Losing Is Not an Option Read online

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  Published by Laurel-Leaf

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  New York

  Text copyright © 2003 by Rich Wallace

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers.

  “Dawn” was originally published by Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers in 2002 in the collection One Hot Second, edited by Cathy Young.

  Excerpt from “Nine Triads” from The Sidewalk Racer and Other Poems of Sports and Motion by Lillian Morrison. Copyright © 1965, 1967, 1968, 1977 by Lillian Morrison. Used by permission of Marian Reiner for the author.

  LAUREL-LEAF and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  eISBN: 978-0-307-55757-5

  RL: 5.5

  Reprinted by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers

  v3.1_r1

  FOR PETER JACOBI

  Three excellent wishes:

  to move the body with grace

  to fly without a machine

  to outrun time

  (FROM “NINE TRIADS” BY LILLIAN MORRISON)

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also Available from Laurel-Leaf Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  NIGHT GAME

  NAILED

  THE AMAZING TWO-HEADED BOY

  I VOTED FOR MARY ANN

  IN LETTERS THAT WOULD SOAR A THOUSAND FEET HIGH

  WHAT IT ALL GOES BACK TO

  DAWN

  THANKSGIVING

  LOSING IS NOT AN OPTION

  Night Game

  It was the fourth home game of the season, so it’d be ten in a row for us if we could avoid getting nailed going over the fence. We’d gone six for six the year before, in fifth grade, but they’d tightened security that fall.

  We dressed dark so we wouldn’t be seen, and we knew how to lie in the tall weeds behind the field, timing our move while other kids, less cautious, got caught sneaking in.

  We’d never been caught.

  I was psyched.

  I always walked the four blocks over to Gene’s house before the football games, even though my house was closer to the stadium. This was late October, so the sun was down and the sky was barely visible through the maples, broad enough to meet above the street and still holding some red and amber leaves. I needed a sweatshirt under my coat, but no gloves yet. Definitely not a hat.

  I walked in the street, right down the middle, rarely having to shift to the sidewalk for a passing car. The traffic to the game was out on Main Street, away from our neighborhood. Most people walked to the games anyway, especially on nights like this.

  Gene’s house was like ours. I’d walk right in the back door. His mother would be doing dishes, his father would be reading the paper with a fat cigar in the center of his mouth.

  “Ronny’s here,” Gene’s mom would call, and he’d come racing down the stairs.

  He’d shoot me a look—No fence can stop us—and go over and kiss his mom.

  “Have money?” she asked.

  “All I need.”

  “Pooh-Gene,” his dad said, looking up from the paper, “you going to a dance?”

  “Huh?”

  “Pretty fancy shirt for a football game.”

  “It’ll be under my jacket.”

  His father just gave him the look—amusement mostly—and nodded as he went back to the paper.

  This was a little odd, this button-down pinstriped shirt Gene had on. But he grabbed his jacket and kind of pushed his chin toward the door.

  “Maybe we’ll see you at the game,” his mom said. Both sets of our parents would be there (our older brothers sat the bench; they might get in for a few kickoffs in a blowout, but mostly they played on Monday afternoons with the JV squad). If we saw our parents there, we wouldn’t let on that we knew them.

  Foot traffic was heavy by the time we got to Main Street, and you could feel the banging of the drums six blocks away and the tinny sound of the fight song riding over it.

  We turned up Buchanan Street, moving into a darker zone to approach the field from the far corner. “Dickheadsaywhat?” Gene said.

  “What?”

  He started cracking up.

  “You suck,” I said, laughing, too. He got me with that a couple of times a week. I smacked him on the arm with my fist.

  He stopped walking. “It’s a little early yet,” he said. “Give it about ten minutes.”

  We took a seat on the curb. He took a filter-tipped cigar out of his pocket, about the size of a crayon, and stuck it in his mouth.

  “Where’d you get that?” I asked.

  “Smolinski.” His neighbor, a freshman in high school.

  He lit the cigar and took a long puff, holding the smoke in his mouth. He handed it to me. The inhalation was surprisingly hot but had a hint of vanilla or something mild.

  We both took another puff, then he rubbed it out on the pavement and put it back in his pocket.

  “Save that for later,” he said.

  We’d kicked butt that afternoon, touch football on the street in front of his house. His block had more kids than mine for some reason, and we always managed to get on the same team, whether it was stickball, football, street hockey, or driveway basketball. There were always other kids around, but we stuck together. We were such close friends with each other that all our other friends seemed peripheral. It was like we shared two homes, two sets of parents, and two older brothers. My parents’ photo albums had more pictures of Gene in them than any of my cousins or uncles.

  We usually won. He’d hit me with square-outs all the way down the field (telephone poles marking each goal line). We did better than the Giants or the Jets were doing.

  Two guys were walking down the hill toward us in a hurry. Jerry Boyd and Peter Macey. Peter was in the group that had parties and went to the movies with girls. Jerry was his shadow.

  “Geno,” Peter said as they walked past.

  “What’s up?” Gene said.

  Peter kept walking, turning backward for a few steps. “Going to the game?”

  “Eventually.”

  “See you there.”

  “Right.”

  Gene stood up from the curb, wiped off his pants.

  “What a jerk,” I said, meaning Peter.

  “No,” Gene said. “He’s cool.”

  “He sure thinks so.”

  Peter did stupid stuff like writing girls’ names on his notebook covers. We didn’t want anything to do with that stuff.

  “Time to move,” Gene said, taking a deep breath. He turned to face me squarely. “Quiet,” he said.

  “I know.” I’d almost screwed it up the week
before.

  We walked the length of the stadium but a block up the hill from it, then cut through a yard, crossed the gravel parking lot, and made our way down the grassy hill at the corner of the Sturbridge Building Products lot. We edged along through that little patch of woods till we were diagonally across from the refreshment stand, back by that low, shedlike building where they store the pole-vault mats and the lawn tractor.

  We knelt there, amid the fallen leaves and stray beer cans, surveying the scene.

  Gene nudged my arm. “Falco,” he whispered, staring straight ahead.

  I looked around. Mr. Falco, a janitor from our school, was standing inside the fence about fifteen feet from our hopping spot, a place where the barbed wire atop the chain-link fence was cut and hanging and that tractor shed afforded maximum shelter. His back was to us, but it was obvious why he was stationed there. Too many others had been using this spot.

  We had alternatives, but we’d need to be quiet. We’d need to risk ripped coats and scratched faces, but we’d get in. We’d save the two bucks’ admission.

  “Under?” I whispered.

  He looked around. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  I started to get up.

  “Wait,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The national anthem’s in about five minutes.”

  “Okay.” We slinked back into the shadows.

  This was probably the best football team our town had ever had: 6-1 at this point, headed for the play-offs. The quarterback, Mike Esposito, was being recruited by a long list of colleges. He lived five doors up the street from Gene, and you’d see him shooting baskets in his driveway. He’d walk past often, holding hands with his girlfriend, and was always friendly. He claimed he’d received recruiting interest from Notre Dame and Syracuse, but the papers said most of the attention was coming from Division II schools in state, like Kutztown and Bloomsburg. The word in the neighborhood was that he was dumb as a rock.

  We could see the band taking formation on the field, light blue uniforms trimmed with darker blue. The overhead lights were brilliant to look at, like staring up at the sun, but all the sound, all the light, was focused on the field. Back where we were was dark, quiet, tense.

  The anthem started. We glanced at Mr. Falco, looking out at the field, baseball cap held steadily over his heart. We moved out of the weeds behind the shed, completely shielded from the field. Gene pulled the bottom of the fence toward him. It was loose here; he could lift it ten inches off the ground. I slid under, smelling dirt, and then pushed hard on it, keeping it up so Gene could follow me under. We crouched, waiting for the song to end. We were in.

  The trick was to sprint across the fifty yards of practice field between us and the crowd. Then you could blend in over by the bathrooms and the refreshment stand. That was the moment when we could celebrate, slapping hands with each other and laughing.

  Gene made a motion with his hand for me to stay low, indicating that we’d try to make our way along the inside of the fence for a ways before darting over. Mr. Falco would never catch us, but there were rent-a-cops on duty and always some teachers milling around eating hot dogs.

  The captains were out on the field now for the coin toss, and you could see the cheerleaders with their pom-poms waving and all the players punching shoulder pads and making fists at each other.

  The captains jogged off, then the two teams came on for the kickoff. We knew everybody in the stadium was looking at the field.

  “Now,” he said, and we took off running, pumping our arms and breathing hard. We slowed quickly as we reached the edge of the crowd, separating momentarily as part of the plan and circling around to meet behind the bathrooms.

  “Did somebody say ten in a row?” Gene said as I rejoined him. He had a major grin on his face.

  “Let’s find a seat,” I said.

  “I gotta hit the bathroom first.”

  We went in and he started messing with his hair, trying to get it to lay flat. I just gave him a smirk. Who cared what we looked like?

  We squeezed in about six rows up, down by the twenty-yard line. My heart was still pumping.

  We scored on our first possession, Esposito rolling out, looking toward the end zone. Lenny Hill had a step on his defender, thirty yards up the field, but Esposito tucked the ball in, cut toward the sideline, and simply outran everybody for the touchdown.

  We jumped to our feet and yelled. The band started up. Esposito ran off the field, took off his helmet, and walked to the bench for some water. He stood there, acting like he was oblivious to the crowd, but he was soaking it all in.

  A pack of guys our age and a little older walked by at the bottom of the bleachers, wearing their junior football team jerseys. Tracy Jackson and Gwen Monahan were trailing behind them, scanning the bleachers as they walked.

  Tracy waved when she saw Gene. I glanced over at him; he gave Tracy a barely noticeable nod.

  She put up two fingers and kind of beckoned him, but he didn’t go. She pointed toward the upper row of bleachers, ahead toward the fifty-yard line or so, then smiled and they kept on walking.

  We were two touchdowns ahead by halftime. Gene and I took great pride in never watching the band perform at the half, so we made our way over to buy candy and flat Coke.

  I got a Mounds bar and looked around. Tracy and Gwen and some others were over by the fence, looking at us. At Gene, anyway. He looked at them, then back at me. “Come on,” he said, turning to walk toward the bathrooms again.

  The men’s room was crowded, guys lined up four deep at the urinals. Gene went over to the sink, messed with his hair again. I got on one of the lines.

  He exhaled kind of heavily, then blinked a couple of times. “I’ll meet you out there,” he said.

  I took my time. Even washed my hands. When I came out Gene was over by those girls. He and Tracy were standing a little apart from the group, maybe thirty feet from where I was standing. Then Tracy was walking toward me.

  “Hi, Ronny,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  “Good game, huh?” She and I’d been friendly back in second grade, but she’d veered off into popularity long ago. I didn’t know what to make of this sudden friendliness. I could see Gene with his back to me, talking to Franny Haines, who was a couple of inches taller than he was and had breasts already. I guess Tracy had some, too.

  She said something else, but I wasn’t listening.

  “Ronny?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Give Gene a few minutes, okay?”

  I could have told her that Gene didn’t have any interest in what Franny had to offer and that he didn’t want to hang out with anybody but me. But I figured I’d let her find that out for herself.

  I watched Tracy walk away, looked back at Gene and Franny, and walked slowly toward the end-zone fence. From there I could watch the marching band. I tried to ignore Gene and Franny, but I couldn’t help looking over a few times.

  Gene came over just before halftime ended, as the teams made their way out of the locker rooms.

  “Let’s go,” he said, and we walked back to our spot in the bleachers.

  I wanted to ask what that was all about, but I didn’t. We did the usual second-half routine, yelling every time we scored or made a big gain, but Gene seemed distracted. I felt little and young. Like a sixth grader.

  “I told her I’d walk her home,” he said when the game ended. “You wanna meet me over by Turkey Hill?”

  “I guess so. When?”

  “Give me twenty minutes,” he said. “Maybe a half hour.”

  “Okay.” I stayed in the bleachers while everybody filed out, watching Gene push his way through the crowd. I caught sight of him and Franny leaving through the gate, with Tracy and Gwen and some others following about twenty feet behind.

  I made my way up to street level. I could see Mike Esposito and the head coach out in front of the locker room, talking to a couple of men in ties who were writing in notebooks. Esposito
had his jersey and shoulder pads off, and the dark T-shirt he was wearing was soaked and sticking to his skin.

  I moved away from the crowd, heading back to my neighborhood, reversing the way we’d come earlier.

  Franny lived somewhere uphill and to the left, so I made my way down to Main Street in a hurry. Horns were beeping, celebrating the win, and crowds were gathering at the two pizza places in town. Usually we’d be making noise, too, like we were a big part of that win even though all we did was yell from the bleachers. That night I felt kind of hollow and alone.

  I walked over to Church Street, out of my way, and took my time heading up toward the Turkey Hill store. I’d get another candy bar. I’d wait.

  Church Street is just a block in from Main, running parallel. It was empty and dark. I could hear the river, one block to my right, and had a better look at the sky.

  The fence-hopping streak had reached double figures that night. Ten in a row. This had been the toughest one yet. Or at least it had looked like it would be. It had actually been pretty easy. No less of a rush, though. Next time we’d probably pay the two dollars.

  We were scheduled to meet at nine the next morning for football—Gene, Louie, the Hernandez brothers. In a couple of weeks we’d switch to basketball, then street hockey when the snow came. Stickball as soon as it thawed.

  Ten in a row was a nice solid number. Like a photograph to keep in an album, or like something slippery that I’d try my best to hold on to.

  Nailed

  I’ve never liked this guy Gary. I barely knew him before this year because he went to the Catholic school through sixth grade and lives on the other side of town. But we’re rivals anyway. Both of us small, both into sports, both of us the fastest one in our schools.

  I’d see him at the swimming pool and played against him in Little League and YMCA sports, and he told me to eat shit a couple of times and I told him where to shove it. So we knew each other’s reputations when we got to the middle school. His team beat ours in the Y soccer championships last year, and he made me look bad all game.

  It pissed me off when he made the basketball team and I didn’t. I outplayed him in the tryouts, but the coach—our gym teacher—thinks Gary is hot shit. There’s no way he deserved to make the team over me.