Read Online Out of the Pocket by Bill Konigsberg - Free Book Online Page A

“Way.” I had avoided Dennis for three days, which isn’t that hard since we don’t hang out that much outside of football. The tough thing was Austin and I had barely talked either.
    Just football stuff, nothing personal. I was so mad at him, and Austin knew it. He’d been avoiding me.
    “Finch won’t write that shit,” Dennis said. “If you want, I’ll go tell him he better not or I’ll kill him. If that appears in the paper, he’s a dead geek.” Vintage Dennis. An apology by way of promised violence.
    I laughed, still not quite over it.
    “Probably let’s not do that. Just don’t ever do that to me again, okay? Don’t tell anyone. Please.”
    Dennis shrugged. “Not a problem,” he said, relieved, as if everything were back to normal. Things weren’t, but I didn’t have the energy to focus on it. I had to think about practice and the game tomorrow. Dennis strutted off to his locker, and Austin hung around.
    He wasn’t in uniform, and wouldn’t be for at least another week.
    “Yo, I’m sorry, too, dude,” he said.
    “Oh, Dennis was sorry? I didn’t hear him say that,” I said. “Must have missed that in that great apology.”
    Austin sat next to me. “What do you expect? It’s Dennis.”
    I looked up at him and saw real regret in his eyes.
    He really was sorry that he had told Dennis, I could tell.
    “So Rahim knows, too,” I said, detaching my mouth guard from my helmet.
    Austin examined his feet and said, “Yeah.”
    I walked toward the water fountain and Austin walked at my side.
    “Anyone else?”
    He shook his head.
    I pressed the button, placed my mouth guard under the 62
    stream of water, and looked up at him. I tried to say it as nicely as possible because I didn’t want to fight. “Why’d you do that, Austin?
    I trusted you.”
    Austin exhaled. “I didn’t mean to do something bad. I just needed to tell someone. I should never have told Dennis. That was stupid. I’m sorry.”
    “Yeah, that wasn’t so smart,” I said, waving my mouth guard in the air to dry it. “Well, it’s done, anyways.”
    “Yeah. Done,” Austin said. “And I’m sorry, dude.”
    “How are you feeling, how are you feeling?” I said, mimicking him making fun of me. He got it immediately and laughed.
    I was glad it ended with a laugh, and felt a little bit lighter on my feet after I punched him in the shoulder and slowly jogged out to the fi eld.
    We started practice with the scrambling triangular, an agility drill. As a lefty, I dropped back, keeping the ball up near my left shoulder as if I was about to pass. I dropped back five steps, and then ran to my left at a forty-five-degree angle, as if being forced out of the pocket. I then shuffled quickly to the left and ran backward, back to where I began, and threw the ball off to my right. It’s supposed to help your agility when the pocket breaks down.
    Sometimes the pocket breaks down and you’d better be ready to scramble. Your feet are all you can one hundred percent depend on.
    I was ultrafocused and Coach saw my intensity.
    “Attaboy, Bobby,” he yelled, and I felt hot, in my stomach. I like praise, especially from Coach, who can be tough.
    We did formation work and I tried to keep my chin up, but the tier brought out the worst in me, as always.
    The tier formation was this big, ugly, unwanted thing that was ruining my life, and I had no control over it, just had to deal with it the best I could.
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    I couldn’t get the timing down, especially when I was throwing to Somers out of the backfield. Sometimes it meant an extra few seconds in the pocket, and it was hard to stay patient.
    “Yo, Bobby, stop your dancing,” yelled Rahim, after one play in which I had shimmied around the pocket for much longer than was comfortable. “You suck at it.” Everyone laughed, so I did, too.
    Since it was Thursday, we did our typical run-through, focusing on our opponent for the next day, La Habra. Big defensive line, Coach kept warning. We had to be