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"Amazing catch!"
One of the players on the field could not help blurting it out.
A moment earlier, the kicker had gotten excited and booted the ball with everything he had. Plenty of power. Not much aim. It had sliced toward the sideline, started dropping fast, and looked ready to smash some unlucky bystander in the head.
Then the stranger had taken it out of the air like it was nothing.
To someone who did not play, it probably looked like a simple catch. Anyone who spent every afternoon around football knew better.
First came the speed. A high kick could come down hard, and an oblong football did not fall like a round ball. The flight path wobbled, twisted, and lied. Tracking it took reflexes.
Then came the impact. Players had all tried to catch balls like that. It hit the hands like a thrown brick. Taking it cleanly without giving ground was not normal.
The craziest part was that the guy was not even wearing gloves.
Afterward, he only shook out his hands once.
Anyone who had played the sport knew exactly how ridiculous that was.
"Go get the ball, Flea."
Adam Newman, the Normans’ starting quarterback and number five, slapped a receiver on the helmet. He knew today was tryout day, which made the stranger’s identity obvious enough. The guy was a walk-on.
The Normans had been cursed this season. Starters kept getting hurt, the roster had thinned out, and their level of play had fallen with it. Other schools had started joking that Beverly Hills was less a football team than a stretcher squad.
The last-minute tryout had actually been Adam’s suggestion.
Their next Ocean League game was practically do-or-die, and two backup spots still had no one the coaching staff trusted. They needed bodies, and they needed them now.
Adam had not expected a surprise like this.
He silently thanked God, memorized the newcomer’s face, and waited to see what the guy would do when the real test started.
"That guy..." Reese, the backup quarterback, squinted from beside him. "I swear I’ve seen him somewhere. Recently."
"It’s a small school," Adam said. "You probably passed him in the hall."
Privately, he hoped there was no history between them. Reese had a short fuse. If he were not decent on the field, Coach Thomas would have cut him loose a long time ago.
"No, that’s not it," Reese muttered. "I think it was at the dance last night."
"Then you definitely saw wrong."
Adam knew Reese well enough. At any party, the guy’s attention went straight to girls and stayed there. He was not the type to remember another boy’s face.
Adam had gone to the dance too, but unlike Reese, he had been waiting for one person.
The problem was that she had never shown up.
Ten minutes later, head coach Thomas came onto the field wearing a school cap with a bold orange B on the front. He carried a clipboard and had the entire staff behind him: offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, strength coach, and three assistants.
Football had one obvious trait: everyone came in bulk.
The rosters were large. NFL teams carried fifty-three players. Coaching staffs were large too. A professional team could easily have a dozen coaches, sometimes far more.
BHHS, possibly the only high school in the world with oil production on campus, had money to spend. The football program got more of that money than most students realized.
The results, unfortunately, did not match the investment.
That was why Coach Thomas had looked ready to bite through sheet metal for the past week.
"What are you idiots standing around for?" he barked the moment he reached them. "Reese, why the hell is your helmet off? Trying to show everyone how much pus we can squeeze out of your face? Next time I catch you on my field without a helmet, I’ll pop every pimple myself and have Gilly clean up the mess."
Gilly was Coach Thomas’s Shar-Pei.
"And why is my quarterback standing there like a scarecrow?" Thomas snapped at Adam next. "You auditioning to guard parking lots after graduation? It isn’t Christmas. Nobody needs you hanging around like a bell-ringer."
His eyes moved on.
"And you, Flea..."
The entire starting offense and defense got their share.
"Look at yourselves. Another home loss. Another pile of excuses. Everyone stays three extra hours today. Nobody leaves until it’s dark."
Coach Thomas stood with his hands on his hips, spraying rage across the field like a sprinkler with anger issues.
That was how he had earned the nickname Madman.
To be fair, he knew what he was doing. He had led two different high schools to CIF section championships, and BHHS had paid well to bring him in. On campus, he had real authority.
The starters snapped back into their scrimmage.
The tryout group, Nolan included, waited on the sideline. There were roughly twenty of them.
Thomas turned to them.
"I don’t care why you’re here," he said. "You’re already behind. You get one game. One chance. At the end, only two of you stay."
Three late arrivals jogged up at the wrong moment.
Coach Thomas shredded them verbally and sent them right back out. They were done before they started.
"Selection is simple," he said. "You are not worth the time it would take to fit pads, so we’re playing flag football. Random groups. Round robin. One quarter. Everybody understand?"
"Yes, sir."
Nolan heard the others answer and followed a beat late.
Before this life, he had known next to nothing about football.
He had watched a Super Bowl once, but mostly for the halftime show.
The old Nolan could chain every combo in Street Fighter from muscle memory. Football rules, however, were a blur.
That morning, he had asked around and picked up the basics. Now the coach had switched them to something called flag football, which Nolan did not understand at all.
Before he could think too long, an assistant handed everyone a belt with two hanging strips of fabric. Nolan copied the others and fastened it around his waist.
The game began.
His side had the ball first. A teammate took the snap, ran forward, dodged one defender, and tossed the ball backward to Nolan.
Nolan did not overthink it.
He tucked the ball in both arms and ran straight ahead.
It was still football. The scoring rule had to be mostly the same.
Touchdown.
"What the hell?"
Coach Thomas stared at the way Nolan clutched the ball against his chest and muttered under his breath.
It was the strangest ball-security form he had ever seen.
This kid had not played football. There was no way. He had barely even watched it.
And yet the ridiculous part came next.
When Nolan ran, he looked like a freight train with legs. Two defenders tried to close him down from the front. He turned one shoulder and rammed through the gap, knocking both of them off balance.
The others chased from behind, but he kept pulling away until he crossed into the end zone at an easy jog.
Nolan turned around, expecting his teammates to rush over for high fives and everyone on the sideline to cheer.
Instead, they all stared at him.
Blankly.
He looked down.
One of his flags was gone.
In flag football, if someone pulled your flag, the play was dead.
Nolan gave an awkward smile.
"New field," he said. "Takes a second to get the feel."
On the sideline, Coach Thomas took off his cap and scratched his head.
This kid was definitely here to cause trouble.
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