Out of the Pocket (9 page)

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It was a win-win.

The ball was snapped and I took a deep drop, seven steps. Somers was open over the middle, about eight yards downfi eld.

I wanted more. Rahim was racing down the sideline, about even with their defensive back. I waited two extra seconds and threw it as deep as I could.

As soon as I threw it, I knew it was wrong.

Rahim didn’t have the guy beat at all.

If it was catchable, it would be for either of them, and it could be my first interception of the year. I’d lost my cool, and it would cost me. Luckily, I overthrew both of them by a good fi ve yards.

I sighed, relieved.

“Framingham!” Coach yelled from the sideline. “What the hell was that?” He signaled for a time-out, and violently motioned for me to come over. “What the hell, Framingham? You see something I don’t see?”

“No, Coach.” I took out my mouthpiece and waved it in the warm night breeze.

“So what were you thinking?”

“I wanted to test them deep.”

“Why?” I could see the veins popping out from Coach’s forehead.

“Because I was pissed off,” I said.

Coach shook his head as if he’d never been more certain of anything in his life. “Unacceptable, Bobby. You don’t cost this team a chance to win because you feel something. No damn way. Next time you do that, you’re out of the game. Not to mention a thousand stadium steps a day for the following week.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, looking him directly in the eye.

I felt confi dent. I’d made a mistake, let a momentary emotion get the best of me, and I was taking responsibility.

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Coach nodded at me, accepting my apology, before he turned away to tend to the game plan. I trotted back out to the field, confident that this new change of character would result in a win, and be the major story of the game.

It turned out I was half right. My change of attitude did help the team, and it was one story of the game.

Not the only story, however.

Some of the others involved a hard-nosed Durango team that overcame a bunch of early mistakes to take a fourth-quarter lead at 17–16. Our stellar defense really clamped down on their running game, keeping it in check. Mendez scored once and Rahim scored on a short touchdown pass in the right corner of the end zone that culminated a long, patient drive for us.

Rocky had kicked a thirty-yard field goal to give us a lead early in the fourth quarter.

With less than three minutes remaining, we were trying to run out the clock, driving toward midfield. The crowd was loud and I felt their energy in my hamstrings. On a third-and-long call from our own thirty-five-yard line, I got set in the pocket and saw their biggest defender, number 99, bearing down on me.

My feet froze.

I saw a quick flash of maroon jersey behind him, near the sideline. It was Mendez, and I quickly lobbed a pass toward him. It was a smart idea, but he didn’t see me throw it.

One of their linebackers saw the gift pass and received it gracefully. Had he not inadvertently stepped out of bounds with his next step, he would have returned the interception for a score.

The crowd got quiet. It was the first real mistake I’d made all game, all year. I expected all hell to break loose from Coach and the other guys on the team. I ran to the sideline slowly, deliberately, petrifi ed.

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“That’s just a miscommunication,” Coach said, slapping me on the rear. “That happens when you don’t get good protection. Head up, Bobby.”

I looked around. Was he for real? I’d probably just cost the team the game, and I wasn’t being screamed at? Who was this coach?

When I saw my teammates weren’t cursing at me either, but were focused on the game, I bucked up and stopped thinking of myself.

La Habra got to our fifteen-yard line as time ran under thirty seconds. We were out of time-outs, so they let the clock run down to about five before bringing their kicker out. Basically, Roger Gordon was money.

I watched as Gordon lined himself up, talking to himself, settling himself down. I prepared myself for how I would feel after the kick, knowing he wouldn’t miss, and that my senior season wouldn’t end with us undefeated, as I’d hoped. It was prayer time.

The long snapper snapped the ball back and I watched as the holder received it cleanly and placed it under his finger at the correct angle. I watched Gordon stride toward the ball.

Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a disturbance around the left side of the line of scrimmage.

I saw the maroon-and-gray jersey first, couldn’t make out the 81

on the back, but knew it was Rahim.

He flew untouched past the right-side blocker and extended fully, aiming his hands not toward the ball exactly but toward where it would be a moment later. In the silence, I could almost hear the scrape of ball against bone.

The ball continued upward and I held my breath, wondering if it was possible that Rahim had blocked the kick but that it would still be good. I imagined Rahim’s finger attached to the ball as it sailed through the uprights, but was relieved seconds later as the trajec77

tory changed and the ball wobbled well short and to the right of the goalpost.

Sometimes you feel like you might explode out of your body. The
power of your happiness overwhelms your body and can’t be held by it,
and you feel it rush out of you through your fingers, your hair, every
part of you.

This was one of those moments.

The scream from our sideline was nearly deafening, and it was joined quickly by a roar from our home crowd that threatened to carry for miles. I rushed out to find Rahim, who was underneath a pile of our guys who were screaming and hollering and beating down with celebratory fists. I looked for other bodies to envelop, and found, fi rst, Mendez. We tangled into each other and jumped up and down, ecstatic. Then I saw Austin. I lunged toward him.

“Careful of the ribs, dude!” he yelled.

I finally found Rahim, who was exhausted from the pileup and soaking from the Gatorade shower the guys had given him. “I owe you one!” I yelled as we hugged.

I was psyched up after the game, talking to reporters, when my mother and father found their way to me.

“Yahoo, Bobby Lee! Sensational!” my mother shouted, throwing her arms around me. I hugged her hard, laughing with giddiness into her shoulder.

“Thanks, Mom!” I yelled, over the blaring noise of the crowd around us. I looked to my father, who was standing by her side, smiling contentedly at me.

“Hey, Dad,” I said, hugging him hard. He felt warm and wet.

He hugged me back for a moment before pulling away. “What a game! Other than the one play, you were perfect.”

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“Can you believe Rahim?” I said, pointing to where the other guys were hoisting him up and carrying him around the fi eld.

“You almost lost it there. What you should have done,” he said,

“is tried a pump fake on him. If he bit, you could have gone right around him.”

My father was a great guy, but he had lots of stupid ideas. He was wrong. No way could I have done that. I just stared at him.

“All’s well that ends well,” he said as he started walking toward the car. “See you back at the house.” And with that he was off.

My mother turned around and offered a subtle, silent apology for my father—a shoulder bob and a certain way of creasing her eyes that says,
Don’t Take It Personal, Bobby Lee. He’s Just Like That
.

Carrie was there. She hated football but sometimes she came to my games. She came up behind me and placed her chin on my neck.

“That was one of the finest basketball games I’ve ever seen,” she said. I turned to her and smirked.

“Hockey,” I corrected.

“Look, I may be white, but the name-calling is totally out of place,” she said, kissing me on the cheek and heading out toward her car.
She’s so weird. I love her.

“What were you thinking when you threw the pick?” The usual suspect reporters had come to form their circle around me. I was a little relieved to see them fl ock to Rahim this time. But sure enough, they found me, too.

There were about seven of them looming in front of me, including Finch who was waving a tape recorder in my face along with the rest of them.

What kind of questions are these? What do you think I was thinking? What would you think if a six-foot-six mammoth in a helmet
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was running at you, full speed, with a look somewhere between homicidal and maniacal in his eye?

“I was thinking, ‘Holy crap, I’m about to be mauled,’ ” I said, and the laughs came pouring out, as if from a comedy faucet.

That’s me. Just turn my crank and I’ll gush stupid jokes at you all
night.

“Did you throw to the right place, and Mendez got messed up, or was it your fault?” asked a short guy, new to me.

“Just a miscommunication,” I said, echoing Coach. “It happens sometimes.” They all nodded, as if this answered, rather than restated, their question.

“Did their guy, Levy, get in your face today?” asked a tall, skinny guy, maybe fi fty, who was standing to the right of Finch.

“I have no idea who that is,” I answered.

He rifled through his notes. “Number fifty-five,” he said. “Linebacker?”

“Well, I got knocked down a bunch, so probably,” I said. “Mostly it was number ninety-nine. I saw his number a lot from the ground.”

A couple of them laughed.

The man smiled thinly. “I’m doing a feature article about Gus Levy. He’s one of their linebackers, and he’s Jewish.”

I laughed, feeling a little high from the adrenaline still. “A Jew in Southern California? Stop the presses!” I said. A huge laugh.

I should do stand-up. Or more truthfully, when I’m punch-drunk on adrenaline and dealing with pesky reporters, I should do stand-up.

“A Jewish football player who’s being recruited all over the country,” the man said patiently, his thin smile barely remaining.

“Oh, okay,” I answered. “Cool. But there are some Jewish players in the NFL. That quarterback for Houston. Sage Rosenfels? He’s gay, isn’t he?”

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It took about two seconds for the sirens to start going off in my head.

I meant Jewish, of course, but I don’t think in my whole life I’d had a conversation with anyone about Jewish athletes, let alone thought about it. Gay ones, though, I’d thought a lot about that. It just slipped out, and there was no way to slip it back in.

“Pardon me?” the older reporter said, his ears seeming to dance as they perked up.

“Jewish,” I said. “Did I say? Wow. I don’t know why that was in my . . .”

I looked at Finch. I didn’t mean to, but subconsciously I thought of our interview and I just looked at him. He had this expression on his face, like he was deep in thought, and I wanted to yell out,
No!

No! Stop thinking that.
But I was already looking strange enough to the group of reporters.

I looked away, and that’s when I found myself, once again, staring deep into the eyes of the goateed stranger whom I’d seen after our fi rst game, at Huntington Beach.

He had this glint in his eye that made me blush. He smiled big, a flawless row of white teeth showing, and I lost my train of thought completely.

“You think you have a shot at a perfect season?” said Finch, and I came to, thankful for the question.

“I think if we win all our games, we have a good shot,” I said, and more laughs.

“You’re Yogi Berra!” shouted one of the old-timers, a guy with chronic bad breath and even more chronic bad suits. He shouted as if he were threatening me, though in a happy sort of way.

Totally demented.

I smiled, fielded more inane questions, and headed to the showers.

81

I took my time showering and changing, and when I left the locker room, all my buddies were already gone. There was some party at Colby’s, and I just didn’t feel like dealing with it. I was glad to escape to my car, alone.

But once I got outside, I realized I wasn’t quite by myself yet.

There was Finch Gozman, standing alone under a streetlight in the parking lot, his head hung low.

He was standing right in my way, and I was like, great. There was no way I could get to my car without walking near him, unless I took some insane circular route that only a person with OCD would take.

So I exhaled, counted to ten in my head, and approached him.

“Hey, Finch,” I said.

“Hey, Bobby Framingham,” he answered, looking at his cell phone. He stared at it for a few seconds, shook his head, and put it in his pocket. He looked sad.

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“You okay?”

He looked off in the distance. “Defi ne
okay,
” he said.

Finch wasn’t a friend, obviously, but I had sort of a soft spot for people like that, who didn’t fit in. That’s probably why Carrie was my—whatever she was. We stood silently under the streetlight for a few moments while I debated with myself whether I had enough energy to take on someone else’s problems.

It surprised me a little that I was very okay with it. The game had left me in a pretty good mood, and Finch’s issues seemed like a welcome break from my own.

“What happened?” I asked.

Finch looked into my eyes and it was like he was searching to see if it was okay to talk to me. Sometimes I was reminded that I was not just another guy to a lot of people at school. People, especially ones like Finch, looked up to me. He studied me for a while, like he was trying to psych out my motive, before he finally spoke.

“My mom, she just won’t stop,” he said.

I nodded.

“It’s Friday night. And I didn’t even go to the game for fun. I went because it’s my job. She just picks and picks. ‘Will you have enough time to study over the weekend? How do you expect to get into Stanford if you waste your time going to football games?’ ”

“Wow,” I said.

“It’s like, if I don’t get into Stanford . . .” He closed his eyes and for a second I panicked because I thought he was going to cry.

But he didn’t cry. He just looked beat-up, so I put my hand on his shoulder.

“There’s just a lot of pressure,” he said, regarding my hand as if I’d just put an exotic parrot on his shoulder.