The Extra Yard (11 page)

“I can help you,” he said.

Teddy tried to swallow, couldn't. His throat was that dry. “I know.”

“So you'll let me?”

“Yes,” Teddy said.

There was a huge cheer from the Wildcats fans as Jake Mozdean returned the second-half kickoff to midfield, giving them great field position.

“Just remember when you get out there,” his dad said. “Don't pull back from center without the ball securely in those big hands. Don't leave it on the ground. Just turn and hand it to Jake on first down and get out of the way.”

“Got it.”

“You're playing the most fun position in sports,” David Madden said. “Go have some fun.”

“This is fun?” Teddy said.

He sprinted toward the huddle, thinking Jack had been right, as usual.

Now or never.

T
eddy handled the first snap from Charlie just fine, but then nearly fumbled the ball when he handed it off to Jake, way too high with the ball, almost hitting Jake in his right shoulder pad.

Jake managed to hold on but was dropped for a two-yard loss. It was second-and-twelve. Brian came in with the play.

“Slot screen right,” he said.

It was a short pass to Gus. Mike O'Keeffe, in for Teddy now at tight end, was supposed to get out in front of Gus as quickly as he could, briefly screening the kid covering Gus. It couldn't be a block, and Mike had to act like a receiver running out on a pattern so that the refs wouldn't call an illegal pick. What Mike could do was become a blocker as soon as Gus caught the ball, if he did.

Teddy had seen Jack successfully run the play in practice plenty of times: straighten, turn, throw.

Teddy didn't baby the throw at all. He trusted it, the way Jack had told him to. He probably threw the ball harder than he needed to, not taking any chances that the first pass attempt of his life would be picked off. But Gus caught it. Mike threw a good block. So did Brian, busting it out of the backfield. Gus ran for fifteen yards and a first down.

As Gus ran back to the huddle, Teddy found his mom's face in the stands. She put up her fist. Teddy did the same. He was one-for-one.

The rest of the drive was like a roller coaster ride. Two plays later he did pull away too quickly from Charlie, in too much of a rush to drop back to pass, leaving the ball on the ground. He managed to fall on it right before the Mustangs' nose tackle did. But Jake cleaned that up for him on the next play, running for twelve yards on a quick pitch. Teddy hit Mike on a curl after that. Coach Gilbert—or maybe it was Coach Madden—called for a post pattern, wanting to go for a touchdown right here. Teddy never came close to getting the pass away, buried by a blitzing linebacker. But he held on to the ball.

They finally ended up with first-and-goal at the two. Teddy was sure they'd just give it to Jake and have him pound it in from there. But when Jake came in with the play, Teddy nearly laughed.

“Really?” Teddy said.

“I'm just the messenger,” Jake said.

“Let's do this.”

He pulled away from center, put the ball in Jake's gut, then took it out as Jake plowed into the line, bent over, like he still had the ball. Only Teddy had the ball on his hip, the way his dad had shown Jack how to hide it. Naked bootleg. Touchdown. This time he looked over at his dad, who shrugged and held out his hands, as if he hadn't been able to help himself.

I'll go back to being angry at him later,
Teddy thought.

For now they had a game they were trying to come back and win.

Brian got to the outside for the conversion. It was 13–7. They were on the board. Coach Gilbert had been right. It wasn't the season any of them had expected.

But it sure wasn't dull.

•  •  •

The story of the game for the Wildcats for the rest of the third quarter and into the fourth was the way their defense was playing, doing everything it could to give the offense a chance to take the lead.

Teddy was totally clueless about how good the rest of the league was. He didn't know if Moran was one of the best teams or one of the worst, or how much an early-season loss would hurt them later on. But he couldn't worry about games they were going to play later. He just wanted to win this one. He wanted to see if he could actually be the kind of quarterback, even in his first shot at it, who could bring his team back from being two touchdowns behind and win.

He'd been intercepted once, at the end of the third quarter, trusting his arm
too
much, trying to squeeze a ball in to Mike O'Keeffe between two defenders. Their safety cut in front of Mike and picked the ball off. But then the Mustangs fumbled the ball right back to the Wildcats three plays later.

On the sideline his dad said, “Sometimes the smartest decision a quarterback makes all day is eating the ball.”

“I've been telling myself not to overthink this deal,” Teddy said. “That time I underthought.”

“Welcome to the club, kid,” he said. “There isn't a quarterback alive who hasn't done the same thing, no matter how long he's played the position.”

Jack had stayed on the sidelines, as Teddy had asked him to do. He had tried to stay out of the way, especially when Coach Gilbert and Teddy's dad were talking to Teddy. It was as if Jack knew enough not to give Teddy too much information. Teddy told him at one point that he was afraid his brain might be running out of storage space the way his laptop did.

But before Teddy went back on the field, Jack got with him and said, “If you get a chance, take a shot down the field with Gus. That kid can't cover him deep.”

“I've been a QB for about twenty seconds and now you want me to call an
audible
?”

“Are you kidding?” Jack said, shoving Teddy toward the field with his left hand. “This whole thing is an audible!”

It didn't happen on that series because the Wildcats went three and out, Teddy overthrowing Brian badly on third down. They punted the ball back to the Mustangs, who went three and out themselves and punted the ball back.

Four minutes left in the game. The Wildcats were still down 13–7.

On the sideline David Madden said, “Okay, here's what I think we should do.”

“Dad,” Teddy said. “Just send in the plays, okay? This isn't English class. I don't need an outline.”

David Madden gave him a long look. “You're never easy, are you?”

“I'm me,” Teddy said.

David Madden gave him another long look. “I'm good with that.”

“Good.”

Both teams were tired. It had been that kind of game. But the guys doing the grunt work for the Wildcats, the big boys in the offensive line, seemed less tired than everybody else on the field. They started opening up huge holes for Jake and Brian, so there was no need for Teddy to put the ball in the air. He was happy to keep handing off the ball as he kept an eye on the clock.

He wasn't out here to play a hero game. He just wanted to win. Somebody, probably Jack, had once said that a quarterback was like a point guard in basketball. The only stat that mattered was the final score.

After making five and six and seven yards a pop, the Wildcats finally stalled at the Mustangs' thirty, just under two minutes to go. As Jake Mozdean came running in with the next play, Gus said to Teddy, “I can beat my guy.”

“I know.”

“Let's go for it.”

“Let's see what the play is.”

It was a pass, just not to Gus. Nate Vinton had replaced Mike O'Keeffe at wide receiver after Mike moved over to tight end. The play was called “wideout chains.” It simply meant that the intended receiver, Nate in this case, was to make a cut toward the sideline, and just make sure he was past the first-down markers.

But as Teddy and Gus broke the huddle together, Teddy whispered to him, “Take off.”

Teddy was in the shotgun. Charlie Lyons gave him an easy snap to handle. Teddy made sure to eyeball Nate the whole way. It would have been a major quarterbacking sin if he was throwing to Nate.

Only he wasn't.

He'd called an audible.

He made a sweet pump fake to Nate, then turned and saw that Gus was streaking down the other side of the field, having beaten his man by five yards.

Teddy told himself to trust his arm as he let the ball go. His arm hadn't let him down so far, even when he'd been picked off.

His arm let him down now.

Gus Morales did not.

The ball was underthrown, badly. Teddy had put too much air under it when he saw how open Gus was. He could see it coming down short and behind Gus, like a terrible version of a back-shoulder throw. But Gus turned for the ball before the cornerback covering him did. He was able to put on the brakes and come back on the ball and somehow gather it in at the nine yard line before being knocked out of bounds.

“Dude!”
Gus said when he got back to the huddle, as if that described everything that had just happened. With Gus, that one word, “dude,” could be like a whole speech.

First-and-goal. Teddy didn't even look over at his dad, or Coach Gilbert. He didn't want to see their reaction to him having changed the play they'd sent in.

But all Brian said in the huddle when he brought in the next play was, “Coach Gilbert said that if you're that determined to have your buddy win the game, let's actually give him a chance to win it.”

“That would be me,” Gus said.

“Slot reverse,” Brian said.

“Love it,” Teddy Madden said.

He got under center, took the snap from Charlie, faked a handoff to Brian, turned and pitched the ball to Gus, who was running behind both of them. As soon as Gus had the ball in his hands, running left to right, he turned on the jets, turned the corner, put such a smoking-hot move on the Mustangs' left corner that the kid fell down.

Wildcats 13, Mustangs 13.

On the conversion play, Jake carried three guys with him into the end zone. Now it was 14–13, Mustangs. That was the way the game ended.

T
eddy was having lunch with Jack and Cassie and Gus on his back patio, just after noon on Sunday.

It had been Teddy's mom who'd suggested they all have lunch together and talk about their community service obligation, how they might be able to work together and somehow save the music department and, ultimately, Mrs. Brandon's job.

“I promise not to wear you all out with this,” Alexis Madden said. “Or interfere with the one o'clock football games.”

“Not just any one o'clock game,” Teddy said. “Giants versus Cowboys.”

“I'm aware of that,” his mom said. “I'm actually surprised they haven't declared this a national sports holiday.”

“I've been meaning to ask you,” Cassie said to Teddy. “Now that you're a quarterback, are you giving Eli Manning as much love as Odell Beckham?”

“I have to admit,” Teddy said, “that I am feeling the love a little more for Eli these days.”

“Can we take the football talk off the table for just a few minutes?” Teddy's mom said.

“They'd rather you took the food,” Cassie said.

“If you do, Mrs. Madden, would it be okay if you at least left the chips?” Gus said.

“I sometimes forget what an amusing group this is,” Teddy's mom said.

“Think about it, Mom,” Teddy said. “Would you want me hanging around with a bunch of humorless losers?”

His mom sighed.

“Could we talk about something that's not at all funny for a few minutes?” she said. “Like Mrs. Brandon losing her job?”

Cassie said, “It's awful. You guys think of whoever your favorite coaches have ever been, in any sport. Because that's who Mrs. B is in music. We can't just let them shove her out the door.”

Teddy grinned. “Mom just can't let that happen to a former band member.”

“A
what
?” Cassie said.

“Yup,” Teddy said. “Mom and Mrs. B used to be in a girl singing group.”

“Get out of here!”
Cassie said. “You were rocking out back in the day, Mrs. Madden?”

“I try to limit my singing around the house,” she said. “When the windows are open, it tends to scare the neighbors.”

That much Teddy knew about his mom, even if he hadn't known about the Baubles. She was always listening to one of her favorite radio stations, or playing songs from her iPod on the speakers spread throughout the house. And most of the time she
would
be singing along, still knowing all the words to an amazing number of songs.

Jack said, “So what can we do?”

Teddy's mom told them that the town hadn't explained exactly how much money it would take to keep the music program in place at Walton Middle. But she said she had a rough idea of how much it cost, per student, including the price of instruments; and how much money it cost to stage the big holiday show. Mrs. Brandon wasn't going to lose her job at the school. She also taught history. Music, though, was her first love. She had told Cassie once that getting kids to love music made her feel like a writer getting them to want to read.

“Mrs. Brandon likes the night of the show better than she likes Christmas,” Cassie said. “We can't let them take that away from her too.”

“You mean they might?” Gus said.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “I heard my mom talking about it with my dad the other night. She said the town is pretty dug in on this. Without the money we're talking about raising, no holiday show. And my mom thinks that next year, there will be no Mrs. B. She won't stick around if she can't teach music.”

Teddy's mom nodded her head. “We've basically got six weeks to come up with the money.”

Then she told them that this wasn't just finding a way to accumulate community service hours. This would be a way for them to serve the community at Walton Middle School the way Mrs. Brandon had always served it.