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"With a 1.9 GPA, getting into a selective college is going to be brutal," Katherine said. "And your resume is a wasteland. You should do what I did and join a team."
Katherine Walker was tall and lean, six-one with the kind of height most professional models would envy. Since sophomore year, she had been an outside hitter on the BHHS girls’ volleyball team.
"BHHS has athletic aid packages for athletes in every program," she went on. "Football gets the biggest one. With your build, not playing football is practically a waste. If you can win a starting spot and help the team get results, you might have a shot at a full ride. Best case, if you’re good enough, a college admissions office puts you on a priority list. That makes getting into a top school a lot less impossible."
She squeezed his shoulder.
"Besides, look at you. You’re built like you were assembled in a gym. If you don’t play something, who’s supposed to afford all the meat you eat?"
Then she smiled.
"And the most important part? Sarah Michelle Gellar is on the cheer squad. Don’t tell me you don’t want a future star cheering for you."
This was not the first time Katherine had brought it up, and Nolan’s answer had not changed.
"Not interested."
"Money is my problem," he said before she could argue. "As for college, football helps, sure, but GPA and SAT scores still matter more, don’t they? Which brings me back to AP classes..."
That was where his interest sharpened.
Advanced Placement courses were the closest thing American high school offered to college coursework. They carried extra GPA weight, and for a student trying to look serious to selective colleges, a transcript without AP classes looked thin. Four passed exams would be the floor. More would be better.
Nolan planned to use them to drag his GPA out of the gutter.
That would not be easy.
Still, he had found a few courses where an A looked possible: AP Psychology, AP Art History, AP Studio Art, and AP Music Theory.
None of them would be free points, but they gave him a way to turn all the movies, music, design, and pop-culture knowledge packed in his head into something admissions officers might actually recognize.
Then there were AP English Literature and Composition, AP Microeconomics, AP U.S. Government and Politics, and one special case: AP Computer Science A.
In 1994, AP Computer Science was not built around Java yet. Java had not reached classrooms. The exam still used Pascal, a language old enough to feel almost friendly compared with the software jungle that would come later.
The future belonged to computers. If he was going to start over, he would be an idiot not to learn the machinery behind it.
All told, that made eight AP classes, plus his regular honors courses, plus the small matter of keeping himself and his family afloat.
Football did not fit anywhere.
After listening to him lay out the plan, Katherine laughed.
"When did you turn into an academic decathlon kid?"
At BHHS, that was not exactly an insult, but it was not a compliment either. The school had its share of ruthless grade-chasers, kids who treated every class like a courtroom battle and every club like a line item on an application. Nolan’s proposed schedule sounded like something one of them would build in a fever.
"Fine," Katherine said at last, shaking her head. "But you still have to go to the tryout tomorrow. Show up, pretend you’re a fragile little lamb, and get cut early if you want."
She glanced at the scrape on his cheek.
"And stop worrying about money for five minutes. I’ll figure something out."
When Nolan asked what that meant, she only gave him a mysterious look and refused to explain.
They talked about Mia after that. Katherine said Nolan’s mother was working three jobs and trying to return to the career she had given up: screenwriting.
Before marriage, Mia had been a working Hollywood writer. Back then, the industry was still adjusting to the pressure television had put on traditional film. Now things were different. The 1990s were already producing one breakout after another, and 1994 felt like the front edge of something bigger. Nolan supported the idea of Mia writing again, not just emotionally, but strategically. If she could get even one script to the right person, it might change their entire situation.
Before long, Mia called them into her room.
"Katherine says you’re trying out for football?" she asked, hope brightening her tired face.
Football was not just a sport at BHHS. It was a civic religion with helmets. Parents bragged about their sons playing it the way other people bragged about scholarships or piano recitals.
Nolan glanced at Katherine. She was giving him an urgent look, so he nodded.
"That’s wonderful." Mia’s expression softened. She looked worn down, probably from work, but the smile was real. "Are you hungry? I can make you something."
It was the first time in weeks she had offered to cook him a late-night meal.
She wanted to make sure he ate before the tryout.
Nolan shook his head and told her he was fine.
When he left, he took the trash bag from beside the door.
His room was at the other end of the motel corridor. Walking alone beneath the buzzing lights, thinking about where the family stood and what the future might demand from him, Nolan felt a knot settle in his chest.
At the far end of the walkway, he flicked the trash bag toward the dumpster near the edge of the parking lot.
It dropped in cleanly from almost thirty yards away.
The original Nolan had two natural advantages. One was his height. The other was exceptional hand-eye coordination.
He had been good at darts, pool, arcade games, and anything else that rewarded touch and timing. But under the influence of his older brother, the family geek, he had never cared much for sports. That was probably one reason his skin looked so pale.
Maybe he really was built for football after all.
Chasing athletic aid was not worth much by itself. But if he could actually play, that changed the math.
The most immediate benefit would be status. In a school like BHHS, status made everything easier, including the kind of side business he had started the night before.
The students here came from families with money. Where people were willing to spend, someone would always be there to collect.
Long term, football was even bigger. In the future Nolan remembered, it would become the most valuable sport in America by a ridiculous margin. By 2019, NFL revenue would sit around sixteen billion dollars, well ahead of MLB and nearly double the NBA.
Mia’s reaction said the same thing in a simpler way: football meant something here.
No useful skill was ever a waste.
But first, he had to find out whether he actually had the talent.
Tomorrow’s tryout would answer that.
...
The next morning, Nolan and Katherine stepped off the bus.
Things were different now. They had to leave an hour early just to reach school on time.
BHHS did not have some grand, ceremonial entrance. The classroom buildings sat right against the street, with not even a proper wall on that side. It was not because the district was broke. The school simply sat in Beverly Hills, where every square foot was expensive enough to have an ego.
The location had its advantages. At least they did not have to pass through metal detectors like students at certain rougher schools elsewhere.
Morning traffic had already choked South Moreno Drive. And that was only the parents dropping kids off. Plenty of students drove themselves and headed straight for nearby parking.
The clothes told the decade as clearly as the cars did. By 1994, some of the most fashionable teenagers in America were already wearing miniskirts that sat several inches above the knee. The boys were soaked in skate culture and hip-hop influence: oversized shirts, oversized pants, skateboards under one arm, headphones around their necks, Walkmans buried in their pockets.
This was youth culture in motion.
At BHHS, classmates changed depending on what courses you chose.
Between periods, a few familiar faces heard Nolan was trying out for the Normans and immediately got excited. Their main request was predictable: if he made the team, could he introduce them to girls on the cheer squad?
College cheerleading had its rival powers: Kentucky, Louisville, USC, and plenty of others fighting for prestige and attention.
But high school cheerleading was different.
For that, BHHS might as well have been the capital.
It made sense. Half the parents here worked somewhere in film, television, fashion, music, or art. Their kids had inherited the instinct for presentation. Everyone knew how to dress, how to pose, how to make a hallway look like a camera might be waiting around the corner.
Southern California had a flavor, and BHHS wore it shamelessly.
After a dull Spanish class, a chemistry lab on iron and copper sulfate, a history lesson on ancient Egypt, and an English writing assignment on A Tale of Two Cities, Nolan was done with classes for the day.
It was only 2:30 p.m.
From then until six or seven, the campus belonged to clubs, teams, rehearsals, practices, and everyone trying to build a life that looked better on paper.
Nolan went alone to Nickoll Field.
The grass stretched out in front of him, striped with yard markers like a giant green ruler.
He had barely had time to take it in when someone shouted.
An oval football came spinning down at an angle, dropping like a shell toward his head.
Nolan planted, timed it, jumped straight up, and raised both hands.
He plucked the ball out of the air as if it had been thrown to him on purpose.
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