Chapter 323: No more jokes

As soon as Andrew and Paige disappeared from the living room on their way to the attic, Mitchell turned his gaze toward Steve.

"What’s wrong with him?" he asked. "Did practice go badly?"

Jay, Cam, Claire, and the others who did not know about the prank turned toward him as well, waiting for an explanation.

Andrew’s attitude was far too strange to ignore.

It was not as though he usually acted overly confident before every game or behaved as if victory were guaranteed. Andrew took every opponent seriously and rarely underestimated anyone.

But he always seemed calm.

Whenever the family gathered for dinner during the week leading up to a game, he could talk about what they had practiced that day, comment on some aspect of the opposing team, or have a normal conversation with Jay without any trouble. He never showed the intensity with which he truly prepared.

Although he had probably studied more than anyone else, Andrew usually separated football from the rest of his life with surprising ease.

He did not bring that tension into his relationships, which was why it was so unlike him to respond that way.

That was why everyone looked to Steve for answers.

Besides being one of UCLA’s starting receivers, he now lived with Andrew. If something had happened during practice or if Andrew’s behavior had changed over the past few days, Steve was the person most likely to know.

"Same as always..." Steve replied after a few seconds.

The delay was brief, but long enough to make his answer sound less reassuring than he intended.

For Steve, those few seconds had simply been the time he needed to remember Andrew’s prank and decide how much he could say without ruining it.

To everyone else, however, it looked as though he were searching for a careful way to answer.

As if he knew something had happened during practice, or that Andrew had been dealing with more pressure than usual for several days, but did not want to worry them by sharing every detail.

Without realizing it, Steve had just made Andrew’s performance even more convincing.

"What exactly does ’same as always’ mean?" Claire asked, narrowing her eyes.

"You know..." Steve said, making a vague gesture with one hand as he tried to come up with an answer that sounded convincing.

He paused briefly and added, "Physical training in the morning. Then we split up by position. I was with Yarber and the other receivers, practicing routes. Andrew spent most of the time with Chow and Rip."

At least that much was true.

Eric Yarber was the wide receivers coach, so Steve spent a large part of the position-specific sessions working under his instructions.

"Chow was hovering over Andrew more than anyone else, as usual, and he gave him several videos to study at home. I’ve seen him watching them on television over the past few days," he finished.

Once the team drills ended, the offense split into groups. The linemen practiced protections and blocking, the receivers reviewed routes and adjustments, and the quarterbacks worked on their reads, mechanics, and decision-making.

Norm Chow, as offensive coordinator, supervised the entire unit and constantly moved between the different groups.

However, he usually paid special attention to the quarterbacks and, within that group, mainly to Andrew.

Not only because he was the undisputed starter, but because the entire offense depended on his ability to execute the system. Chow could spend several minutes watching the receivers or correcting the offensive line, but he always ended up returning to Rip Scherer’s side to review every detail of Andrew’s work.

Cam let out a disapproving breath. "I’ve always said that man is too demanding," he said, crossing his arms.

Jay turned toward him. "He’s coaching UCLA’s starting quarterback, who happens to be a Heisman favorite, not directing a children’s theater class," he said with a stern expression.

"I’m not saying he shouldn’t push him," Cam replied. "But Andrew has been following that routine since he arrived in January. He practices with the team, studies film, comes home with even more material, and the next day he has to answer questions as if he were taking an oral exam."

"That’s how you prepare a quarterback," Jay said.

"That’s how you prepare a nervous breakdown," Mitchell muttered.

Jay ignored the comment. "If Andrew wants to become one of the best, he has to put in that work. He has a talent almost no one else possesses, and it would be a waste not to make the most of it," he said seriously.

"Making the most of his talent is one thing. Not being able to enjoy Halloween is another. He did not even dress up," Gloria said.

The discussion continued.

Steve exchanged a look with Sam, Howard, and the others.

"What do you say we go outside?" Haley suggested.

All the younger ones agreed immediately. One after another, they began getting up and heading toward the backyard under the excuse of getting some fresh air.

As soon as they stepped out of the house, Howard filled his lungs and exhaled in an exaggeratedly loud manner. "This escalated much faster than I expected," he commented.

They had not even been there for ten minutes, and an atmosphere of general concern had already settled over the house.

Haley nodded and pointed an accusing finger at Steve, "And you’re only making it worse! Are you actually trying to help Andrew?"

"I didn’t mean to," Steve defended himself. "I was just trying to answer without ruining the prank."

"Well, you’re doing it far too well," Leonard said, looking at him suspiciously as though he were Andrew’s accomplice.

Sam slowly shook her head. "I can’t believe Andrew considers this a simple prank. He’s not only fooling Claire. He’s worrying his entire family."

"Collateral damage," Monica summarized, crossing her arms.

"And we’re caught in the middle," Rachel added, somewhat uneasy. "When they find out we knew from the beginning, won’t they consider us accomplices?"

Howard brought both hands to his head, as if he had just realized the true gravity of the situation, "If Claire finds out, we won’t be safe!"

"Safe?" Sam repeated, arching an eyebrow.

The way Howard had said it made Claire sound less like a woman celebrating Halloween and more like a dangerous criminal who would hunt them down one by one for playing a prank on her, even though they had not actively taken part in it.

"Yes, safe," Howard insisted. "If she finds out we knew what Andrew was doing and still didn’t say anything, she’ll decide we were part of the prank just because we knew."

"Is she really that extreme?" Sam asked. "It’s not like we asked Andrew to tell us."

"That won’t matter to her," Howard replied, nodding with complete seriousness. "That woman is like that. She’ll see it as a revenge debt."

Haley, as Claire’s daughter and a witness to years of living under the same roof, slowly nodded. "Yeah. That sounds a lot like my mom."

Monica looked at Howard with some amusement. "You talk like you have experience."

"I do," he answered immediately. "It happened to me once."

After saying that, he remained silent for a few seconds.

Howard tried to let those words sink in, hoping to build enough tension to set up the story.

However, Haley ruined the moment by bursting into laughter. "I remember now!" she exclaimed. "It was hilarious. I barely knew you back then, but you were terrified for like a week."

"It was not hilarious!" Howard protested, looking at her indignantly. "Your mother kept me from sleeping for days! It was traumatic!"

Leonard, as his best friend and the main witness to that entire week, quickly remembered it as well.

"I admit it was a little extreme considering she had only known you for a few months," he commented. "But it was also a pretty creative prank."

"What was it?" Steve asked, frowning. "I don’t remember."

Everyone turned toward Howard, waiting for him to begin telling the story.

"It all started on Halloween in 2008..." he began.

That had been their first year of high school.

Howard and Leonard had met Andrew at the beginning of September, which meant they had only been friends for two months. They did not yet have the kind of trust they shared now, after more than four years of experiencing practically everything together, but the chemistry between them had developed with surprising speed.

Until then, Howard and Leonard had been two geeks with fairly limited social lives.

Middle school had consisted mostly of classes, video games, comic books, and long discussions about those subjects that no one else ever seemed interested in hearing.

Andrew joined them.

At first, both of them expected the quarterback their age to be exactly like the popular athletes in movies. Someone incapable of holding a conversation about anything other than games, girls, or parties.

Instead, they discovered that Andrew could talk about Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, superheroes, and comic books with the same enthusiasm they had.

He did not merely know about those things.

He was one of those fans who remembered names, dates, side stories, and specific details, and who argued about every subject as though his honor depended on it.

It had been quite a surprise.

That was why, when Andrew invited them to spend Halloween with him at the Dunphy House of Horrors and then attend a party afterward, they both accepted immediately.

By then, Andrew was already competing with Claire in their annual prank tradition.

That year, he had prepared something fairly elaborate and wanted someone to record Claire’s reaction without her noticing.

He asked Howard, and Howard happily agreed.

Besides, during those weeks, he had already begun becoming a kind of makeshift cameraman for Andrew. He helped him with some YouTube videos and recorded parts of his games to put together highlight compilations, so hiding a camera and finding a good angle did not seem too complicated.

The prank worked perfectly.

Andrew managed to scare Claire, got a spectacular reaction, and declared himself the winner of that Halloween.

Howard recorded everything.

He also laughed while it was happening and celebrated with Andrew once the prank was over.

Claire saw him.

At the time, however, she said nothing.

After that, the group went to a party, and Howard ended up having the best Halloween he could remember up to that point.

The night had been perfect.

The problem began over the following days.

At first, Howard only had the strange feeling that someone was watching him.

At school.

On his way home.

While waiting for the bus.

He never saw anything definite, so he decided to blame it on his imagination. Until he began noticing a figure in the crowd.

Sometimes it appeared on the other side of a shopping mall.

Other times, near the entrance to the comic book store.

It always remained at a distance, staring at him.

It was the Cat in the Hat.

Yes.

The famous anthropomorphic cat from the children’s books.

Except it did not look like the cheerful illustrations Howard remembered from his childhood.

It wore the same costume used in the 2003 live-action adaptation.

Howard saw it once and assumed it was a coincidence.

Then he saw it again. And again.

Howard began changing his routes, constantly looking over his shoulder, and panicking every time he spotted a red hat among the crowd.

He even swore he saw it one night standing on the other side of his bedroom window.

Although by that point, he had already spent several days sleeping poorly, and Leonard was never able to determine whether it had truly happened or whether Howard was beginning to hallucinate from paranoia.

Eventually, everything was revealed to have been one of Claire’s pranks.

She had hired an unemployed actor, found him a costume identical to the one from the movie, and paid him to follow Howard for several days without ever getting close enough for Howard to confront him.

It was her way of getting revenge on him for helping Andrew.

And, according to Howard, proof that the woman recognized no moral boundaries when it came to Halloween.

Everyone listened to the story until the end.

Rachel was the first to react. "Seriously? The Cat in the Hat is scary?" she asked, confused. "I remember reading those books when I was little. They were pretty entertaining."

"The books aren’t the problem!" Howard exclaimed. "The problem is the 2003 movie. The live-action version of that damn cat."

"Mike Myers," Leonard added, remembering the actor who had played the character beneath several layers of prosthetic makeup and a massive costume.

Steve’s eyes widened slightly as the memory finally came back to him. "Oh, man. I never liked that cat."

It was not as though the movie had given him nightmares or that he considered it genuinely frightening. It was still a stupid children’s comedy.

But when he had watched it as a child, there had been something about that costume and the prosthetic-covered face that made him uncomfortable in a way that was difficult to explain.

The character looked too human to be a cat and too strange to still look like a person.

Sam remained silent for a few seconds, waiting for someone else to point out the obvious.

When no one did, she finally spread her arms in disbelief. "Is that really what stands out to all of you about that story?"

Everyone looked at her.

"Claire hired an adult to follow a minor around for several days," Sam continued. "At school, in stores, on his way home, and even outside his bedroom window."

She pointed at Howard and added, "That could have ended with the actor getting arrested. And probably with Claire being reported for arranging the whole thing."

Haley tilted her head. "When you explain it like that, it sounds a little worse."

"A little?" Sam repeated.

The fake baby story had already seemed extreme to her.

This was in an entirely different category.

It was not a scare that lasted a few seconds or a prank carried out inside a house. Claire had organized a psychological stalking campaign that lasted for days against a teenager she had known for two months.

"I don’t know, I look back on it with amusement now. It makes for a good story," Howard said with a shrug.

’Then why did you sound so traumatized before?’ Sam thought, furrowing her brow.

"Besides, she apologized afterward and gave me a lot of candy," Howard added.

"She bought your silence with sugar," Monica concluded.

"Now I understand why you said we wouldn’t be safe," Rachel murmured.

Leonard began to look genuinely worried.

"So what do we do?" he asked. "Do we tell Claire about the prank?"

No one answered immediately.

The alternative did not seem very appealing either.

Up to that point, all they had done was withhold information, pretend they knew nothing, and allow events to run their course. Claire could consider them accomplices for keeping the secret, but they could always argue that it was a dispute between her and Andrew.

Telling her, on the other hand, would mean directly betraying Andrew and ruining a prank he appeared to have been preparing for several days.

None of them was sure which of the two would make the worse enemy.

Claire could hold a grudge for weeks and plan a terrifyingly elaborate revenge.

But Andrew would have a much more personal reason to come after them if he discovered they had betrayed him.

"I think I’d rather take my chances with Claire," Howard admitted.

"I agree," Rachel said.

"With her, we’re only playing dumb. If we tell her, Andrew will know we betrayed him," Steve said with a nod.

"True," Haley said, wearing a more serious expression than usual. "The best thing is to let everything run its course. Besides, I don’t think my mom will get revenge this time."

Leonard looked at her. "What do you mean?"

"Think about it. There are too many of us," Haley explained. "She can’t get revenge on everyone."

She paused briefly and then added, "When we pulled the pregnancy prank on her, she didn’t go after anyone afterward either. Even Alex was involved in that one."

The others slowly began to nod.

It made sense.

The more people involved, the harder it would be to choose a target and organize an individual retaliation against each of them.

Besides, none of them had actually helped Andrew. If Claire wanted revenge on all of them just because of this, she would have to be vindictive to an absurd degree.

That was the safest course.

...

In the attic, Andrew had no idea about the paranoia beginning to spread among his friends.

At that moment, he was standing beside Paige, moving boxes aside and looking through old costumes in search of something they could use.

"The prank is starting off pretty well," Paige commented.

She had noticed the change in Andrew’s attitude from the moment they arrived.

At the apartment, he had behaved as usual: calm, relaxed, and showing no sign that the game against Oregon was affecting him.

But as soon as he entered the Dunphy house, his expression became more serious, his answers shorter, and his mood considerably worse.

"Right? I’m a good actor," Andrew replied, nodding with a satisfied smile.

Paige looked at him with a small smile. "Yes, but at this rate, your aunt won’t be the only one who falls for it. Your whole family is buying it."

"I know..." Andrew let out a sigh and shook his head. "Collateral damage."

In truth, he would have preferred Claire to be the only one who fell for it.

He did not want to worry his parents or the rest of the family.

But how was he supposed to avoid it?

Everyone was gathered in the same house. He could not act normally around the others and then suddenly look exhausted or become irritable every time Claire glanced his way. It would be far too obvious.

Besides, he was not even guaranteed a moment alone with her.

If he wanted the prank to work, he had to stay in character throughout the entire gathering.

That was precisely why he had told Steve, Haley, and the others beforehand. At least that way, he could keep them from worrying too, and they could help him maintain the act.

"Even so, I didn’t expect the mood to change so quickly," Paige said. "You only snapped a couple of times, and everyone started worrying about you."

It was true that she had only just officially met Andrew’s family.

Even so, it had taken her very little time to understand that they were very close and cared deeply about him.

What she had not expected was for them to react that way simply because Andrew seemed a little more distant than usual or said he did not want to talk about practice.

Especially because Paige had never seen him as someone fragile.

Andrew projected confidence.

He seemed dependable, levelheaded, and capable of handling pressure without letting it affect the people around him. Even while under enormous media attention, he continued joking, competing with everyone else, and acting as though everything were under control.

Paige knew he attended therapy on Wednesdays. He had not gone that week because of Halloween, but the simple fact that he took his mental health seriously had seemed like a sign of maturity.

He did not wait for the pressure to become unbearable.

He worked on learning how to manage it.

"Yeah, I guess they’ve been paying closer attention ever since I had that panic attack," Andrew commented.

He fell silent for a moment, bringing a hand to his chin. "Which actually helps a lot with the prank, now that I think about it."

Paige blinked, "You had a panic attack?" she asked, surprised.

Andrew froze for a moment. "Oh..."

He had just realized that he had never told her.

He ended up explaining it briefly.

After the loss to Nebraska on September eighth, he had tried to carry on as though nothing had happened. However, the following day, he began to feel intense pressure in his chest, difficulty breathing, and the certainty that something was wrong.

For several minutes, he had believed he was having a heart attack. But after going to the hospital, he learned that it had been a panic attack.

Paige listened to the entire explanation in silence.

She never would have imagined it. He was the same player who had destroyed Arizona the previous Saturday, taunted an entire stadium, and then spoken in front of the cameras with an almost irritating calm.

The kind of person no one would look at and think had ended up in a hospital just a few weeks earlier, convinced that his heart was failing.

"That must have been hard..." Paige said, not quite knowing what she was supposed to say in a situation like that.

Though believing that your heart was failing certainly had to be terrifying.

Andrew grimaced and shrugged. "And pretty pathetic. Can you imagine the headline if I had actually died?"

Paige looked at him.

Andrew adopted a solemn voice and added, "’The greatest prospect in history goes undefeated throughout his entire high school career, loses his first college game, and dies of a heart attack the next day.’ The whole country would have laughed at me," he said, shaking his head.

Paige could not stop a small smile from appearing on her lips. She liked that kind of humor.

"That definitely would have been the important part. That you couldn’t handle your first loss, not the tragedy of the most talented player in the NCAA dying," Paige commented.

Andrew, who had been looking through some costumes, stopped and slowly turned his head toward her. "The most talented player in the NCAA?"

Paige realized too late what she had just said.

"Thanks. I didn’t know you held my talent in such high regard," Andrew said, placing a hand over his chest with emotion.

Paige rolled her eyes. "It was just a figure of speech. Don’t let it go to your head."

"You could have said one of the most talented. But you didn’t," Andrew replied.

Paige let out a breath and returned her attention to the boxes in front of her. "I’m starting to regret saying something nice to you," she muttered, and Andrew laughed.

After a few seconds of both of them searching through costumes, Paige spoke again. "By the way... I’m sorry," she said in a more serious tone.

Andrew raised an eyebrow slightly. "For what?"

"For all the times I made fun of you about Nebraska," Paige said.

Since she had begun becoming part of the group, Paige had mentioned that loss on more than one occasion. Never with any real cruelty, but as part of the dynamic they shared: provocative comments, small competitions, and any available opportunity to annoy each other.

However, now that she knew what had happened the following day, some of those jokes seemed wrong and insensitive.

Andrew made a dismissive gesture with one hand. "It doesn’t matter. It was fine."

Paige looked at him, trying to determine whether he meant it.

"Really," Andrew insisted. "You can keep making fun of me about Nebraska."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Actually, I like that you’re the only one who does," Andrew began explaining. "Everyone else treats the subject like it’s Voldemort. The moment someone mentions Nebraska, they change the subject or look at me as if they’re waiting for me to have another panic attack. Except my grandfather, obviously."

Andrew had to admit that it bothered him a little when they treated the subject as though it were forbidden.

"Then I’ll keep doing it," Paige said with a nod. "And now I have even more material," she added with a smile, already imagining future opportunities to use it against him.

Andrew grimaced.

Now she knew about the hospital and the panic attack, which gave her a dangerous number of new ways to tease him.

Even so, he said nothing.

She was probably only trying to provoke him.

Andrew returned his attention to the boxes until he found the Michael Myers mask he had worn years earlier. The same one he had left stored in that house after one of his best Halloweens when it came to scaring children.

He also picked up a fake knife.

When he turned around, Paige had just stepped away from the box she had been searching through.

They both froze.

For several seconds, they looked each other up and down in complete silence.

Paige was wearing Jason Voorhees’s iconic hockey mask and holding a plastic machete in one hand.

"Jason..." Andrew finally said.

"Myers..." Paige replied.

The greatest, most historic and intense rivalry in horror cinema. Michael Myers against Jason Voorhees.

The two great kings of the slasher genre.

Andrew tilted his head slightly as he examined her. "Jason after losing a foot in height," he commented mockingly.

"Shut up," Paige said, throwing the fake machete at him.

Andrew laughed as he stepped aside and let it pass beside his body. "I’m just joking."

Paige huffed and walked toward him to retrieve the weapon. She bent down, picked the machete up from the floor and, when she straightened, found herself only a few inches away from Andrew.

Neither of them moved immediately.

Michael Myers’s expressionless mask remained face-to-face with Jason’s as the silence stretched between them.

Finally, Paige was the first to break it. "You shouldn’t wear a mask if you want to pull off your prank, genius," she said sarcastically.

Andrew blinked behind the mask.

She was right.

His voice came out muffled, and he had to speak louder to be understood. Besides, with his face completely covered, Claire would not be able to observe his expressions or interpret his supposed exhaustion or bad mood.

"Right..." he admitted.

He removed the mask and placed it back inside the box.

After searching for a few more seconds, he ended up finding a much simpler option: a black vampire cape.

He draped it over his shoulders and prepared to leave the attic, but stopped when he noticed Paige was still staring at him.

"What?" he asked.

"I was thinking about your prank," she replied.

Andrew waited for her to continue.

"You should take advantage of the panic attack and forget about the supposed injury."

He frowned slightly.

The original idea had been to make Claire believe that his knee was bothering him. It would be more dramatic and far more worrying for Claire to find out about that.

Paige, however, began pointing out the problems fairly quickly.

"An injury would be difficult to maintain," she explained. "While we were up here, your family probably already asked Steve how practice went. I’m sure he didn’t mention anything about you being in pain. The pressure is much more believable than some supposed injury you suddenly have on Halloween when you’ve never been injured before."

Andrew tilted his head slightly.

"You already had a panic attack after Nebraska. Your family knows it happened and has probably been paying closer attention to you ever since. You wouldn’t have to invent symptoms or fake an injury. You’d only have to keep acting the way you did a few minutes ago," Paige concluded, resting the machete against one of her shoulders.

Andrew considered the idea for a few seconds.

He had to admit that she was right.

Even a minor injury could lead to questions that were far too specific. When had it happened? What part of his body hurt? Had the doctors examined him? Why had Steve not noticed anything?

There were too many opportunities for him to contradict himself.

Pressure, on the other hand, required no visible evidence.

"Good point," Andrew finally admitted.

Paige smiled behind the Jason mask.

"Thanks," Andrew said.

Paige murmured something Andrew could not understand and headed toward the attic exit first.

Andrew watched her walk away for a moment before following her downstairs.

The night continued.

Every few minutes, another group of children rang the doorbell. Claire and Phil took turns opening the door, handing out candy and guiding them through the areas they had prepared near the entrance, where they could look at the decorations and listen to the sound effects.

Andrew, meanwhile, stayed in character.

Steve, Haley and the others talked, laughed and moved around the house. Andrew, on the other hand, remained more subdued than usual.

He spoke very little.

At times, he seemed lost in his own thoughts, and whenever someone tried to hold a conversation with him for too long, he replied with short sentences or a slightly irritated murmur.

At one point, Phil approached the couch and held out a hand toward him. "Here. One of your favorites, A-Train," he said, offering him a piece of candy.

Andrew, who was sitting there looking at his phone, glanced up.

He had to admit that A-Train was one of the best nicknames Phil had given him over the years.

Although perhaps that said more about how bad the others were.

Besides, he would probably stop thinking it was so good once The Boys came out someday and Phil learned about the other A-Train.

"I can’t eat candy. It would ruin my diet," Andrew replied curtly.

Phil’s smile disappeared, and he slowly began to withdraw his hand.

Andrew watched him and raised a hand. "I’m sorry, Uncle Phil..."

He set his phone aside and took the candy. "Nothing’s going to happen to me from eating one piece on Halloween."

"No, no. It’s fine," Phil replied quickly.

He sat beside him and gave his shoulder a few gentle pats.

Andrew lowered his gaze to the wrapper. "I’m also sorry for talking to you like that. I’m a little... I don’t know. I’ve been like this since Monday," he said.

"It’s okay," Phil assured him. "Alex talks to me much worse every day, especially when she’s on her..."

"Hey!" Alex protested from the couch across from them.

Phil froze. "Exams," he finished. "I was going to say when she’s in the middle of exams."

Alex narrowed her eyes. "You were not going to say that."

Claire approached at that moment and sat down on Andrew’s other side.

She placed a hand on his knee. "Are you okay?" she asked softly.

Andrew shook his head slightly, "No. It’s fine. I don’t want to bother you on Halloween."

"Come on," Mitchell interjected.

He had watched Phil and Claire take up both sides of the couch and could not help feeling that they were occupying a position that belonged more to him as Andrew’s father.

He walked over and remained standing in front of Andrew. "You can talk to us. We’re here for you."

Andrew remained silent for a few seconds. He appeared torn between continuing to pretend that nothing was wrong and finally admitting it.

"I don’t know..." he began. "I’m just nervous about the game. Or more like scared."

He turned his head and briefly met Claire’s eyes.

She was watching him closely.

Andrew quickly looked away, as if embarrassed to have admitted it out loud.

"Scared?" Claire repeated.

Andrew nodded. "Yeah. Of losing. Of disappointing everyone at UCLA. Everyone expects us to beat Oregon and stay in the national championship race. UCLA hasn’t beaten them since 2007, and the last time they played was in last year’s conference championship. Oregon destroyed them."

He was not lying about that.

UCLA’s last victory over Oregon had come in November 2007 at the Rose Bowl.

In Eugene, the Ducks’ home stadium, the Bruins had not won since 2004.

UCLA’s fans, students, and alumni were keeping alive the hope that this might finally be their year. Perhaps, if they stopped thinking with their hearts, aiming for the national championship was too ambitious.

But at the very least, they wanted a major victory over Oregon.

They wanted revenge for so many years of being unable to overcome the Ducks and to prove that UCLA once again belonged among the conference elite.

"Andrew, you can’t think like that," Claire said. "It’s a team. All the responsibility isn’t on you."

"But people don’t see it that way," Andrew said.

That was the price of being the face of the program, especially with as much media attention as he received.

"I’m the favorite to win the Heisman," he continued. "Everyone expects me to score four or five touchdowns every game. And after what happened against Arizona, running up the score and everything else, if I have a bad game now, they’re going to tear me apart."

Claire opened her mouth, but Andrew continued before she could answer.

"They’ll say I can only do that against inferior teams. That I started thinking too highly of myself after one great performance and that, when a real opponent finally showed up, I couldn’t back up everything I did and said."

He lowered his gaze again. "And maybe they’ll be right. I’ve only beaten two ranked teams that didn’t even make the top fifteen. Big deal. Now we’re facing the number two team in the country, in their own stadium. It won’t be the same," he said.

Part of what he was saying was true.

Arizona and Oregon State had been ranked somewhere around twentieth and twenty-fourth when UCLA faced them. They were good teams, without a doubt, but neither belonged to the true group of national contenders.

Oregon was something else.

The Ducks were ranked second in the country and had spent several years competing at the highest level. The previous season, they had won the Pac-12 and the Rose Bowl. The year before that, they had played in the national championship game.

They were not simply a more difficult opponent.

They were a completely different class of team.

Claire and the others understood that.

That was why it took them longer than expected to find something to say.

They could not simply tell him to calm down and that everything would be fine. Andrew knew football far too well to accept an empty response.

Andrew discreetly raised his gaze.

Claire was watching him with absolute concern. Her eyes even seemed slightly glossy, perhaps because of how strange it was to see him looking so unsure of himself.

That was the expression he had been waiting for.

"Got you!" Andrew exclaimed.

A smile immediately appeared on his face.

The living room, which was already completely silent, seemed to grow even quieter.

The expressions on Claire, Phil, Cameron, Mitchell, Gloria, Manny, Alex, and Luke’s faces froze.

Even Luke looked genuinely shocked.

For the past several minutes, he had watched his cousin, someone he had always considered capable of facing anything, begin to doubt himself. It had almost been like watching one of his heroes fall apart in front of him.

And now Andrew was smiling.

’Oh, God...’ Haley thought, bringing a hand to her mouth to keep herself from laughing.

She had to admit that her mother’s expression was priceless. As for everyone else...

Well, she felt sorry for them. But that was how prank wars worked within the family.

"What...?" Claire murmured.

"It’s a prank!" Andrew revealed. "Did you seriously think I’d be afraid of Oregon? Please."

He said the final words as though the very idea were offensive.

Andrew respected the Ducks.

Of course he did.

They were the second-best team in the country and had one of the most dominant and innovative offenses in recent NCAA history.

But their defense was not their offense.

It was not a bad unit. Quite the opposite. They had faster, stronger, and more talented players than Arizona or Oregon State, and they were usually among the best defenses in the country.

However, they normally ranked somewhere between twelfth and twenty-fifth in points allowed.

Their offense, on the other hand, had been among the top four in the nation for years.

The Ducks were terrifying because they forced their opponents to keep pace with them, not because their defense was unbeatable.

Andrew knew it would be difficult. That did not mean he was afraid of them.

"It’s a prank?" Claire asked, finally blinking. "Seriously?"

"Yeah," Andrew replied, crossing his arms with a satisfied smile. "You didn’t see it coming, did you? I win this year!"

His expression, posture, and even tone of voice had changed completely.

There was no trace left of the subdued and insecure young man he had been playing for the past hour.

’Whew... it’s a prank,’ Luke thought, sighing with relief.

"A prank about something like that!?" Cam exclaimed, rising to his feet. His face was beginning to turn red with indignation. "Seriously, Andrew!?"

"That’s incredibly low!" Mitchell added.

Andrew raised his hands. "We’d already used scares, costumes, traps, and every normal kind of prank. I had to try a different approach."

"Making us think you were on the verge of another breakdown was your different approach?" Mitchell asked.

"Yeah. It was either that or a heart attack, and I don’t think I’m a good enough actor to make you believe that," Andrew replied naturally.

He had considered bringing back the heart attack performance he had practiced with Willa years earlier.

But he was rusty, and back then the idea had been to have a trigger, which was Claire’s prank itself.

That is, he would wait for Claire’s prank and let it scare him to death, literally. But now he knew Claire was not going to play any prank on him.

That would make faking a heart attack even more difficult, so he discarded the idea.

"I’m sorry for dragging all of you into it. My aunt was supposed to be the only one who fell for it, but I couldn’t act one way around her and behave normally with everyone else without her noticing," he apologized.

"We’re always collateral damage!" Gloria exclaimed, raising her voice more than usual. "Enough with this stupid prank competition!"

"Yeah!" Manny added, raising his voice in support.

Luke joined the complaints as well.

He said the pranks were not funny anymore.

And the fact that someone like Luke was saying that spoke volumes about how far things had gone.

Phil quickly joined in. Then Mitch, Cam, Alex, and practically every other member of the family began talking at once, recalling scares, humiliations, and more from over the years.

Even Haley, who had avoided becoming collateral damage that time through sheer luck, supported the complaints.

She had known about the prank beforehand, but Andrew’s performance had been convincing enough that, for a few moments, she had begun to wonder whether there might be some truth behind his words.

The only exception was Jay.

He remained seated in an armchair with his arms crossed, watching the chaos with an impassive expression.

Andrew shifted his gaze toward his grandfather. "You didn’t fall for it?" he asked, surprised.

"The moment you said you were scared, I stopped listening," Jay replied with a snort.

Andrew blinked.

Jay knew him too well.

At first, his colder attitude and refusal to talk about football had managed to worry him. But the moment Andrew claimed he was afraid of Oregon, the entire performance lost all credibility in his eyes.

Not because he believed his grandson was incapable of feeling pressure.

Andrew could be worried, tense, or even overwhelmed.

But afraid to play Oregon?

That sounded far too dramatic.

He realized it might be one of the twisted pranks Andrew and Claire played on each other around that time of year.

The others knew Andrew too, but the memory of the panic attack a few weeks earlier had made them much more sensitive to any change in his behavior.

Jay, on the other hand, had preferred to trust what he knew about him.

Andrew was about to respond when he heard something that wiped the satisfaction from his face.

"It’s over," Mitchell declared.

Andrew turned toward him. "What is?"

"The competition," Gloria said.

"Permanently," Cameron added.

One after another, everyone began to agree.

They had endured too many years of being innocent victims. For six years, they had been used as pieces in pranks that were not even aimed at them.

That night had been the final straw.

Claire, who had already recovered from the initial shock and was even beginning to admit that Andrew’s approach had been rather brilliant, looked at the others in disbelief.

Andrew did the same.

Both of them seemed to expect the complaints to die down after a few minutes.

They did not.

The outrage was real, and so was the decision.

Under pressure from the entire family, Andrew and Claire eventually agreed.

But Mitchell was not satisfied with a verbal promise.

He walked over to Phil’s computer, drafted a document, and printed it before returning to the living room with several sheets in his hand.

The contract established the permanent end of the Halloween prank competition.

It also prohibited any future retaliation related to previous victories and any attempt to restart the tradition under another name.

Andrew read the document in bewilderment.

Claire did the same.

Then, under the watchful eyes of the entire family, they both signed it.

Mitchell instructed them to stand up and shake hands.

’What the hell?’ Andrew thought as he accepted his aunt’s hand.

And so, in a far more formal manner than anyone could have imagined, the Halloween prank championship came to an end.

The final score remained tied.

Three to three.

"I don’t know what just happened," Rachel commented, looking at Sam, Paige, Monica, Steve, Leonard, and Howard.

"I guess it’s a good thing for us, right?" Howard murmured.

Leonard nodded.

At least, if the competition had officially ended, they would no longer have to worry about future revenge or getting caught in the middle of another prank war.

From eight o’clock onward, the final hour of the gathering passed in a much more normal way.

However, the celebration was not over yet for the college students.

Haley, Steve, Sam, and the others were planning to go to the West Hollywood Halloween Costume Carnaval on Santa Monica Boulevard.

The main event had started at six in the evening and would continue until after midnight. Haley and Rachel had suggested the plan a few days earlier, and the others had agreed, attracted by the idea of finding huge crowds in costume, music in the streets, packed bars, and several blocks closed to traffic.

Andrew, however, decided not to join them.

He did not feel like spending nearly an hour in the car just to get to West Hollywood. He had practiced, attended classes, and had already been away from home for several hours.

In theory, the drive took fifteen to twenty minutes, but with the street closures and everything else, the trip would take much longer than usual.

For him, two hours of Halloween had been enough, at least that year.

Even so, he made it clear that the others should go.

There was no reason for them to cancel their plans just because he preferred to stay home.

The group understood.

Andrew was not the only antisocial one that night.

Paige was not going either.

She had never fully confirmed that she would go. She had remained undecided for most of the gathering, and when it was time to leave, the late hour and the drive were enough to drain what little enthusiasm she had left.

She felt just as lazy about it as Andrew did.

Haley, Rachel, Monica, Steve, Sam, Leonard, and Howard left together for Santa Monica Boulevard.

Andrew, meanwhile, offered to drive Paige back to the UCLA dorms.

They were less than five minutes from his apartment, so he would barely have to go out of his way.

That way, Steve could drive directly to West Hollywood without wasting time entering campus to drop her off.

The BMW stopped at a red light.

Andrew lightly drummed his fingers against the steering wheel as he thought. Beside him, Paige stared ahead with her back resting against the seat.

The music played at a low volume, just loud enough to keep the silence inside the car from becoming uncomfortable.

Even so, neither of them had spoken since leaving Phil and Claire’s house.

"Hey," Andrew finally said.

"Yes?" Paige replied, turning her head toward him almost immediately, as though she had been waiting for him to break the silence.

Andrew kept his eyes on the traffic light. "Do you want to come to my apartment and watch Twilight?"

Paige remained silent.

The silence lasted only a few seconds, but it was enough for Andrew to feel the need to explain the invitation.

"You know, we have to watch the earlier movies before we go see the last one in theaters," he added. "And I guess they’ll be a little more bearable with company."

Paige watched him for a moment. Then she slowly nodded. "You’re right. Watching them alone would be torture."

Andrew glanced at her from the corner of his eye. "So that’s a yes?" he asked.

"Yes. Besides, if I watch them with Sam, she’ll talk through the entire movie, explain why every scene is important, and glare at me every time I criticize something," Paige replied.

That was fairly likely.

Sam was a genuine fan of the series, and Paige had no intention of spending two hours pretending she did not find certain parts ridiculous just to avoid offending her.

With Andrew, on the other hand, she could make fun of the movie without holding back, and he would probably do the same.

A smile appeared on Andrew’s face.

Her answer brought him more relief than he would have liked to admit.

After all, Paige had just turned down the plan to go to West Hollywood because she was tired and did not feel like continuing the celebration. There was a fairly reasonable chance that she would also want to go straight back to her dorm.

"Great..." Andrew said.

The light turned green.

Andrew turned at the next corner and headed toward his apartment.