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At Marcus’s next game, Troy calls a timeout after directly colliding with a player from the other team, concerned he’s injured. Marcus volunteers to play quarterback, but the coach refuses because it would cause too much strife among the team. The team wins by a slimmer margin than usual. Marcus silently fumes that he could have stretched the lead and that the coach gives Troy preferential treatment because “pretending nothing had gone wrong was preferable to replacing the guy with somebody better” (147).

At practice, the coach no longer lets Marcus play backup quarterback. Instead, Marcus is put on offense, where he finds he’s a natural. One day, he makes a charge for Troy, feeling like the tackle will be beautiful vengeance. When the coach blows the whistle for Marcus to stop, Marcus sees genuine terror on Troy’s face. Troy confronts Marcus in the locker room, telling Marcus to stay out of his business. Marcus congratulates Troy on Charlie’s upcoming induction into his college hall of fame, but Troy doesn’t know about it.

At home, Troy, Chelsea, and their mom look up the college induction, finding Marcus is right. The three can’t believe they didn’t know about this and scramble to figure out how to manage the situation. Their mom wonders if Charlie simply forgot to tell them, but Troy argues that their dad would have to have a clue before he could forget something. Chelsea is angry Troy would talk about his dad that way, to which Troy responds that the man he’s talking about isn’t his dad and “hasn’t been him for a long time” (153). The family frantically searches for a letter from the college, finding it hidden inside the porch swing with all Charlie’s other mail, some of which is so old it’s started to decompose. The three decide Charlie can’t attend the ceremony. Shortly after, Charlie arrives and asks who broke the swing.

Looking at the college website, Marcus realizes Charlie’s family isn’t taking him to the ceremony. Marcus confronts Chelsea about it, adamant that Charlie should be allowed to accept this honor. Chelsea is sympathetic but says her mom made the decision. Marcus replies that the decision had to be Troy’s. Chelsea lays into Marcus because he’s not part of their family and has no idea “what it’s like to watch your father turn into a lost, helpless stranger” (162). Marcus feels chastised, but he also feels like he knows Charlie in a different way than Charlie’s family does.

Charlie cuts class to go to Three Alarm Park in the hope that Charlie will show up so Marcus can ask about the ceremony. Instead, Marcus finds Charlie preventing the local bus from proceeding to the outlet mall, hollering about how he paid his quarter and should get to ride. Marcus rushes to help, but Charlie ignores him until Marcus claims he’s Mac and that the two of them need to get going. On the way back to the park, Marcus asks Charlie about college football and if he’d want to be inducted into the hall of fame. Charlie is enthusiastic about the idea and has fond memories of college football. Though this statement conflicts with Charlie’s belief that he’s a teenager, Marcus concludes “things didn’t have to make sense to make sense to Charlie” (166).

Marcus also concludes that if Charlie’s family refuses to take him to the ceremony, Marcus will have to do it. The event conflicts with the most important football game of the season, and Marcus will have to keep the plan a secret so Troy doesn’t figure it out ahead of time. Since the college is over 100 miles away, Marcus also needs to find better transportation than his Vespa. He considers borrowing his mom’s car, but if anything went wrong, that would be inviting his dad to have her declared an unfit parent. Feeling guilty but determined, Marcus asks McTavish for a ride, omitting that Charlie’s family doesn’t want Charlie to go. An enthusiastic McTavish agrees to drive them.

To make sure he can pull off his plan to get Charlie to the ceremony, Marcus starts staking out the family’s house to get a sense of any routine Charlie might have. After watching for a few days, Marcus figures out that Charlie typically pretends to read the paper, has a small breakfast, and then heads off into town, where distractions pull him in any given direction. Since Marcus has missed his first class twice already, he goes to school and then cuts second period to search for Charlie. He finds the man angrily punching an ATM because the machine didn’t give him gum when he inserted a dime. Charlie doesn’t recognize Marcus, but he’s excited to go for a ride on the Vespa. As they get closer to Three Alarm park, Charlie suddenly asks “Hey, Mac,” […] “how come you never told me you’ve got a motorcycle?” (175).

The day of the induction ceremony, Marcus waits outside Charlie’s house, only for the man to deviate from his routine. Inside, Chelsea finds her dad in the basement, trying to play a CD on a turntable. Marcus taps on the window until he gets Charlie’s attention, frantically whispering that they’re late. Charlie has no idea what they are late for but heads outside, forgetting about Marcus by the time he hits the pavement. Marcus pulls up on the Vespa and reminds Charlie about the induction ceremony. Prompted, Charlie remembers and gets on the bike. At Marcus’s house, McTavish arrives. Charlie doesn’t recognize him.

In the car, Charlie and McTavish quickly start reminiscing. McTavish tells a story of a time Charlie released the mascot of another team—a hawk—from its cage, saying that he always expected the hawk to one day find its way back. Charlie mentions the time they put a football through the window of a business owner’s car. McTavish doesn’t remember this, but Marcus recognizes it as the incident from the day he met Charlie. When the group stops at a rest area, Charlie goes to the bathroom while Marcus and McTavish discuss Charlie’s illness—how Charlie is himself one minute and vacant the next. At once, they realize Charlie’s been in the bathroom a long time. They rush into the men’s room to find it empty and realize that “for reasons known only to himself, and probably already forgotten, Charlie had run away” (185).

After a short but frantic search, Marcus and McTavish find Charlie walking alongside the freeway, thumb out to signal that he’s looking for a ride. Jumping in the car, they speed up to Charlie, pretending to be strangers who are going exactly where Charlie is headed. With Charlie back in the car, Marcus insists they still have to go to the induction ceremony for Charlie’s sake. Though McTavish is skeptical, he agrees.

At Troy’s house, he prepares for his football game. The family wonders where Charlie is, but Troy’s mom is sure he’ll be back in time for the game. Troy says it doesn’t matter because his dad doesn’t even know who’s playing. Troy’s mom recognizes that Troy misses the way his dad used to be, and she tells him that she and Charlie discuss Troy throughout each game, but Troy responds that his dad wouldn’t know what’s going on “if he didn’t have a living, breathing cheat sheet sitting right next to him” (190).

When Marcus, Charlie, and McTavish arrive at the college, Charlie is confused at first, but he’s soon surrounded by well-wishers who loved watching him play. After some arguing with the alumni committee, Marcus and McTavish are allowed to sit near Charlie, and they marvel at how Charlie appears so coherent. Meanwhile at Charlie’s house, Chelsea arrives home after checking the entire town for Charlie. Her mom tells her to stay calm and wait, but Chelsea is too scared. After Marcus found Charlie the night of the party, she decides to call him. When there’s no answer at his house, she calls his mom’s work. Marcus’s mom informs Chelsea that Marcus said he’d be gone all day at a football game. Troy’s game is only supposed to last a few hours, and with a jolt, Chelsea realizes Marcus took Charlie to the induction ceremony.

After confirming this via a livestream of the football game at which the ceremony will take place, Chelsea’s family calls the police. The cop who’s been handling Marcus’s case notifies the police department in the college’s town, telling them to let Charlie have his moment while keeping an eye on him. Afterward, the cop heads for the college to get Charlie back, thinking that Marcus “had a lot to answer for” (200).