The Walk On (16 page)

Alex smiled too. “No sir, I didn’t.”

“What was your other question?”

Alex paused, wondering if he should even ask. He’d come this far, though, so he plunged ahead.

“It’s about Steve Garland’s column.”

Alex saw Coach Hillier’s smile fade quickly.

“What about it?”

“He was kind of critical of Coach Gordon. You’re in charge of the paper, so I was wondering …”

“Why I didn’t make him take it out?”

“Yes.”

Coach Hillier crossed his arms.

“That’s a fair question,” he said.

“And?”

“And you’re not the first person to ask it today.”

“So what’s the answer?”

Coach Hillier looked at him for a moment, as if making a decision. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. You’re right, I do have the power to take something out of the paper if I think it’s inaccurate or libelous or unfair. But ninety-nine percent of the time, I let the students make the decisions. That’s how they learn. I try to be especially conscious of not censoring anything where the football team is concerned because there’s an obvious conflict of interest for me as a coach.”

“Who else asked you the question?”

“You should be a reporter,” he said.

“I’m a quarterback,” Alex said. “So who was it?”

Coach Hillier nodded in the direction of midfield, where Coach Gordon was talking to the two captains.

“Coach Gordon?” Alex said.

Another nod.

“The fact is, you got hurt because Coach Gordon kept trying to score in the fourth quarter. People have different opinions about the value of running up the score in a situation like that. I didn’t question Coach Gordon about it at the time, and I’m the offensive coordinator, so I’m responsible too. What Steve wrote was a fair comment whether you agree with it or not. So I left it in.”

“What did Coach Gordon say when you told him that?” Alex asked.

“Nothing,” Coach Hillier said. “Which isn’t good. It means he’s angry.”

“Does that mean something’s going to happen?”

Coach Hillier shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ll see. But if you repeat what I just told you to anyone—including Jonas and especially anyone who works on the newspaper—something
will
happen to you and it won’t be pleasant.”

He smiled when he said it, so Alex smiled too.

“I hear you, Coach,” Alex said. “Loud and clear.”

On Friday, Alex found out that something had, in fact, happened in the wake of Steve Garland’s column.

He had just sat down in his seat for French class, dreading the vocabulary test that was to come, when Christine Whitford came in and made a beeline for him.

“I have to talk to you after class,” she whispered, looking very serious.

“Sure,” he said, wondering what could possibly be so important.

Taking the vocab test would have been tough enough, but his mind kept wandering to what Christine could need to talk about and away from the verbs he was trying to conjugate. He finished just as the bell was sounding and handed the quiz to Mademoiselle Schiff, convinced he had gotten no more than half the questions right.

“Everything okay, Monsieur Myers?” she asked, surprising
him by speaking in English. She had been the only one of Alex’s teachers who had not asked on Monday how he was feeling.

“What?” he asked, not really hearing the question at first. “No. I mean, everything’s fine.”

“You sure? You were looking around a lot during the quiz. Was it difficult for you today?”

“No, it was okay.… I mean, I hope it was okay. I’m just a little distracted.”

She gave him a look that indicated she wasn’t buying what he was telling her but wasn’t going to pursue it. That was a relief because he could see Christine standing just outside the door looking impatient.

“Au revoir, Monsieur Myers,”
Mademoiselle Schiff said, then added,
“Bonne chance ce soir.”

It took Alex a split second to translate, but then he got it—or thought he did. She had said, “Good luck tonight.” Did she mean with Christine?

“Ce soir?”
he replied.

“Oui,”
she said.
“La jeu de football, non?”

“Oh—um,
oui
,” he said.
“Merci.”

“De rien,”
she replied.

Christine was practically tapping her foot by the time he got through the door.

“Sorry,” he said. “Mademoiselle Schiff—”

“Forget it,” she said, taking him by the arm. “Come on. We have to find a place to talk.”

There was no pep rally that afternoon. According to the other guys on the team, Coach Gordon would play that card only three times during the regular season: the opener, the
conference opener, and the finale against Chester. Christine walked briskly down the hall, poked her head into a break room—too crowded—and finally walked outside, where she found a spot under a tree that seemed to suit her.

“What’s going on?” Alex said, truly baffled by now.

“Steve has been banned from tonight’s game,” she said in what would best be described as a screamed whisper.

“Steve?” Then he got it: Steve Garland, the sports editor. “Banned? What do you mean banned?”

“Coach Gordon told Mr. Hillier that Steve couldn’t have a press pass for the game to sit in the press box or to talk to the players or coaches after the game. He said that if Steve wanted to act like a big-shot sportswriter he should get a job at the
Inquirer
or the
Daily News.
”

“That sucks,” he said. “But there’s not much I can do about it. I’m the third-string quarterback.”

“I know,” she said. “But you
can
get some of the players to talk to Steve after the game.”

“I thought he was banned?”

“From the
press box
,” she said, sounding exasperated. “Coach Gordon can’t keep him out of the stadium. Tell your friends on the team to talk to him.”

Alex had seen several of the starters talking to reporters after practice, so he knew they were around, but he didn’t really know how it all worked. No one wanted to talk to him.…

“So you want guys to talk to him outside the locker room, even though Coach Gordon has banned him?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Or maybe get me some of their cell numbers so Steve can call them over the weekend?”

“Do you know what kind of trouble guys will get in if they do that? Coach Gordon would kill them.”

She put her hands on her hips, a move that instantly reminded Alex of his mom. He knew he was now officially a dead man.

“I
know
that,” she said. “They can talk to him off the record. He won’t use their names.”

“How can they be sure of that?” he asked.

The hands were still on the hips. “If he uses their names, they can say they didn’t know they weren’t supposed to talk to him
and
they’ll never speak to him again. He won’t want that to happen.”

Alex sighed. “I’ll see what I can do. I don’t know why, but I’ll try.”

She smiled at him. Which reminded him why he was willing to help.

The game that night was marginally more competitive than the Mercer game had been. Alex could see during warm-ups that Cherry Hill Academy had bigger players than Mercer, but their skill level, once the game began, wasn’t that much better.

The score was 7–7 after one quarter, and Coach Gordon called the team around him at the quarter break to let all the players know how disappointed he was in their performance.

“If you expect to be a good football team,” he said angrily, “you can’t let a team like this think it can play with you!”

Whether it was their coach’s angry words or just the inevitable fact that Cherry Hill didn’t have enough players to compete with them, the Lions scored three second-quarter touchdowns. Matt Gordon ran for two and found Jonas wide open on a thirty-two-yard post pattern for a third.

That seemed to relax everyone a little bit, although Coach
Gordon rambled on at halftime about the need to not let up in the second thirty minutes. They didn’t. The final score was 42–14, with the second-stringers giving up a late touchdown to make it that close. The fourth-quarter play-calling, especially once Jake Bilney came into the game at the end of the third, was much more conservative than it had been a week earlier—mostly straight handoffs. Bilney threw one pass, on a third and fifteen at midfield, and it was intercepted.

He trotted off the field to where Alex was standing next to Matt Gordon.

“I’m not sure why Dad called that play,” Matt said. “That’s not the kind of throw you’re comfortable trying to make.”

“You mean I’m not any good at it,” Jake responded. “It’s the kind of play I might have to make if you ever get hurt. Give your dad credit for knowing what he’s doing. I just need to be better.”

Matt Gordon said nothing in response. He just patted Bilney on the shoulder and said, “Don’t be so tough on yourself, Jake.”

Jake
was
tough on himself—frequently. Alex wondered how much of it had to do with feeling pressure from him as third string. Jake had already commented on that a couple of times.

But whatever Bilney’s fears, Alex never saw the field all night. Bilney knelt down twice—without incident—after Cherry Hill’s late touchdown and everyone shook hands when the clock hit zero.

Alex had already asked Jonas before the game if he would talk to Steve Garland over the weekend and Jonas had said yes, as long as Steve
promised
not to use his name.
Alex thought briefly about asking Matt Gordon but didn’t: it wasn’t fair to ask Matt to betray his father in any way. Matt might have been willing, but that didn’t mean Alex should ask. Instead, he asked Stephen Harvey, who was getting enough playing time to make it worthwhile for Garland to talk to him.

Harvey gave him a look. “I saw that girl after the game last week,” he said. “And I saw her story on you. She’s pretty, but are you sure you want to take this kind of risk to impress her?”

He was speaking very softly. They were standing in the freshman corner of the locker room while everyone else undressed to shower after Coach Gordon’s brief postgame talk.

“I’m not trying to impress her,” Alex said.

“Really?” Harvey said. “What are you trying to do?”

Alex hadn’t really thought about that.

“Okay, maybe I am trying to impress her,” he admitted. “Will you help?”

Harvey thought about it for a moment. “Sure. Why not? But if the guy uses my name, I’m gonna get mad at
you
, not him.”

“Understood,” Alex said, still not sure why he was doing this. Actually, he was sure but suspected it wasn’t a great idea.

Bilney, already dressed, walked over. “Matt and I are going to Hope’s party,” he said. “I heard you were invited too. You going?”

“I think so,” Alex said. “Any reason not to?”

“None at all,” Bilney said. “You’re not the one who can’t complete a pass.”

“Come on,” Alex said. “Third and fifteen, they were waiting for you to throw.”

“Yeah, well, maybe that shouldn’t have been the play call at 42–7. But you know, I know, Matt knows, and even his father knows that you could have made that play work. You can throw left-handed better than I can throw right-handed.”

He wasn’t even smiling a little bit when he said it.