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quarterback,” he said. “You guys with me?”
    “Always have been,” Calvin said.
    “Then let’s do it. On one.”
     
    Jason hurried through dinner on Wednesday and dashed toward the Boulevard. The parade was scheduled to begin in less than an hour, but he and some others needed to prepare their costumes. It was dark as he walked excitedly along 12th Street. A breeze was blowing, but the night wasn’t too cold.
    Vinnie was waiting as planned beneath the digital clock outside the bank. The clock said 6:13 and forty-two degrees.
    It had been a good practice that day. Jason had found Calvin for a long touchdown pass, and later he’d dashed thirty yards for one of his own.
    “You’re the man now,” Vinnie said as they shook left hands. “No question about that.”
    “For two games only,” Jason said. “It’s your job again next season, believe me.”
    “Hope so,” Vinnie said.
    “I know so. DiMarco-to-Fiorelli for years to come. State champions by the time we finish high school.”
    “That’d be something.”
    “Look at this town,” Jason said, waving his arm up the Boulevard, which was packed with small stores and restaurants—the block they were on included Lupita Music, which had sponsored his first Little League team, and the Envigado Bakery, which provided doughnuts and juice for many of the Saturday-morning YMCA leagues.
    He’d always felt supported here, in this little town in the shadow of the giant New York City and the bigger neighbors of Hoboken and Jersey City. He loved the Hudson City YMCA, where he’d become hooked on athletics during a season of indoor floor hockey as a first-grader. He’d won his first championship as a second-grader in that gym, leading the purple-T-shirted Hudson City National Bank Buckeyes basketball team to victory. So many of the businesses in town kicked in by sponsoring teams and soccer clinics and youth basketball tournaments.
    “I love it here,” Jason said. “The people are good. They deserve something big. We can make that happen.”
    Vinnie lifted his cast. “Maybe you can. I’m damaged goods.”
    “You’ll heal. I’m talking later—other years. This group we’ve got can be big-time champions. We just have to stick together and work it.”
    “I’m with you.”
    “And I’m with you. The future starts now. It starts Saturday. We’ll beat Palisades, then turn it all toward Hoboken. After that, who knows? We’ll just keep getting better ... until we’re great.”
    They’d walked a couple of blocks and turned down 14th toward Anthony’s. “Time to paint the faces,” Vinnie said.
    “Yeah. I decided to be orange,” Jason said. The group was going to wear their football jerseys and paint their faces wild colors. They weren’t in the parade, but lots of spectators dressed up for the event.
    “We should go through the cemetery later,” Jason said.
    “What for?”
    “It’s spooky. And it’s Halloween, man. If there’s ever going to be ghosts around, it’d be tonight.”
    Vinnie shrugged. The cemetery was very small, only about a square block, and was surrounded by a tall fence of thin iron posts. It overlooked the cliffs on the edge of town, which overlooked the Hudson River and New York City.
    “I don’t think anybody’s been buried in there for eighty years,” Vinnie said.
    “So? Ghosts stay around forever.”
    Vinnie laughed. “No such thing.”
    “How do you know?”
    Vinnie shrugged again. “I guess I don’t.”
    “It’s Halloween, buddy. Strange things happen.”
     
    Anthony’s mother had bought several tubes of face paint, but she insisted the kids put it on in the basement. “That stuffs greasy and it smells,” she said. “Don’t wipe it on my walls.”
    Anthony had a big glob of yellow paint in his palm. “I’m doing a yellow face and a red nose,” he said. “We got trick-or-treat candy, Ma?”
    “We got plenty. But save that for the little kids who come around. You can get your own.”
    Within a few