“I’m excited to put this behind me, and I look forward to playing ball at the University of Michigan,” I said.
“As you heard, you made our day. I’ll be in touch. I understand your unique circumstances with your movie commitments. We’ll have to work out the logistics for all that. I also want to get you on campus since you’ve committed. You’re part of the family now. Welcome to Michigan,” Coach Haber said and then needed to get back to his meeting.
Now I had to deliver the bad news to everyone else.
◊◊◊
While I made my calls to the programs we’d turned down, Lexi found me.
“I talked to Frank Ingram, and he’ll put together a social media and traditional campaign to announce your decision.”
Once again, she had proved herself invaluable.
“Thanks.”
“He had something else for you. Chubby Feldman heard that you’d completed your J-drama. He’d like to get the cast together at his house tomorrow so he can share some information about the upcoming James Bond movie,” Lexi said.
“If we don’t have any conflicts, set it up,” I said.
I wanted to remind her that we still had commitments with the J-drama.
“I talked to the producer for
That meant I might get to go home a day early.
◊◊◊
I had lunch with my family. I caught them up with all that had gone on since Tim, Wolf, and I had decided to play ball at Michigan. Frank had sent me a link to a few of the football message boards at different schools. Ty had put out a text hinting that we might be joining him, which caused a frenzy to ensue. It was amusing to see all the ‘insiders’ scrambling to either debunk the rumor or prop them up with their ‘contacts’ inside the various football programs.
I always found it fun to read these message boards and see how invested the posters were in the lives of teenagers. I hated to break it to them, but teenagers sometimes acted illogically, in ways that had nothing to do with them or their school.
The Ohio State board was in total meltdown because they couldn’t see any rational explanation for why I would decide to go to their hated rival, Michigan. They were blaming everything from the rumors about their coach’s health to Michigan being a bunch of cheaters by holding a camp at our high school. It had to be someone’s fault they’d lost the battle.
Then there were the ones that were the embodiment of hope eternal. It wasn’t over until I arrived on campus. They would continue to recruit me, and if the rumors were true, I would see the error of my ways.
I was almost done with lunch when my phone rang. It was Coach Foster from Southwest Central State.
One of the apps Fritz had added to my phone was the ability to record conversations. The app was originally designed as a way to spy on cheating spouses or your teenagers. I had explained to Fritz that I had zero desire to have him recording
It was bad enough that he had access to my tablet and could review my browser history. How did I know that? We’d been joking around and taking shots at each other when he let it slip that he was confused as to why I liked a certain kind of porn. He had to swear on a stack of Bibles that my mom would never find out.
I put up with this level of intrusion in my life only because I knew Fritz and his team were trying to protect me. If anyone ever hacked their server, I shudder to think of what they would find out about me and the other people they protected. Fritz had explained that they downloaded everything to a stand-alone storage device that was not connected to the Internet. For someone to hack it, they would have to have physical access and hook up to it directly.
That appeased me enough to put up with it. Where I drew the line was recording my phone conversations. With that in mind, Fritz had given me control of what was or was not recorded. I suspected he might have just gone ahead and recorded everything and had given me the button to make me feel better. That unnerving thought aside, I swiped the record button before answering.
“David, Coach Foster.”
“Hey, what can I do for you?” I asked.
“I just wanted to touch base because we heard some rumors that you plan to commit to Michigan.”
“That’s what we decided,” I said to include Tim and Wolf.
“I thought we’d made a compelling … uh … case for you to give us an on-campus visit. I would hope that you would appreciate the effort we went to.”
“Did you want us to send the money back?” I asked to see if he would admit to it.
“What money?” he asked.
“The money I received for the charities.”
“I think those were just coincidental donations and had nothing to do with us,” he backtracked.
“If you want the money back, just let me know where to send it. I don’t want there to be any hard feelings,” I tried again. “I don’t want to feel obligated to an on-campus visit if I’ve already decided.”
“Like I said, the money didn’t come from us.”
