Million Dollar Throw

In the middle of a game, Coach takes Nate off the bench and reinstates him as the quarterback. Nate ends up helping the team win the game, and he looks into the stands to see “Abby high-fiving his mom, because in this moment she didn’t have to see anything. All she had to do was listen” (197) to the crowd cheering.

Nate’s team is “one win away now from playing for the league championship. But Nate already felt as though he’d won some kind of championship today. Maybe of himself” (197). 

Nate feels like he can finally throw the football again, and at least that part of his life is once again making sense: “Nate felt good about football again. At least he had that going for him” (199).

When he is home alone, Abby shows up at his door. She says she’s been out walking with her cane, but it’s clear that she’s upset. She starts crying in front of Nate, something she never does, and tells him that her dad lost his job. This is a huge deal because her family has always been well-off, but now they’re low on money and without insurance. Considering what’s going on with Abby’s eyes, this is devastating news. Nate asks Abby what he can do, and she says, “I want to be with you” (202). Nate puts his arm around her, and she rests her head on his shoulder. He tells her that it will be okay, “that she was going to have to take that one of faith” (203). 

It's twelve days before Thanksgiving Day and Nate’s chance at the million-dollar throw, and his team has their second-to-last game of the season. Near the end of the game, Nate falls, and his throwing hand gets stepped on:

All Nate did know was how much it hurt. Like someone had jabbed a needle right into the top of his hand. He didn’t cry out at the bottom of the pile. Didn’t grab the hand when he stood up, as much as he wanted to, not wanting anybody to know he was in any kind of pain. Just waited for the pain to go away. Only it didn’t (211).

He doesn’t want anyone to know because he wants to finish the game, and he doesn’t want to have any excuses for not making the million-dollar throw. Nate’s team ends up winning, despite his hand injury, which means that they will move onto the championship game.

Abby is about to leave town for a series of tests, so they’re saying goodbye in her art studio. She asks about his hand—she’s the only person he told about it—and he says it’s fine. He’s more upset that she’s leaving than he is about his hand. Even though she’s going away for a bit, she and her parents will be at Patriot’s game to witness his halftime throw. Before she leaves, she tells him she loves him, and he says, “Me too” (217). 

Nate’s family decides to celebrate Thanksgiving the day after so that everyone can focus on his throw. In preparation for the throw, the “SportStuff people had arranged for them to spend Wednesday night at a Courtyard Boston hotel, just a few minutes away from Gillette Stadium. A limousine would pick them up at five o’clock, even though kickoff wasn’t until eight thirty” (220). Nate brings his friend and teammate Malcom with him for moral support and as a throwing buddy to help him warm up before the big moment. On the field, Nate and Malcolm throw the ball back and forth. Nate looks around in awe:

Finally seeing the world of pro football—Brady’s world—from the inside. The lights. The signs. The fans starting to fill the seats. The wire over his head, the one with the camera attached to it, zooming along this way and that, as if the camera were warming up, too, for when it would give people watching on television those amazing overhead shots (224).

Nate and his family watch the first half of the game, and Nate studies Brady’s every move. Doug Compton, the man in charge of directing Nate for the throw, tells them that it’s halftime and therefore Nate’s show time. Nate has his special Brady-signed football in hand for the big throw. Nate is welcomed into the bright lights of the field by an announcer. He thinks he’s about to make the throw, but instead the announcer asks if he wants to warm up first. Then the announcer calls Tom Brady to come and give Nate some pointers.

Tom Brady introduces himself to Nate, and “Nate was so flustered, so excited to be actually shaking Brady’s hand—with his hands shaking the way they were—that he forgot he was holding his football and promptly dropped it” (232). Tom Brady notices that Nate is using a ball signed by him, and he says, “Wow, now the pressure’s on me, too […] I’ve got to come through for you” (233). Nate and Tom throw the ball back and forth, and Nate wishes this moment could last forever.

Tom tells Nate to believe he can do it, and when Nate throws the ball towards the target for the big throw, he really believes he can. And he does. Nate makes the big throw, and his parents, Abby, Malcom, and Tom are all cheering for him from the sideline. Someone brings him a huge check for a million dollars with his name on it. Despite all the overwhelming attention, Nate rushes over to Abby and hugs her “in front of the whole stadium and maybe the whole country. She hugged him back, for all she was worth” (237). She asks him what he’s going to do with the money, and he says, “I’m going to give it to you […] I found a way for you to see” (237). 

The next day, Nate tells his mom about “the surgeon who’d saved the eyesight of a thirteen-year-old boy in London with the same kind of Leber’s disease Abby had. The surgeon Nate had finally discovered after all those days and nights searching on the web, sometimes checking every hour on the hour” (239). Nate says that he’s going to pay for Abby to have this surgery, however much of his million that it takes. Nate knows that his family will be fine financially because his dad has been selling houses again.

It’s a year later, and Nate is the freshman quarterback of his high school team: “Nate, Malcolm, Pete, LaDell, and the four other freshmen starting for varsity this season would be the youngest Valley team to ever win the league. But only if they could put the ball in the end zone” (243), which they do. After the game is over, Abby runs onto the field. She is able to see now because Nate paid for her surgery and got her “the best eyes money can buy now” (244).

The novel ends with the lines: “He ran after her then, ran down the open field, knowing nothing could stop either one of them, feeling as if both of them could see forever” (244).