Painting the Black by Carl Deuker

here.”
    I nodded. “I’ll be there.”

9
    I arrived at Memorial Stadium early. I wanted to make sure I got a good seat, high enough so that I could see the whole field, but not so high that the players looked small.
    All around me Crown Hill kids were eating junk food and laughing together in the late afternoon sun. Stereos played rap music. There was a party atmosphere in the air. And why not? Cleveland was a weak team. And we had Josh Daniels, the new kid with the cannon for an arm, the kid who had single-handedly beaten Franklin.
    I wished I didn’t know how tight Josh was, how scared he was. Then I could have kicked back and enjoyed the last rays of sunshine and the music and the talk. But I did know, and my own stomach churned out acid by the quart.
    We won the coin toss and Curtis carried the opening kickoff out to the thirty-five. On the first two downs Kittleson ran twice, picking up about five yards total. On third and five Josh had Santos open over the middle, but threw the ball high. Around me, kids groaned and then went back to eating popcorn and joking with one another. It was the opening minutes of the first quarter. I was the only one who was worried.
    And I stayed worried, even though Cleveland didn’t do much of anything. They were slow and small, and a first down was a major accomplishment for them. But throughout that quarter Josh couldn’t get our offense into gear either. One drive stalled when he missed on a third and three pass in the flat to Curtis that even I could have completed. And the next drive ended when he fumbled the snap on two consecutive downs.
    â€œThey’d better put Ruben in pretty soon,” a kid a couple of seats away from me said. “This Daniels is doing nothing.”
    The guy next to him nodded.
    Josh was still at QB when we got the ball back early in the second quarter, but everybody in the stadium knew something good had to happen or he was out of there.
    On third and four at our twenty-six, Josh dropped back and uncorked another wild toss that sailed over Curtis’s head and out-of-bounds. Even worse, after he’d released the ball, he’d taken a vicious hit from a blitzing safety. The guy had stuck his helmet into Josh’s ribs and had driven him to the ground.
    For a long time, Josh lay on the turf, his hands cradling his mid-section. Canning hovered over him, and so did the trainer. Finally he stood, and applause came down from all around the stadium.
    That’s when I saw the yellow penalty flag. “Unsportsmanlike conduct: roughing the passer,” the referee announced. Then he marched off fifteen yards.
    You wonder about sports sometimes, about whether one play can change a whole game, even a whole season. Take that penalty. Say the guy doesn’t cheap-shot Josh. We have to punt, and on the next series Brandon Ruben is playing quarterback. But those fifteen yards gave us a first down, and they gave Josh another chance.
    He made the most of it, too. It was as if that late hit had somehow knocked all the nervousness out of him. On the very next play he hit Santos for fifteen yards. Kittleson busted one for another ten yards, and then Josh hit Wilsey on the numbers for thirty-four yards and a touchdown. After that the rout was on. We led 14–0 at the half; 29–7 at the end of three quarters. The final score was 35–13.
    Saturday night can be a tough time to catch a bus. I had a long wait for the Fifteen, so I didn’t make it to Godfather’s until nearly an hour after the game. I searched the place, but Josh wasn’t there. I bought a large Pepsi, found a booth, and looked out the window. I wanted him to show while the excitement of the game was still in his blood.
    The minutes crawled by. I finished my first Pepsi and bought another one. Still no Josh. I found an old newspaper and flipped through it once, twice. I looked at the clock on the wall. It had been two hours since the game had