Free The Rise of Rachel Stark by J.A. York Page B

heard from Bob
Davies, who, as the coach of the Rockford Wildcats, was 45 miles
away.
    "Ted," Coach Davies said, "I just
heard that we're suddenly favored to beat you guys
Friday."
    "Well," O'Connor said. He heaved a
big sigh. "I sure hope that's not the case, Bob, but, you know, at
this point I'm not sure of anything."
    "Really?"
    "Yeah. You know what happened that
kind of scared me? When Steve Peterson lit into them and told them,
ordered them actually, to get ready to play Friday, that he
expected them to do that, they just got right up out of their
chairs, one of them said you can expect anything you want, and they
walked right out of the room. I think they went straight down to
the locker room and turned in their uniforms."
    "Wow."
    More grist for the mill. And it
bounced back to Chante with the speed of light.
    Meanwhile, Tabby was calling some
of her old contacts at the Neehawk News and the radio and
television station in the area. The floodgates now were
open.
    Reporters and television cameras
showed up at Chante's football practice that afternoon, and the
first thing they noticed was that Sheldon Beasley, Bull Evenshot,
Jimmy Blaze and Rodney Stark, the sophomore phenom from Tennessee,
were missing.
    Sheldon, Bull, Jimmy and Rodney
took Rachel and left school early and drove up to the cemetery to
avoid the media. But Tabby stayed behind to be their
spokeswoman.
    "I can confirm," Tabby told
reporter after reporter, on camera and off, "that Sheldon Beasley,
Bull Evenshot, Jimmy Blaze and Rodney Stark have left the Chante
High football team."
    Will they return in time for the
game Friday?
    "That depends on the school
administration," Tabby said.
    She tried, with only moderate
success, to explain why the players had quit.
    "Bullying?" said one reporter.
"What's that?"
    Others indicated that one student
"teasing" another, or playing a prank, did not seem like a good
reason to do what the four Chante players were doing.
    She gave some examples of what was
going on at Chante High, but most of the reporters just shook their
heads.
    Moreover, Tabby was battling the
administration for the hearts and minds of the news media. Mr.
Peterson and Coach O'Connor told reporters they were hopeful that
the players would return to the team by Friday.
    And the school released this
statement to the media:
    "Chante High has a proud history
of outstanding academic and athletic achievement. For a few
football players, however well-meaning they might be, to suggest
that some Chante students are now being 'bullied' by others, is not
only misguided, it is patently untrue.
    "The administration and football
coach Ted O'Connor are hopeful that these players will soon return
to the team. They have been urged to do so. If they do, no
punishment awaits them. On the contrary, they will be treated with
the utmost respect by their teammates, just as the vast majority of
Chante students are treated with respect by their peers.
    "The student body at Chante High
is a happy family. Despite this temporary 'bump in the road,' it
will continue to be so."
    The entire statement appeared not
only in the local media, but in the Omaha and Lincoln newspapers as
well.
    Coach O'Connor, complaining that
the "defectors" had already hurt the team, ran the reporters off
the field and banned them from attending the Thursday practice.
Meanwhile, he moved running backs Danny Jackson and Oscar Olney, as
well as second-team replacements for Sheldon and Jimmy, into the
first-team lineup. Wednesday's practice did not go well, "to say
the least," O'Connor told reporters afterward.
    Things were not going so well for
the school administration either. An angry school board convened an
emergency session, closed to the public, in the principal's
office.
    Most of the board members blamed
Mr. Peterson for "letting things get out of control." But a
late-arriving member said she had been listening to a couple of
call-in programs on the radio, and that a wide majority of the
callers