The Walk On (42 page)

Alex actually felt faint for a moment. Clearly, Christine did too. Mr. Hillier and Jonas simply stared at Buddy.

“Are you
sure
?” Mr. Hillier said.

“Of course I’m sure,” Buddy said. “That doesn’t mean he did anything. But he was in there a few minutes. Said he’d taken his watch off for the blood test and then couldn’t find it.”

Christine shook her head. “Jake doesn’t wear a watch.”

Alex realized she was right. Jake was always looking at his cell phone for the time.

“Buddy,” Mr. Hillier said. “I don’t want to accuse Jake of anything unless you’re sure.”

“I’m
not
lying,” Buddy said. “And I did
not
touch that blood.”

He was, if nothing else, convincing.

“Now what do we do?” Jonas asked.

“We go see Jake in the cafeteria,” Mr. Hillier said. “Except for you, Christine. You’re going to go talk to Matt.”

Christine reddened a little. “Why should I go talk to Matt?” she said.

“Because he’ll tell you the truth,” Mr. Hillier said. “Hmm …, now that I think of it—Alex, Jonas, you guys go talk to Jake without me. If I walk in with you, Jake’ll freak out. Tell him what you know—and be firm about it. See what he says.”

Alex still wasn’t sure what was going on. He had sensed, at times, that it bothered Jake that he had come in and moved ahead of him on the depth chart. But Jake had never said it was wrong—in fact, he’d made a point of saying it was the
right thing to do, not so much because Jake was a bad player (he wasn’t) but because he was Matt lite running the offense and Alex brought a completely different dimension to it with his arm.

Jealous of him? Sure, Alex could buy that. Defensive about Coach Gordon? Absolutely. But this? He still couldn’t believe it.

Lunch period was winding down when they walked in. Alex spotted Jake sitting with a bunch of juniors—none of them football players.

Matt was standing at a table on the other side of the room with some of the guys on the team. The room was buzzing more than normal: five days without school loomed, as did the pep rally and the game Friday night. Christine took a deep breath and walked in Matt’s direction without saying a word to Alex or Jonas.

Alex took a deep breath too, and he and Jonas headed for Jake’s table. If any of this was making Jonas uptight, he didn’t show it. He was as cool now as in the closing seconds of the games they had pulled out during the regular season.

“Hey, Goldie,” Jake said. “Where’ve you been?”

“Actually, I’ve got some news. You got a minute?” Alex nodded in the direction of the table where he and Jonas usually sat.

“Absolutely,” Jake said, sitting up from his usual slouch and then standing. The three of them went to the table and sat down. Alex knew all eyes from the football table were on them.

“So,” Jake said. “Tell me you got some good news—please tell me that.”

“In about two minutes, they’re going to announce I’ve been cleared,” Alex said. “There was a mistake.”

“That’s
great
!” Jake yelled. “Goldie, I guarantee we’re going to need you Friday. What happened?”

Alex walked through how he had learned about how the blood samples had somehow been switched. He watched Jake’s face carefully as he talked.

“So how in the world did they get switched?” Jake asked. At that moment, his cell phone began pinging. He picked it up. “Google alert on you, Goldie,” he said. He hit a couple of buttons. “Here it is: ‘State clears Chester Heights QB. Blood test was compromised.’ ”

He looked up, smiling.

“Congrats, Alex,” he said. “But I still don’t understand how it happened.”

“Why don’t
you
tell us?” Jonas said, his tone a little bit menacing.

For the first time, Jake’s face betrayed some fear. “Me?” he said. “How would I know anything?”

Jake was clearly lying—the look on his face now was a dead giveaway. Alex could feel his anger swell.

“Hey, Jakey, what time is it?” he asked.

Jake looked at his phone. “It’s 12:01. Why?”

“You told Buddy Thomas you needed to go back into the training room on the day we were tested because you left your watch in there,” Alex said. “Problem is, Jake, you don’t wear a watch.”

Jake’s face lost all color. “So?” he said, knowing he was caught but trying to bluster through somehow.

“Why, Jake?” Alex asked. “How could you do that to me?”

“Let me answer that one, Jakey,” a voice said behind Alex. “I’m pretty sure I know exactly what happened.”

Alex looked behind him. Matt Gordon was standing there with Christine. He grabbed two empty chairs from the next table. Christine sat in one, Matt the other. The bell rang. No one moved.

“Let me begin at the beginning,” he said.

“A lot of this is your fault, Alex,” Matt said, looking right at Alex and calling him by his real name for just about the first time since he’d put “Goldie” on him way back in August. “It started, really, when I first saw you throw a football in preseason. You
do
have a golden arm. I looked at you and thought, he’s just a freshman—by the time he grows and gets stronger, he’s going to be a better quarterback than I can ever dream of being.”

“But—” Alex said.

Matt held up a hand to stop him. “I had two goals this summer: for us to have a great season
and
to put myself in a position by the end of the season to be a big-time D1 recruit. When I saw you, I knew I was a lot farther from being the kind of player I needed to be to get recruited than I’d thought.”

He paused. They were all staring at him. No one said a word. The cafeteria was emptying. None of them noticed.

Matt looked down at the floor. “I panicked,” he continued. “I knew I could never throw the ball like you do—I just don’t have that kind of arm. But I could use my speed and build my strength to the point where I could be a very good college quarterback. There are 126 Division I schools. Maybe twenty have quarterbacks with legitimate NFL arms each year. I didn’t have to be one of those guys. I could be a poor man’s Tebow: big enough and athletic enough to be a very good college QB. If I got to that point, maybe I could even be an NFL tight end or fullback or H-back.

“But I needed to get better—fast. In a fair competition, Goldie, you might have beaten me out by midseason.”

“Not true,” Alex said.

Matt again held up a hand. “You play football well, Goldie, but you don’t
know
football like I do. You aren’t a coach’s son. You haven’t studied the game your whole life. I still had an edge there. But I needed more.

“So I went looking for help—and I found it.”

“Isn’t it hard to find steroids?” Christine asked.

Matt laughed and shook his head. “Not even a little bit. Every team, including ours, has guys on it who know people who know people. You just ask around a little. Took me about a week to make a connection.

“I screwed up twice. First, I didn’t know about the new drug-testing rule. Of all people, I should have known. I found out when my dad got a reminder memo and I happened to see it on his desk. By then it was too late to cycle off before the first test.

“And you know the worst thing about steroids? They work. That’s why so many guys take the risk. I put on fifteen
pounds of solid muscle. I could work out twice a day and not feel tired or sore.

“But when I realized I was caught, I thought I owed it to my dad to let him know.” He looked Alex right in the eye. “I told him I’d quit before they did the test. I said I’d confess to the team and quit, and he could play you instead. It would probably come out sooner or later what I’d done, but at least I wouldn’t have a positive test on my record.

“He said I should just play. He said maybe everything I’d read was wrong and I’d test clean if I got off what I was taking right away. So I stopped. And when my test came back clean, I was stunned.

“But then I heard you tested positive, Alex, and I knew something had happened. I knew there was no way you were taking anything. For one thing, you can’t lift five pounds. For another”—his eyes were starting to glisten—“I know you.”

They were all listening now, mouths agape.

“I went to my father the day they announced you were suspended. I told him it had to be a mistake. He said there was nothing to be done and that it wasn’t my concern. I got angry with him and said it
was
my concern because Alex was my teammate and my friend.

“He waved me off. Then I really got angry and asked him if he’d had anything to do with it. He was furious. He couldn’t believe I’d question his integrity that way, even if there
was
a way to mess with the test—which there wasn’t, he said. He threw me out of his office.”

“But he was lying,” Christine said. “Right, Jake?”

Jake also had tears in his eyes. The bell for fifth period was ringing. They all just stared at him.

“Yes,” Jake said slowly. “He was lying. He called me in the Monday after we beat Chester. He said he needed me to do something that was awful but would be better for everyone on the team in the long run. When he told me what it was, I said no, absolutely not, no way. He said he’d make certain Alex wouldn’t be punished beyond missing the playoffs this year.

“I said it’ll jeopardize his chances to get a scholarship. He insisted it wouldn’t, that as long as Alex tested clean the next three years, colleges would overlook it because he was so talented. He pointed out that a lot of kids with serious criminal records get scholarships because they’re good.”

“That’s true, actually,” Matt said.

Jake nodded. “I still said no. Then he told me that he would
guarantee
that he would get a coach at either a D1 school or at least a Patriot League school to scholarship me in a year. The Patriot League thing got my attention. I know I’m not good enough to play at a big-time school, but a place like Lehigh or Lafayette? I could have a chance at those places.”

“Do they give scholarships?” Jonas asked.

“Yes,” Matt said. “You have to be a good student too, unlike at a lot of the big-time schools, but the scholarships are the same.”

Jake continued. “Coach said, ‘Jake, do this for me and you’ll be
my
son when it comes to a scholarship.’ I asked how I could trust him to follow through on his promise. He just said, ‘If I don’t, you’ll go public with the story, and my career is over.’

“I told him I’d think about it.”

He was looking at Alex now. “There’s no excuse for what I did—none. All I can tell you is I did it because I really need
a scholarship if I’m going to go to college. And Coach was guaranteeing it.”

“But why Alex?” Christine asked. “If Coach Gordon was just trying to save Matt, why not switch vials with someone who doesn’t play? Why bring Alex down when he may have been needed in the playoffs?”

“I think I can answer that one,” Matt said. “My dad wanted Goldie gone. He knew that by next year
everyone
would be saying he should start instead of me. He figured if Goldie tested positive, he’d have to transfer someplace because of the public humiliation.”

He paused and looked Jake in the eye. “And with Goldie gone, you’d have gotten to play more next year too—right, Jakey? It wasn’t
all
about my dad wanting to get rid of Alex. You didn’t mind the idea either.”

Jake looked at Alex. “God, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been sorry since the day they nailed you with this. Matt’s right. I thought I was going to play this year. I’d even thought about not playing next year and coming back a fifth year to be the starter when Matt graduated. Once you showed up, that was out the window.”

“And so you walked into the training room and just switched the labels on the vials,” Matt said. “I’m off the hook, Alex is a dead man walking, and you get a scholarship
and
the chance maybe to start in two years.”

Jake nodded. “It was easy. I just told Buddy I’d left my watch behind. He didn’t care if I went back in there—why should he? I just switched the two labels. Took about five minutes because I was nervous and I was being very careful.”

A teacher Alex didn’t recognize walked in and did a double
take when she saw the group sitting around the table. “You’re all late for fifth period!” she said. “What do you think you’re doing! Get going!”

They were about to stand up when the door opened again and Mr. Hillier walked in.

“It’s okay, Ms. Cohen,” he said. “I called this meeting. The kids all have permission to be here.”

“Oh,” she said, clearly startled. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“No problem,” he said, smiling.

“I can give you all late slips,” he said after she left. “But are you close to a resolution? You can fill me in on details later, but tell me what happens next.”

Again they all looked at one another. It was Matt who finally spoke.

“Well, now that I know what happened, it seems pretty clear,” he said. “I’m going to tell Mr. White that I was doping and that my father arranged to get the samples switched. I’d rather not tell him about Jake.…”

“But, Matt, I’m guilty.…”

“I know you, Jake. And I know my dad. He’s … persuasive. I believe you do feel guilty for what you did,” Matt said, “and even if we don’t make it public, I expect the team will figure it out—and that you’ll pay a pretty steep price. I think that’s enough—unless you disagree, Alex.”