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their parents waited.
    Josh touched Jones on the shoulder and in a quiet voice asked, “Jones, did I do something wrong?”
    Jones flinched when Josh touched him but kept walking. Without looking back, Jones said, “Yeah, you showed up.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Josh asked, jogging to stay even with the older boy.
    Jones stopped in his tracks. He glanced back at the coaches before he said in a low, snarling tone, “You think you just join this team? You get chosen . But you stumble? You’re gone. Rocky finds someone better? You’re gone. Some snot-nose kid with a daddy from the pros shows up to stay? It means one of us goes.”
    Jones turned and started to walk away.
    â€œBut don’t worry,” he said over his shoulder, sneering. “If us guys have anything to do with it, you’ll be gone before that happens.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    ROCKY’S OFFICE OVERLOOKED THE green plastic field. Rocky’s desk, like the Chiefs’ GM’s, faced in, toward the two chairs in which Josh and his father sat. The shelves on one wall bowed under the weight of trophies and ribbons. Several photos with ribbons strung around their frames showed Rocky atop podiums and flanked by other bodybuilders. Josh looked at the coach behind the desk, the swell of his neck and biceps. He was huge, but nothing like the man in the framed photos, who looked as if he’d stepped out of the pages of a comic book, so disproportionately large were his muscles.
    â€œA lot of metal,” Rocky said, noticing the direction of Josh’s stare, “but that wall’s the one I really like. My Wall of Fame.”
    Josh turned his attention to the opposite wall andthe pictures lined up neatly in three rows from one end to the other. In them, Josh recognized Rocky standing with his arm around various celebrities: Jessica Simpson, George Bush, AROD, LeBron James, and Al Gore.
    â€œWow,” Josh said.
    â€œAnd the secret to it all,” Rocky said, pointing toward the wall behind them, where the door was, “is that stuff, Super Stax. That’s how you do it to it.”
    Josh twisted his head around and looked back at the stacks of quart-sized cans he’d noticed when he’d walked in.
    â€œIt got me big,” Rocky said, pointing toward the trophies and then to the Wall of Fame, “then it got me rich.”
    Rocky looked from Josh’s father back to him and said, “But when you’ve got money and success, then you want to share it, and that’s what I love to do more than anything. Your dad? A talent. I knew it the first time I saw him play. Intensity, that’s what he’s got. It reminded me of myself. And now you.”
    Rocky opened a drawer in his desk, took out a can of Super Stax, and thumped it down on the gleaming mahogany surface.
    â€œThis stuff will get you everything you’ve always dreamed of,” Rocky said, staring hard at Josh. “It’s good and it’s clean. Nothing in it that isn’t found in nature,and it gives you the edge you need to train harder and get bigger and stronger and faster. This first one’s on me.”
    Rocky pushed the can across his desk at Josh. Under the name it said: NEW IMPROVED BANANA FLAVOR . Josh looked at his father, who beamed and nodded for him to go ahead.
    â€œIt’s that simple,” Rocky said, standing up and turning toward the field below. “Five teaspoons of this powder in a glass of milk and you’re on your way. I saw your skills. You’ve got the raw materials. Now, if you follow me, we’ll do it to it.”
    Rocky spun on them and extended a meaty hand.
    â€œDeal?” he asked.
    Josh let Rocky swallow his hand in an iron grip and did his best to keep his bones from crumbling as he shook. Josh’s dad clasped the coach’s hand, too, and they shook, grinning at each other.
    Â 
    Josh’s dad—normally gruff and quiet—bubbled like a giddy