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don’t get some help, it can wreck things for you too. You don’t want that.”
    I shook my head. “No,” I said slowly, “I guess not.”
    Still, the thought of seeing a psychologist made me nervous. What would people think about me?
    â€œI know that it seems like a strange thing, seeing a therapist,” Dad said, again echoing my thoughts. “But it’s not, really. I mean, when you think about it, your mind is one of the most important parts of your body. It affects everything.”
    When he put it that way, it made sense. I was looking at Dad in a whole different light than I had just a few minutes ago.
    â€œOkay,” I said.
    â€œOkay, what?”
    â€œI’ll go see him. This psychologist.”
    A wide smile spread across my father’s face, and his blue eyes twinkled. “That’s great, Reg,” he said. “I think you’re making the right decision.”
    I went to bed that night with a bunch of different thoughts racing through my mind. I wondered what it would be like to talk to somebody about what was going through my mind—my private thoughts. I still felt a little uncomfortable about sharing them.
    I wondered how Nate Brown was doing, lying in a hospital bed. He was probably a lot more uncomfortable than me, thinking about whether he was ever going to walk—let alone play football—again. Maybe talking to someone about my feelings wasn’t such a big deal.
    But mostly, as I tried to get to sleep, I thought about my father. Dad and I had always had a good relationship, but our conversation tonight was the most openhe had ever been with me. Part of me felt good that he trusted me enough to tell me those things. But another part felt scared that my Dad, who had always been a rock in my life, had experienced something so frightening. And I hadn’t even noticed there was anything wrong.

chapter nine
    Another big surprise was awaiting me the next morning at breakfast, as I dug into the Friday
Times
with my bowl of Cheerios.
    Even though I wasn’t playing in tonight’s game against Franklin, I still flipped quickly to the prep sports section.
    Division mulling suspension for Lincoln player
read the headline atop the small story on the right side of page three. A queasy feeling crept into my stomach, and I stopped chewing my cereal.
    Northeast Athletic District officials are considering a Milbury request for disciplinary action against a Lincoln player following a serious spinal injury to Miners tight end Nate Brown
.
    A district source has informed the
Times
that a number of complaints have been made about the play on which Brown was injured last week. The Milbury player remains in Gower General Hospital.
    I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Were they serious? I hadn’t done anything on the play except get hit. Or had I? Was there something on the game video that showed something different? Something I’d missed? Now my stomach was really flipping about.
    I read on.
The Lincoln player involved in the incident was linebacker Reggie Scott, a senior with a reputation for being a hard hitter in the defensive backfield.
    What were they talking about in this story? I hadn’t hit anybody on that play. It had been the other way around. But thisarticle was making it look like I had laid out Nate Brown with a vicious tackle. This was unfair. So why was it making me feel guilty?
    There was just one more paragraph to the story:
District officials were tight-lipped about a possible suspension. But it appears Scott will play tonight when the Lions take on the highly rated Franklin Demons in one of the most anticipated games of the season
.
    I tossed the paper across the eating bar in disgust. The story made me sound like some kind of dirty player, like it was my fault Nate was lying in a hospital bed. How could they put something like that in the newspaper without even checking the facts?
    Dad looked up from his section of