever coached. Gain thirty pounds and I could just about guarantee you a four-year scholarship at linebacker.”

  “I’ve been working really hard to earn my shot at quarter—”

  “This isn’t about you,” Barker interrupted sharply. “I want to talk about Popovich. You notice anything about his game lately? Anything different?”

  Yeah—he’s afraid to get hit. Maybe Chelsea thinks he’s playing Russian roulette, but he’s got himself packed in Bubble Wrap!

  He kept his mouth shut. You didn’t bad-mouth a teammate to the coach. Not even Troy.

  Aloud, he said, “Not sure what you mean, Coach.”

  “He’s not himself,” Barker explained. “It’s like he’s lost his guts. When you get under center, you don’t think about what can go wrong. You think about the next big play, and you believe it’s going to happen just right, as sure as the earth’s going to keep on turning. Once that confidence goes, you’re finished at quarterback. You know what I’m talking about? Sure you do.”

  Marcus nodded excitedly. Winning the starting spot was going to taste twice as sweet because of who he was taking it from.

  “And we both know why all this is happening, don’t we?” Barker pressed on.

  That sour note brought a frown to Marcus’s lips. Does Barker suspect that Troy’s gone weak because he’s afraid that what happened to his father might happen to him? Does the coach know about Charlie?

  The bobblehead tilted forward and fixed its eyes on Marcus. “It’s no secret that you two aren’t exactly best friends. You’ve been after his job, and that’s extra pressure. Then there’s that Alyssa Fontaine. Don’t look so innocent. You think I’m blind?”

  Marcus was taken aback. “It’s just that—no offense, Coach, but—you’ve got no business messing with your players’ personal lives.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. Now find some other skirt to chase, will you?”

  Marcus’s eyes widened.

  “You’re the new guy,” Barker explained reasonably. “Popovich led this team to a perfect season, and he’s my man until he proves he isn’t. This is a town where the head cheerleader designs zone blitzes in her sleep. We take our football seriously. Trust me, your love life is not a topic that keeps me up nights—until it affects my team.”

  Marcus left the office astounded by the twisted brilliance of Barker’s logic. The guy could justify human sacrifice if it would help him win football games.

  Calm down, he reminded himself. You were trying to cool it with Alyssa anyway. This is just an extra reason to make it stick.


  Still, it rankled him—the thought that Barker would order it.

  The athletic department was headquartered between the gym and the pool. The hallways were lined with trophy cases, celebrating past DNA glories, not just in football, but also basketball, soccer, volleyball, swimming, and track.

  Marcus’s eyes were immediately drawn to a brass plaque that read:

  CHARLES POPOVICH

  CLASS OF 1973

  Third-Round Pick—San Diego Chargers

  1977 National Football League Draft

  “Our First NFLer, but Not Our Last”

  There were no similar plaques, so he had to assume that Charlie really was their last—or at least the only one so far. He located the 1973 team picture. There was Charlie, tall and young in the back row, grinning like a winner.

  But Charlie wasn’t the one Marcus was looking for. He could not shake the feeling that the mysterious Mac might have been on this team, too. A teenage friend you played football with was usually a high school buddy.

  Of course, the faces meant nothing to him. But the roster was listed below the photo.

  No one was named Mac. But—his eyes homed in on a thick-necked young man to Charlie’s left. Name: James McTavish.

  McTavish. Mac?

  The hearing date was set—December 2. On that day, Marcus was to stand before a judge and explain his involvement as a conspirator in the TP’ing of K.O. Pest Control. If he chose to plead innocent, he would be expected to reveal the name of the guilty party.

  “Otherwise,” his attorney explained, “I can’t help you, kid. You’ll be sending me in there to fight a fire with nothing but air.”

  The lawyer was a Bronx native with a bad suit and a worse accent, but Marcus knew he was right. There was no reason on earth for a judge to take his word for it. On December 2, it was going to be either Charlie or him.

  Who knew if the authorities would even believe the truth? A fifty-four-year-old Alzheimer’s patient didn’t exactly fit the profile of a juvenile delinquent. They could accuse Marcus of trying to blame his own misdeeds on a sick, helpless man. That was easier to swallow than a wild tale of an NFL veteran mistaking a strange kid for his childhood friend and carrying on a grudge against a store that had gone out of business years ago. Unless by sheer luck the judge happened to be James McTavish himself.

  The thought startled him. Okay, granted, the judge wasn’t likely to be James McTavish. But James McTavish had to be somewhere. If Marcus could find the real Mac, then Mac could fill in the blanks.

  Of course, the guy might live in California … or Japan. He might even be dead. But it wouldn’t hurt to try to track him down.

  There were two McTavishes in the Kennesaw white pages, neither of them James. One was an elderly woman who was hard of hearing. It was only with great difficulty that Marcus was able to gain her assurances that she had no relatives named James. The second guy was easier to communicate with but of no more help.

  “Yeah, I remember hearing about other McTavishes somewhere in the area. They weren’t part of our family, though. Sorry, pal.”

  Marcus did an internet search and found, to his dismay, that there were more than two thousand McTavishes in the United States. Nearly three hundred of these had the first initial J. And there was always the possibility that the J. McTavish he was actually looking for was unlisted.

  The magnitude of the task at hand was beginning to sink in. Oh, sure, it could be done. But how did you go about it? What were the steps? Marcus was a high school kid, not a private detective.

  He was about to shut down the browser when the message caught his eye:

  WHO ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

  It was a banner ad for www.almamater.usa, one of those websites where people could track down former schoolmates, find old boyfriends and girlfriends, and reconnect with past acquaintances.

  It brought an ironic smile to Marcus’s lips. Himself and Troy, twenty years down the road, laughing over their long-forgotten animosities. Alyssa, now a farmer’s wife, mother of six, former porn star, ambassador to Finland—anything was possible.

  But it occurred to him that this was exactly the place he needed to be. He was looking for a high school classmate. Not his own, but Charlie’s.

  He entered the site and clicked on Find an Old Friend. He typed in the school’s name and location—David Nathan Aldrich in Kennesaw, New York—and highlighted Class of ’73.

  In the space designated for his message, Marcus typed:

  We played football together for the Raiders and in Three Alarm Park, when we weren’t making trouble for Old Man Dingley. What happened to you, Mac?

  —Charlie P.

  As the mouse hovered over Submit, Marcus knew a moment of unease, pondering the possibility of the real Charlie P. visiting this site and finding a message from himself. But that wasn’t very likely. If Charlie could look at a sixteen-year-old and see his friend Mac, then he wasn’t searching for long-lost classmates. Part of him probably thought he was still in high school.

  A grimmer thought occurred to Marcus. There was a decent chance that Charlie might be so impaired, he couldn’t figure out how to use a computer at all.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Aldrich Raiders won again, despite an uneven performance from quarterback Troy Popovich. It was nothing that the average fan in the stands would recognize—he was just a touch quick to abandon the pocket. He got rid of the ball a little early, and he slid when he might have picked up a few extra yards by scrambling. But to Marcus, who had done all these things as a JV quarterback in Kansas to avoid getting hit, it was as obvious as blown coverage in the end zone. And there was no mistaking the worry lines on the bobblehead brow of Coach Barker—and around the luscious lips of the true football expert in Kennesaw, the head cheerleader.

  It was hard to tell if Troy knew what was going on in his own head, or if the whole thing was subconscious. Marcus understood the cause of Charlie’s problems, yet his association with the King of Pop had made him crave the very same kind of physical contact that Troy now seemed to be trying to avoid. Of course, Troy was Charlie’s son, so the former linebacker’s illness would affect him in a different and more profound way. He might even fear a genetic weakness that would make him prone to concussion.

  In the end, though, Troy’s mediocre game was more than made up for by the heroics of Ron Rorschach. Behind Marcus’s ferocious blocking, Ron was en route to a rushing title, piling up touchdowns along the way. And he was already second only to Troy in the number of rhyming cheers designed by Alyssa and the squad.

  Even Marcus was starting to get noticed, for the sheer energy of his physical play. The crunch of his hits could be felt in the back row of the bleachers. He was the secret of Ron’s success, by far the best Raider rookie this year. But the nonfootball scuttlebutt was even more tantalizing: He had been arrested and given a court date to face criminal charges (true); he single-handedly fought his way out of Luke Derrigan’s basement the night of the party (false); he rode a motorcycle (half true); he stole Troy Popovich’s girlfriend and then dumped her (twenty-five percent true); the dumping part was just a cover, and he and Alyssa were still secretly seeing each other (totally false, but nice to think about).

  Marcus tried to tell himself that he didn’t care, but the fact was he did. He noticed the admiring looks in the hall and the whispered conversations in his wake.

  Alyssa explained it with her usual flare. “Marcus, you are so hot right now, we could fry an egg on your pecs. And I found you first. Go, me!”

  He would have taken her compliments more seriously if she didn’t always make them among large groups of people, where they were pretty sure to work their way back to Troy. Yet the flirting felt great—and he couldn’t escape the notion that, in spite of everything that had happened, it could get a whole lot better.

  The problem was this: Alyssa the Football Expert understood blocking. He opened up holes so that Ron could gain yardage and become a star. In other words, Marcus did the don
key work in order for someone else to reap the rewards.

  He had to wonder if he might be performing the same function outside football as well.

  The email in the inbox of Charlie P.’s account on www.almamater.usa had the subject “Blast from the Past?” Hand trembling, Marcus clicked on the message and read:

  Is this really the Charlie P. I think it must be? My name is Doris Brennan Vanderboom, but you probably remember me as Dori, who sat behind you in trig class senior year. I’m president of the DNA Alumni Association here in Syracuse, where many of us seem to have settled after college.

  Because we’re neighbors up here, our little group meets every few months for wine and cheese and to talk about the good old days. The purpose of this message is to see if we can cajole you into joining us sometime. We all followed your career in college and the NFL. What could be more delightful than having our football hero back in the bosom of his DNA fans?

  I’ve checked the Association records, and the last address we have for you is in San Diego—decades out of date, I’m sure. Are you back in New York State? What do you say, Charlie? Are you too big a star to let a bunch of old friends fawn over you?

  Hopefully yours,

  Dori

  Class of ’73

  Excitement dissolved into disappointment. Not Mac. Just some busybody from the alumni association. But really, what had he expected? To throw a posting on a message board and find the real Mac? It was too big a world for that. It was actually kind of amazing that he’d stirred up anyone at all from the class of 1973.

  Not that Charlie cared. If the King of Pop gave a hoot about his old classmates, he’d have supplied an address more current than San Diego, which had to be more than twenty years old....