Two-Minute Drill - Mike Lupica [26]
“Dad, it doesn’t matter. If this is all he thinks of me and this is all the other guys—maybe except Chris—think of me, then what am I doing on this team in the first place?”
“Honey,” his mom said, “you don’t know that the rest of the players think that. And by the time Mr. Dolan calms down a little—”
“He seemed pretty calm to me,” Scott said.
His mom smiled, as if smiling away the fact that he’d interrupted her, and said, “I’m sure twisted ankles happen all the time in sports and don’t have to be anybody’s fault.”
“He probably just wanted to act hurt because he was embarrassed that you finally got the best of him,” his dad said.
“Dad, you’re not listening,” Scott said. “This isn’t about Jimmy. It’s about me. I’m turning in my uniform tomorrow night.”
His parents looked at each other, as if deciding which one would go first. Then Scott saw his mom give his dad the tiniest nod.
Mr. Parry took a deep breath. “I’ve always taught you to finish what you started, haven’t I?”
Scott nodded, not liking where this was going.
“We talk about that a lot, right? Even when it’s something like cleaning your room?”
“Dad—”
“Let me finish, okay?”
Another nod, Scott looking his dad in the eyes, because that’s what his dad had taught him to do, from as far back as Scott could remember.
Even if you didn’t like what they were saying.
“But I’ve always told your mother I was never going to force you to play sports,” he said. “And I certainly don’t want sports to ever make you as miserable as you are right now.”
Scott just waited.
“But I do want to ask you a question, pal. Are you quitting because you are this miserable, or just because you got your feelings hurt tonight?”
“I’m doing it because this is a lost cause,” Scott said.
“The season’s not over.”
“For me it is.”
“You can’t let this coach run you off, whether you like him or not,” his dad said. “I had plenty of coaches like this Dolan guy, believe me.”
“Dad,” Scott said, “I’m not you.”
His dad looked at his mom, then back at Scott. “That’s not the problem, son,” he said. “The problem is that tonight you’re not being you.”
Hank Parry stood up, as if saying the conference was over.
“Sleep on it,” he said. “If you still want to quit tomorrow, I’ll come home early and drive you over to the practice field myself.”
Scott hadn’t changed his mind by the time he got up in the morning.
All day at school he felt as if he was keeping this huge secret from Chris, but he wasn’t ready to talk about it with him, especially not at school, where somebody might overhear them. Not that anybody on the team would really care.
He decided to tell Chris when they were studying together—Scott’s house today—later.
They took Chris’s bus after school so they could pick up Brett, then Mrs. Conlan drove them all to Scott’s, telling Chris she’d see him after practice.
His practice, Scott thought, not mine.
Up in his room, with the dogs running around in the backyard, Scott put off telling him a little more. They were working on math today, using a game Scott’s mom had bought for them, called “24.” Not from the TV show 24. This was like a board game, with all these different cards, four numbers on every one of them, in different combinations. You had to figure out how to use some combination of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division so that you ended up with a total of twenty-four.
Scott was having Chris work without a pencil and paper, saying it would help him organize things better inside his head.
“Just another exercise for his brain,” Scott’s mom had said.
Sometimes he thought she was into this as much as he was. Like she was the real head coach in this and Scott was just her assistant.
Scott had turned the whole thing into another competition, him against Chris this time, making it more fair by giving himself the hardest combinations, but still doing the thing that Chris