Sweet Boy Down: A Novel

The stadium lights pierced through sheets of rain as Toby Greer lay flat on his back, the number 14 on his mud-stained jersey a reminder of every expectation he’d inherited. His father’s number. His father’s legacy. Now, Henderson Field’s turf absorbed both his father’s legacy and his own shattered certainty with seconds left in the fourth quarter. Millbrook down by three. The perfect season his father had once lived, and the one Toby was supposed to replicate, blurred above him like the constellation of stadium lights through the downpour.

“Son?” His father’s voice cut through the rain, through the rising panic. Jim Greer kneeled beside him, still wearing his assistant coach’s headset, his face tight with the fear Toby had never seen there before. The team doctor appeared on his other side, Coach Marshall hovering just behind them, all their voices mixing with the drum of rain on his facemask.

His left knee felt like it had exploded from the inside out, but Sweet Boy Toby–everyone’s golden child–managed his signature smile, anyway. Water ran down his face, masking everything else that might have leaked from his eyes.

“I’m good,” he lied, even as the stretcher appeared beside him. “Just give me something for the pain and put me back in. We can’t lose this one, Dad. Not this one.”

He didn’t know it then, but those words would echo in his head for months to come.