Free Gym Candy by Carl Deuker Page A

quarter, Carlson came our way again. "Notice anything?" he said. We looked onto the field. None of us saw anything. "Check out the Pasco guys. They're all leaning forward; they've all got their hands on their knees, sucking air. Those guys are gassed." He paused while we looked. "Now look at the Rogers players. Standing tall, every last one of them."
    Halfway into the fourth quarter, with the score still 6–0, Pasco had the ball near the fifty. On first down, the quarterback dropped back to pass. Rogers blitzed a safety; the Pasco fullback who was supposed to block him never saw him. The safety blind-sided the quarterback just as he started to pass. The ball floated like a party balloon toward the middle of the field. Rogers's cornerback cut in front of the intended receiver, plucked the ball out of the air, and took off. Fifty ... forty ... thirty ... twenty ... somebody dived at his feet
but came up short ... fifteen ... ten ... five ...
    Touchdown Rogers!
    It was so unexpected that it took the Rogers fans a few seconds to start roaring, but once they started, you'd have sworn fifty thousand people were screaming. The placekicker split the uprights with the extra point, putting Rogers ahead 7–6.
    With the lead, the Rogers guys were supercharged. They held Pasco on downs on the next possession, blowing through the line on each play. The Pasco punter got off a high spiraling punt that pinned Rogers back on their own twenty-yard line. A couple of running plays got Rogers nine yards, leaving them with a third down and one yard to go for a first down.
    In similar spots all game long, Rogers had run the fullback on a dive into the line. This time the quarterback faked the handoff and dropped back to pass. From high above we could see the tight end come wide open in the middle of the field. The pass was perfectly thrown; the tight end caught the ball in stride at the forty-five yard line, and he was off to the races—no Pasco player came within ten yards of him.
    Pasco had one final possession, but they had no life at all. On fourth and ten, their quarterback tossed the ball about five yards behind his intended receiver.
Rogers took over and ran out the clock. When the final horn sounded, DeShawn stood up. "You know something? Our new coach knows football."

4
    A bunch of things happened over the Christmas break, most of them good, one of them strange, and the last one great.
    I turned sixteen the day after school broke for the holidays. My mom took me to the department of licensing off Greenwood. During football season, I hadn't had much time to practice driving. Guys on the team had talked about how they'd flunked on their first try, so I was nervous, but I did okay with everything except parallel parking. At the end, the examiner handed me a sheet with the number 82 on top. "Congratulations," she said.
    I drove the Honda home. When we were inside, my mom gave me a lecture on driving responsibly. She'd printed off the Internet a page with twenty safe-driving rules, and she had me sign at the bottom of the page. "Break any of these," she said, "and you lose your driving privileges. Understood?"
    That next morning my dad came downstairs while I was eating breakfast. "I hear you passed your driving test," he said.
    "First try."
    "It took me three. I kept rolling through stop signs." He poured himself a cup of coffee. "You got anything planned for this morning?"
    "I was going to call Drew."
    "Don't. It's time I taught you how to drive the Jeep. That is, if you want to learn."
    "You bet I want to learn."
    "All right then. Finish your breakfast." He stopped and gave me one of those looks that let you know there's a joke that you're not in on. "I know the perfect place."
    He took Fifteenth across the Ballard Bridge and turned toward Discovery Park. He wound along one of the wooded park roads for a while and then made a quick turn into a driveway and put on the brakes. "Okay, let's switch seats."
    I looked up. In front of