And then, there is Grey—helmet on (thank God), gait strong, walking off next to Nick, who’s helmetless but appears fine. When he sees the look on my face, Grey breaks into a run, taking off his helmet when he gets to me.
“Are you okay?” he asks, eyes searching.
“Are you?” I ask Grey, and my voice is all weird and stilted. There’s so much in it I don’t say, and the fact that Nick doesn’t know about the concussion looms large in the front of my thoughts.
He winks. “Rogers is gonna live and we’re ahead by a touchdown—I’m most definitely okay.”
29
GRADE ONE CONCUSSION, DELIVERED BY THE RIGHT hook of a Tetherman lineman immediately after the dude plowed Jake into the ground on a super-duper late hit. Not even close to Grey’s injury, but a prescription all the same for butt-to-bench therapy.
Jake’s out the rest of the game. Just like the delinquent who took him down, and it doesn’t seem fair that they have the same punishment. That’s not an eye for an eye, it’s a slap on the wrist for a brain bruise.
My mind is a jumbled mess once we’re back and settled. Tetherman scored on the next drive, and so now we’re tied at 17–all. But with fewer than thirty seconds left, it’s our turn to end this and avoid overtime.
The kickoff return was a great one—Chow getting us all the way down to the twenty. Coach Shanks signals for our first rushing play and Jake’s backup—a runny-eyed sophomore named Levi Towson—looks like he’s just been asked to scale the Taj Mahal.
“Orange One.”
There’s nothing different about my voice in the huddle. But there’s everything different about the reaction.
All ten boys are silent.
Towson just stares at me, glinting eyes begging me to take it back.
So I repeat myself. “Orange One.” And give a descriptor. “Straight through the middle.”
Blink, blink—Towson stares at me. Tate isn’t having it—that eye roll could probably be seen from Pluto. “Let’s just Orange Nine it up in here and finish this on first down. Kid’s not ready.”
He isn’t. But that’s not the point. We respect our coach and our teammates.
“Orange One.”
“But—” Towson begins. I don’t let him finish.
“Orange One.” Handclap. “Break.”
That buzzing crowd comes in now, an entire wall of orange, on its feet, a wave of noise crashing over our movement toward the line. I settle in behind Topps. Towson is a yard behind me, shaking like the wimpiest leaf known to man.
Dude, grow a pair.
“ORANGE ONE. ORANGE ONE. HUT-HUT.”
Topps shoots the ball into my hands and I rocket left, ready to pick up Towson before he jukes through a hole made by the offensive line and leading straight toward the end zone.
Only Towson isn’t there.
He’s gone the wrong way and gotten tangled up in the meaty palms of a defender on the right side.
Shit.
I tuck the ball against my body and jerk two steps until I’m lined up with the hole, narrowing by inches each second. I grit my teeth, twist my shoulders, and dive through, aiming for the white end zone paint just beyond a Tetherman lineman’s back foot.
A body comes flying in crossways at my ankles, pushing my lower half into a spin and throwing off my balance. I brace for impact, the turf rushing up toward my face, my body now parallel to the white line of the end zone.
Wait. The ball can’t just hit the ground. It’s got to hit before my knees.
My knees—which are being driven straight toward the plastic grass by some hippo in Tetherman white and silver.
Shit.
I thrust the ball away from my chest and reach for the green beyond the white line. The ball’s point touches and I have a split second to smile before the freaking hippo crashes down, crushing my knees into the turf so hard I’m sure I tag China.
The crowd roars, and somewhere in the storm there’s the shrill of a whistle. Through the corner of my eye I glimpse one of the refs, arms up.
Oh, thank God.
Touchdown.
The hippo peels away, but not before grinding his shoulder into the outside of my top knee one final time before the refs run over to break it up. When I can stand, a pair of arms immediately hooks me under the shoulders and flings me around in a rough circle.
“O-Rod!!!!” Topps’s cheeks are rosy with glee as he winds up for another revolution. Gentle giant that he is, he sets me down as if I’m landing on a flower petal, my other teammates approaching for high fives. It’s only as I’m walking away from them to the sidelines as special teams set up for a field goal that I feel it.
Mixed in with elation and realization that I should’ve spiked the ball—because when else am I going to get to do that?—is a twinge in my left knee.
It doesn’t hurt, not with the white-hot certainty of a true injury, but it doesn’t feel right either. There’s a hitch on the outside of the joint, like a violin string that’s skipped the bridge.
“Rodinsky,” Coach Lee yells from down the line, “you’re a sorry excuse for a running back, but at least you managed not to get caught.”
My heart rises. That almost feels like a compliment.
I stick my head under the hand dryer for just long enough that my hair won’t paint wet streaks on my shirt before grabbing my bag and checking my phone.
Addie: Have Nick. Meet you at Pat’s. We might be late.
I text back: Don’t miss curfew, Adeline.
Addie immediately answers: I don’t miss anything and you know it.
I laugh. Kill, block, shot, catch—she’s right. She doesn’t miss.
I step out of the locker room with a smile on my face.
Like the past couple of weeks, Grey is there. Again, he’s pushed up against the building, smelling of boy soap, the curling pieces of his hair catching the dying stadium brights.
But this time, he’s not alone.
A girl in a dress is there, too, blond hair shimmering in the same light. She’s pressed into Grey, one palm flat against his chest, the other hand in his hair, sweeping the curls off his temples.
I’m so stunned, I stand there for a second, the locker room door open, wedged against my backside.
“Look—don’t.” Grey’s voice is insistent. I could just be imagining it, but it almost looks as if he’s trying to jerk his head away from her hands but not getting anywhere. “Stacey, don’t,” I hear him say.
Stacey.
That Stacey?
I stiffen and my butt loses its leverage as a doorstop and the heavy metal door slams shut behind me. Grey stumbles off the wall and out of the girl’s grasp.
“Liv,” he says, eyes wide and hands out, defensive. “It’s not what it looks like.”
For a moment, I believe him—he didn’t look like he was encouraging her or enjoying her touch. But Grey Worthington knows how to evade the grasp of a two-hundred-pound linebacker. Surely he could escape a scant one hundred pounds of teenage girl.
Then the girl turns and it is her. She’s not at school in Arizona. Stacey’s here.
Touching my boyfriend.
The light’s not the best, but she’s definitely recovered from my right hook. Stacey’s face morphs into a little smirk. She’s had her brows filled in and her blond hair is less softball-practice-and–Sun In and more super-expensive balayage.