Chapter Thirteen

I was startled out of my sleep by a ringing phone. I rolled off the sofa and onto my feet. I’d fallen asleep watching TV. The TV was off. That meant my mother had turned it off. She must have seen the holes in the wall. She knew what I’d done. I felt so ashamed. That was why I hadn’t wanted to see her or talk to her. What was I going to say to her?

The phone kept ringing. I ran to pick it up.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hey, Moose, you just get up?” It was Caleb.

“Just this second.”

“That’s what I figured because you didn’t answer the first few times you were called.”

“You called me earlier?”

“Me and Mrs. Perkins. When she couldn’t get you, she asked if I’d keep trying.”

“Mrs. Perkins called me?”

“She called everybody on the team.”

“Why would she be calling people? Isn’t she off for the summer?” Mrs. Perkins was the school secretary.

“She was calling to set up a meeting. She said Coach wanted everybody to meet in the weight room at ten.”

“Why would there be a meeting?”

“She didn’t tell and I didn’t ask. You got just enough time to get yourself ready and get there.”

“What do you think it’s about?” I asked.

“Probably wants to tell us some more little sayings and make us work harder. Maybe hand out some steroids.”

“Don’t joke about that,” I said.

“Who’s joking? You okay?”

“I’m fine!” I snapped and then instantly regretted my angry tone. He was just worried about me. Heck, I was worried about me. Maybe I should tell Caleb what was happening.

“So I’ll see you there,” Caleb said.

“Sure. Thanks for calling.”

I put the phone down. I didn’t know what this meeting was about, but I felt uneasy, more than uneasy. I looked at my hand. It was swollen and painful to the touch. What an idiot I was!

The pills were back in my gym bag. I hadn’t dumped them, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to take them anymore. Maybe I could just pretend to take them and not tell anybody. No, that wouldn’t work. Tony would be able to tell by the results. No matter how hard I worked over the next eight weeks, I couldn’t get the same results. There didn’t seem to be an answer—at least no answer that didn’t involve disappointing somebody, letting somebody down.

I walked down the hall. I tried to look away, but I couldn’t avoid seeing the holes. I was going to go straight from the meeting to the hardware store. I was going to buy a piece of drywall and some plaster and paint. I couldn’t change what I’d done, but I could have it all fixed before my mother got home from work that night. Then I’d apologize and promise not to ever let something like that happen again. Could I keep that promise?

I was going to ask Caleb to help me fix the wall. He was good with that sort of stuff. That was one of the decisions I’d made. The other was that I was going to talk to him. I’d make him promise not to tell anybody and to let me make my own decision, but to help me with that decision. I could trust him. Actually, there was nobody else I could trust with this.

I bumped into a couple of other guys on the way into the school. They were laughing and joking around. Nobody else seemed worried. Maybe there was nothing to worry about. Maybe being paranoid was just another symptom of steroid use.

I hadn’t taken any this morning. Missing one part of the day wouldn’t make any difference, but would it hurt me?

It was a few minutes before ten, and almost everybody was assembled in the weight room. Caleb came over and sat down beside me.

It was strange being here without loud music pumping through the room or anybody sweating away on the weights. Looking up, I noticed the Wall of Fame and all of the progress charts were gone. Why weren’t they there?

All that was left were the inspirational quotes. I looked at them, from quote to quote. My eyes stopped on one: Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser. That one was positioned on the wall so that I stared right at it when I was doing my squats. I still hated squats and I’d learned to hate that quote. What was wrong with being a good loser? Wasn’t that better than being a bad winner?

“I wonder where Tony is,” Caleb said.

“Maybe he’s in his office.”

Caleb shook his head. “His SUV isn’t in the lot. I don’t think he’s here.”

“Probably coming with Coach Barnes.”

I looked over at the clock. It was exactly 10:00, and Coach Barnes was a stickler for being on time.

Almost on cue, the office door opened. It was Coach Reeves! What was he doing here? I jumped up from my chair, as did everybody else, and we rushed over to him.

“I’m thrilled to see you all again too!” Coach Reeves responded. “But I need you all to sit down. We have to talk.”

We settled back into our seats. If I was anxious before, I was really anxious now.

There was a rattling sound and I realized where it was coming from. Coach was shaking a can of spray paint. He walked over to the wall and started painting. He was spraying over all the sayings that lined the walls. Gone was No Pain, No Gain; gone was Reach for the Stars. He painted over the last half of Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser, so that it only read Show me a good loser. He sprayed over the last part of Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing! Now it read Winning isn’t everything. Finally he sprayed over the word Fame and in its place crudely painted Shame, so it was now the Wall of Shame.

We all sat there in stunned silence, watching him work. This was crazy. Finished, he dropped the can to the floor with a metallic thud.

“Thank you all for coming to my meeting,” Coach Reeves said.

“We’re glad to be here,” Caleb said, “but we didn’t know it was your meeting. Mrs. Perkins just said we were to meet with our coach.”

“You are meeting with your coach. Your old, or, I guess, newest coach.”

“You’re our coach again?” I gasped.

“Are you disappointed, Michael?” Coach Reeves asked.

“No! Never! Of course not! I just don’t understand.”

“That’s what I’m going to explain. They asked me to come out of retirement for one more year, and I agreed. Coach Barnes is gone. His assistant, Tony, is gone.”

“Gone where?” Robbie asked.

Coach shook his head. “That will be determined by the courts.”

“Courts?”

“The chief of police called last night. He wanted the school to know—for you all to know—before the press conference. Yesterday, as part of a large-scale police operation, Jessie McCarthy, along with a number of other professional football players, was arrested and charged with the illegal possession, use and sale of steroids.”

“I saw that on the late news last night,” Robbie said, and a couple of the other guys nodded in agreement. I hadn’t seen or heard anything.

“What hasn’t been announced yet is that, as part of the investigation, Mr. McCarthy revealed his source of illegal drugs.”

I knew what he was going to say.

“The man who has been working as your strength coach, Tony, was subsequently arrested for trafficking in steroids. A search of his apartment, and this office,” Coach Reeves said, gesturing over his shoulder, “revealed massive quantities of steroids.”

I glanced around the room. Lots of the guys had their eyes on the floor. People looked uncomfortable, upset, scared. Nobody looked surprised.

“Tony then revealed that he was not operating alone. Coach Barnes was part of the steroid ring, and this included selling and distributing steroids to high school students. This has been confirmed at his old school.” He paused and looked around. “And I hate to think it, but I suspect it also took place here as well.”

Nobody answered.

“I want to apologize to all of you,” Coach Reeves said.

“You want to apologize to us?” Caleb asked.

“Yes, this mess is all my fault. I should have known better. My instincts told me this was wrong. Why would he want to come to this school? To this town?”

“He wanted us to become champions,” somebody said.

“He wanted you to be his ticket to a college coaching position or even the pros. He thought that if he could take a Division Two school and make it the Division One champion, that everybody would notice and he’d be on his way. The problem was that he didn’t care what, or who, got in his way or who he had to hurt to get there.”

He looked back at the wall. “Winning isn’t everything. There’s nothing wrong with being a good loser. It’s better to lose fairly than to win by cheating.”

What was going to happen now? What was going to happen to me?

“You’re all going to be interviewed by the police,” Coach Reeves said.

My heart rose up into my throat.

“What should we tell them?” Caleb asked.

“You should tell them the truth. The sign of a winner isn’t that he doesn’t make mistakes, but that he owns up to those mistakes.” He paused. “Doesn’t anybody have any questions?”

“And if somebody did use steroids?” Caleb asked. I knew he was asking that question for me.

“I’ve been assured that if they tell the truth, no charges will be laid against them, and we’ll be here—I’ll be here—to help make things right.”

Everybody sat silently. I knew it couldn’t be just me—could it? It didn’t matter. Slowly I got to my feet.

“I’ll talk to them,” I said. “I’ll tell them whatever they need to know.”

Robbie got to his feet. “I’ll talk to them too. I’ll tell them the truth.”

Another guy stood up, then a fourth and a fifth and a sixth, until eleven of us were standing.

“I want you to know—all of you—how proud I am. This was the first step, and that’s often the hardest step, toward us putting things back in order. I want you all to go home now.”

Slowly, silently, everybody shuffled toward the door.

“Michael, could I have a word with you?” Coach Reeves asked.

I moved off to the side and waited until the last guy had left. I felt so awful. I’d let him down. He must be so disappointed in me.

“This is going to be a tough year,” Coach Reeves said. “Thank goodness I have a good captain to help me make this work.”

“After what I did, you still want me to be the captain?” I asked in amazement.

“Now more than ever. You made a mistake and you probably did it because you wanted to help the team, to lead them to victory.”

I nodded my head.

“Coach Barnes was pretty slick. Slick enough to fool me, so why not you too?”

“It was Tony who convinced me.”

“The words may have come out of Tony’s mouth, but they belonged to Coach Barnes. He used those words to seduce you with your own dreams. And do you know the scariest part?”

I shook my head.

“He’s not alone. There are people like him everywhere. They’re not coaches, they’re drug pushers. They spend their time convincing kids, even middle school kids, that they need these drugs to compete or win or get to the next level. People have to stand up to them.”

“But…but…I didn’t.”

“Yes you did. You did it today.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “When you stood up right here, right now, you were showing leadership. Everybody makes mistakes. We’re going to need a good leader to make things right.” He paused. “I don’t know how we’ll do this season, whether we’ll win it all or lose every single game. What I do know is that no matter what the score is, we’ll walk off the field with our heads held high. We’ll walk away knowing that we played the game fair and square and to the best of our ability. Do you know what that makes us?”

I shook my head.

“Winners.”