Coach Kitt said it might change, and I’ve got hope in that might. “I’ve already talked with Coach Kitt, and she understands my potential value.”
She laughs. “We all understand your value, believe me.” Cat eyes narrowed, Kelly swipes her claws. “Paid to play in high school? Yeah, everyone understands your value.”
My hands curl into fists. “That’s not how it worked.”
“Right. You can spin it however you want, but here, you haven’t earned a thing. We don’t owe you squat—not the softball team, not the football team, not Northland.” Again, she starts to stalk away but whirls back around at the last moment. Like I’m the one who dinged her, not the other way around. And maybe I did—maybe she’s as close to Stacey as I am to Addie. “And I’m going to love watching you get hit.”
I start my warm-up thirty seconds late, so Coach Lee is making his opening remarks to the team by the time I finish my laps, sweat pouring down my face and pooling between my skin and the shirt I’m wearing beneath my jersey and pads. I squeeze in next to Grey, trying to wipe the sour look from my face, and whisper, “What’s up?”
“Scrimmage.”
Oh. Shit. My heart bottoms out when I realize that those routes I worked on this morning are plays I might actually have to pull off in a game simulation.
On my first day. After everyone else has been practicing for two weeks, plus, you know, most of their lives.
Meanwhile, I’m a quarterback who knows ten of the plays and has never taken a snap.
I suddenly realize Grey’s not dressed out in his full uniform. Gone are this morning’s pads, tights, and helmet. Replaced with an undershirt, red jersey, and the same basketball shorts from yesterday. Plus, the sunglasses are back.
“You’re not going to practice?”
Grey shakes his head, watching Coach Lee, who is rattling off numbers. “Nope. Can’t get hit.”
“But you’re wearing red—doesn’t that keep you from getting tackled?”
The Clark Gable angles to his face go all nightly newsman serious. “I want to be out there more than anything, Liv, but this is football. You get hit. The red’s not a force field, it’s a suggestion.”
A suggestion.
As I’m processing that, Coach Lee calls my number. Thirteen. And I realize he’s been separating us all into teams the whole time. One of which I’m the quarterback for—A team for Brady, B team for me. Nothing but sidelines for Grey.
Great.
My parents are going to kill me. Kill me dead. If not for playing football, then for the position I’m in right now with a guy nicknamed “Topps.”
I don’t know Topps’s actual first name. I don’t know his last name. But for the eighth time in so many minutes, my hands are hovering near the rear-end seam of his pants.
Like, right underneath his junk.
Big, bulgy, manly junk.
I have a feeling this is making him uncomfortable, too, because every time he’s been upright in between plays, his cheeks have turned rosy red above his meandering dark beard.
But embarrassment won’t save him, just like it won’t save me when my parents see where my hands have been.
But first: Orange Nine.
I scream the play twice and huddle in as close to Topps as possible, waiting for the ball to hit my fingertips. The second it makes contact, I’ve got my eyes up and my feet are going back. The feeling isn’t a whole lot different from making a catch and slinging it back to first for the out. Except that now I’ve got a wall of boys in front of me, and the “base” is a moving target. In this case, number eighty, streaking in a right-to-left pattern about five yards from the line.
It doesn’t take much to spot him—thank God I’m not two inches shorter—and as my arm goes back, I see a huge body rumbling in from the left. I release the ball right before he gets to me, slowing just enough not to totally tackle me. But it’s still hard to stop two hundred pounds on a dime, and this guy, number forty-eight, is easily that. My magical red jersey makes him veer away, yet he can’t do that fast enough either, and his chest smacks into my nonthrowing shoulder, setting me on spin cycle on my way to the turf.
Again.
Clearly our offensive line needs to do a better job, because they’re getting beat. Every. Single. Time. If not by number forty-eight, then by the dude on the other side, number fifty. If my reflexes were any worse, I’d be in traction already—much to Kelly’s amusement.
I roll onto my back and pop up to my feet, realizing only too late that there’s a hand extended my way, ready to help. It’s attached to number forty-eight, whose name I don’t know. High school jerseys don’t have names like they do in the pros.
“Sorry,” he says. Beyond his face mask, there isn’t a smile, just a wary look of trepidation.
I dust my hands off. “No problem.” As he starts to stalk off, I shout, “Hey, wait! What’s your name?”
He turns around and extends his hand again. It’s calloused and heavy. “Nick Cleary.”
I can’t help it—I start reading his face. Baby-blue eyes. Rusty stubble. Very much a steak-and-potatoes Prince Harry.
Crap.
His identity registers in my eyes before I can stop it, and he smiles at what he sees there. “Don’t worry, Rodinsky, I’m not going to drill you into the dirt. I have much more restraint than my sister.”
“Lucky me.”
He doesn’t answer, just jogs back into formation.
Which means I need to do that, too.
Next: White Ten.
It’s a ten-yard shot straight downfield to either tight end.
I yell the play twice, pause for a second next to Topps’s back end, and then shoot back into the pocket. My target tight ends are tangled up by defenders and are slow to extract themselves and make it to their spots. Out of the corner of my eye, Nick is rounding in an arc toward me. On the other side, my throwing side, number fifty is already free of his defender and hotfooting it my way.
I have to get rid of the ball. I know it. But I don’t want to throw it away. I want to prove I can stay calm and make the play.
My feet start moving toward the right-hand line, eyes high over the complete chaos in the middle. I plant my back foot and bring my arm back to throw, but something both hard and soft hooks me across the bare patch of neck below where my helmet ends and my jersey begins.
Down I go, face-first into the turf. If the landing knocks the wind straight out of my lungs, what comes next ensures I won’t be getting any of that wind sucked back in for at least thirty straight seconds. Number fifty falls flat on top of me.
I’m immobile, my field of vision nothing but sun-dried turf and fresh dirt. Earlier, Shanks explained that if I get hit, the safest thing to do is to stay as still as possible while waiting for the pile to break up. So I stay still. But number fifty hasn’t moved yet. He’s taking his freaking time, and his girth is approximately equal to a Mack Truck lined with bricks.
“Hey, Sanchez. Get off her, man—she’s not a mattress.”
The voice is Coach Shanks’s, and I’m suddenly embarrassed that he’s noticed I’ve been squashed. Ten plays and this is the first time I’ve truly taken something resembling a real hit. And, God, it hurts. My ribs shudder like they’re going to shatter. Efffffff.