“The big deal is that you’re a chickenshit.”

Griff threw the ball then, straight at Coach. The ball bounced off his barrel chest. Griff turned toward the locker room.

When Coach grabbed him by the shoulder and whipped him around, his helmet nearly flew off, taking his head with it. Before Griff could recover, Coach planted his wide, leathery hand in the center of his chest and shoved. He landed hard on his ass. Pain shimmied up from his tailbone, straight along his spine, and directly into his brain. It hurt so bad, he caught his breath and tears came to his eyes. They were more mortifying than his position on the ground.

“I’m not scared of you!” he shouted up at Coach.

“Do I have your attention now?”

“Why don’t you pick on somebody else for a change? Phillips missed ten of ten today. I don’t see you making him kick till he gets one between the frigging uprights. How many times did Reynolds fumble during the last game? Three? Four? Why aren’t you on his ass? Why is it always mine?”

“Because Phillips and Reynolds don’t have any talent!” Coach seemed to use up all his breath in that one roar. His voice was much softer when he said, “And you do.”

He flicked sweat off his forehead with the back of his thumb. He looked away, then back at Griff, who was still sitting in the dirt because his butt bone hurt too bad to try to stand.

Coach said, “Not another player on this team, not another one in this school, or in any of our rival schools, has talent to match yours, Griff. And you’re pissing it away, feeling sorry for yourself and carrying a chip on your shoulder because your mother was a whore. You’ve had a lousy life up till now, no denying that. But if you let it ruin the rest of your life, who’s the fool? Who will you be spiting? You, that’s who.

“You may not be scared of me, but you’re scared shitless of yourself,” he said, jabbing the space between them with his finger. “Because in spite of yourself, you’re better than the two who made you. You’re smart and good looking. You’ve got more natural athletic ability than I’ve ever seen in any sport. And because of those gifts, you just might make something of yourself.

“And that scares you, ’cause then you wouldn’t be able to wallow in your goddamn self-pity. You wouldn’t be able to hate the world and everybody in it for the shitty hand you were dealt. You wouldn’t have an excuse for being the self-centered, self-absorbed, complete and total jerk that you are.”

Speech over, he stood looking down at Griff a moment longer, then turned away in disgust. “If you’ve got the guts for it, suit up tomorrow and be ready to apply yourself. If not, stay the hell off my team.”

Griff was at practice the following day and for every day after that, and that season he led the team to the state championship, as he did for the three following years. Neither the incident nor Coach’s lecture was ever referred to again. But Griff didn’t forget it, and he knew Coach didn’t.

Their relationship improved. They had ups and downs because Griff constantly pushed him and Ellie to see just how far he could go before they got sick of him and kicked him out.

When he defied his weekend curfew and came in an hour and a half late, they didn’t kick him out, but Coach imposed the worst punishment fathomable-making him wait two months beyond his sixteenth birthday to take his driver’s test and get his license.

They encouraged him to invite friends over, but he never did. He’d never developed friend-making skills and didn’t really have the desire to. Overtures by classmates were rebuffed. Sooner or later people abandoned you, so why bother? In the long run, you were better off keeping to yourself.

Sometimes he caught Ellie looking at him sadly and knew she harbored unspoken worries about him. Maybe she sensed, even then, that the worst was yet to come.

Things rocked along pretty well. Then, early in his junior year, an incident in the locker room got Griff suspended from school for three days. It hadn’t been a fair fight-Griff against five other athletes, three football players and two on the basketball team.

When they were pulled apart by assistant coaches, two of the boys were taken to the emergency room, one with a broken nose, the other needing stitches in his lower lip. The other three had bloody noses and bruised torsos but didn’t require hospitalization.

Griff, instigator of the seemingly unprovoked fight, suffered no more than a few scrapes and a black eye.

“We have no choice, Coach Miller,” the school principal said as he relinquished Griff to him. “Just be glad the parents of the other boys declined to press assault charges. They could have,” he added, glaring at Griff.

Coach took him home, marched him past a subdued Ellie, and confined him to his room for the duration of his suspension. On the evening of the second day, Coach walked into his room unannounced. Griff was lying on his back on the bed, idly tossing a football into the air.

Coach pulled up his desk chair and straddled it backward. “I heard something interesting today.”

Griff continued tossing the football, keeping his eyes on it and the ceiling beyond. His tongue would rot out before he would ask.

“From Robbie Lancelot.”

Griff caught the football against his chest and turned his head toward Coach.

“Robbie asked me to thank you for what you did. And especially for not telling.”

Griff remained silent.

“He figured I was in on whatever it is that you’re not telling. I’m asking you to tell me now.”

Griff pressed the football between his strong fingers, studied the laces, avoided looking at Coach.

“Griff.”

He dropped the football. Sighed. “Lancelot weighs what? A hundred twenty-five, maybe? He’s a nerd, a geek. A pest, you know? People cheat off him during chemistry tests, but otherwise…” He looked over at Coach, who nodded understanding.

“I had finished my workout with weights and went into the locker room. I heard this commotion back by the showers. Those five guys had Robbie backed into a corner. They had his underwear. He was standing there without anything on, and they were making him…you know. Work it. Saying stuff like ‘Are you really, Lance a lot?’ ‘Let’s see this big lance of yours.’ ‘Too bad your lance isn’t as big as your brain.’ Stuff like that.”

He glanced at Coach, then away. “He was crying. Snot was running out his nose. His dick was…he was yanking on it something fierce, but it wasn’t…doing anything.”

“Okay.”

“These guys were giving him hell. So I plowed through them and pulled him away from the wall, walked him to his locker, told him to get his clothes on, wipe his nose for God’s sake, and get the hell out of there.”

“And then went back and beat the crap out of his tormentors.”

“Tried anyhow,” Griff mumbled.

Coach watched him for a long moment, then stood up, replaced the chair beneath the desk, and went to the door. “Ellie says dinner’s in half an hour. You’d better wash up.”

“Coach?” He turned back. “Don’t tell anybody, okay? I’ve only got one more day of suspension, and…and I promised Lancelot.”

“I won’t tell anybody, Griff.”

“Thanks.”

To this day Griff remembered the expression on Coach’s face as he left his room that evening. He was never able to define it, but he knew that something important had happened, that some sort of understanding had passed between them. As far as he knew, Coach had never betrayed his confidence about the incident.

By now he’d made the neighborhood block and for the second time approached the house with the white flowers on either side of the front door and the backyard pool with the slide. He’d wasted enough time. It was do or die.

The two kids with the football were still throwing passes to each other when Griff parked at the curb and got out.