Two-Minute Drill Read Free

five-nine and was really shorter than that. How he’d won the Heisman Trophy, how he’d thrown one of the most famous touchdown passes in all football history against the University of Miami when he was a senior. After that, according to Scott’s dad, Flutie had spent more than twenty years in pro football, in just about every league there was. Even the one in Canada.
    Now Flutie was about to retire. And because it was his last game, his coach had let him try to drop-kick an extra point. It turned out Flutie loved football history almost as much as he loved playing. He knew that guys used to drop-kick all the time in the old days and had taught himself how to do it. Not only taught himself how, but gotten really good at it.
    So Bill Belichick, the Patriots coach, put him in at the end of a game against the Dolphins, and Flutie drop-kicked the extra point right through. And even though that point didn’t win any championships for the Patriots, his teammates had acted as if it had. So had the people in the stands that day.
    “They said he was too small his whole career,” Scott’s dad said. “But every time anybody ever gave him a fair chance, he played as big as anybody on the field.”
    That was the biggest dream of all for Scott, down here behind his house, in his secret place between the woods and the water:
    Someday he was going to get the chance to do something big in football.

FOUR
    Chris Conlan came over on Saturday morning and brought his dog with him.
    Scott hadn’t asked what kind of dog it was that day when Chris had said pictures didn’t do him justice. But in his head, he’d pictured a dog as big as Casey. Maybe a big old Lab, something like that.
    It wasn’t a Lab.
    Wasn’t even close.
    The dog’s name was Brett, Chris said, for Brett Favre, his all-time favorite quarterback.
    Brett was a black-and-tan Norwich terrier.
    “Wow, he’s small,” Scott said when Chris came walking through the front door with Brett under his arm, carrying him the way he would a schoolbook.
    Chris grinned and put a finger to his lips.
    “Shhhh,” he said. “He thinks he’s big.”
    But you had to say one thing for Brett: What he lacked in size, he made up for in speed. As soon as he was on the ground, he and Casey began tearing through every downstairs room in the house. Sometimes Casey was the one doing the chasing, sometimes Brett. Every few minutes, Casey would stop, lie down panting, tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth, and Brett would jump on his back.
    The first time he did it, Chris said, “He looks like a jockey riding a horse.”
    “Or Stuart Little riding one,” Scott said.
    Right then the two dogs went tearing off again, like they were already best friends.
    It wasn’t long before Scott’s mom pointed to them and said, “Outside. Now. Boys and dogs.”
    Scott couldn’t wait to show Chris his field, anyway.
    “Follow me,” Scott said as they made their way through his backyard, “there’s something you need to see.”
    When they came through the trees, the dogs already running ahead of them, Chris spotted the goalposts.
    “This,” he said, “is mad crazy.”
    Scott said, “Welcome to Parry Field.”
    Chris took Scott’s football out of his hands and, without even warming up or looking as if he were putting any effort into it, threw a perfect spiral from where they were standing that nearly clipped the top of one of the uprights.
    “That throw didn’t exactly stink,” Scott said.
    “Whatever,” Chris said. “Who does this field belong to?”
    “Me.”
    “This is . . . yours ?”
    “Mine and Case’s,” he said. “And my dad’s on weekends. You’re the first . . . guy I’ve brought here.”
    He wanted to say “friend.” But he stopped himself, not wanting to scare Chris the very first time they were hanging out together. Besides, he’d always thought that being friends wasn’t something you talked about, it was something you just knew.
    Something that just