Second Down
Copyright© 2025 by Lumpy
Chapter 24
We ended up staying until Freddie kicked us all out of the diner around eleven-thirty. While that wasn’t all that late, we’d also played a full football game and spent two hours each way on a bus. I was about dead when one of the juniors dropped me off at home.
I slept until almost noon, when a knock at my door woke me up.
I cursed myself for how late I’d slept. Between giving up time to train with Li and how much of my Saturdays were eaten up by football, I really didn’t have the time to be sleeping away my only totally free day.
I hopped out of bed and half-shambled to my bedroom door, pulling it open and finding my father, dressed for work, standing on the other side.
“You won,” he said, stepping past me into my room and closing the door. He looked almost shell-shocked. “Every single bet.”
“Wha ... How much?”
“You now have three thousand four hundred and thirty-eight dollars. That’s twenty-four hundred and seventy-three in profit. How? How on earth were you so certain this was how the game was going to go? Vegas only had a fourteen-point spread; they didn’t see it going this way. And you were positive.”
I knew this moment was coming, and honestly, I’d been dreading it. If there had been any other way to place the bets, I would have, because there was no way to explain how I knew what I knew. I almost thought up a lie but abandoned it just as quickly. Dad was really good at spotting lies, and even if he wasn’t, the entire crux of my argument was ‘trust me.’
I’d be shooting myself in the foot if I tried to bluff my way through this.
“Blake?”
“I was thinking if I should try to make up a reason, but I decided not to. I want you to trust me, and that means I have to be completely honest with you.”
“This isn’t something you get to decide, Blake. If you’re involved in something illegal...”
“I’m not,” I cut in. “Nothing illegal. No one else was involved in how I knew the outcome. But yes, I did know how the game was going to end. Mostly. I knew it was going to be a blowout and somewhere in the range of thirty points.”
“How? Explain it to me.”
“I can’t. There’s no way to describe it that won’t sound completely crazy. I need you to trust me on this.”
“This isn’t something I can just trust you on. This could end badly if you’re doing something you shouldn’t. I mean jail time badly.”
“I’m not. I can promise you that. Look at the evidence. I didn’t just know they’d win, I knew the exact score, more or less. There’s no way to throw a game like that, and me, a kid living in West Texas, would have to have inside information on what would be the biggest scandal in sports history, if the game was being thrown. Hundreds of people would have to be involved. I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m being straight with you instead of making up excuses.”
He was quiet for a long time, staring hard at me. I could see he was in cop mode, trying to figure out what I was thinking. If I was lying.
“You make a good point,” he finally said.
“Good, ‘cause I want you to place more bets.”
“Blake, I told you this was a one-time thing.”
“I know what you said. But this isn’t enough for what I need. These next bets are just like the last one, guaranteed. I know exactly what’s going to happen.”
“How?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Then I can’t place the bets.”
I sighed. Round and round we went. Part of me wanted to tell him everything, about the dream, about his death, about Joshua. But, I couldn’t stop his death if I was in the nut house.
“If that’s how it has to be, then I won’t be able to bet. Because there’s no explanation I can give you that will make sense. All I can say is that I know what’s going to happen.”
“Blake...”
“So instead,” I continued, rolling right over him. “We need to figure out another way to come up with twelve thousand dollars. And fifteen thousand the year after that. And another fifteen the year after that. Or I give up on my dream of being drafted.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It is. Maybe I make it on just talent, but the people I’m competing against, many of them will have help on top of their talent. I’m trying to find a way to make my dreams happen without putting you and Mom in debt. And I think I’ve proven something is happening here that can pay for it.”
Dad was back to the cop stare. I kept my mouth shut, knowing pushing any harder right now would backfire.
“I must be absolutely crazy,” he finally said, shaking his head.
“That makes two of us.”
“What are these bets you’re thinking about?”
“I don’t know if they even take pro bets like this, but on the twenty-third, some NFL records will be broken. The Rams are going to have the longest kickoff return in history: a hundred and three yards. And Tyrone Hughes of the Saints is going to set the record for most kickoff returns in a single game. It’s going to be a crazy game.”
“That’s ... incredibly specific.” Dad crossed his arms. “A game score is one thing. Those kinds of record-breaking performance? That’s not something anyone could arrange.”
“I know. And I still can’t tell you how I know.”
“Maybe. What else?”
“November fifth. George Foreman is going to win the heavyweight title.”
Dad’s eyebrows shot up as he exclaimed, “No way in hell. Moorer’s undefeated. Thirty-five and O. Foreman’s in his mid-forties. It’s a miracle that fight is even happening.”
“I know how it sounds. But that’s what’s going to happen.”
“Jesus.” Dad started pacing my room. “Okay. Even if, and this is a massive if, you’re right about all this, we need to be smart about this. We can’t just keep winning. Someone’s going to notice.”
“What do you mean?”
“We need some losses mixed in. Strategic ones. Small enough not to hurt too badly, but enough to make the pattern look natural.”
“I hadn’t thought about that.”
“Who wins the Rams-Saints game?”
I wracked my brain, trying to pull up the specifics. “Pretty sure the Saints take it. Close game though.”
“Okay. Here’s what we do. Five hundred on the Saints to win straight up. We’ll put a hundred on a high over-under that we know will lose. That offsets some of the winning pattern. Then another hundred on the longest return record. Not both records though. That’d be too suspicious for anyone to predict. “Then we take everything you’ve got and put it on Foreman.”
“Okay. Sounds good.”
“I must be out of my mind. I need to make these calls somewhere else. Just in case. The last thing your mother needs is to hear me placing all these bets.”
“Dad...”
“Sure, just ... don’t make me regret this,” he said, waving off what I was going to say, and heading back downstairs.
I didn’t say anything. I knew I was pushing him hard enough as it was. This was going to work, though. The problem was, I needed more. I needed more stuff to bet on after this. And maybe something outside of sports.
I spent the next several hours alternating between homework and working on my list of stuff to gamble on. Actually, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. The dream was still pretty clear in my head, every year I lived of it. Hell, sometimes, I remembered stuff from the dream better than I remembered stuff from my own life.
Still, it had to be something that dream me had been paying attention to, which did put a big limit on the things I remembered.
A few hours later, I headed downstairs to grab something to eat, having slept through lunch. I was almost to the bottom of the stairs when I heard my mother’s voice coming from the kitchen. I stopped cold and started to turn back around. I wasn’t hungry enough to deal with whatever was making her sound so angry.
“No, that’s not acceptable. None of these medications are working.”
I stopped in my tracks. I knew it was wrong to eavesdrop, but I was getting more and more worried about her health, and it sounded like Dad had finally gotten her to go see the doctor.
There was a pause, and I could hear her pacing, clearly listening to whatever the other person was saying.
“Don’t tell me to be patient. I’ve been patient. For weeks now, I’ve tried everything you’ve prescribed, and nothing helps.”
Another pause. I eased down a few more steps, careful to avoid the squeaky third one from the bottom.
“The Imitrex isn’t touching it anymore. Neither is the Fioricept. And the preventatives you gave me might as well be sugar pills.”
There was another long silence.
“I don’t care what the insurance company approves! I need something that works. These headaches are killing me. I can barely function.”
The pacing stopped. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter. She sounded like she was begging. Pleading with him.
“You don’t understand. I can’t ... I can’t live like this.”
The quiet voice was gone after the next long pause.
“Then what good are you?” she yelled.
The sound of the phone slamming into its cradle made me jump. Then came the soft sounds of crying, muffled like she was covering her face with her hands.
I backed up the stairs as quietly as I could and went back to my room. She’d be mad if she knew I was listening, and I knew she didn’t want me seeing her like that.
I needed to talk to Dad about her. He needed to get her to a specialist. There was something wrong, and it wasn’t just headaches. If they were just treating the symptoms, then they’d never find it.
I couldn’t spend all of Sunday at home doing homework, though. I also had to go to Eduardo’s to help out, as part of the plan to keep him out of the gang. After meeting Rafe and seeing how much influence he clearly had over Eduardo, it was all the more imperative.
It also meant that there was still no rest for the weary. I could have kicked myself for sleeping so late.
By early afternoon, I found myself on a ladder hammering another nail into a fresh facing board along the south side of the house. The wood was good, sturdy cedar Eduardo’s dad had brought back from work, or somewhere. I’d seen the rotted facing boards and suggested they change them out, both because they looked kind of bad and because the rot could spread into the side boards or even to the edge of the roof, which would allow rodents and other small pests into the attic.
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