“Here comes the drill team float. Look at the roses!” Bess jumped up and pointed at the giant cake. “My design looks fabulous, doesn’t it?”
“Definitely,” Nancy agreed. She waved at Kristin Seidel as the blond girl marched by in her purple-and-orange majorette’s uniform.
“Hi!” Bess joined in, waving an Emerson pennant that she had bought.
The drill team’s giant cake disappeared around a corner and was followed by a bagpipe band. Then came the float bearing the homecoming king and queen.
“Those thrones are great,” Bess commented, pointing to decorated golden chairs on the float. Behind the thrones were trellises threaded with real roses.
“And Jerry was right. The king does have to wear purple tights!” Nancy added with a laugh.
The next float was built by the football team and displayed a huge replica of a football. Nancy shook her head as the papier-mâché-and-wood model rolled down the street.
Anchored to a raised platform behind the giant football was a goalpost. Sitting on the goalpost’s crossbar was Randy Simpson, his legs swinging freely in the air.
This was the first time Nancy had seen Randy since his accident. He seemed to be fine and was grinning easily as he waved at the cheering bystanders. The rest of the team hailed the crowd from the edges of the float.
“I think he sees us!” Bess jumped up and waved her pennant as Randy tossed them a salute.
Randy’s expression changed a moment later, though, when the goalpost began to wobble as the float came to a corner. The color drained from his face as the raised platform began to rock back and forth.
“Oh, no!” Bess shrieked.
Nancy gasped. “It’s going to fall right off the float!”
When the tractor and flatbed rounded the corner, the giant football tilted to one side and the raised platform lurched to the edge of the float. Randy lost his balance and slid off the crossbar but managed to grab it with his hands. He held on to the wildly swinging goalpost, but he couldn’t stop its downward plunge.
Before any of the other players knew what was happening, the goalpost toppled off and crashed onto the street with a sickening crunch, taking Randy with it!
Chapter Thirteen
Her heart in her throat, Nancy jumped down from the wall she and Bess had been sitting on.
“Poor Randy!” Bess cried, but Nancy was already halfway around the corner. She was only dimly aware of the shrieks from the crowd, her attention focused solely on getting to Randy. Pushing past the crowd that had gathered around the disabled float, Nancy rushed over to the mangled goalpost on the street. The giant football had fallen on top of it.
“Randy!” she called.
“Where is he?” Bess cried, right behind her.
At last Nancy heard Randy’s muffled voice. “I’m under here!”
The football players joined Nancy and Bess, and they all tugged at the football and the goalpost. Randy was curled in a ball underneath them, his arms wrapped protectively around his head.
“I’m okay,” he gasped, crawling out onto the street. He stood up and wiped his hands on his jeans, while his teammates pressed forward with concerned expressions.
“That was some fall!” Bess exclaimed.
Randy nodded, breathing deeply. “That’s for sure. Luckily, one of the first things a quarterback learns is how to take a tumble.”
Glancing up, Nancy saw that the parade was continuing despite the accident, moving around the Wildcats’ ruined float. The tractor driver had pulled his vehicle off to the side, and now he came rushing over to them.
“I don’t know how that happened,” the short, rotund man said, obviously flustered. “Are you okay?” he asked Randy. “I nearly died when I heard that thing land. I don’t get it. We weren’t going that fast when we took that corner.”
Nancy had been so worried about Randy that she hadn’t even thought about that. Now that she did, something seemed very wrong about the whole accident. “The float started rocking before the turn,” she pointed out.
Randy nodded. “It never did seem stable, but I just figured we were hitting lots of bumps.”
Nancy tuned out the noise from a group of clowns that was parading by. Walking along the perimeter of the cracked football, she checked the holes that were drilled along its edge. “These were used to attach the football to the platform, right?”