Second Down - Chapter 24

We ended up staying until the diner kicked us all out around eleven-thirty. While that wasn’t all that late, we’d also played a full football game and two hours each way on a bus. I was about dead when one of the juniors dropped me off at home, and slept until almost noon, when a knock at my door woke me up.

I cursed myself for how long I slept. Between giving up time to train with Li and how much of my Saturdays were eaten up by football, I really didn’t have the time to be sleeping away my only fully free day.

I hopped out of bed and half-shambled to my bedroom door, pulling it open and finding my father, dressed for work, standing on the other side.

“You won,” he said, stepping past me into my room and closing the door. He looked almost shell-shocked. “Every single bet.”

“Wha... How much?”

“You now have three thousand four hundred and thirty-eight dollars. That’s twenty-four hundred and seventy-three in profit. How? How on earth were you so certain this was how the game was going to go? Vegas only had a fourteen-point spread, they didn’t see it going this way. And you were positive.”

I knew this moment was coming, and honestly, I’d been dreading it. If there had been any other way to place the bets, I would have, because there was no way to explain how I knew what I knew. I almost thought up a lie but abandoned it just as quickly. Dad was really good at spotting lies, and even if he wasn’t, the entire crux of my argument was ‘trust me.’

I’d be shooting myself in the foot if I tried to bluff my way through this.

“Blake?”

“I was thinking if I should try and make up a reason, but I decided not to. I want you to trust me, and that means I have to be completely honest with you.”

“This isn’t something you get to decide, Blake. If you’re involved in something illegal...”

“I’m not,” I cut in. “Nothing illegal. No one else was involved in how I knew the outcome. But yes, I did know how the game was going to end. Mostly. I knew it was going to be a blowout and somewhere in the range of thirty points.”

“How? Explain it to me.”

“I can’t. There’s no way to describe it that won’t sound completely crazy. I need you to trust me on this.”

“This isn’t something I can just trust you on. This could end badly if you’re doing something you shouldn’t. I mean jail time badly.”

“I’m not. I can promise you that. Look at the evidence. I didn’t just know they’d win, I knew the exact score more or less. There’s no way to throw a game like that and me, a kid living in West Texas, would have to have inside information on what would be the biggest scandal in sports history if this was being thrown. Hundreds of people would have to be involved. I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m being straight with you instead of making up excuses.”

He was quiet for a long time, staring hard at me. I could see he was in cop mode, trying to figure out what I was thinking. If I was lying.

“You make a good point,” he finally said.

“Good, cause I want you to place more bets.”

“Blake, I told you this was a one-time thing.”

“I know what you said. But this isn’t enough for what I need. These next bets are just like the last one, guaranteed. I know exactly what’s going to happen.”

“How?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Then I can’t place the bets.”

I sighed. Round and round we went. Part of me wanted to tell him everything, about the dream, about his death, about Joshua. Of course, I couldn’t stop his death if I was in the nut house.

“If that’s how it has to be, then I won’t be able to bet. Because there’s no explanation I can give you that would make sense. All I can say is that I know what’s going to happen.”

“Blake...”

“So instead,” I continued, rolling right over him. “We need to figure out another way to come up with twelve thousand dollars. And fifteen thousand the year after that. And another fifteen the year after that. Or I give up on my dream of being drafted.”

“That’s not fair.”

“It is. Maybe I make it on just talent, but the people I’m competing against, many of them will have help on top of their talent. I’m trying to find a way to make my dreams happen without putting you and mom into debt. And I think I’ve proven something is happening here that can do it.”

Dad was back to the cop stare. I kept my mouth shut, knowing pushing any harder right now would backfire.

“I must be absolutely crazy,” he finally said, shaking his head.

“That makes two of us.”

“What are these bets you’re thinking about?”

“I don’t know if they even take prop bets like this, but on the twenty-third, there’s going to be some NFL records broken. The Rams are going to have the longest kickoff return in history - a hundred and three yards. And Tyrone Hughes of the Saints is going to set the record for most kickoff returns in a single game. It’s going to be a crazy game.”

“That’s... incredibly specific.” Dad crossed his arms. “A game score is one thing. This kind of record-breaking performance? That’s not something anyone could arrange.”

“I know. And I still can’t tell you how I know.”

“Maybe. What else?”

“November fifth. George Foreman’s going to win the heavyweight title.”

Dad’s eyebrows shot up. “No way in hell. Moorer’s undefeated. Thirty-five and oh. Foreman’s in his mid forties. It’s a miracle that fight is even happening.”

“I know how it sounds. But that’s what’s going to happen.”

“Jesus.” Dad started pacing my room. “Okay. Even if, and this is a massive if, you’re right about all this, we need to be smarter. We can’t just keep winning. Someone’s going to notice.”

“What do you mean?”

“We need some losses mixed in. Strategic ones. Small enough not to hurt too bad, but enough to make the pattern look natural.”

“I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Who wins the Rams-Saints game?”

I wracked my brain, trying to pull up the specifics. “Pretty sure the Saints take it. Close game though.”

“Okay. Here’s what we do. Five hundred on the Saints to win straight up. We’ll put a hundred on a high over-under that we know will lose - that offsets some of the winning pattern. Then another hundred on the longest return record. Not both records though - that’d be too suspicious for anyone to predict. “Then we take everything you’ve got and put it on Foreman.”

“Okay. Sounds good.”

“I must be out of my mind. I need to make these calls somewhere else. Just in case. The last thing your mother needs is to hear me placing all these bets.”

“Dad…”

“Sure, just … don’t make me regret this,” he said, waving off what I was going to say, and heading back downstairs.

I didn’t say anything. I knew I was pushing hard enough as it was. This was going to work though. The problem was, I needed more. I needed more stuff to bet on after this. And maybe something out of sports.

I spent the next several hours alternating between homework and working on my list of stuff to gamble on. Actually, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The dream was still pretty etched in my head, every year I lived of it. Hell, I remembered stuff from the dream better than I remembered stuff from my own life sometimes.

Still, it had to be something that dream me had been paying attention to, which did put a big limit on things.

A few hours later, I headed downstairs to grab something to eat, having slept through lunch. I was almost to the bottom of the stairs when I heard my mother’s voice coming from the kitchen. I stopped cold and started to turn back around. I wasn’t hungry enough to deal with whatever was making her sound so angry.

“No, that’s not acceptable. None of these medications are working.”

I stopped in my tracks. I knew it was wrong to eavesdrop, but I’d been getting more and more worried about her health, and it sounded like Dad had finally gotten her to go see the doctor.

There was a pause, and I could hear her pacing, clearly listening to whatever the other person was saying.

“Don’t tell me to be patient. I’ve been patient. For weeks now, I’ve tried everything you’ve prescribed, and nothing helps.”

Another pause. I eased down a few more steps, careful to avoid the squeaky third one from the bottom.

“The Imitrex isn’t touching it anymore. Neither is the Fioricept. And the preventatives you gave me might as well be sugar pills.”

There was another long silence.

“I don’t care what the insurance company approves! I need something that works. These headaches are killing me. I can barely function.”

The pacing stopped. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter. She sounded like she was begging. Pleading with him.

“You don’t understand. I can’t... I can’t live like this.”

The quiet voice was gone after the next long pause.

“Then what good are you?” she yelled.

The sound of the phone slamming into its cradle made me jump. Then came the soft sounds of crying, muffled like she was covering her face with her hands.

I backed up the stairs as quietly as I could and back to my room. She’d be mad if she knew I was listening, and I knew she didn’t want me seeing her like that.

I needed to talk to Dad about her. He needed to get her to a specialist. There was something wrong, and it wasn’t just headaches. If they were just treating the symptoms, then they’d never find it.

I couldn't spend all of Sunday at home doing homework though. I also had to go to Eduardo's to help out, as part of the plan to keep him out of the game. After meeting Raf and seeing how much influence he clearly had over Eduardo, it was all the more imperative.

It also meant that there was still no rest for the weary. I could have kicked myself for sleeping in so much.

By early afternoon, I found myself on a ladder hammering another nail into the fresh facing board along the south side of the house. The wood was good, sturdy cedar Eduardo's dad had brought back from work, or somewhere. I'd seen the rotted facing boards and suggested they change them out, both because they looked kind of bad and because the rot could spread onto the side boards or even to the edge of the roof, which would allow rodents and other small pests into the attic.

Eduardo's mom had loved the idea, and had wanted to get the facing boards changed for a while, but she said if it was going to be done, it was going to be done right. Which meant a good solid wood and well painted.

And a lot of work from Eduardo and me.

"Hand me another nail?" I called down to Eduardo, who was holding the ladder steady.

"So Melanie Barlow really just came up to you?" He asked as he handed a few more up.

I'd been telling him about the after game trip to the Silver Spoon on Saturday, partially to get him to join us. He was comfortable with the other freshman football players we ate lunch with, but I really thought if he was friends with more of the guys, guys Elijah and the rest wouldn't dare cross, he'd be insulated from their bullshit almost entirely.

He'd also have backup if it ever came to it. I could just imagine what Raf would do if he had to come face to face with Andre, Spencer, and Nathan, each of whom, individually, outweighed Raf by a hundred and fifty pounds.

They would have gone for it. There were enough friends of friends at the diner Saturday, people who didn't play but were part of the circle, that he wouldn't have been out of place at all.

Of course, getting Eduardo to believe that wasn't an easy task. So I was trying to sell the upsides.

"Yeah, caught me totally off guard. She was all 'we should study together sometime' with this look, you know?"

"No, I don't. Girls don't look at me like anything."

I paused mid-swing. "That's because you practically dive under a table whenever one walks by."

"I do not," Eduardo protested, but his voice went quiet like it always did when he was uncomfortable.

"Dude, yesterday in the cafeteria, Sarah Marti asked if she could borrow a pencil and you nearly knocked over your coke, you freaked out so much."

"That's different. I wasn't expecting…"

"That's exactly my point." I said, finishing securing the board and climbed down a few rungs. "You're acting like girls are going to bite you or something."

"Easy for you to say. You're a big shot quarterback. Girls are lining up for you. Besides, have you seen her brother? He's a house."

"Not even close. My last relationship went down in flames and she's dating Mason of all people now. And being quarterback has nothing to do with it. You just need to talk to them like regular people. And Elton is a pretty good guy, he's not going to pound you for talking to his sister."

"Right, regular people who are pretty and smell nice and make me forget how words work."

I couldn't help laughing. "See? You're funny when you relax. Girls like funny guys."

"Blake..." Eduardo's voice had that warning tone.

"I'm serious! You're a good dude. Smart, decent-looking…"

"Blake, please stop describing me."

"Fine, fine. Just think about it" I said as I climbed back up. "Pass me another board."

We got back into the rhythm of it and I started talking about a fight that broke out on Friday in the cafeteria over some kind of nonsense. It wasn't a real fight, just one of those things that happen in high school, but that could get kind of funny.

Once we finished the last board, Eduardo and I headed inside, the amazing smells from the kitchen hitting us. I swear, even if I wasn't trying to stop what could happen in the future, I might still have spent half of each Sunday here fixing stuff, just to get the food his mom made us as a reward.

We weren't a home cooking kind of family, but even the times we did, it was nowhere close to what she fed us. It was a good thing I did so much exercise every week, or I'd have weighed three hundred pounds by now.

We'd come out of the rear of the house from washing up when Alex, Eduardo's brother, came thundering down the stairs, almost bowling into us.

"Hey, watch it," Eduardo said.

Like all older brothers, he found Alex much more annoying than Alex really was. It was that sibling reflex. I could kind of relate to it, although Alex was a good kid and mine was an honest-to-god psychopath, but still.

"Mom said I should help!"

"When did she say that?"

"I don't know. Like twenty minutes ago, but I had to finish something first."

"Yeah, so you just happen to come offer to help when we're on the way back in, after we're done. Just like always."

"We appreciate the offer though," I said, patting Alex on the shoulder. "There's always next time. We're going to have to change out the gutters. They're cracked pretty good on that side of the house."

"Ohh," Alex said, clearly not wanting to actually do any work.

I swear, the kid needed to learn a poker face. Eduardo wasn't much better, shooting me a look for backing up his brother instead of piling on.

"So I was talking to Tommy Newton, and he knows you and I are friends, and he said his brother Calvin said you were really throwing well. He said you threw for like forty yards against Trinity."

Calvin Newton was one of our cornerbacks. I actually didn't know him super well, only in passing, so it was interesting that he was talking to his family about me.

"It was only thirty-five and I'm only as good as my receivers, but yeah, I've been having some good games."

"It sucks that the coach still makes you run the ball all the time. You guys would be winning every game if you could throw more."

"Ha, I'll tell coach you think so. Maybe he'll listen to you, because he doesn't listen to me."

"No," he said, getting shy at the idea I might mention him to anyone.

"Hey, you want to come see a game sometime? I could probably get you down by the field before kickoff. Maybe even sneak you onto the sidelines for a minute."

Alex's eyes went wide. "For real?"

"Blake, you don't have to…" Eduardo started.

"ARE YOU SERIOUS?" Alex practically bounced off the wall.

"Mijo, inside voice," Eduardo's mom said, coming out of the kitchen, probably trying to find out what all the ruckus was about.

"Mom! Blake said I could come to his game! And go on the field!"

"Did he now?" She raised an eyebrow at me, but her smile was warm. "Well, that's very nice of him."

"Thank you thank you thank you!" Alex wrapped his arms around my waist in a tight hug.

"Okay, I think it's just about time. Eduardo, you and Alex go clean up the tools and put up the ladder, and then get Alex washed up and come eat. Blake, come sit down and eat something."

"I should help clean up outside…"

"No no no," Mrs. Guzman said, her tone leaving no room for argument. "You've done more than enough. Sit!"

"But Mom…" Eduardo protested.

"Now, please." She pointed toward the door. "Blake is our guest."

"Really, I don't mind…"

"Mijo." She fixed me with that look all moms seem to master. "Sit."

I sat.

Eduardo looked annoyed and I gave him an apologetic look. He shrugged and took his brother by the shoulders, herding him toward the door. We both knew what mothers were like. We were helpless against them.

The smell of whatever was cooking got even stronger as she took a big spoonful and dropped it on a plate with some freshly made tortillas.

"Those two," Mrs. Guzman said, shaking her head. "Always fighting."

"They're just playing. You should see me and my brother. They're angels compared to us."

That might just be the biggest understatement in history.

"Yes, normal brother stuff that drives their mother crazy," she said, but she was smiling.

"I met Raf the other day," I blurted out.

I had actually wanted to find a moment alone with Eduardo's mom to talk about Raf ever since he had come over, but I hadn't had the chance. He was clearly the biggest issue with keeping Eduardo on the straight and narrow, and I needed to know more about him.

The change in her expression was immediate. Her smile vanished, and it looked as if she had smelled something rotten.

"When?"

"He showed up here. You and Alex were out shopping, and I was working on the guardan with Eduardo."

"That boy has the devil in him. He's no good. No good at all."

"I got that impression."

"He's the reason we moved here. Away from Midland, away from... all of that. Eduardo doesn't know the whole story. But Raf, he's involved with very bad people. Dangerous people. And he doesn't care who he drags down with him. Eduardo looked up to him because he was the older cousin and had a car, but too much. I was very scared for my baby. He wouldn't be the first in the family that boy has poisoned."

"What do you mean?"

"Two of Eduardo's cousins are in prison because of him. Long sentences. They were good boys, like Eduardo. But Raf... he has a way of making trouble sound exciting. He causes good boys to make bad choices."

"So you moved away."

"It's been hard on Hector, with all the driving, but we couldn't ignore the signs. The way Raf started showing up more, talking to Eduardo about easy money, about respect. Just like he did with the others. I didn't know he was coming here. Has he been around more than that one time?"

"Not that I've seen. And Eduardo stood up to him when he was here. Told him to leave."

The relief on her face was palpable. "He did?"

"Yeah. It wasn't easy for him, but he did it."

"Good. That's so good." She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. "You know, Blake, since you and Eduardo became friends, I've seen such a change in him. He's more confident, more focused in school. He talks about the future now."

"I'm glad. I'm really happy we met, and he's my friend. Honestly, getting to know all of you has been amazing."

"Mom!" Alex's voice carried from the back door. "Eduardo won't let me put the tools away!"

"Because you'll mess it up!" Eduardo shouted back.

"Will not!"

Mrs. Guzman rolled her eyes, but her smile had returned.

"Dios mío! Those two..." She pushed back from the table. "Excuse me, Blake. I better go make sure they don't kill each other."

I watched her hurry toward the door, thinking about everything she had said about Raf. I wondered what he had done to get the other two cousins locked up. And if Eduardo knew about it.