Thursday, November 3, 2011
The doorbell of the new Pritchett-Tucker house rang, a ding-dong different from the standard one. Cameron, true to his style, had insisted on customizing it: a sound more fitting for a boutique than a family home.
"I'm coming!" Cam sang out from the kitchen, with his usual enthusiasm.
He skipped out of the way in little hops, enjoying, though with a bit less surprise than in the first few days, the space of the new house. It wasn't that the previous one had been small, not at all, but compared to this one, it now felt compact in his memory. Several months after the move, the initial excitement had faded a little, but not completely.
He opened the door and, just as he expected, found more than familiar faces.
"Hi, everyone!" he exclaimed, opening his arms as if welcoming guests to a premiere.
On the other side stood the Dunphy family: Claire in front, Phil beside her with a slight smile. Behind them, Haley absorbed in her phone, Alex with a neutral expression staring straight ahead, and Luke leaning slightly to one side, completely focused on tracking the erratic flight of a fly that seemed to have hypnotized him.
"Hi, Cam," Claire greeted him, and the others followed suit.
"Come in, come in!" Cam invited, stepping aside and accompanying the words with a wide, almost ceremonial sweep of his arm.
Phil was the first to enter, softly whistling, still impressed by the house. And that was saying something, considering he was the one who had sold it to them. He'd tried to show them the best option possible, but seeing it already lived in was something else. His eyes scanned the entryway until they stopped on a new object.
"Is that… new?" he asked, pointing to a modern floor lamp with curved lines he didn't remember from previous visits.
"It is!" Cam replied with a smile. "We're taking it little by little, you know? Bringing the house to life."
Although they had brought almost all the furniture from the old house, this one had two floors, more bedrooms, a noticeably larger living room, a kitchen that finally felt designed for actually cooking, and a more spacious dining area.
Claire walked down the hallway toward the living room. "Has my dad arrived yet?" she asked without stopping.
As for the new house, she'd already gotten used to it. Even though the initial shock had been strong, especially when she realized her nephew, a seventeen-year-old kid, had put $200,000 of his own money toward helping Mitch buy the house with a bank loan.
She knew he made good money on YouTube and that his channel was among the most watched in the world, but that good? She hadn't imagined it.
"Yes," Cam replied casually. "He came with Gloria and Manny. They're waiting in the living room."
Claire raised an eyebrow slightly and, almost reflexively, glanced at the clock hanging on the hallway wall. It read exactly 5:00 p.m., on the dot, the precise time of the meeting.
If her father was already there, it meant he'd arrived early. And that wasn't typical of Jay. It wasn't that he was ever late, but he also wasn't the type to show up before the agreed time for a family gathering.
She pressed her lips together, thoughtful. 'Although, of course… this isn't a normal meeting,' Claire thought.
They reached the living room. It was spacious and bright: a large main sofa in a neutral tone, another facing it to form a kind of U around a low wooden coffee table, a light rug defining the space, and large windows letting in the afternoon light.
Opposite the main couch stood a flat-screen TV, and on the wall, a few framed pictures and decorative details Cam had carefully chosen to make the place feel lived-in.
On one of the sofas sat Jay, arms crossed, wearing a more serious expression than usual. It wasn't exactly anger, but that look of his that signaled something important was about to be said.
Beside him, Gloria remained silent, almost unnatural for her, sitting upright, hands clasped on her lap. In a single armchair, Manny sat with his legs crossed and one hand resting on his chin, pensive, as if analyzing something difficult in his head.
"Hey, Dad," Claire greeted him with a slight nod before sitting down on one of the empty sofas.
Jay looked at her and replied only with a brief nod. It was the same kind of greeting he gave the others as they came in and took their seats. Everyone sat down, except Luke, who had too much energy to sit still right away.
The seriousness hanging in the room was noticeable, and unusual for the family. Aside from Luke and Cam, everyone else was serious, even Haley, who put her phone aside.
"Make yourselves comfortable, Mitch will be right out," Cam said with his classic host smile. "He's just finishing up a few things."
He paused briefly, as if taking in the charged atmosphere of the living room.
"I'll go get the cookies!" he added immediately, spinning on his heels and heading almost at full speed toward the kitchen, partly so they wouldn't burn, and partly to give himself a break from the tension you could practically cut with a knife.
At that very moment, a new little person appeared in the room.
Lily, almost five years old, walked in, softly dragging her feet, dressed in comfy at-home clothes and tightly hugging a medium-sized pink teddy bear as if it were a shield. Her mere presence seemed to change the air in the room.
"Hi, Lily!" Phil said, slipping back into his usual upbeat energy.
"Mi amor!" Gloria greeted her with a smile.
"Hi, princess!" Haley said.
The others, even Jay, greeted her warmly, and for a few seconds the seriousness in the room was suspended.
"What a cute teddy bear," Haley said, smiling as she helped Lily sit down beside her on the couch. "Is it new?"
Lily nodded, squeezing the bear a little tighter. "A gift from Andy…" she said in her soft little voice.
"Oh… how sweet," Haley replied, looking at her fondly. "He really loves you."
But Haley's expression shifted slightly. Her smile froze for a second, and something seemed to click in her head.
"Andrew really loves you… a lot," Haley repeated, more to herself than to Lily, as she slowly turned her gaze toward her mother.
Claire already knew exactly where that line of thought was going. She gently shook her head.
"No, sweetheart," she said quietly, without needing to add anything else.
Haley understood immediately and closed her mouth. That idea was desperate, and they definitely couldn't sink that low.
"Dad," Luke said, standing next to Phil and shaking his arm impatiently, "let's go play outside. Come on!"
The backyard of the house was spacious. Andrew, a sports lover, had filled it with things: a basketball hoop, a batting machine, several football balls scattered around, a ping-pong table, and more. For Luke, it was paradise.
"I can't, buddy," Phil replied with an apologetic smile. "Sorry. This is an important moment."
Normally, he would've run outside with him without a second thought, but not this time.
Luke sighed as if he'd already expected that and dropped heavily onto the couch, right to the right of his dad and to the left of Lily and Haley.
Lily looked at him in silence for a few seconds. "I'll play," she finally said, climbing down from the couch with determination.
Luke looked at her, frowning. "I'm not playing with a little girl," he snapped without thinking, annoyed.
"Luke…" Claire started, in a warning tone.
But before she could intervene, Lily lifted her chin, looked straight at him, and said very calmly, "Then I'll tell Andrew."
Luke froze. "Tell him what?" he asked, suspicious.
"That you didn't want to play with me," Lily continued. "And if he knows, he won't play with you."
Everyone fell silent, watching the standoff between Luke and Lily.
Luke swallowed. He knew perfectly well that Andrew had an absolute soft spot for Lily. What she said mattered. He couldn't risk Andrew not wanting to play with him.
"Fine," he muttered at last, defeated. "We'll play."
Lily smiled, satisfied, grabbed her teddy bear with one hand, and started walking toward the backyard as if nothing had happened.
"Come on," she ordered.
Luke got up from the couch and followed her, his shoulders slightly slumped and his pride clearly bruised.
Claire watched them go, mildly impressed, knowing the kind of personality Lily was beginning to show. Phil opened his mouth, but decided not to say anything. Jay raised an eyebrow slightly, with a look that mixed respect and amusement.
Gloria smiled to herself. "That girl is going to rule the world," she murmured.
Jay, his patience already wearing thin, glanced at the wall clock.
"Why is he taking so long?" he asked, clearly referring to his son. "It's already been five minutes!"
"Yeah," Claire chimed in. "Time's tight. Andrew's going to arrive around six."
"Manny," Jay said suddenly, turning his head toward him, "go get him and tell him to hurry up."
Manny looked at him with a calm well beyond his age, completely used to Jay's temperament after so long living under the same roof. "I don't want to."
Jay sighed, disappointed. "Kids these days don't respect authority figures anymore."
"We're not in nineteen hundred, Grandpa," Alex commented quietly, looking at him over her glasses.
Before the argument could escalate, the hallway door opened and Mitch appeared, pushing a rolling whiteboard whose wheels squeaked softly against the floor.
"I'm here already, people. Stop complaining," he said as he positioned the board in front of the couches.
"You took too long," Claire pointed out critically.
"It was five minutes," Mitch replied, rolling his eyes. "Besides, Andrew will arrive a bit later. We have time, he's with his friends."
It was Thursday, the day before a game, so practices were much shorter, and by this time Andrew was already free and could have been home. Instead, he'd gone to hang out with Steve, Archie, Reggie, and Kevin.
"This is important," Claire insisted. "Your son's future, Mitch."
"I know, I know," he answered, raising his hands. "Let's start, then, instead of arguing."
Right then, Cam came back from the kitchen with a tray of cookies and another with glasses and juice. He carefully set them down on the coffee table and smiled, satisfied.
"Alright, everything's ready. Let's begin," Claire said, straightening up on the couch as she fixed her gaze on the whiteboard in front of her.
"I can't believe we're still doing this and that I'm part of it," Alex muttered to herself, rubbing her temple in resignation.
Why was there so much seriousness?
Why were they meeting without Andrew there?
The normal thing,the usual, was for the family to gather the night before the game at Cam and Mitch's place. A quiet dinner, almost ritualistic, before Friday.
On Fridays, Andrew left early for school and they didn't see him again until after the game. That was the tradition.
But this Thursday, and the previous ones since Andrew had started his senior year, were different. They were meeting earlier than usual, without him present.
The seriousness was in the context. Since Andrew had begun his senior year in September, the situation had changed in a real and legal way: the colleges fight to recruit him was no longer background noise, it was concrete and official.
And for the family, that had become a tangible danger. Much more noticeable than in his junior year.
Because now the possibility of Andrew leaving the state to study and play football was no longer an abstract idea. It was real. Distant states. Very distant ones: Georgia, Missouri, Alabama, among others.
The problem was that Andrew wasn't just a five-star prospect.
Every college was fighting for him, including those in the SEC, pushing with unusual intensity. And not because he was just another five-star recruit.
Andrew was different. One of those players who come along only once in a while. Generational. For many, the best high school player in history.
Normally, when a five-star recruit emerges in California, the SEC giants, Alabama, LSU, Florida, and the like, do enter the conversation, yes, but without too much aggression. They know they're starting at a disadvantage. And they also know that a "normal" five-star isn't worth playing every card.
But Andrew wasn't normal.
He had an absurd growth ceiling, massive media impact, and a level of dominance that suggested his influence in college would be immediate. A player capable of changing the status of whatever program he chose. Far more than other elite prospects of his era, like Clausen or Barkley.
Because of all that, Andrew's college destination was uncertain. And for the Pritchett-Dunphy family, that uncertainty was something none of them liked.
They had been there at every stage of his high school and middle school career. Every Friday, without fail. Home or away, it didn't matter. Bleachers, short trips, and routines that had become tradition: arriving early, watching the game, celebrating, or suffering, together. Andrew on the field, and them always there, present.
The idea that he might leave the state didn't sit well with anyone.
Because watching him play would no longer be so simple. It would mean long flights, hotels, and complicated schedules. Games thousands of miles away if he chose Georgia, for example. It was obvious they couldn't always be there. Most of the time, they would have to settle for watching him on television.
None of them wanted that.
Of course, no one had said any of this to Andrew. They knew it would be unfair. It was his future, and the decision belonged to him alone.
And in concrete terms, Mitch and Cam couldn't impose anything on him either. They couldn't tell him which university to attend or which scholarship to accept. The choice was the athlete's. Very different from when he had decided to go to Mater Dei, a stage when his parents had had more weight on the scale.
Even then, Mitch and Cam had never forced him into anything. They had always respected his decisions.
Besides, in this case Andrew was taking his college choice far more seriously than when he had decided which high school to attend after Palisades. Back then, when he chose Mater Dei among other offers, he had been more receptive to outside opinions, more willing to listen and be guided.
Now it was different.
This time, he was analyzing almost everything on his own. Not because he was shutting his family out, it wasn't that, but because he understood that no one, except himself, truly knew what kind of player he was and what he needed for the next level.
He had always loved football in its deepest form: studying games, breaking down playbooks, and understanding schemes. Now he was completely focused on that.
He still listened to comments, of course. But he was more closed off, more introspective.
So why were they meeting?
If they couldn't change his decision and didn't want to blackmail him, emotionally or in any other way.
The answer was simpler than it seemed. They were meeting to talk, to understand, and to organize their thoughts.
To analyze the colleges Andrew had already chosen to visit, to debate which others might come into play, to interpret his criteria and his signals. And, based on those same criteria, the ones he valued, to see whether there was an option that checked all those boxes and was also close to home.
They didn't want to convince him to stay for emotional reasons and become a burden; they wanted to show him that staying could also be the best football decision.
That's why, when Haley saw Lily, that fleeting idea crossed her mind, but Claire shut it down. No long explanation was needed: that would be far too low.
Using Lily to influence Andrew, provoking tantrums from the little girl and pushing him to stay through emotional guilt, would be crossing a line. One none of them was willing to cross.
It would be manipulation, and no one wanted that. And as for them asking him not to leave because they didn't want to lose Fridays, the bleachers, the celebrations, and the routine, that too would be low and selfish.
It was true, but saying it would be immature and unfair to Andrew. That's why they were playing by different rules. His rules.
The same rules Andrew was using to decide his future: football, development, scheme, competition, and projection. And that was where the nearby universities, the Pac-12 schools, still had strong cards on the table.
It wasn't about holding him back. It was about showing him that he could choose what he wanted without having to go so far away.
As for Alex, the reason she'd said she couldn't believe she was still part of all this had less to do with cynicism and more to do with affection.
She got along very well with her cousin. There had always been a quiet complicity between them, built on mutual respect and conversations that didn't need many words or jokes, unlike the dynamic Andrew had with Haley.
For that very reason, the idea of him being so far away made her uncomfortable.
It wasn't just about losing Friday night games. It was about losing him, and the everyday closeness they had shared for almost as long as she could remember.
She knew Andrew would be fine wherever he went, and that he would succeed with near-mathematical certainty. But that didn't make the distance any easier to accept. And even if it was hard for her to admit it, that was why she was sitting there.
"Alright, everyone," Mitch said, standing. "As you already know, the third of the five visits is now confirmed."
He picked up the marker and pointed to a specific section of the whiteboard, where several colleges were written in neat columns.
"This Saturday we're going to Missouri," he announced, circling the university's name. "To visit the Missouri Tigers."
No one liked hearing that name, but it was already decided.
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