Chapter 11

As it turned out Jack and Howie were only a few minutes late picking up Vixen. Howie was ready to take the blame, but it wasn’t necessary. All Vixen asked as Howie climbed into the back seat of the Jeep was, “So no Misty, huh?”

“No, she changed her mind.”

“She’s good at that from what I hear,” Vixen said, shaking her head, but she didn’t elaborate.

It didn’t take long for the three of them to get over to Alan’s house. They’d only been there a couple minutes when Summer pulled in, bringing Bree and Autumn with her. They were just getting their coats off when another car pulled in. This time it was some other friends of the older kids, Lyle Angarrack and his girlfriend, Ashley Keilhorn.

Lyle was on the football team, of course, and surprisingly enough, so was Ashley. She was the first girl ever to play football in a Spearfish Lake Marlins uniform, and mostly was just Lyle’s holder on extra points and field goals. There had been a certain amount of resentment around the team, and among other teams, to have a girl playing football. That only lasted into about the first quarter of the Warsaw game, the second game of the season, when a Warsaw player thought he ought to knock some sense into a girl who dared to play football, of all things. His intentions may have been one thing, but he had overlooked the facts that Lyle and Ashley were boyfriend and girlfriend and were also respectively the largest and third largest players on the Marlin roster; the medics had to haul him off in an ambulance. The result was the only real walkover Spearfish Lake had enjoyed all season long.

Since then, there had been some suggestions that Ashley ought to be playing more regularly and perhaps in the front four – but she had just stayed the holder. So far, that is; Coach Reardon was sneaky, after all.

Howie was a little sorry they were both seniors and wouldn’t be playing next year. When you got down to it Ashley was just a spear-carrier despite her size, but Lyle, despite the fact he could only play a limited amount, had proved to be the main Marlin secret weapon all season long. He’d made several plays the night before that had turned a loss into a win, and it wasn’t just his last-second, long field goal, either. It wasn’t clear what the Marlins were going to do without him, but Howie hoped that the coaches were thinking about the problem real, real hard.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” Howie greeted them. “I was afraid I was going to be the only football player in this crowd of nerds. With the three of us, we ought to be able to handle them.”

“Remember, this is supposed to be about witches and inquisitors, not football,” Alan reminded them, “although in a way it’s sort of the same thing.”

“We’ve got one more,” Autumn informed him. “Jared Wooten rode his bike over. He’s out in the kitchen.”

“Jared? Cool!” Howie said as Jared came into the room, carrying a Pepsi. “Sorry I didn’t get to talk to you last night, but you made a couple really great catches.”

“If you get them where I can reach them I can usually catch them,” Jared said. “But they have to get at least close.”

“Yeah, well I wasn’t having the greatest night I ever had,” Howie admitted. “But I think I know where I was screwing up and I’m working on it.”

“Howie,” Summer asked, “I thought Misty was coming.”

“She changed her mind,” Howie shrugged. “She said she didn’t want to have to spend time with my brother’s loser and nerd friends. Fine with me, I’ve had to spend enough time with her loser friends. She can sit and play Nintendo by herself.”

“Did something happen, Howie?” Autumn asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve taken all of that shit from her I need to take, and I guess I got my eyes opened. She can go find someone else to play her mind games with. I don’t need any more of it.”

“Hey,” Jared said, “I know you said earlier this week it was really bugging you. I guess it really was, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Howie nodded. “I may have that problem solved. I hope so, anyway.”

“It’s probably just as well she isn’t here anyway, at least as far as the game goes,” Alan said. “It would give us an odd number. Now, I know none of you are gamers, very much anyway. Jack, Vixen, Lyle, and Ashley were with us the last trial session, and it didn’t go very well, but they at least have some idea of what’s going on. One of the things Summer and I talked over was to not play at all, and just split up to coach each of team. So let’s just break this up into football players and non-football players, that’ll even out those who have a little experience.”

“We could do it seniors and sophomores,” Summer said. “But that would put all the experience onto one team, and that might not be quite fair.”

“OK, since this is just a test session and it doesn’t mean much, let’s make the football players the Inquisitors and the birdwatchers and other sky people the witches,” Alan grinned.

“Other sky people?” Jack frowned.

“You mean you haven’t heard about that?” Autumn grinned. “You didn’t know Bree was a pilot, did you?”

Jack shook his head. “Can’t say as I’ve heard that, but I can’t say I’ve ever talked to you before, Bree.”

“And I can’t believe it’s not all over the school. I have to say, though, your turkey vultures saved my butt last weekend.”

“Huh?”

“When you’re flying a sailplane you have to look for signs of rising air. I was real low the other day and thinking I was going to have to land when I saw a kettle of turkey vultures circling. I know you guys call that a kettle, but to a sailplane pilot, they’re markers.”

“You mean you’ve flown with turkey vultures?” Jack said, his eyes wide.

“Fairly often,” Bree smiled. “Several times with hawks, and once with a bald eagle. That was cool! It’s really fun to sneak up on a hawk when they don’t see you coming.”

“Damn, I always thought that would be so neat,” Jack shook his head.

“I’ve learned one thing about Jack,” Alan said. “Get him talking about birds and we’re never going to get him talking about this game. I don’t know Bree very well either, but I’ll bet she’s the same way when she gets to talking about flying.”

“I’m not that bad,” Bree replied with a smile. “Close, but not that bad.”

“Let’s get down to the game and save that for the pizza time,” Alan grinned. “Between football, birds, and flying, I don’t think we’re going to lack for much to talk about even if we don’t talk about the game much.”

“All right, let’s talk about the game,” Jack said. “But Bree, we have something to talk about later.”

“Fine with me,” she grinned.

“OK, getting down to it,” Alan said, “this is like a lot of role-playing games in that there are several different roles, people with different talents. We don’t have all the options worked out and we’ve really only got a couple modules ready to play, but if this evening is even partway successful we’ll know we’re on the right track. OK, the concept of the game is pretty simple. The inquisitors are looking for witches to burn at the stake. The witches would rather avoid that, and operate under the theory that the best defense is a good offense. The last time we tried this game we had it balanced a little too much toward the witches, so we’ve tried to remedy that. What’s going to happen is that I’m going to coach the inquisitors and Summer is going to coach the witches, but we won’t be playing ourselves. So let’s get started.”

Two hours later the eight game players and two coaches took a break. “Well, I have to say it’s going better than last time,” Lyle commented.

“Yeah, you didn’t have to stop and rewrite the game cards more than three or four times,” Vixen said. “That means you’re making progress.”

“Well, yeah,” Summer agreed. “That was the point of this, anyway, to see if we were on the right track. We’ve still got some work to do, and I think we overdid fixing the problem with the balance toward the witches, so I think I see where we need to make adjustments.”

“We really only looked at one module,” Alan said. “In the end there’ll probably be a lot more than that. We have one more module pretty close to being done, and if you don’t mind hanging around, we’d like to take a look at that.”

“Speaking for me,” Autumn spoke up, “this has been a little more fun that I thought it was going to be. I’m perfectly willing to stick around if anyone else is.”

There was some discussion around the room, but most of it leaned toward the idea of taking the time to look at the other module. “Fine with me,” Alan said. “I’ll call and get some pizza ordered. What does anybody want on theirs?”

In the next few minutes the group broke up into smaller groups. Jack and Vixen got Bree into a corner quickly and started talking birds. It turned out she’d seen quite a bit of airborne bird behavior, and quickly had the two of them enthralled. The rest of the seniors, Alan, Summer, Lyle, and Ashley, wound up going out to the kitchen and getting involved in a discussion of details of the game, while Jared, Howie, and Autumn settled into a sofa and chairs in another corner of the living room.

“Howie, I’m sorry to hear you broke up with Misty,” Jared told him.

“Well, if I actually am broken up with her, I don’t know if I feel sorry about it,” Howie told the other two. “I mean, I thought I’d be broken up about it, but really, it feels like a big weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Don’t get me wrong, Misty was fun to be with for a while, but things were getting too serious. She wants all my attention, and there are other things I have to do.”

“Well, it’s probably good you got refocused a little,” Jared said. “I mean, I probably shouldn’t say it, but I think you were getting a little too serious, if you know what I mean. Bree and Autumn and I were talking over lunch the other day that we’ve all got several more years of school left. I mean, if we were to just go to college and not go on past it, we’re still looking at another seven years. I don’t know that I’d want to go through that much drama for that long.”

“Good God, no,” Howie shook his head. “I mean, I really haven’t thought about college much, but I’m beginning to think if we can do pretty well the next couple years I might be looking at an athletic scholarship. Whether I really want to go to college or not, I’d be a fool to turn it down.”

“It might be a little early to be thinking about that,” Jared pointed out.

“Well, yeah, it might be,” Howie said. “But it’s not impossible, either. Look, whatever happens, we’re going into next year with almost all the guys we’ve got this year, and this year we might be able to get some of the mistakes out of our systems. That means we have an edge on next year and a big one after that if we can fix a few problems. I really doubt it means anything like a Notre Dame athletic scholarship, but some small school, well, that might be different.”

“You’re going to have to keep your mind on your game,” Jared pointed out.

“Well, if Misty and I are through, it ought to be a damn sight simpler. At least now maybe I can get back to thinking about homework once in a while, too.”

“Still having trouble with geometry?” Jared asked.

“Yeah,” Howie replied glumly. “It’s almost making sense, but not quite, if you know what I mean. What with all this stuff I’ve been going through, I just haven’t had the time to sit down and figure it out.”

“I’m willing to help you with that,” Jared offered. “Mrs. Elsasser is all right, but she just doesn’t present stuff very well.”

“I think you have to pay a little closer attention,” Autumn pointed out. “You have to really listen to what she’s saying, not just sort of be there with your mind on other things.”

“Yeah, right, like Misty,” Howie conceded. “There’s another good reason to have her out of my life.”

“Well, I’m like Jared, I’m willing to help you catch up,” Autumn offered. “Maybe we could get together tomorrow and work on it. Sometimes it helps if you have a couple people. Bree is pretty good at it, too.”

“It’s something to think about,” Howie said. “And it would probably be a good idea. I really appreciate the offer, but maybe for right now I better just work on it with Jared. If we can’t make sense of it, maybe we could call you in for more help.”

“I’m willing to help if I can,” Autumn said. “I mean, it’s for the good of the football team, isn’t it? That’s what cheerleaders are supposed to do, help the team, right?”

“Well, yeah,” Howie grinned. “Maybe I can help you out with something in return. I’m not bad with biology, and I have Jack to lean on if I get stumped.”

“It would be helpful,” Jared said. “It’s not my strong subject, and I’m sort of faking my way through it.”

Autumn grinned. “I’m pretty good with biology, too, but I know Bree is a little weak on it. Maybe that’s something we could work on together, too.”

Before too much longer Bree came over and joined them. “Boy Howie, your brother sure is a nut about birds, isn’t he?”

“I imagine he just about talked your ear off about them.”

“Well, not so much talked my ear off about them but picked my brain. I’m no big expert on birds, but I know a little about which ones soar and which ones don’t as well as the differences in how they act when they are soaring. It’s kind of nice to have an interest like he and Vixen have, though.”

“You’d know,” Autumn grinned. “After all, you’re about as far into your flying as Jack seems to be about birds. I’ve heard Summer talking about what big nuts he and Vixen are when it comes to birds.”

“Birds of a feather,” Jared grinned.

“Well, maybe,” Bree smiled. “In fact, it’s nice to know that you can have interests outside school and be good with them. Since I got into flying the glider, it’s really made me feel like an outsider at school.”

“It’s a little out of the ordinary, no doubt about that,” Jared nodded. “But maybe not as far out of the ordinary as you might think. I can’t speak for Howie and Autumn, but I have interests outside of school in my martial arts. I’m not real great at it, nothing like my Uncle Randy who’s been my main sensei. But it’s good stuff to know if you think there might be a need for it.”

“You think you’re going to need it?” Howie asked.

“I’m not saying yes, but I’m not saying no, either,” Jared replied obliquely.

“You know, I wouldn’t mind hearing something about that,” Bree said, a little surprisingly. “I don’t think I have a real need for it, but it would be good to know something about it.”

“Well, I could work with you on that a little,” Jared shrugged. “Like I said, I’m no great expert but I could show you a few moves. If you want to go a little further, I can probably talk to Uncle Randy about it.”

“I wouldn’t mind knowing more about it, either,” Howie admitted.

“Bree,” Autumn put in, “just before you came over, we were talking about getting together in a little study group to help Howie with his geometry, and Jared with his biology. Do you think you’d be interested in joining us?”

“For sure,” Bree admitted. “I don’t want to say I’m getting stumped by biology. I’m hanging on, but I need to have the best grades I can get for when I start looking to go to college.”

“Fine,” Howie said. “Let’s do it. Where and when?”

Autumn looked around the four of them. “Nobody here goes to church, right?” she asked. “We could do it tomorrow morning. That way if the guys want to watch football in the afternoon, we could have it out of the way. I think we could do it at my place, although I probably ought to call Mom and ask.”

“I can probably get a ride in,” Bree said. “It sure will be nice when at least one of us can drive. I’m kind of stuck out in the country the way it is right now.”

By the following Wednesday the group of Jared, Bree, and Autumn had become regulars over in the far corner of the lunchroom. After the game test session on Saturday and some of the other things that had happened, they’d really started to become friends, and awkward silences in their conversations had already become a thing of the past.

Even so, they were a little surprised to see Howie come over and join them; he had been toward the end of the lunch line and a lot of the other regular groups were already established. “Hey, Howie,” Jared said, “what brings you over to fantasy corner?”

“I’m getting a little tired of sitting with some of the team guys,” Howie said. “Some of that stuff gets old after a while. Besides, I’m a little tired of watching Misty put moves on Matt Wadsworth.”

“Good grief,” Jared snorted. “I knew her taste was bad, but I didn’t think it was that bad.”

“You know what she’s doing, don’t you, Howie?” Autumn interjected.

“Of course,” Howie snorted. “I know she doesn’t like Wadsworth any more than I do, which isn’t very much. He’s literally all hat and no cattle, if you know what I mean. A lot of mouth, and nothing to back it up. I’ll bet he doesn’t get two minutes of playing time Friday night.”

“What do you think she’s trying to do?” Jared asked.

“Oh, hell, no question. She’s trying to get me jealous. I’ve been around her little games enough I can spot them.” He didn’t mention that a long phone call to Shay Archer on Sunday had given him considerable enlightenment in how to manage that. It was sort of like a good quarterback learning how to read a defense; once you saw the tricks and understood what they meant, it was like an open book. Howie was a quarterback, of course, and now he knew how to read the book.

“Good,” Autumn told him. “I overheard her boasting to a couple of her friends that she planned on having you eating out of her hand before long.”

“That’s going to take some doing,” Howie shook his head. “Now that I’ve been away from her for a few days I can see things a lot more clearly. I mean, in general, I know what she wants to do, but it would be nice to know how she plans on doing it so I’ll know how to counter it. I know she’s been badmouthing me to her buddies, telling them I’m off limits to them because I’m still supposed to be hers.”

“Well, that seems pretty logical,” Bree smiled. “And I’ve heard her saying it, too.”

“It’s not going to happen,” Howie said flatly. “I’ll go through the rest of high school without a girlfriend rather than put up with that stuff again.”

“The problem is that as long as you don’t have a girlfriend she’s going to see you as easy meat,” Jared pointed out. “She’s going to be after you till she gets what she wants.”

“Yeah, that’s the downside,” Howie agreed glumly.

“Hey,” Autumn said, an evil grin starting to spread across her face, “I think I might have an idea, if you’re up for it.”

The Rochester game on Friday night was brutal.

In several respects, the Coldwater team the Marlins had beaten in the season opener had been even tougher. Coldwater had lost because they’d made several small mistakes and one big one in that game, the big one being that they didn’t take the Marlins seriously – and they had every reason not to before the game started. It had been well into the game before they realized that they were in more trouble than they thought. At that, the win had come on a last-second extra-point kick by Lyle Angarrack to score the first Marlin win against Coldwater in many years.

Rochester made some mistakes on Friday, too – and one of their biggest ones was guessing that the ground game the Marlins had played against the weaker Frontier team a week before was going to be the trend of the Marlin offense. Though the game had been close, in a way it had been something of a sucker play – the Marlins returned to the air, and with a vengeance. Howie wound up passing on the first down of the first possession, something unheard of almost anywhere, and it was a long bomb to Jared Wooten, who was wide open downfield. He cruised in about twenty yards for a touchdown to get the Marlins on the scoreboard first.

As expected, the Rochester Woodmen stuck to their running game. It tended to not go anywhere inside, although they had enough luck to the outside to keep the game close – closer than anyone wanted. With only a minute left in the fourth quarter, the Marlins were on fourth and long when they brought Lyle in to kick. Since it was well downfield, they were anticipating a punt, but just before the ball snapped the halfback – Ashley Keilhorn – dropped back, fell to one knee, and took the long toss from center, just as Lyle reared back and kicked. It was a fifty-three yard field goal, a league record, bringing the Marlins within four points of the leading Woodmen.

With less than a minute to go, the Marlins had to kick off, but this time Lyle didn’t try to boot it the length of the field – it was an onside dribbler. Marlin halfback Jimmy Gogolen picked it up and made it to the Woodmen forty before he was dragged down.

That was within Lyle’s proven field goal range, but a field goal wouldn’t help much being four points down. The Marlins had little choice but to go for a touchdown.

Since the Marlins had proved they’d pass at the most illogical times, absolutely no one anywhere near the football field expected anything but a pass – and they got one, just not the one they were expecting. Howie took the ball and reared back like he planned on passing, but in the process handed it off to Jared, who flipped a long lateral to Jimmy Gogolen. The Rochester team mostly had their attention looking for the pass and on their own backfield so didn’t notice Gogolen until he was inside the twenty, and he was down to the five before being brought down.

There were only seconds left now. The Marlins called time-out, and brought Lyle Angarrack back onto the field, this time in his halfback role. The big guy was good at crashing through lines and gaining ground up the middle, given halfway decent blocking, so naturally most of the Woodmen were lined up against his run.

Which was what Coach Reardon, Howie, and the Marlins were betting on. No one was even close to Jared in the end zone when Howie tossed a short pass to him. It was his eighteenth completion out of twenty-one attempts for the evening, setting an all-time school passing record in the process. Seconds later, Lyle kicked the extra point.

There were still a few seconds to go, so this time when Lyle kicked off, it was a long bomb, going clear into the end zone. That brought the ball back out to the Woodman twenty, but there was only time enough for the Woodmen to run one play, which went nowhere.

Since it was a home game, the fans flooded onto the field to celebrate – and well they should have! The win wrapped up the first winning season the Marlin football team had managed in over a dozen years. There had been a lot of bad football, a lot of desperation, and not a lot of winning in a long, long time; and now the young Marlin team had returned at least a little respect to Marlin football. One more win out of the games remaining and they would be in the state playoffs – a place no Marlin team had seen in over twenty years.

So there was considerable cause to celebrate. This was the moment Misty had been waiting for – a girlfriend should be at the side of her hero at his triumphant moment, after all! After going without her all week, watching her mess around with that dork Matt Wadsworth, he’d be happy to have her back. A little work, a few touches in the right place, and things would be back to normal.

She was well toward the front of the crowd surging through the gate in the chain link fence in front of the grandstands – but she wasn’t fast enough. She lost sight of Howie for a moment, but when she spotted him again there was a brunette cheerleader stuck to him like glue, in a deep, deep kiss!

What did that Trevetheck bitch think she was doing with her guy? The nerve of some people!

She was so mad at the sight she didn’t even notice their lips parting for a second, so she had no idea of what Autumn whispered to Howie: “She sees us now. Now squeeze my butt so it looks like you’re really going to get a reward!”

“OK,” he whispered back with a grin, and kissed her again. And squeezed her butt too – it squeezed very nicely, in fact. Very nicely indeed, even if they both knew it was an act for Misty to see.

Misty saw the butt squeeze, though, and she thought she knew what it meant – Howie was going to be getting some real loving tonight. Shit! She charged right up alongside the two of them, just about mad enough to bite nails, preferably someone else’s. How dare Howie take up with someone else! He was supposed to be hers! She stood there, the steam just about blowing out of her ears, as her boyfriend and this little cheerleader slut did their best to explore each other’s tonsils while she rubbed her body up against his showing she was really hot to trot.

Misty thought that maybe she should give some of that treatment to one of his friends; he might still get jealous. He had started to be pretty good buddies with Jared Wooten, she knew. That might do the trick! She looked around for him, and finally saw him, in a similar clinch with a little blonde. She had to look twice to realize it was Bree Gravengood, of all people! She didn’t even come to football games!

Well, try brute force, she thought. “Howie,” she said when the two of them came up for air, “Do you want to go out for pizza after the game?”

“Sorry,” Howie said. “We’ve already got a pizza date set up.”

“But what about me?” she pleaded.

“Matt’s around somewhere,” Howie said with a grin. “He ought to be willing.”

Since the Frostee Freeze was now closed, the post-game parties tended to be held in three or four pizza joints around town. Misty looked in all of them, but never saw a sign of Howie or Autumn. She wouldn’t have been likely to, either; the party was being held at the Erikson house, with a lot of friends around, including Howie’s older brother and his group of friends, Howie’s new group of friends, and several other football players and their girlfriends.

Just to help the story along, Autumn spent most of the evening at his side, or even under his arm. Even though it was something of an act, she found she was liking it.

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