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front of the television set in the living room, watching the end of the six o’clock SportsCenter. He cleaned up when he was done, had two pieces of pie with vanilla ice cream, went upstairs and fired up his laptop so he could check his e-mails again.
    There was some junk mail that had gotten through and messages from Tim asking Will to call him later about their upcoming fantasy draft.
    That was it.
    Not what he was looking for, no miracles tonight.
    So he sat there for a while online, checking out some of the NFL stat pages, getting ready for the upcoming fantasy draft. The kids his age in the West River league had decided they might as well have a fantasy league, too, and Will had won it easily the year before. This year he had decided to partner up with Tim, mostly because Tim had begged him.
    â€œYou do the work, I’ll share the glory,” Tim had said.
    â€œBut what’s in it for me ?”
    â€œThat’s a very selfish attitude, if you ask me.”
    â€œI didn’t,” Will had said.
    Last year fantasy football had just been pure fun. It seemed more important now, though, if only because this year it might be the only way Will would get to compete with the other kids in the West River league.
    Fantasy football was just one more version of a game that had always come naturally to Will. He knew the stats he needed, for selecting a quarterback or running back or wide receiver, were already inside his own head, that he didn’t need to look them up online. He knew them by heart.
    Like football was his heart.
    Which was why, for the first time ever, despite how his dad and the rest of Forbes had been struggling for years, Will understood what it was like to be poor. He knew a lot of people were a lot worse off than he was, and Will had never been one to feel sorry for himself. He and his dad had it much better than some people— most people—who’d lost their jobs when the sneaker factory closed, people who even now were still looking for steady work. Will had lost his mom, and then a first home, which he barely remembered, but he’d always had football. As though the game was the one constant in his life.
    Maybe that was why the idea of losing the upcoming season made him feel so lost.
    Â 
    He thought about going back downstairs, seeing if there was anything good on television tonight. He didn’t really feel like calling Tim, not wanting to talk to anybody in the mood he was in. So he decided to watch one of his favorite movies, The Express, the one about an old Syracuse University football player named Ernie Davis.
    As much as Will knew about football history, he didn’t know much about Ernie Davis at first, just that he was one of the names on the long list of guys who’d won the Heisman Trophy and that he’d been the first African American to win the award. He came from Elmira, New York, just over the Pennsylvania border, and he’d grown up poor. So when Will watched the movie and learned that Ernie Davis died in the end, died before playing a professional game, it had just about killed him. He’d rewatched The Express many times since, but he’d always shut it off after Syracuse beat Texas and won the Cotton Bowl and the national championship. Will liked his own ending to the movie better. The happy ending. He wished life could work out that way, too.
    He watched the movie tonight and got to the Cotton Bowl part, the part with all the dirty play from the other team, the nasty comments made because Ernie Davis was black, the attempts by the Texas players to hurt him every chance they got. But he kept getting back up until his team won the game and finished off its undefeated season.
    The end, Will thought, the happy end, as he shut off the movie, hearing his dad’s car in the driveway at almost the exact same moment.
    He heard the car door slam, went over to the window and looked down and saw his dad limping across their small front lawn to