Game Changer

By building up to the actual account of the injury until the end of the novel, the novel positions the reader in the same place as Teddy’s family, his friends buzzing on the Internet, and his doctors struggling to monitor any signs of recovery: What happened to Teddy? By withholding that information and moving through a series of cryptic messages posted on Camille’s webpage, the novel heightens the impact of discovering exactly what happened. Teddy’s injury is assumed to be a terrible accident, but an understandable risk—the hitting was aggressive, the heat nearly unbearable, and the stakes high as the seniors evaluated the freshmen and their ability to be tough.

Rather than beginning with any account of the scrimmage game, the novel begins by juxtaposing two contradictory messages. The first, the medical report about Teddy’s admittance to the hospital; the other a record of Teddy’s thoughts as he adjusts to the reality of his coma, in a confusing two pages of italicized fragments. Teddy’s thoughts, juxtaposed to the cold efficiency and clinical observations of the admittance report, suggest a mystery, a core uncertainty that Teddy struggles to recall. Teddy, suspended in the un-life of a coma, sees only darkness and blobs of occasional light. The opening line, “Light in the darkness” points to the wider action of the novel as each of the characters work to bring to light the reality of Teddy’s injury out of the darkness of the team’s deliberate, conspiratorial silence.

The team, despite the coach’s insistence that it is a family, is in conflict against itself. A parallel plot is introduced of another team in shock, wrestling with the implications of its possible termination: The Youngblood family is in crisis. In an emotional shock since Sarah, Teddy’s mother, departed quite unexpectedly one morning, the Youngblood family is filled with tension and unresolved conflict.

As Teddy works through the darkness of his coma toward the light of his recovery, the town works through the darkness of its ignorance about the reality of the football program. Ethan works his way through the darkness of his own deception and evasions, the Youngblood family works its way through its own trauma. As each member of the family in turn speaks to Teddy, their emotional and psychological profiles emerge. They each reveal how they are in comas of their own. Sarah is suspended between her guilt over her decision to leave the family and need to find herself. Jim is caught between his allegiance to a game and a program he loved and his fears over why his son will not awaken. Janey is suspended between her childhood and her growing realization that her brother was nearly killed. Each is suspended in the between, each in a darkness of their own, groping blindly for some light.

Ethan, in session with a therapist assigned by the school to make sure none of the players at the summer camp are having problems after seeing Teddy collapse on the field, talks about his frustrations, and his anger over his own mediocre abilities. He discusses his feelings about how once he was the promising phenom but then, through no fault of his own, he stopped growing, and that distinction went to Teddy. The remark reveals Ethan’s low self-esteem, his existential anxiety over not belonging on the team, and his perception of himself in pejorative terms: He is cursed, he is luckless, and worst of all from a football perspective, he is small. Ethan’s transcript shows that Ethan has issues deeper than any concern over seeing his friend collapse on the field. “He’s going to be OK, right?” he asks twice to the therapist as his session ends (34), illustrating a young boy, terrified and guilt-ridden, desperate to find some way to assuage that guilt.