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hurt.”
    Coach Rivers had been a quarterback himself in college, at the University of Massachusetts, and every once in a while he would take a couple of snaps and make a couple of deep throws just to show his players—his words—that he wasn’t some kind of “chopper.” Tonight he said they were going to start out running plays in their red-zone offense, which meant that Nate and the guys would start on the defense’s 20-yard line.
    Sometimes they did it that way the last practice before a game, Coach telling them they had two minutes to score. Or a minute. Or even thirty seconds. Sometimes he’d do it the way he did in a game, have his assistant coach for the offense, Coach Hanratty, hold up a chalkboard with three plays on it, only Nate knowing which one was his “hot read”—the play he was actually going to call.
    Sometimes he’d even let Nate call the plays himself.
    “The one thing most coaches at this level don’t realize,” Coach had said the first week of practice, “is that you guys want to learn. You’re like sponges when it comes to learning. So you’d better know from the jump that we’re not going to play your father’s style of eighth-grade football. If anybody here thinks ball control means running with it, grab a ball and go run some laps.”
    Their defensive coach was Coach Burnley, Malcolm’s dad. Malcolm pulled double-duty as the Patriots’ middle linebacker in addition to playing center.
    While he huddled up with his guys, Coach Rivers pulled Nate aside and said, “There’s gonna be plays up on the chalkboard, like always. But call what you want tonight, as long as you throw every down.”
    Nate said, “Well, if you insist.”
    Then Coach walked away from him, telling everybody that the offense had a minute and a half, no time-outs.
    Throw every down, Coach had said.
    In Nate’s mind, it was like telling a bird to fly.
    First down he split out Pete and Eric to the right side, a play they called “L Wait.” It meant LaDell. He was supposed to hold his place in the backfield for a couple of beats, then swing out to the left sideline and look for the ball once he crossed the line of scrimmage. If the linebacker came up on him, LaDell could try to blow by him, knowing Nate would read the move.
    Nate took the snap from Malcolm, dropped back, rolled a little to his right, trying to make it look as if he had Pete and Eric over on that side of the field for a reason, that he planned to end this imaginary ninety-second game—the best kind of fantasy football—on the very first play.
    He eyeballed his wideouts just long enough, then looked to his left, saw LaDell over there, saw their right linebacker, Sam Baum, giving him way too much room, five yards at least, LaDell wide open.
    A beautiful thing. LaDell being open that way.
    It was the pass that was ugly. Hideously ugly. Nate knew as soon as he released the ball, knew it was a bad throw the way he knew when it was all good. Knew. He had given the ball too much hang time, led LaDell by too much. And even though Sam Baum had to be as surprised as anybody on the field that Nate would give him this kind of bunny on the first play of practice—or ever—he knew what to do when he saw the ball floating in front of him like a beach ball.
    He closed on the ball as if the play had been called for him, as if he were Nate’s primary receiver, and there was nothing LaDell could do to stop him. Sam caught the ball in stride and ran the other way with it until Coach, the only one who could stop him, did that by blowing his whistle.

    As practice wore on, the harder Nate tried, the harder it got for him to hit what he was aiming at.
    When they moved the ball back later, in a part of practice called “Stretching the Field”—you could only try for pass plays of fifteen yards or more—he had Pete wide open on a Hutchins-and-Go and overthrew him by ten yards.
    When Pete got back to the huddle, he tried to make a joke of it, saying to Nate, “It