Joseph Monninger - Game Change

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright 2017 by Joseph Monninger

All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

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Cover photograph Pete Saloutos / Getty Images

Cover design by Christopher Moisan

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Names: Monninger, Joseph, author. Title: Game change / Joseph Monninger.
Description: New York, New York : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [2019] | Summary: When Zeb Holloway is called to be starting quarterback one week before the state championship game, he realizes he may have a future outside his rural New Hampshire town.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019002041

Subjects: | CYAC: FootballFiction. | High schoolsFiction. | SchoolsFiction. | Dating (Social customs)Fiction. | Single-parent familiesFiction. | New HampshireFiction.

Classification: LCC PZ7.M7537 Gam 2019 | DDC [Fic]--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019002041

ISBN 978-0-544-53122-2 hardcover

ISBN 978-1-328-59586-7 paperback

eISBN 978-1-328-80988-9
v2.0819

FOR SUSAN

Did you think the lion was sleeping because he didnt roar?

JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER

Later, in the week that followed, Zeb Holloway watched the injury form again and again. T.T. Monroe, the finest quarterback ever to play for Rumney High School in Grafton County, New Hampshire, turned the corner on an option play in the last minutes of their win over Hampton, and Zeb knew something had to give.

It was exactly like sensing a wave about to break, and Zeb had turned halfway to check the college scouts in the stands, the men with college baseball hats perched on their heads and slim binocular cords looped around their necks, the ones who came to watch T.T. and time him and smile when they saw him pull off yet another spectacular run or passhe was a highlight reel, everyone said, and it was trueand by the time Zeb pulled his eyes back, he caught merely the end of T.T.s leg buckling under him, heard the bone snap, heard T.T. scream like a fox Zeb had once heard scream when his uncle George Pushee had darted an arrow through the animals cheek.

No, no, no, no, no, T.T. shouted as soon as the action stopped.

He rolled on the field and grabbed handfuls of grass. Zeb heard the grass rip free of the earth.

Holloway, warm up! came the shout.

It was Coach Hoch. Backs coach.

Zeb heard the call far away and did not at first realize it signaled for him to warm up. Then Hawny Spader, his best friend, a third-string defensive back who never played, suddenly appeared with a ball hatched under his arm and his eyes scrambled wide.

Youre going in, man! Hawny said as if he couldnt believe it even as he gathered the substance of the situation.

Zeb regarded him, trying to pull himself together.

Holloway! Holloway, get your butt going. Get warmed up!

Coach Hoch came through the team like a man spreading a shower curtain. Kids jostled away, most of them riveted by the spectacle of T.T. slowly being attended to by the EMTs who now ringed his body. The stadium had gone quiet. Seven thousand peoplemaybe more, hard to count them, Zeb thoughthad turned to stone in an instant. Zeb knew everyone was stunned and he understood the calculation: not only had T.T.s varsity career suddenly come to a horrible conclusion, but the state championship, the championship that T.T. had promised to bring to the high school on the Saturday after Thanksgiving Day the following week, had now become a long shot. The fans had a difficult time absorbing it all so quickly, Zeb reflected, and the bright flashes of understanding they experienced felt halved and sliced by newer disappointment as the reality of the situation became clearer in each moment that passed.

Before Coach Hoch reached him, Zeb glanced over at the cheerleadershe looked mostly for Stella, but his eyes couldnt pick her out of the line of pompoms and white sweaters with blue piping that marked the girls formation. Several of them held their hands to their lips, and then, as if understanding her place in the mourning process was greater than the others, Stella, T.T.s girlfriend, stepped forward, a bit showy even in this moment of small tragedy, and Zeb saw tears filling her eyes, while two other girlsnot ones he knew wellput their arms around her and tried to comfort her. It pained Zeb to admit it, but he could spot the evaluation forming in Stellas movement, her neediness for attention. T.T. was injured, and Stella had become mourner in chief, the girlfriend whose sadness could give her a first starring role. Sad, noble girlfriend. Tragic girlfriend. Zeb knew she would be aware of the new eyes that found her. That was catnip to Stella. She couldnt resist it.

Forget him now! Coach Hoch half shouted while he was still yards away. Forget T.T. We all want him to be okay, thats fine, you can want it to be any which way, but youre the next man up. You hear me? Youre the next man up! What do we always say? Youre the next man up, thats what we say.

Zeb nodded.

It still hadnt sunk in that he was now to get ready, now to go into the game as T.T.s replacement.

Ill warm him up, Coach, Hawny said. I got him.

Start throwing, Coach Hoch said. There you go. Hawny, good man. You get him limbered up, you hear? Now quit looking at T.T. Theres not a thing in the world you can do for him. No, I take that back. What you can do for him, Zeb, what you can do is step in and finish the game the way its supposed to be finished. You hear? Zeb, you tracking with me?

Zeb nodded, his stomach buzzing with butterflies. He had been in a game only once the entire season, in a mop-up victory over Campton when the score had been so lopsided the game had taken on a festive air for the Rumney team. His role had been meaningless, a mere comic piece of punctuation because the game had been so securely put on ice by T.T. Even this game against Hampton, halfway through the fourth quarter, was iced. By rights, T.T. should have come out before, and he probably would have after the final series, but Zeb knew some of it had been to parade for the college scouts what T.T. could do. It had been showing off, honestly, and Zeb didnt like thinking it, but he knew his grandmother in Maine would say something about the Lord and pride going before a fall.

Still dazed, he stepped back and grabbed the ball when Hawny underhanded it to him. He tossed it to Hawny, putting some air underneath it. Hawny caught it, tucked it close to his body as receivers were trained to do, and lofted it back.

Okay, now, nothing fancy, Coach Hoch said, finding his calmer voice, his sincere voice. Coach Hoch stood next to Zeb, sideways. He was a solid, thick man, with lips turned too wide up and down, a fish with its lips pressed against the side of an aquarium. Were golden in this game. Well be running the ball and taking it slow. Grind out the clock, thats all we have to do. Well hand the game to our defense... thats it. Not a thing to worry about. What does Coach K say? Its a game and its supposed to be fun. Isnt that what he says?

Zed nodded. That was, indeed, what Coach K said.

For a moment, Zeb concentrated on throwing. He could always throw. In fact, although he was not as explosive as T.T., not nearly as fast or elusive, he sometimes felt that as a thrower, a pure passer measured by that standard alone, he could hold his own with T.T. Zeb lived to throw, whereas T.T. passed merely as a part of his arsenal. For Zeb, passing constituted his only football gift. Even now, lobbing the ball to Hawny and catching it when it came back, Zeb took satisfaction in the motion, in the quiet tick of the laces as they left his right hand. He threw a good, tight spiral. Hawny, on receiving the ball, nodded and tossed the ball back. They had played catch a thousand times, but never quite like this, never with the game open and waiting.