The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(83)

“But you guys really do know I’ve had a lot going on, right?” I said, and I knew how lame that sounded almost before the words were out of my mouth.

“We’ve got a lot going on, too,” Chris Tinelli said quietly. “And our stuff matters just as much to us as your stuff does to you. Maybe more.”

And I knew he was right.

I knew they were all right to call me out like this. I kept telling myself how special they were and how special it was for me to coach them and how, no matter how much craziness I was experiencing in my other football life, this team really was my safe place. When I was with them, I still felt like the person I used to be before I became Front Page Jenny Wolf.

Only now I wasn’t there for them.

You got me.

“So we’ve basically asked Mr. Rubino to keep coaching us the rest of the way,” Chris Tinelli said. “And my dad has offered to help him out.”

“And Mr. Rubino is okay with this?”

“He basically said it was up to us,” Chris said. “He said it wasn’t his team or even your team. It was ours.”

“Mr. Rubino pretty much said what we’re saying to you,” Carlos said. “You’re probably going to run the Wolves for a long time. But we all just get one chance to be high school players, especially on a team this good.”

“Truth is,” Chris Tinelli said, “it’s like we’ve been pretty much coaching ourselves lately, which is kind of a bunch of BS with us this close to maybe winning the first football championship our school has ever won.”

I looked up into the bleachers again.

“Anybody else care to weigh in?”

Noah Glynn, who’d subbed for Chris after he’d gotten mugged and kept us unbeaten that day, stood up.

“We all like you, Coach. I don’t think there’s anybody in this gym who doesn’t like you. But you’re the one always telling us to do our jobs. Except now you’re not doing yours, at least not with us, anyway.”

I stared hard into the faces staring back at me, thinking about how happy I really had been from the first day, being on the field with them. How pure it all was compared to so much of what I’d encountered with the Wolves and to everything that had happened to me and around me because of the Wolves, all the way to the death of John Gallo.

Suddenly I smiled. Couldn’t help myself. There it was.

“Something funny, Coach?” Chris said.

“I was thinking how much better I like things here than where I just came from.”

How much better I like myself here.

“That’s nice to hear,” Chris said. “But if that’s all you got, we sort of need to get out on the field.”

I thought: a guy yesterday offered me four billion dollars for a football team.

But right now this one felt like it was worth more to me.

“There’s one last thing I want to say,” I said to the Hunters Point Bears.

I hesitated.

“Please give me another chance.”





Ninety-Nine



SUDDENLY IT WAS THE morning of the league championship game at Wolves Stadium, the Hunters Point Bears against the Basin Park Patriots.

The Bears had decided that day to keep me on as coach. Had given me a second chance after they held one more team meeting of their own with me out of the gym.

Now I was on the field watching my players warm up, as excited about the big game as they were. Feeling like I was the one back in high school. The Wolves were still winning, were now two victories away from being back in the playoffs. But the Wolves didn’t need me. In the end, these kids decided they did.

Just not nearly as much as I needed them.

I had spent the past couple of weeks focused on them, managing to stay out of the media for the first time since I’d taken over the Wolves.

The city was currently more obsessed with the mysterious death of John Gallo, speculating on almost an hourly basis about what might have driven one of the most powerful men in San Francisco to suicide. There had been more than one story written about the blood feud between Joe Wolf and Gallo and how both of them had died the way they had, in different parts of the bay.

When we were all on the field, a few minutes before the kickoff, I walked over to Chris Tinelli.

“Thanks for taking me back. Because I sure would have hated to miss this.”

He tipped back his helmet and smiled.

“Thanks for letting us use your football stadium.”

“It’s not mine today. It’s yours.”

The Bears just didn’t play that way—weren’t nearly up to what Ryan Morrissey liked to call the circumstances of the occasion, quickly falling behind by two touchdowns. Chris had fumbled a ball away when he got hit from the blind side, and the Patriots had driven down the field for their first touchdown. Carlos had fallen down in the open field, and Basin Park’s star running back, a kid named Mazeeka Brown, had run seventy yards for his team’s second store.

Things had gotten very quiet on the Hunters Point side of Wolves Stadium. With two minutes left in the first half, we had the ball at midfield. I always told the kids to be their best selves as players. I felt like I had to do the same now as a coach, somehow change the energy of the game so that we didn’t go into the locker room still down two scores.