Million Dollar Throw

Nate acknowledges that it’s an amazing day for football: “One of the those early-November days when it was cold but not too cold, the sun painting every part of the day as bright a color as possible […] It was too good of a day to feel bad about anything” (118). He tries to remind himself that football is low stakes, not “life or death or losing a job the way his dad had lost his, the way he knew dads all over the country were losing theirs” (118).

Nate decides that during this game he’s just going to enjoy the pure joy of football and not worry about anything else; especially not the million-dollar throw. During the first half Nate throws okay, but by the second half he can’t seem to throw anymore. Coach Rivers benches Nate for the first time in his life.

Even though Nate has been benched, he’s not mad because he thinks he deserves it. Eric, the quarterback that takes Nate’s place in the game, throws like a champ, and their team wins the game. Coach tells Nate that his benching is temporary, but Nate is skeptical. With the way things are going, he worries that his benching will be permanent.

Nate goes home to find his parents are watching TV. He thinks how he never knows “what to expect these days from his dad, what kind of mood he would be in when he was around. He seemed to know his dad less and less” (133). His parents ask about the game, and he tells them that he was benched and goes straight to his room. His mom brings him a burger and fries and lets him eat in his room. He sits at his computer and thinks about Abby, “wondering what she was going through right now, this minute. Wondering if she had a roommate. What her room was like. What it was like learning to be blind. Wondering how scared Abby was” (135).

An instant message pops onto his computer screen from Abby. She says that she misses him, and he replies, “Not as much as I miss you” (136). 

Nate’s mom tells him that she’s taking a second job as a waitress at one of the nicest restaurants in town, to which Nate rebukes: “But mom, the Grille isn’t a place you work at, it’s a place we go to” (137). He’s also upset because his mom is used to staying at home, and now she will be gone all the time, just like his dad. Nate and his mom have a heart-to-heart conversation. He tells her about his worries for Abby, and she says, “You’ve got the biggest heart of anybody I know […] So when somebody you love is going through stuff, so are you” (140).

Nate opens up to his mom about the million-dollar throw, saying he knows it would change everything for them. She admits that it would be amazing, yet she tries to impart how he's not responsible for what happens to the family, and how he should enjoy his special moment:

But whether or not you win it or not, it is still going to be one of the great nights of your whole life. Of our family’s life. Which is why I don’t want you to spend the next three weeks, or whatever it is, walking around with the weight of the world on your shoulders. Or thinking that you’re going to be letting anybody down if you miss (142).

Coach Rivers gives Nate a pep talk before practice. At first Nate is throwing okay, but then he starts messing up. The coach then puts Eric in so that he can get some practice as Nate’s replacement for the upcoming game. Nate watches Eric play and realizes he seems different because he has a new sense of confidence about him after helping the team win the last game. Nate thinks that if anyone were watching from the outside, they would think that the team belonged to Eric.

Abby gets home from Perkins and calls Nate over to her house. When he gets there, they go to her art room, and they joke about how much they missed each other. She says she might be going back to Perkins for a second semester, and that her doctor said her eyes are going blind much faster than they should be. Nate is upset by all the news, but he then has a distressing realization: “The real reason she hadn’t called him while she’d been away wasn’t just because she was too busy. It was because she loved it there. Loved being at a school for the blind. This was her new world. She needed it” (151).

She asks about Nate’s game, and he says that it was awful. She tries to encourage him like usual, but he dismisses her: “I’m just tired of people telling me that the season’s going to work out fine, that everything is going to be the way it used to be. ‘Cause it’s not” (152). She tries to say that’s not true, but he retorts, “That’s the thing. You think you know everything about me, every single thought inside my head. And you don’t” (152). Things become awkward after that and Nate leaves.

This is the first time Nate goes a whole weekend without communicating with Abby: “At least there was a game for him to play and focus on, Saturday against Salisbury, a game the head coaches nearly called off because it was raining so hard” (154). Nate doesn’t mind the rain because it means he doesn’t have to “worry about his throwing because it was almost impossible to throw in the wind and rain” (154). Nate’s team wins, and he wants to call Abby when he gets home, but he doesn’t. Instead, on Monday morning, they sit next to each other like they usually do, “acting as if nothing had changed between them, both of them knowing differently” (155).

Things are different at school, too. Abby now sits up front in each class, and in math she has a special monitor on her desk. After class, Abby trips on a desk, and she pleads with Nate not to tell the teacher because then the teacher will tell her parents, and her parents will make her use her new cane; she’s been falling more frequently these days, and she says a cane would be even more embarrassing than the glasses she hates.

It’s another game day. Nate’s feeling down on himself about his throwing, and his friend Malcom tries to cheer him up. Nate rejects the attempt, and Malcom says, “Dude, what is it with you these days? I want to talk about mojo, you want to go looking for a dark dang cloud” (161). Towards the end of the game, Nate gets scared to throw the ball because he’s scared of messing up. Coach benches him, and Nate says, “I’d do the same […] Really, I would” (163). When he gets home that night, he finds out that his dad has “been laid off from Big Bill’s” (164).

The situation with Nate's family has worsened since his dad lost his job: “They were at the kitchen table. As soon as Nate walked in, he knew it was bad, the way you always did with your parents. Not how bad. Just bad. Just by the way they were looking at each other” (165). Nate asks what happened, and his dad says that the company wasn’t doing well and had to lay people off. Nate’s mom has been crying, and Nate asks if they’re going to lose the house. His dad is candid: “I’m not going to lie to you, son […] That’s a possibility. Has been for a while. The way it is with a lot of other people right now. It’s why I have to back into the wants ads tomorrow and see if I can find a job as soon as possible” (167). Nate asks what will happen if he doesn’t get another job soon, and his dad gets angry and says, “We’ll lose everything” (167).

Nate goes to his room and thinks about all the bad stuff happening around him. Then he thinks about Tom Brady’s life, how he didn’t always have it easy; how he beat the odds stacked against him and became a star: “So it wasn’t as if his hero hadn’t been knocked down. Anybody could get knocked down. Anybody and everybody. It was like Bill Parcells had talked about: It wasn’t how you got knocked down, it was how you got back up” (169). He decides he’s done feeling sorry for himself and asks his mom to help him hang up the painting of the target Abby made for him.

Nate and his mom stand the painting up in the backyard so that he can practice throwing the ball through the hole. Nate calls the painting his “dream catcher”(170) and decides that he’s going to practice throwing every day like it’s his job. His mom tells him to try not to make the target, but when he tries not to, he ends up putting the ball through the hole.

Coach tells the team that Eric, not Nate, will be the quarterback for the next game. However, he says that Nate’s “too good of an athlete to stand on the sidelines. You’re going to play some running back, probably more wide receiver. I might even take Bradley out and line you up at tight end once in a while” (175). The game goes well, and he thinks it’s funny because he “was working so hard at being a wide receiver and doing well at it that he felt more like a part of the team than he had for a while, whether he was out of position or not” (178).

When Nate gets home that evening his mom is at work, and his dad makes them dinner. His dad tells Nate that things will be okay and that they’re not the only family going through a rough financial patch. His dad also apologizes for his attitude lately and gives Nate a hug, something he hasn’t done in a long time. Nate goes upstairs and completes his homework, thinking about how he hasn’t talked to Abby in a long time. He wishes he could talk to her tonight because she wasn’t at school, and nobody knows why.

Nate’s mom gets home late, and he’s been up waiting for her. He asks if his mom can take him to Boston, pronto, because he has found something there that might change Abby’s life. His mom and him hug, and she says, “You’re still leading with your heart” (183).

Abby says that she missed school because she had a horrible day: “Nate knew these bad days were going to start coming more frequently. The distance between them was still there. This was the new Nate-and-Abby, the world the two of them were living in now” (184).

On Wednesday, Nate and his mom go to Boston. It’s revealed in later chapters that Nate is meeting with an eye doctor to find information on a special surgery for Abby. Abby isn’t at school on Thursday, which is starting to be the norm. He goes to Abby’s and leaves a gift, Helen Keller’s autobiography as an audiobook, on her doorstep. After Abby finds it, she calls and tells him to come over. Once in her art room, they talk about things. She says that it’s obvious he’s been deliberately creating distance between them: “[S]o it won’t be hard for me to leave you when I leave here—if I do end up Perkins full time—and you don’t even think about trying to deny it” (187). He says that it’s true, but that he doesn’t want her to go.