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whistle!”
    â€œYour mommy can’t help you on this field; your only family is your team!”
    If the last one was true, Marcus was definitely the black sheep of the clan. His teammates looked right through him, and spoke to him hardly at all. He was a part of the drills only when Barker directly ordered it. And after the whistle, when the players were hauling one another upright, Marcus was left on the grass like a discarded tackling dummy. They took their lead from Troy. To Number Seven, Marcus was an escapee from a leper colony.
    Of all the Raiders, Ron Rorschach was the most sympathetic, but even he was unwilling to cross his quarterback. “You’ve got to see it from Troy’s perspective. You’re a big threat to him.”
    â€œA threat?” Marcus repeated bitterly. “Troy’s like God in this place. If Coach tried to bench him, he’d be lynched!”
    Ron shook his head. “Not a football threat.”
    Marcus followed Ron’s gaze to the sidelines, where Alyssa was practicing with the cheerleaders. There was something about the way the uniform hung on her. It was exactly the same as what the other girls wore, yet it wasn’t —almost as if sheer attitude could fill out a sweater and miniskirt. Spying Marcus, she winked and waved.
    Marcus turned back to Ron. “Alyssa said they broke up.”
    Ron snorted. “You could set your watch by their breakups.”
    Marcus was torn. He didn’t want to chase away the hottest girl who had ever been interested in him. On the flip side, it was hard enough to be the new guy with a tight-knit unit like the Raiders when the team captain’s ex wasn’t hitting on you.
    â€œHey, stranger!” Alyssa greeted him. “Nice moves out there.”
    He grimaced. “They still drop my passes unless Coach is on their necks.”
    She looked him up and down. “I wasn’t following the ball .”
    Marcus shuffled uncomfortably. “Listen, maybe we should keep a low profile around practice when—you know—the guys are watching.”
    She regarded him pityingly. “When you throw off your back foot, you can’t get any zip in your passes.”
    Summer practices ended by noon. That day, driving with one hand and wolfing down his sandwich with the other, Marcus headed straight for Three Alarm Park as his new routine dictated. Whatever Charlie had meant by “the usual,” the newest Raider didn’t want to be late for the more important half of his football education.
    As it happened, “the usual” seemed to mean “whenever I show up— if I show up.” There were days when Marcus would have to kill three hours before Charlie came jogging down the path. There were days when the man never turned up at all. And there were times when Marcus would kill the motor on his bike to find Charlie already draped over the Paper Airplane, genuinely miffed at being kept waiting. “Where were you?” he’d say. “Having lunch with the president? I’ve been here forever!”
    At first, Marcus had tried to formalize their schedule, but it just didn’t seem to work. Charlie would readily agree to meet at twelve thirty, and then the next day, he’d roll in at quarter to four without so much as an excuse. Plan? What plan?
    It was annoying, but waiting to see if Charlie was going to show up soon became Marcus’s personal reality TV show. In an odd way, the introduction of this random factor somehow made his life richer. Charlie wasn’t boring, that was for sure.
    Of course, now that Marcus trained with Charlie, he had very little enthusiasm for running down his own passes when he was training alone. The solitary workouts got lamer and lamer until they began to resemble vigils for the missing fifty-something man.
    He was more than happy to stop what he was doing when a voice from outside the park called, “Hey!”
    â€œCharlie?” This