Losers Take All (24 page)

“You were right about my college essay,” Becca admitted. “In fact you were so right that you made me feel guilty. I owe you an apology.”

“So you are writing about the Losers?”

She nodded. “My college essay is now called ‘Revolution and Counterrevolution at Fremont High.'”

“It sounds a little more impressive than ‘Knight and Shadow,'” I told her. “Not that I have anything against your horse.”

“To get into Stanford or one of the top Ivies you need a story, and I think I've found mine.”

“You definitely have. Just don't start a civil war and burn our school down to impress the admissions people.”

“I don't think that will be necessary,” she said. “But, Jack, I didn't know that any of this would happen when we were floating on our backs on Hidden Lake and I first mentioned joining the team.”

“You were so nervous that day about asking me out for a date that you couldn't have been thinking about anything else,” I told her.

“Don't flatter yourself,” she said. “Seriously, it's also not why I talked to that reporter from the
Star Dispatch
about our team. I don't want you to think I'm super calculating and that I'd been planning this all along, or that I used your family and your father—” She broke off. “'Cause I swear I didn't. It all just sort of happened.”

“Okay, I believe you,” I said. “My dad and I had a talk the other day and things are better between us.”

“I'm glad,” Becca said. “Things are a little better with my father, too. I had lunch with him and he was really trying not to be a jerk. He's full speed ahead with the divorce, but he's making it as painless as possible. He's giving my mom the house and the car, and pretty much everything she wants. It's uncontested, and moving ahead at record speed.”

“Well, isn't that good?” I asked. “At least it's not a bitter fight.”

“I suppose.” She nodded. “Except that it makes me feel strange. Doesn't he have any feelings for our house where I grew up? It's like he's trying to escape from everything we shared. Part of me wishes that it was a little more contested. And he wants me to meet his new
friend
, Emily.” Becca fell silent for several seconds. “At lunch he kept stressing the word ‘painless,' as if he was going to inject us all with Novocain, like one of his patients. But maybe you're right and painless is better than the alternative.”

“I preferred painless when they were gluing my teeth back together.”

“I know you don't like dentists,” she said with a little smile. “And I also know how much you care about your old friends. I said some stuff at the hospital I regret.”

“Me too,” I told her. “And you were absolutely right that it was guys on the football team who beat up Dylan.”

“Actually, you were the one who said it first. So you were right.”

There was a machine in the little room that suddenly made a
thwump-thwump
sound, like a racing heartbeat. I looked into Becca's hazel eyes and waited for it to finish thumping, but it kept going and even seemed to speed up. “Is there anything else we need to apologize to each other about?” I finally asked.

“I don't think so,” she said. It was hard to tell in the low light, but I thought she'd started blushing. “I missed you,” she whispered. “A lot.”

“Me too.”

“Really?” she asked. “That's a little hard to believe. Because you couldn't say you loved me. And you've been completely ignoring me.”

“I wasn't ignoring you, I was pissed off at you,” I told her. “But I guess I couldn't have gotten so angry if I didn't care about you so much.”

No, she wasn't blushing. It was something else. Her eyes glowed.

Becca stepped toward me and I put my arms around her, and then the electrical room suddenly got a lot hotter.

 

31

There were fifteen of us now—Rob Powers had wasted no time in letting Muhldinger know he was leaving the Lions for the Losers. “I told him in his office before first period. His face turned so red I thought he might explode,” Rob told me almost proudly. “He kept repeating: ‘You'll regret this, Powers. Your father will be ashamed of you. I guarantee you'll regret this.' But the only thing I regret is that I didn't do it long ago. I hate that son of a bitch and I'm glad I'm not down in that pit. Now, where's that bag of chips?”

We were sitting together, all wearing our home soccer jerseys. Instead of a tailgate party we had brought lots of snacks. The Lynton Mud Pit, as it was known in Fremont, was much smaller than Gentry Field, so we had a good view of the marching band playing “Fremont Forever” while the cheerleaders built a three-story pyramid. Several thousand Lions fans had made the short trip, and they sang as if in one voice: “Fremont High will rise to the sky, to be number one.”

I picked out my dad ten rows down, standing with his old high school cronies, including Rob Powers's father. I wondered if Muhldinger was right about Rob's father being ashamed, or if our principal's threats were now all empty.

On the field, the Lions were fired up and ready for battle. They circled around Muhldinger, who thumped a playbook the way a preacher pounds a Bible. He was going over last-minute strategy, but I could tell he was also ordering them to keep their heads in the game. Three of their teammates had been arrested, and their backup quarterback was watching from the stands.

Not that any of it mattered, because the Lynton Foxes were outnumbered and too small to put up much of a fight. There were more than sixty Lions on our sideline, and when they broke the circle with a loud cheer they looked like red-and-gold giants. Across from them stood thirty or so maroon-and-white Lynton Foxes, and when they ran out onto the field, they looked pint-sized. Their kick returner, who waited alone in the end zone, couldn't have been more than five-five. He was going to get stomped on, and the Foxes were going to be buried in their own mud pit, as usual.

The short Lynton returner caught our towering kickoff deep in his end zone. I thought for sure he would down the ball and take it at the twenty, but he never gave it a thought. Instead, he ran it out—straight up the center of the field—and the little guy was a maroon-and-white blur against the green grass and brown mud. The home crowd roared as his blockers formed a flying wedge to protect him. At the fifteen a ferocious red-and-gold wave smashed into the Lynton wedge and dissolved it.

But the kick returner wasn't hiding behind the wedge any longer. He had danced sideways, and he was so short and moved so fast that the Fremont tacklers hadn't picked up his cut. By the time they gave chase the Lynton speedster was streaking down the right sideline with only the kicker to beat. He gave our kicker an inside fake and darted by him. It was a footrace to the end zone, and our fastest guys couldn't catch him. Their kick returner high-stepped over the end line like he was seven feet tall and raised his arms, and the Lynton fans let him know just how sweet it was to draw first blood after decades of being blasted by Fremont.

Next to me on the bench, Rob whispered, “Holy God. That's a hundred-and-five-yard runback!”

It's a dangerous thing to give the home crowd of an underdog team some hope. I could almost feel the Lynton fans begin to rally behind their Foxes and start to believe that maybe, just possibly, this might be their day.

Fremont tried to shrug it off. Our band played, our cheerleaders twirled, and the Fremont faithful chanted: “Fremont number one. State champs, state champs. Bury Lynton in their pit.” But their defense stopped us at midfield, and we had to punt it away. Down they came in half a dozen plays, and their short runner made a slick outside move, took it around the end of our line, and dove right through the legs of the last defender to score again. Almost before we knew what was happening it was fourteen to zilch.

Good football teams respond to falling behind by getting physical. Fremont had been trained for this moment by practicing line drills, hitting the tackling sled, and power-lifting in the weight room. We didn't need big plays—we needed to assert ourselves and start pushing them around. Whatever Muhldinger said about how we didn't have a culture of bullying at Fremont, when it came to football that was definitely our style. The Lions tried to take over the line, stuff their runners, and grind out yards on the ground. But Barlow's replacement fumbled deep in Lynton territory, and their quarterback uncorked the longest pass of his life to their tallest receiver, who somehow caught it and ran it in. Fifteen rows of Fremont fans fell silent, and Becca whispered to me, “They're going to lose to Lynton.”

“Can't happen,” I told her. “Not Lynton.”

“Lynton,” she said. “They're spooked.”

“She's right,” Rob Powers agreed from my other side. “They're toast. They just don't know it yet.”

It was twenty-eight to three at halftime, and I kind of wondered what Muhldinger was saying to the Lions in the locker room. He had fired them up for a comeback against Smithfield, and I was sure he was screaming and punching the walls. If Lynton could score twenty-eight points in a half, then in theory Fremont also could—especially since we were projected to be state champs and the Foxes always finished near the bottom of our league.

My teammates passed chips and pretzels around during halftime. Most of the Fremont fans were sitting in silent shock, and I was a little worried about how obvious it was that our Losers section wasn't dejected.

Frank and Dylan started laughing it up, and I went over and suggested they tone it down.

“I was just saying, we might have to start calling the football team the Losers and find a new name for our soccer team,” Frank told me.

“Instead of the Lions how about the Kittens?” Dylan suggested.

“Say anything you want later,” I told them, “but for now, chill.”

“This is not a good thing for anybody,” Rob Powers agreed, sounding nervous. “People around us are taking this pretty seriously.”

They sure were. I could see my father's face, and he looked like he was going to the funeral of an old friend.

One of the Fremont cheerleaders sat alone on the end of a bench, her hands clasped, as if whispering prayers.

Now that the game was on break, other Fremont fans had started watching us. I could almost feel their attention swinging our way. Maybe it was because the Losers had become school celebrities, or they could have been pointing out Dylan as the guy who'd been beaten up, or possibly Rob Powers was drawing their stares. News travels fast, and he wasn't hiding having switched teams. Whatever it was, I could feel lots of eyes on us.

When the Lions ran back on the field for the second half, the Fremont band played the loudest charge of the day. The cheerleader who had been seeking divine intervention jumped up and screamed for all she was worth. A white-haired lady everybody called “Ma Bell” who hadn't missed a Fremont game in twenty-two years rang her large cowbell over her head, and my father shook his right fist in an encouraging and demanding way that I remembered from when I was a kid.

The Lions dug in and tried to claw their way back, but the old Fremont magic fizzled that fall evening and the rout became a debacle. Our most sure-footed defenders tripped over their own feet. Reliable runners fumbled. Our All-League quarterback threw passes that bounced short or sailed right into the opponents' arms.

Lynton kept pushing. Soon it was forty-two to ten, and our cheerleaders stopped yelling and sat silently. Our band quieted, too, as if the mouthpieces had been taken from the brass section and the tips of the drumsticks were wrapped in cotton. Even my father, who never gave up, stopped shaking his fist and sat with his elbows on his knees, as if he was ashamed of something.

It ended forty-nine to ten—the most points scored against Fremont in fifty years and the most lopsided loss that anyone could remember. When time ran out on the scoreboard, the Lynton fans gave the victorious roar they had been waiting to let out for decades.

Muhldinger walked quickly across the field and shook hands with the Lynton coach, and then he turned, stuck his hands in his pockets, lowered his head, and didn't look up once all the way to the team bus. It was strange given how much I disliked him, but I actually felt sorry for the man.

 

32

The Warren soccer clubhouse was a one-story brick building that looked out on a beautiful pitch. There were two other ragged-looking fields, where their youth teams played, but the men's field had grass so thick and carefully trimmed it looked almost hand manicured. Several hundred blue and red plastic seats in rows faced down on it, and the trophy case in the Warren clubhouse held numerous silver soccer balls and even a golden boot.

“They seem to take their club pretty seriously,” Dad noted appreciatively as we walked in. “Don't tell any soccer jokes.”

“I'm the soccer joke around here,” I muttered.

“You'll do fine,” he said. “They asked you to come this morning for a reason.”

“Yeah, they're desperate.”

Jan Brent was older than I would have guessed—at least in his midfifties. He was a friendly man who looked like he had once been a superb athlete but in the last few years had eaten too many desserts. He had a big potbelly and thinning white hair. “Jack, thanks so much for coming out so early,” he said, hurrying up and giving me a firm handshake.

Then he turned to my father and offered his hand. “Don't worry, Mr. Logan, we'll run him hard but we won't run him into the ground.”

He had the wrong Dad. As my father shook hands he growled: “Go ahead and run him into the ground all you want.”

Jan smiled as if my father was joking, but I knew better.

After warm-up drills with the squad I found myself wearing a yellow pinny over my shirt and lining up at right wing. The men's team was going to play a practice scrimmage, and they had divided into two squads. There were only three other guys on the field who looked like they might possibly be teenagers, while the rest of the players were grown men with beards, wedding rings, and decades of soccer experience.