The Scrub: The Faith, Family, and Football Series, Book 2: Faith, Family, and Football Series, #2

By Janson Mancheski

Underdogs like Hoosiers

Curly Lambeau's Ghost

A Rocky-like High School Love Story

The Scrub is a coming-of-age YA story of three adolescents facing insurmountable challenges. Janus is at odds with his football coach; his best friend Barnaby's physical therapist is bullying him, and Asha's alcoholic father controls her life. Yet, the three friends remained determined to overcome the odds and succeed.

The story shines a light on high school's emotional ups and downs. And how often students exist in their private worlds of inner torment. On any given day, you can reach soaring heights or just as easily be beaten down into a dark pit of despair.

 

Despite constant personal setbacks, our trio of plucky friends persists. But when Janus' fortunes reach rock-bottom, fatherless and on his own, he has only one place left to turn—he seeks guidance from the ghost of Curly Lambeau, the legendary Green Bay Packers coach. With dark forces closing in, is it too late for our three friends to fight back on their own? Or will they accept coach Curly's advice that you will always be more powerful through loyalty, friendship and teamwork than going it alone?

 

PRAISE FOR THE SCRUB:

"Mancheski deftly paints adolescence in the same dreamy nostalgia as the early days of football.

A rosy, feel-good sports tale." -- Kirkus Review  (2017)

 

"The fact that this book really held me is a testament to the writing. The somewhat generic

synopsis doesn't begin to hint at the quality of this book. It's a winner." --  American Mensa Book Reviews

By Caroline McCullagh (Writer, Reviewer, Novelist)

 

"To deal with the grief of losing his father, Janus "talks" to the ghost of Earl "Curly" Lambeau through a ten-inch statue. Mancheski's latest novel is written with deep passion and personal memories – not to mention rich Green Bay Packers lore." -- Grant Cousineau.  Book Reviewer for Green Bay Untitled Town – 3rd Annual Writer's Conference Event  April 2019

 

"I was enormously impressed with this. It's a masterful job in virtually every respect.  Continuously suspenseful, but it also packs a powerful emotional punch." 

Editor Tom, Kirkus Reviews, August 2019

 

"It's a beautifully written book. I enjoyed it immensely."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Green Bay Publishing
• Release date: Apr 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781950316229

Book preview

Also by Janson Mancheski:

The Chemist

Trail of Evil

Mask of Bone

Shoot For the Stars

The Scrub

The Greatest Hits—Best of The Chemist Series

The Scrub

Original Copyright © 2021 Janson Mancheski

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, movie script or screenplay or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author/publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Certain stock imagery is maintained. Cover design is the purchasing right of the author and can thus be reproduced only by the author or publisher or in advertising with the author’s legal permission.

Any people or persons depicted by Stock Images are models, and such images being used for illustrative purposes only. Any names used are purely coincidental and are considered fictious for storytelling purposes.

This story is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Original copyright @ 2017 by Janson Mancheski. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the author's written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Original publication 11/21/2017 by Abbott Press 1663 Liberty Drive Bloomington, IN 47403.

Second Revised Reprint 3/20/2021 by Fearless Publishing House

THE SCRUB

ISBN: 978-1-950316-08-3

Printed in the United States of America

THE SCRUB

Janson Mancheski

In memory of Coach Gene Bray, who allowed me to keep plugging along until I achieved a glimmer of success on the gridiron.

And for all the athletes on every sports team who

have reached for the stars but came up a little bit short. Remember that Brett Favre, Tom Brady, and Aaron Rodgers were all labeled "scrubs" in their day before they proved otherwise to the world.

INSPIRED BY MY OWN TRUE STORY

––––––––

Let’s act like champions; 

Let’s practice like champions;   

Let’s play like champions;  

Let’s BE champions.

—Earl Curly Lambeau

––––––––

Theirs is not to make reply, 

Theirs is not to question why,  

Theirs is but to do or die, 

Into the Valley of Death Rode the six hundred.

—The Charge of the Light Brigade   Alfred Lord Tennyson

PRAISE FOR THE SCRUB:

Mancheski deftly paints adolescence in the same dreamy nostalgia as the early days of football. A rosy, feel-good sports tale. —Kirkus Review (2017)

The fact that this book really held me is a testament to the writing. The somewhat generic synopsis doesn't begin to hint at the quality of this book. It's a winner.  —  Caroline McCullagh (Writer, Reviewer, novelist) American Mensa Book Reviews Volume: November/December - 2018

To deal with the grief of losing his father, Janus ‘talks’ to the ghost of Earl Curly Lambeau through a ten-inch statue. Mancheski's latest novel is written with deep passion and personal memories – not to mention rich Green Bay Packers lore.—Grant Cousineau. Book Reviewer for Green Bay Untitled Town – 3rd Annual Writer's Conference Event, April 2019

I was enormously impressed with this. It's a masterful job in virtually every respect. Continuously suspenseful, but it also packs a powerful emotional punch.—Editor Tom, Kirkus Reviews, August 2019

It’s a beautifully written book. I enjoyed it immensely.—Michael McConnell, Reedsy Editor May 2020

Table of Contents

PART ONE: FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

PART TWO: THE SHED

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 51

CHAPTER 52

CHAPTER 53

CHAPTER 54

CHAPTER 55

CHAPTER 56

CHAPTER 57

CHAPTER 58

CHAPTER 59

CHAPTER 60

CHAPTER 61

CHAPTER 62

PART THREE: THE LEGEND OF CURLY’S GHOST

CHAPTER 63

CHAPTER 64

CHAPTER 65

CHAPTER 66

CHAPTER 67

CHAPTER 68

CHAPTER 69

CHAPTER 70

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

AUTHOR’S NOTE

FINAL FOOTNOTE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Check out this sneak peek of The Chemist, also by Janson Mancheski

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

PART ONE

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

_____________________________

CHAPTER 1

Thursday Night

The snickering of goblins. It’s the sound the dead leaves make as my bike tires roll over their dried-up carcasses lying strewn along the gutter.

I’m pedaling near the curb along a narrow side street in an older neighborhood close to the river. My bike has no light, only a reflector beneath the seat in back. I’m wearing a hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and cross-trainers, and am indistinguishable from a thousand other adolescents. I am a shadow.

It’s nighttime. Halloween decorations peer from windows and doorways as I sweep past, sheet ghosts lurking in bushes or strung across front lawns in wisps. Gap-toothed pumpkins stare from porches. Dark figures hide in gloomy hedges, and black cat silhouettes and cornstalks are tacked to front doors.

Halloween is a week away, and kids will TP the park trees across from our high school. It’s an eighty-year tradition: football and paper country. Green Bay is one of the bedrocks where the game sprouted its roots. What many folks don’t know, however, is that the city—as part of the adjacent Fox River Valley—is also the tissue-paper capital of the world. Good joke fodder if you’re a Packers opponent, I suppose.

I cruise past homes with dim yard lights. People move behind closed curtains, and I detect the blue flicker of televisions inside. High tree branches whistle in the breeze. I hear them because I’m free of traffic. I roll onward. More dead leaves crackle, more goblins whisper. I veer from one dark street onto an even darker one, which courses along the nearby river. A lone streetlight illuminates the intersection far ahead.

Lost in thought, I can’t shake our football practice from my skull. Coach Ray called a light workout beneath the stadium lights to prepare for tomorrow night’s game. I missed an easy pass I usually hit, and Coach had a conniption fit. I’m a scrub, a loser, a two-bit quarterback. Blah, blah. Heard it all before.

By game time tomorrow against the Trojans, he’ll be over it.

I’m pedaling like a robot, my mind still on his tirade. My eyes focus on some invisible point ahead of me, and I sweep around a car parked on the shadowy street. As I ease past it, the driver’s door opens. The edge catches my back wheel and spins me around. Then I’m in the air, landing hard on the asphalt. My bike slides a full circle. When the spinning stops, I’m on my back in the middle of the narrow street, stunned by my shoulder-to-face plant. My ball cap lies ten feet away. I see colors. My Raleigh is on its side, the front tire spinning. My head has slapped the pavement and pain throbs above my left ear.

A shriek emits from behind me, and I glance back. A girl my age, wearing leggings and a hoodie, stands next to her open car door, lit by the dome light. I recognize her by a glimpse of short white bangs. Asha Silver. From a few of my classes. She also student-jobs in the library.

I watch as she steps into the street and reaches for a hard, black case lying on its side, halfway open. Despite the shadows, I can see the reflection of a long musical instrument on the asphalt. She lifts it with the care of a heart surgeon.

My flute, she cries and renders me a desperate look. What’s wrong with you? She examines the instrument for damage. I wonder, puzzled, how she can tell in the dark. As if reading my mind, she withdraws her phone and swipes the flashlight app.

It’s pitch dark out, I tell her. You opened your door...as I was riding past.

She stares at me, incredulous. "You’re saying it’s my fault?" She cradles the flute like it’s an injured bird.

Just an accident. The pressure in my head is spreading. I detect sparkles at the edge of my vision. I want to ask if she’s okay, but the words won’t form. I drop my head in the crook of my elbow and shut my eyes. The inky night closes in, and I wonder if I’m still inside my body.

~

It’s a dream or a vision. Maybe memory, or even a premonition. I’m not sure. I’m walking from the football field postgame.

Here comes Matt, my erstwhile teammate, giving me a clap on the shoulder as he trots past. Half our players have taken off their helmets, heading toward the exit gates. Our locker room is twenty yards beyond them, inside the high school.

Some far-off region of my brain reminds me that I’m passed out, stretched on the street, dreaming. It’s as if my brain is fighting to right itself. I’m a coma victim, unconscious yet aware of my surroundings. And now, more images flash across my mind.

Coach Ray approaches as we leave the field: You’re holding the ball too long, Janus! Get rid of it faster. We practice that play ten times a day. And four kids hopping the post-game bleachers not far from us, one a straw-haired boy calling from the stands: Hey, Mann! Can you even throw a pass over ten yards? They laugh together and run off.

Flash ahead to Coach standing in front of our locker room. Sweat, dirt, uniforms stained by mud and grass, sweaty gray undershirts...He’s giving his postgame talk. You’re playing like scared little boys! You’re all a bunch of losers. A team of scrubs. He gives us an exasperated look. Go home. Rest. Shake this off. Next week we face the Southwest Trojans. We handled them in our August scrimmage. But we’ve got to get our act together.

A few scattered shouts of: Yeah! and Right! and Let’s do it!

Then Coach is calling us together—arms, fists, helmets extended into a circle around him for a group chant: Red Devils! Red Devils! Hoo rah-rah!

~

Perhaps it’s minutes or even hours later when I hear my voice slurring, Ooo raw-raaaw. Like a drunk coming off a bender.

What? a thin voice is asking. Hey! You sure you’re okay?

I mumble, Yeah. Dandy. I blink and raise my head, then realize I’m staring into the brown eyes of Asha Silver. I look around. I’m prone in the street, my bike toppled in the shadows near the curb. I rub the tender spot on my temple.

You don’t look it, she says. You went blank for over a minute.

I’m fine. Just a little... I recognize where I am now. Asha’s street, striking her car, bike sliding, and me in the air, crashing. My clunked head. We were arguing about something, but I can’t recall what it was.

"How could you not see me? she demands. It’s a car!"

I rise to one elbow. That’s it! It comes back, we’re arguing about the crash. I’ll pay for any damages, I say. To your car and your, uh, piccolo there.

Her grimace at me screams, Moron!

My eyes adapt to the shadows. Beneath her shock of white hair, I notice a silver stud in one eyebrow. She’s petite and skinny. Asha, right? I ask. From the library?

She says nothing, and I struggle to my feet, as cautious as a fallen mountain climber. You live around here?

Why? You want to set fire to my house next?

Before I can answer, a commotion erupts from the duplex across the lawn. The front door flies open, and a giant figure with a gray ponytail looms. He’s wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and backlit by the inner light. I recognize him from the walks he often takes through the neighborhoods around our high school: Sam Silver. Clicketyclackclick. He’s Asha’s dad.

Hell’s going on out here? His slur is discernible, consistent with what I know of his reputation.

Nothing, Dad. Only a little accident.

The car? Better not be—

We’re cool. This is...he’s a boy from school. Go back to sleep. Asha gives me a pained

look. Her father grumbles and disappears back inside the duplex, the door slamming.

My brain is back in gear. Tumblers fall into place, years of local gossip. Sam Silver Fox Silver was a local celebrity twenty years ago. A Golden Gloves boxer in his day. Good enough for a six-fight pro run. These days, his faded glory qualifies him as a storytelling BS-er in the string of taverns on Main Street. It’s a stretch not far from here, on the opposite side of the river.

I want to slap myself for not putting it together sooner. I’d never realized that the skinny waif Asha from my class is the daughter of the notorious Silver Fox. Small world.

I brush my palms on my jeans and rise. Put my cap back on. The skin of my left hand is scraped from the asphalt. My left shoulder, where I landed, is starting to burn. When I rotate the joint, it seems fine. With a game tomorrow, it better be.

I examine my bike, making sure the parts appear stable. Asha stoops and gathers her flute case. She shoves her phone in the pocket of her hoodie. She turns and strides up the slope of her narrow driveway.

Nice talking to you, Asha, I call. I mount my ride. The chain is in place, and the handlebars seem straight. Let me know if there are any damages.

She calls over her shoulder. Get your eyes checked for night blindness.

I have nothing witty to say, and I watch the duplex door close. I pedal away in the darkness.

A half-block later, I roll past neighborhood homes that appear less familiar in the shadows. My mind bounces from Asha to my laying in the street, back to our practice, then to her dad’s shadowy presence shouting from the doorway.

I relax. I’ve been hit harder playing basketball or even falling off a slide when I was ten. After a good night’s sleep, it will all seem like some weird dream.

Except for how cute Asha Silver looked, screaming at me in the dark.

CHAPTER 2

Friday Night

If this were a movie, it would open with the iconic Curly Lambeau statue holding a football in one outstretched hand, pointing his opposite forefinger at the playing field—Old City Stadium—where he founded the Green Bay Packers.

It’s not a movie. And we, today’s East High Red Devils, are not those rough-and-tumble Packers of yesteryear. Instead, we’re a bunch of high schoolers who are lucky enough to be toiling on the same field where the legendary Earl Curly Lambeau played and coached the Green Bay Packers to six NFL championships.

So similarities end about here.

Fortunately, my incident with Asha’s car last night hasn’t had lasting effects. My bike is okay, as am I. So it’s at this moment, beneath the glowing stadium lights and bleachers thick with rabid fans, that I approach the line of scrimmage.

The butt of Nelson’s white uniform pants appears shiny. He’s bent at the waist, clutching the football with both his taped hands. Four more of my teammates, two on each side, are hunched over as well—all alike in our crimson-and-white East High uniforms, but each a different shape and size.

I stand a yard behind our center and survey the opposing defense. The Southwest Trojans are clad in silver and blue. Satisfied, I step forward and slide my hands against Nelson’s backside. My eyes swivel, seeing everything. I’m ready for the snap.

Capacity crowd. The fans revved. The repeated slam of two thousand feet on aluminum bleachers becomes a freight train pounding louder and louder.

Time moves in slow-motion. Vapor snorts from the lineman’s nostrils, and I spot the bug-eyed stares of psychotic linebackers. I bark the signals. On the third hut, the ball is snapped. Our linemen ahead move with ballet synchronicity. I turn and slip the football into Steff’s arms as our big tailback glides past.

I’m carrying out my fake when I hear the cry quarterbacks dread:

Fumble!

My eyes search the ground. Mud churns from digging cleats, the linemen’s thick ankles, and I spot the brown spheroid bouncing along the dewy grass. I dive and smother the ball as three behemoths crash on top of me.

Whistles blast. A thousand pounds of beef unpile from my back, slow and snarling, snapping the way feral dogs do. It’s a three-yard loss, and it could have been worse. Still, it’s the thing I fear most—looking like some twit who doesn’t know his rear from a hole in the ground.

Without glancing at the sidelines, I know Coach Ray is furious.

I rise, wary of looking at our team bench. Our head man, Coach Raymond Grayna, waves his clipboard in the air. He screams at Coach Bob and Coach Van, our two assistant coaches, and everyone else within earshot. His forehead and cheeks are on fire as if he’s looking for someone to strangle.

Someone resembling me if I were near him.

Across the field, the scoreboard reads East Red Devils 14, Trojans 7.

Third down. We’re winning by a touchdown with 3:24 left in the game. The Trojan defenders are fired up. They jostle one another, aroused that if they stop us one more time, they’ll get the ball back.

Our huddle has descended into chaos. My teammates argue and finger-point over the fumble. I bark with authority, Shut up! Everybody concentrate!

They quiet at my stern words. I’m the voice of reason in our huddle, and they stare at me, mimicking shined deer.

Mathew Matt Christian, our big offensive tackle, trots in and conveys the next play. It’s a third-down pass with eight yards to go. I call it with authority. If I complete this throw, we’ll run out the clock and ice the game.

Break huddle, position at the scrimmage line. I imagine the press box voice of the play-by-play announcer: Here we go, folks. It’s a crisp Friday night in late October, with the East Red Devils facing uncertainty. Eleven angry Trojans are hell-bent on stopping them here and getting the ball back.

I study Nelson’s butt, with the football angled between his gnarled hands. Survey the defense. When I glance out at the tight end, Lee Lash, I noticed his eyes are hooded, and his demeanor is wrong. He may not recall the pass route, whether to turn inside or out to the sideline.

If I call a time-out, Coach Ray will go to prison for strangling me here on the field.

Alarm bells in my head. Flashing lights, imminent disaster. If Lee Lash turns the wrong way as I throw, the ball will be intercepted and returned down the sideline for a touchdown. Tie game. And a two-pointer after that will beat us. The crap-storm will be dumped on me, the quarterback.

I calculate the options and percentages in my head: Do I run the play anyway, guessing which way our receiver turns? Or signal a desperation time-out? We’ll be penalized, sure, but it might save the game.

Or maybe I drop back and search out a secondary receiver. Or hold the ball pat-pat-pat for a deliberate sack, risking a fumble but preserving our victory.

Clicketyclickclack. My internal abacus tabulates these odds instantly.

I step to the line. The crowd noise rings in the earholes of my helmet with the forked Red Devil on the side. I ease behind our center, contemplating the various doomsday scenarios. The Trojan defensive back creeps in as if knowing our secret. The stomping feet in the stands are in full force, tremoring as if an earthquake approaches. I bark the count. The ball is snapped, and I sprint out to the right. I can’t let the outcome ride on what’s going on inside my teammate’s foggy skull. As a quarterback, these are decisions a leader must make.

I fire the pass toward our sidelines. The ball sails above our team bench and bounces and strikes a cheerleader in the calf as she performs a high kick. She drops to the running track as if shot, with the crowd groaning at the incompletion.

Coach Ray’s eyes explode like machine-gun fire in my direction. The punting unit rushes past us onto the field as my teammates and I trot to the sidelines.

It was a glorious spiral—a perfect pass thrown for a game-saving incompletion. We bow our helmets as we depart the field. Beside me, Matt says, Got away, huh?

Yeah, I mumble. Slick ball. I don’t want to throw Lee Lash under the bus.

On the sidelines, Coach Ray’s eyes laser in on me. My teammates veer off like escaping antelopes. I’m the straggler, the target, and the next moment Coach Ray is in my grill, screaming, waving his clipboard, shouting: What? Why? Who? Don’t you know...? How can you be so stupid?

I stay silent and eat the crap sandwich.

Without letting him see, I shift my gaze across the playing field to the scoreboard at the stadium’s north end. It’s close to the river and our practice field. The high trees lining the outer fence are the same sturdy elms kids used to climb to watch the Packers and Curly Lambeau win championships in the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s. I don’t need to look. No kids in the trees are watching us now.

Coach Ray’s harsh words have steered us from the field toward our team bench. He’s not letting up. The rest of his rant is a blur, peppered with variations of: You’re a loser, Janus! You’re a scrub! You’re the reason we’re not winning this game by thirty points.

The thump of our punter booting the ball is the only thing capable of silencing him. Coach turns and stomps back to the sidelines. His forehead is hot enough to fry an egg on.

I want to sulk. Hang on the bench and wallow in my great misfortune. In the air, I detect the odor of Tuf-Skin mixed with the bitterness of adolescent adrenaline. These scents blend with the popcorn and cheesy pretzels from the stands. Instead of pouting, however, I move to the sideline for a better view of the final three minutes.

Behind us, our cheerleaders shout from the running track, begging our defense to Hold that line! Hey!

My mind drifts to the image of Coach Lambeau standing on this same sideline decades ago. This sacred turf. Were there contests where he sacrificed himself to win a tight ball game? Of course, there were. Curly Lambeau, from everything I’ve read, would trade his soul to win a game. It was a matter of survival for both him and the team he founded: the Green Bay Packers.

Curly Lambeau was a big-picture guy.

Our defenders hold the Trojans to a single first down, followed by four futile pass attempts. The gun sounds, putting the final exclamation on the contest. The East High Red Devils now have a record of 4-and-1, and we’re in the thick of a tight conference race.

Despite the spotty play of senior quarterback Janus Mann.

It’s how the local Green Bay Press-Gazette will summarize things in tomorrow’s paper. Of this, I can be sure.

CHAPTER 3

The locker room door opens to the rear parking lot, which is near the tennis courts. There’s a long metal rack there where I park my bike. The white-fenced baseball stadium is across the street, bordering the road that courses along the murky East River. Traffic is stalled on the streets as two hundred vehicles depart the stadium lot. Teammates get rides home from parents. Or they passenger with other students who drive or have access to cars. A handful of us relies on our bikes for transportation.

The stadium foot traffic has cleared by now. The lights shine in the distance. They reflect off the low-hanging October clouds, shrouding our high school in ghostly shadows. At the bike rack, I straddle my three-year-old Raleigh. A few teammates in cars flash me victory signs as they motor past. They know I enjoy riding home alone. It gives me time to think.

I seldom wear a riding helmet. I guess I’m a risk-taker. Indestructible seventeen-year-olds. A cliché, I know, but I suppose it applies. Sometimes I wear a ball cap and sunglasses if it’s too bright out, which is happening less often as autumn grabs hold. My no-headgear excuse? I have just eight blocks of riding home along quiet neighborhood streets. Besides, I’ve spent the last two hours in a sweaty football helmet. My hair is short, and steam rises from my scalp. My head feels cool in the night air.

Despite last night’s header, I’m not going to change my ways. It was a fluke—a one-off, which by now, I’ve shrugged away. Did I mention indestructible seventeen-year-olds?

Matt exits the building carrying his backpack. He’s a big black dude who walks a bit pigeon-toed, his knees compensating for his bulk. He’s wearing black-rimmed geek glasses from the Clark Kent era and uses throwaway contact lenses when he plays.

Don’t let him get to you, Janus. He says this in a voice soft for his bulk. You’re not a loser or a scrub. None of us are.

Our opinions count one point, I tell him. Coach’s count fifty.

Forty of us. One of him. Matt walks to where I straddle my bike. He’s trying to fire us up, get us to play better. That’s all.

I know this. My dad was a football coach, and I understand how they think as a species.

The psychology of the negative. Like the marines, they rip you down to build you back up. Get you to function as a unit and not as individuals. Psych 101. Yet with Coach Grayna, it always feels personal. I understand he’s trying to motivate me. At the same time, it gets to be a little much.

I wave to Matt and pedal off.

Get ’em next week, he calls to my back.

Hoo-rah! I shout, giving him a backhanded wave.

Moments later, I cruise past the massive high school's dark front facade, headed for the streetlights at the corner. The wind blows through the high tree branches in the park across the street. It’s a brisk wind, and I’m reminded that November is already on the way.

~

I turn onto the side streets off Walnut Street, the main drag leading to our high school. Each block I ride moves me farther from the buildings, the postgame congestion. Darkness gathers in stagnant pools between older homes and duplexes. As the neighborhoods become more desolate, the presence of streetlights declines.

I try not to think about our game. I can’t prevent the highlight reel of each play, each series, every high and low, from running through