Jerry Renault is a fourteen-year-old freshman at Trinity High School, an all-male Catholic school in his New England home town. He is trying to make the football team as quarterback, but he is getting “murdered” on each play. He tells the coach that he is all right, and this lie bothers him because, like Peter denying Jesus in the Bible, he is essentially betraying himself each time he says he is okay.
Jerry is encouraged when the coach sends him to the locker room but tells him to come back tomorrow. As he drags himself to the locker room, however, he is overcome with pain and nausea. He thinks about how his mother, dying of a painful cancer, was so drugged at the end of her life. Jerry calls out for help, but everyone is still on the football field. He makes it to the locker room, collapses in the bathroom, and vomits