Game Changers by Mike Lupica

Author:Mike Lupica
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2012-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

Ben still thought Shawn might try to call and apologize on Sunday for what he said. But he didn’t. Didn’t apologize at school on Monday.

So just like that, things had changed between them.

Because of one dropped pass.

They didn’t talk about it on the phone, didn’t talk about it at school, didn’t talk about it at practice. It wasn’t as if they were not talking. They didn’t ignore each other in the hall or on the field. But now it was as if the good stuff that started to happen between them — that day over pizza, then at Shawn’s field when he shared his secret about not wanting to be a quarterback, at McBain Field — had never happened.

Like they’d de-friended each other.

Anybody watching them at practice before their next game, against Parkerville, wouldn’t have thought anything had changed between them. Ben knew better. So did Sam and Coop. And Lily, because Ben would tell her all about it when he got home.

“You gotta stop worrying about this guy,” Sam said to Ben at The Rock on Saturday morning, the two of them first to show up for the Parkerville game. “You keep making excuses for him, but I keep telling you: If he could chump on you like that, he was never going to be your friend.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know how to be a friend any more than he knows how to be a quarterback,” Ben said. “Maybe he just has to learn how.”

Sam said, “Give it up.” Held up a hand and said, “I know, I know, he’s our teammate.”

“He is.”

“And he had a chance to act like one, and didn’t,” Sam said. “Maybe that was the real choke job last Saturday, a bigger one, because being a friend is more important than winning a game.”

Ben said, “How about we just talk about the game we’re going to play and not the one we played last week.”

“Now you’re making sense,” Sam said. “I am so down with that.”

Ben knew something: Once Sam dug in, try moving him. Especially when he thought someone had been disloyal. Sam cared a lot about sports, as much as Ben did. But he didn’t say things just to sound good. He really did care about friendship and loyalty more.

That was his real Bro Code, even if he didn’t talk about his as much as Coop did.

Ben did bring it all back to football now, and not just because he wanted to change the subject from Shawn O’Brien.

He said, “My dad says you’re never as bad as you look when you’re losing and never as good as you look when you’re winning. So how about we find out today if that’s true about the winning part?”

Sam reached out and tapped him some fist, and then ran down the field and Ben threw him the ball he’d been holding in his right hand. And just like that, it wasn’t last Saturday anymore. It was this Saturday. This game against Parkerville. The only one that mattered.

But he knew that the Rams getting their first win of the season wasn’t going to be easy.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.