"It's just because your run was the last play that everybody remembers it," DeShawn said. "If it hadn't been for what you did earlier, we wouldn't have had a chance to win. Besides, did you see the arms on that guy who hit you? They were like my legs. I swear to God, he had to have been on steroids. I think half their guys were." "You think so?" I said, looking first at DeShawn and then at Drew. "You think they were on steroids?" Drew shrugged. "I don't know. You hate to call somebody a cheater without any proof, but some of those Foothill guys were just too damn big." For the rest of the day, my mind kept going back and forth. Was number 50 a cheater? Were a bunch of them cheaters? Had they stolen the victory? Or was I being a poor loser by making excuses? *** Toward the end of the day, a rumor started going around that Coach Downs was quitting. "Probably they'll blame that on us, too," Drew said, only half joking. Downs was a PE teacher as well as head football coach, but he had a sub Tuesday and another one Wednesday, and both days he'd had meetings with the principal and the athletic director.
