The Hard Count(111)

I breathe in deep.

“I was afraid of you. I know that’s not what you expect to hear from someone like me. I’m the kid from West End—I must be tough, I must be a thug, I must have a gun in my home, I must be in a gang…I bet he’s killed someone, I bet his brother’s in prison. You can see why I was afraid. I was so afraid that I would get here, and that’s all you would see—a picture in your heads that was so far from the truth, but too impossible to overcome.”

“I was afraid of discrimination. Of intolerance. Of ignorance. I remember the meetings the admissions board held when I was in junior high, the ones about getting rid of the scholarship program because it exposed good kids to at-risk youth. At. Risk. Youth. That phrase…it’s too small. It’s pejorative. It’s not entirely wrong. Growing up in West End made me. That risk…it toughened me up. It made me fast. It made me fight. When I was a kid, I remember hiding on the floor of my room on Friday nights so stray bullets wouldn’t harm me. I hated my home. I loved it. I would never choose it for someone—never wish for my child to feel the fear I did. I could never imagine growing up somewhere else. That fear made me. That fear is the reason I stand up here; the reason I pushed myself to learn, to question, to try—to argue. That fear was balanced out by faith.”

“I was so afraid of you,” I say, stopping and folding the paper, looking to the flat stone in front of me. These words…I know them by heart now. They’re about Reagan and the friends I’ve made, but they’re also about Vincent. “You made me, too. You lifted me. You pushed me. You believed in me. You saw the boy from West End. I surprised you. But you—you surprised me, too.”

“This life, our lives—they are colored by expectations. It’s the surprises, though—how we deviate—that define us. Our time here at Cornwall, together…it’s so very short. Today, we’ll all stand on this field one final time and move a tassel on our caps to mark an end. We’ll blink, and then we’ll begin. We’ll be afraid, but we’ll fight. We’ll push, and we’ll remember who we were, what we thought we knew, what we know now, and how it’s made us—and then we’ll surprise. We’ll shock. We’ll amaze.”

“When I was afraid, you challenged me. And now, I dare you. I defy you to be great. Do not just be tradition—break tradition. As only you can.”

I fold the paper again and push it in my pocket, shaking my head as my mouth falls into its comfortable smirk.

“Do you have any idea how much you mean to me, brother?”

I know he won’t answer, but I think he hears me anyhow. My brother could have died a dishonorable death. He didn’t. His story is this blueprint for me, even the dark parts. I run my palm over my face, my eyes burning as I hold his memory close.

“I wish you could have met Reagan,” I say, my smile growing, knowing how much my brother would tease me for falling for a girl so much like me despite our differences.

“She’s so talented. The film she made is going to air on the public television station in California sometime in the fall. She had applied to USC as a backup, but she swears I’m not her only reason for wanting to go there.”

“Truthfully, though?” I look down at my fidgeting hands, laughing to myself. “Vincent, I wouldn’t care if I was the only reason. Is that bad? It’s bad, isn’t it? It’s selfish. I know it is. But this girl, Vincent.”

I run my hand over my eyes again and move it to my open mouth then my chin, laughing into my palm.

“She has me so completely, and the only thing I can compare it to is the way you said Alyssa hit your heart. Like there’s nothing too crazy, too far, too much...”

I stretch my legs out in front of me and rest back on my palms again, feeling my brother there with me. I don’t speak any more. My nerves are calmed, and I know that when I step in front of my graduating class as their valedictorian in just a few hours, I’ll be all right. I know when I pack everything I own—however slight those possessions may be—and pile into my barely-running car, that I’ll make it all the way. I know that when I’m throwing the ball down the field, competing for the starting job at USC, that there’s going to be a guy building up some young quarterback on the field in Alabama at the exact same time. And he’ll be rooting for me. All because I surprised him.

I stand, shaking out the damp shirt I’d been sitting on and tucking it in the band of my shorts for the walk home. I bend down over Vincent’s stone, balling my hand into a fist and resting it against the cool cement until I feel him tap back. My knuckles remain cold, and eventually I stand, pushing my hands into my pockets to begin the long walk home alone.

Alone, but not for long.

I love my home.

And I love what it made me.



THE END





Acknowledgments


This book is about more than just football. It’s about family. And it’s about the way people see other people. I grew up in a neighborhood much like West End. It wasn’t always that way, but somewhere, during the years, shots rang closer, gangs took over, and people who called that place home for years started to move away. Others stayed. And the horrible things that eventually happened on those streets—it wasn’t their fault.

Drugs. The allure of a quick buck. Gangs, and a world that let kids grow up without parents and where money was thin but bills kept climbing, fostering desperation. Those were the circumstances. The people, though—they were good.