Perfect Season (17 page)

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

THE FRIDAY NIGHT CROWD
for Morristown was even bigger than it had been for Lawton. The smell of sizzling hot dogs floated up from the concession stand in thick clouds. Banners and pom-poms appeared like dormant wildflowers after a desert rain, waving over the throng of fans dressed in gold and blue. Many of the Summit residents wanted to see if the football team was for real, and a lot of outsiders came with hopes of seeing Troy and Chuku play brilliantly. He figured there might be a grump here or there who wanted to see if he'd fall on his face the same way he had for the Jets last Sunday, but he sensed that the crowd was firmly behind him.

Troy stood on the edge of the field in his equipment and drank in the crowd like an actor peering from behind the curtain before a big show. His mind skipped a beat when he saw the tall man in the suit again, the one with the surveyors on the field his first day at the school. For the second game in a row he was wearing a suit. This time, instead of talking with Mr. Biondi, he had someone next to him who looked familiar.

The tall man suddenly pointed behind Troy. Troy turned and saw Chuku coming down the steps. He looked back to the stands. The man next to the tall man was chunky with a thick gray . . . mustache.

“The UPS guy,” Troy spoke under his breath. Baffled and slightly alarmed by seeing the two of them together, he began to scan the crowd again. Tate had gotten a text from Ty saying he might come with Thane.
Might.
Troy spotted Tate, but she was sitting alone with his mom. He wondered if his failure with the Jets had anything to do with his cousins not showing up.

Either way, people spilled out of the bleachers and onto the grass outside the fence surrounding the field. The night was room temperature, and anticipation crackled in the air. It reminded Troy of the Helena concert, lots of happy talk and laughter, but plenty of anticipation to see a big show.

The difference for Troy was that now he felt it running
through
him, not just around him.

“I'm the quarterback.” He whispered the words inside his helmet so only he could hear. Still, they sent a shiver through his frame.

On the way out to the field, Seth put a hand on Troy's shoulder pad and pointed to the crowd. “Football is officially alive and well in Summit. We keep doing this, they're gonna have to build a new stadium. Did you know they were talking about tearing this down and just folding the program?”

Troy laughed out loud. “Tell 'em to save up their money. It's gonna have to be twice the size.”

“I'll let the school board know.” Seth slapped Troy on the back. “Hey, enjoy yourself out here tonight. We are gonna bury these guys. I want all the backups in the game halfway through the third quarter. I want everyone to play.”

The team ran like a high-performance engine during warm-ups, with Troy connecting to Chuku, Levi, or Spencer on every single throw. The receivers' feet were quick and precise and their hands sure. Their running back, Jentry Hood, had a spring in his step that promised touchdowns. Troy's head had cleared completely, so he was feeling razor sharp.

He roared with the rest of the team when Seth gathered them in the team room and said, “Let's go out there and smash Morristown! Right now! Let's go!”

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

SMASH MORRISTOWN IS EXACTLY
what they did. Troy and his teammates played with fury, and by the final minutes of the third quarter, the score was 70–12 and the Morristown players just wanted it to end. When the backups went in, Seth found Troy on the sideline and draped an arm over his shoulders. “Nice win, buddy. Everybody plays. You did it.”

Troy looked up. “
You
did it, Seth. You made this all happen.”

Seth gave Troy a one-armed squeeze. “You're the one throwing touchdown passes.”

Troy shook his head. He knew Seth was modest. He'd been that way as a player, always talking about what his teammates did instead of himself. “You moved up here from Atlanta. You've got a huge mansion and now you're living in some crummy apartment in Summit.”

“Hey, it's got running water and electricity,” Seth said.

“Your game room is bigger than the entire apartment,” Troy said. “I just want you to know how much I appreciate it. I think all these guys do. This is . . . amazing.”

Seth looked out over the field and his eyes glazed over with a dreamy look. “You know, buddy, I'm with you on that. This is amazing. I love it.”

“Let's just hope we can keep it up.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

TWO DAYS LATER, THE
Jets played at home against the Bengals.

Troy attended and felt awful.

Whereas the week before players and coaches had looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and wonderment, he now got treated—except from Thane and Chuku's dad—like one of the ball boys. People were polite, but no one really cared. Mr. Cole
wished
him good luck before the game. At the beginning, Coaches Kollar and Crosley glanced at him hopefully from time to time, but Troy had nothing to give them and they stopped before the first half ended. Afterward—even though the Jets won and people were happy—the owner was nowhere to be seen.

The reporters ignored him, too. That was a relief anyway. Ritchie Anderson didn't ask him to talk at the press conference. The football-genius story seemed to be officially dead. Troy found his mom in the tunnel. She had a parking spot in the players' lot underneath the stadium. They got out of there before anyone else.

When they pulled out onto the turnpike, Troy's mom frowned at the road. “I'm sorry, Troy.”

“I just want to get as far away from this place as I can.” He thumped his head against the window.

“If he hadn't already paid you—”

“The money my father
stole
?” he interrupted.

She gave a short nod. “I'd say you could just quit. I hate seeing you have to go through all this. I'm your mother. I'm supposed to make the hurt go away.

“But I feel like you've got to try.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

FOR THE NEXT COUPLE
of weeks, Troy did try.

He didn't focus on his job with the Jets as much as he did learning the game plan for his opponents on Friday nights, but he tried. That's what he told Mr. Cole, and Troy was grateful that the owner seemed almost to have lost interest in him. The coaches and players certainly had. Troy looked at his Sunday outings as the price he had to pay for the joys of playing on a winning football team on which he was the star quarterback.

His own Summit team seemed to only get better with each passing week. Troy was certainly a huge part of the reason, because—along with his line and receivers—he kept improving. Articles began to appear in the smaller, local papers about him and Chuku, the Killer Kombo. Troy's timing on passes, his fakes on bootlegs and play-action passes, made Coach Sindoni pucker his lips from time to time and let out a low whistle that filled Troy with joy.

He was so thrilled that the bad stuff seemed to be nothing more than minor annoyances, like pesky mosquitoes on a wonderful summer evening.

On the morning after the Summit team's sixth win Troy sat undefeated at the kitchen table and opened the Saturday morning newspaper to read about himself. He chewed on the words and gulped them down as if they were the marshmallows in his breakfast cereal.

“Mom.” Troy tapped the paper until she put down her pencil and looked up from a Sudoku puzzle. “This guy called me a ‘phenom.' How about that? I'd rather be that than a genius. Geniuses are a dime a dozen. And they're saying I'm a candidate for the
All-State
team. Can you imagine? As an eighth grader? It's never been done, Mom.”

“Let me see.” Tate leaned over his shoulder. “That's awesome, Troy. Phenom. Cool.”

Troy searched his mind for something enthusiastic to say to Tate, something to return the compliment. The trouble was that things for Tate weren't going so great. Her mom was still stuck in San Diego with her dad, who wasn't doing any better at all. She had made the JV soccer team, which was a pretty big deal as an eighth grader, except for the fact that even though she was evolving into the star player, the team itself had won only two games.

“Thanks, Tate.” That was all Troy could think of.

Troy's mom smiled at the “phenom” news, but something was missing.

“What's wrong, Mom?” Troy asked.

“Well . . .” She took a sip of coffee. “I just wish the Jets were winning as much as Summit.”

Troy frowned at her for raining on his parade. “They've won a couple of games . . . and I'm
trying
, Mom. I am. I said I was, and I
am
.”

“Oh, I'm proud of you, Troy.” Her smile lost its baggage for a moment. “All those touchdowns. Don't think I'm not. But I worry about the Jets. Mr. Cole had such big plans for the team, and all that money. Don't look at me like that—I'm your mom. I'm supposed to worry.”

Troy nodded because he guessed he understood. It wasn't going to dampen his enthusiasm, though. With the team winning and him playing so well, even an annoyance like Grant Reed and his continued wisecracks about the kindergarten corner had become as meaningless as a raspberry seed stuck in his teeth.

“Do you know if we win our next three games it'll be a perfect season?” Troy's voice bubbled. “That's never been done before in Summit High School football history. After that, it'll be on to the playoffs. Think about it, Mom. Seth said Mr. Biondi told him that if we do that, he
knows
we'll get the support for a new stadium. When that happens—with the record we'll have—St. Stephen's isn't going to be the place to be anymore . . . Summit is!”

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

THE FOLLOWING WEDNESDAY, THEY
were at the breakfast table when Tate got a text from Ty, inviting all of them—including Seth—to join him and Thane at a charity party in Manhattan at the Guggenheim Museum.

“Me, too?” Troy craned his neck to see if he was really mentioned in the text or if Tate was making it up. He felt a bit guilty for having let Ty fade from his life. “We haven't even spoken.”

“Chuku is probably going. His dad's on the list.” Tate kept reading her phone. “I guess the mayor is going to be there, and the cast from
Glee.
Wow. That's cool.”

“Chuku doesn't like
Glee.
” Troy just couldn't see Chuku getting excited about some stuffy charity event. “Me neither.”

“Can we go, Ms. White? He's picking us up in a limo.” Tate showed her phone to Troy, practically glowing with delight.

“I love that cheerleading coach. Jane Lynch, right? Sounds fun,” Troy's mom said.

“We've been in plenty of limos,” Troy grumbled.

“Do you want me to ask him who else is gonna be there? Maybe Eli Manning.” Tate started to text Ty back.

“Naw,” Troy said. “Who cares?”

His mom let her spatula clatter into the sink. She set plates of eggs and toast down in front of them both. “Eli Manning? You love Eli Manning, Troy, and you know it.”

“Yeah, but I don't need to be glomming onto him in some crowd.” Troy picked up his fork and broke open his eggs so that orange yolk gushed onto the plate. He didn't want to say how much he loved Eli Manning because the idea of being Ty's guest just didn't sit quite right.

Tate stopped texting. “You don't want to go?”

“No, I'll go.” Troy stuffed some egg into his mouth and talked while he chewed. “It's just no big deal, that's all.”

Tate's phone buzzed. “He sent me a screen shot of the invitation. It's five thousand dollars a couple.
That's
a big deal.”

“Tate, it's not polite to talk about money.” Troy stared at her until she blushed and shrugged and started to eat.

“Tell him we'd love to go, Tate.” Troy's mom sat down and she shot Troy a disapproving look. “
All
of us.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY

THEY DIDN'T EAT DINNER
that night because Thane talked with Troy's mom and said they'd have a ton of food at the party. Troy's mom made him put on some church clothes, which gave him something legitimate to grumble about. He wasn't sure why he wanted to grumble, but he knew part of it was that
he
should be the one picking people up in limos.
He
was the one with a multimillion-dollar contract, not Ty.

When the limo pulled up and beeped, Tate dashed out onto the front porch, then sprang back inside the door. “Check it out! It's a huge Humvee! White! It's like the one on
The Bachelorette
!”

Seth and his mom walked out into the front hall from the kitchen looking like movie stars.

“Nice,” Seth said, peering out the open door and smiling at Tate.

Troy felt as if it was going to be a long night.

Thane and Ty sat in the backseat facing forward, with a space between them. When they all climbed in, Thane said, “Here, Tate. We saved this seat for you, right, Ty?”

Ty's face practically turned purple. When Tate slapped his knee and said hello, all he could do was stutter and mumble something about being sorry to hear about her dad. Troy felt pretty satisfied that the whole way into the city, Ty couldn't find his tongue.

When they climbed out in front of the big museum that looked like an upside-down wedding cake, Troy leaned close to Tate. “A limo can't make you smooth, right?”

Tate shot him a scowl, then turned to Thane. “Thank you for inviting us.”

“Hey.” Thane laughed. “You guys are family.”

Inside, waiters carried trays covered in white linen and loaded up with drinks and fancy stuff to eat that Troy gobbled down: scallops wrapped in bacon, deep-fried shrimp, little triangles of fried cheese, and even mini hot dogs wrapped in puffy blankets of golden dough.

Several players from the Giants and the Jets were there, including Mr. Moore and Chuku, who wore a white Polo shirt with red pants and some Converse sneakers.

Troy fist-bumped Chuku before Chuku spread his grin all around.

“What's up, dawg? I didn't know they let just anybody into this place.” Chuku raised his eyebrows and everyone laughed. Encouraged, Chuku proceeded to work the room, introducing himself to TV and sports stars alike as an equal. It made Troy laugh.

Ty hung back during it all, his eyes rarely leaving Tate, acting so timid he could barely speak. Troy had to admit that he took advantage of the situation by following Chuku's lead, talking with the Giants' massive defensive lineman, Jason Pierre-Paul, and joking with them about who was going to get more quarterback sacks this season as if they were old buddies.

Behind it all, Troy wasn't only trying to put himself on equal footing with Ty, he wanted to send a secret message that Ty
needed
him. If Ty wanted to be close to Tate, being Troy's valued teammate was the best way to do it.

When Eli Manning appeared, though, it was Troy whose tongue got tied. The famous quarterback seemed shy himself, but other people swarmed him, and before Troy knew it one of the PR people was tugging Eli's arm and saying they had to go. Troy stood frozen, missing his chance.

It was Ty who stepped right into the fray and stuck out his hand so that Manning could only knit his brow and shake.

“Eli, you need to meet my cousin. He's the football genius. You know, Troy White?” Ty grabbed Troy's arm and dragged him in front of Eli Manning before putting their hands together to shake. “Wait, let me get a picture.”

Ty stepped back and snapped off a photo on his phone. “Thanks, Eli!”

The PR person looked insulted and quickly hustled Eli away through the crowd. Troy could only stare at his cousin.

Ty gave a small shrug and a cautious smile. “I knew you'd want a picture, and I really feel bad about us not playing together, Troy. Really.”

In an instant, Troy remembered how much he liked his cousin and why.

“Hey, Ty. You know what you gotta do?” Troy put an arm around Ty and steered him toward Tate. “Show Tate that YouTube video of a talking cat you showed me. Tate loves cats.”

When Tate giggled at it, Ty broke out into a monster smile and Troy nudged him even closer.

There was more food on the next level and Troy began to really enjoy himself. When he and his friends found themselves beneath a painting by Marc Chagall, Troy remembered something from his reading and told his friends that the painter was once a poor Russian peasant.

“My man is more than a football genius.” Chuku pulled Troy close in a one-armed hug.

Troy accepted the praise then continued to mingle. His interaction with Ty lifted a weight free from his heart. He felt at home among the colorful lights, the tinkling of glasses, the soft murmur, and the eruptions of polite laughter from rich and famous people raising money for a children's hospital. It was as though he was meant for things like this, meant to be outstanding and live an above-average life. By the time they emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel and looped around a bridge so they could clearly see the bright lights of New York City in their wake, Troy was confident that things were once again going his way.

So when he shook Ty's hand, he grabbed it with the other as well and coaxed another smile onto his cousin's face before he slid out of the car.