Football Hero (2008) by Tim Green

fifteen minutes to make their pick in the first round. Ty glued his eyes to the Jets’ desk. Two men in suits sat whispering to each other. One of them held a phone clutched to his ear.
    “What the heck is taking them so long?” Morty muttered.
    Finally, one of the men walked up to the stage and handed a sheet of paper to the commissioner, who stepped up to the podium.
    “With the third pick of the draft,” he said, looking up and searching the crowd.
    MacDougal leaned forward in his seat and began to stand up.

CHAPTER TWENTY
    THE COMMISSIONER TOOK A breath and continued. “The New York Jets select Tiger Lewis, wide receiver from Syracuse.”
    Many of the Jets fans exploded with glee, cheering so loud that Ty heard the sound in waves.
    Morty jumped up with them, hugging Ty and Thane together. An enormous smile lit Thane’s face and tears sparkled in his eyes. Ty didn’t know the extent of his own happiness until he felt the tears running freely down his own cheeks.
     
    Charlotte shed the next set of tears. She sat on the edge of her bed, looking down and holding the iPod in both hands as if it were a small animal or a fragile butterfly. Her long dirty blond hair hung in twostraight curtains on either side of her face. Ty stood at the foot of the bed with his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans.
    “Do you like it?” Ty asked. “It’s preloaded.”
    “It’s,” she said, looking up with a sniff and blinking the tears from her big round eyes, “the nicest thing anyone ever gave me.”
    Ty looked down and nudged a hole in the thin carpet with the toe of his sneaker.
    “It’s really from Thane,” he said. “It was his stuff.”
    “I feel like the mouse with the lion in that story,” she said, sniffling and wiping at the corner of her eye.
    “What could I ever do this nice for you, right? I don’t have a dime to my name. But I will. Some thorn in your foot or something.”
    An embarrassed smile flickered onto Charlotte’s face before she laughed, stuffed the earpieces into her ears, cranked up some music, and began to bob her head to the beat. Then she reached out, took his hand from its pocket, and gave it a squeeze.
    Ty felt his cheeks heat up, but he squeezed back, happy to have a friend.
     
    The summer crept along, worse than any summer in Ty’s life.
    Thane had one more class to get his college degree, and so he stayed at Syracuse University, training and studying. While everyone agreed that Thane’scontract would be in the millions, Morty and the Jets couldn’t come to terms, and the agent told Thane that he should expect to have to hold out of training camp.
    When Ty heard this over the telephone, he said, “So you might not get the money until August?”
    “Maybe even September,” Thane told him.
    “Sometimes first-round picks don’t get signed until the week before the season begins.”
    Ty couldn’t explain why, but news of this delay bothered him, even though Thane didn’t seem to mind.
    When school had ended, Uncle Gus, still behind in his payments to Lucy, took on even more work. Ty and Charlotte spent their days cleaning a dingy nearby motel. The three long, low buildings lined up along the highway were usually empty during the day, and without air-conditioning the tiny rooms sweltered in the humid summer heat.
    Uncle Gus would supervise them from outside, where he’d set up a lawn chair under the shade of a big old oak tree. He kept a small red cooler beside him, sipping down cans of Nestea and listening to WFAN, the big New York sports radio station or, when he could find them, afternoon baseball games. They worked in silence. Although Charlotte was friendly to Ty, she wasn’t one for talking, no matter how hard he would try to drum up conversation. When he’d ask her why she didn’t like to talk, she’d only shrug, put her iPod earpiece back in, and concentrate on her vacuum.When they finished cleaning the motel, they’d head for the Breakfast Nook and start right in