J A C O B
I needed to win the game tonight. The bleachers were packed with people, some of them college scouts, most of them family and friends of the players, the cheerleaders, and the school band that would be performing at some point. I thought it was the school band. I didn't care.
They were in the bleachers too, the three of them sitting together, very straight, their eyes on me and only me. The lights were blinding. We had been playing for half an hour. We were winning. I was winning. And they were here to see it. Finally.
They almost never were. Derek usually wasn't even in the country, and my mother had bills to pass, and my father had taxes to avoid, probably some shell companies on the other end of the world to manage too. High school football wasn't exactly something worth a slot in their agendas.
I ran as fast as I could, the ball clutched in my hands as I moved away from everyone's reach. My heartbeat fast in my chest, my breathing louder than the cheers coming from the crowd. Someone was running my way. Fast. Really fast. I didn't think I could move away from his tackle. I had to pass the ball.
I looked around. The new kid was free. He was running and looking at me, waiting for the ball to fall in his hands, just like that. I hadn't just run all those yards, untouched, for him to get to score instead of me.
This would be my touchdown and no one else's, especially not some adrenaline junkie who thought he could make football his new drug of choice. I had been playing for years. He had started only days ago.
I jumped over one of their linemen but another one came and sent me off my feet. I fell on my back, got the air knocked out of me, the ball too. It was gone. I had lost it.
"Fuck!!" I shouted. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
Coach Sargent agreed with my take when we stopped for a time-out.
"What the fuck was that?" he asked me. I had been pouring water down my head, so I didn't answer right away. He kept going, "Isaac was free! Why didn't you pass him the ball?!"
I threw the bottle on the bench where the water boy was struggling to refill everything on time. I didn't think he would manage.
I turned to Coach Sargent, "I thought I had it."
"Well, don't think!" he spat out with a kick at the air in front of him.
"Coach," Edward said. He had shown up to help the water boy, but he was looking at us. "It's fine. We're still winning."
"They're catching up," Coach said, and he was right. We couldn't afford any more mistakes.
"I'm sorry, Coach. It won't happen again." I meant next time I wouldn't let go of the ball, no matter what I did, not until I reached the end zone. Probably he thought I meant I would just pass it to Isaac. No fucking way, I wouldn't.
"Damn right it won't, or I'll bench you," he promised me. "Don't think I won't."
Coach had benched me before. Last year, after a fistfight with Jason halfway through a game. I couldn't remember what the fight had been about, but I didn't care. Jason probably had it coming. My fist last year. A vending machine last week.
Edward gave up on the water boy to throw his arm around my shoulders.
"Come on, be a team player."
"Fuck you."
"You're doing great," he said. "I'm sure they agree."
He was looking at the bleachers, the seats where my parents and Derek looked busy on their phones. I didn't even want to think about what they would say if I got benched.
I pushed Edward away and showed him a frown instead, "That's really gay, Eds."
"Fuck you." He was smiling, so I didn't think he meant it. "I'm gonna go find someone who actually deserves me."
"Like who? Your new boyfriend?" I asked, but he was already walking away. I didn't care. I just spoke louder, "Tell me, have you started doing hand stuff, or are you still in the talking stage?"
He didn't answer me, of course, so I turned to the water boy instead. I needed to hydrate some more before going back on the field and he'd had enough time already to fill up everyone's bottles, especially with Edward's help. He had them all lined up on the bench, but he was too busy talking to a cheerleader to pass me mine.
"Hi," he told her.
I just stood there and watched. I had a feeling this was going to be fun. The girl looked at him from under her long eyelashes, her hair up in a high ponytail, her face a pretty frown. I couldn't remember her name, but I was sure we had made out at some party last year.
"I have a boyfriend," she told him. She'd had a boyfriend at the time too.
The water boy frowned, "I said hi, I didn't say I wanted to fuck you."
The girl's face fell, right then and there.
"What a fucking asshole." And gone she was.
I burst out laughing, "Wow! Something is very wrong with you, isn't it?"
He looked at me and shrugged, "I just wanted to tell her she should tie her shoelaces."
"Sure," I said, grabbing my water bottle myself and turning to the field where someone had been performing a song for the past few minutes.
Apparently, the school band, or whatever it was, had convinced Coach Sargent to let them perform during the game time-outs. They had tried going for the half-time too, but that belonged to the cheer squad and the cheer squad only.
At the center of everything, a girl with nice curves wore what looked like a skin-tight satin green dress, her hair in a braid falling down her back. She was singing something I had never heard in my life before.
"She's doing great, right?" the water boy said next to me, a stupid smile on his face.
I sent him a look, "Who are you again?"
"Luke," he said. "Come on, Jacob, you know this. I've been filling up your water bottle for years now."
"Why?"
"Counts as volunteering." He shrugged.
I looked at the girl again.
"Well, I know who I'm taking home tonight."
Kylie hadn't seem interested earlier. It was fine. I had other options. Apparently, options that could sing.
"Watch it," Luke said. He was wearing a t-shirt with a science joke on it. I didn't think I had to watch anything around him.
Still, I had to ask, "What? Is she your girlfriend?"
He shook his head very quickly, "Me? No. Never. Have you seen Jason? The guy has real anger issues â"
"Wait, Jason is her boyfriend?" I stopped him. I didn't know Jason had a girlfriend. He was a monster. Why the fuck would she date him? Didn't she know how ugly things had gotten last time someone gave him a chance?
"What!? No!" Luke said, almost as fast as he had shaken his head before. "I didn't say he was her boyfriend. Did I?"
I showed him a smirk, "You didn't have to."
He opened his mouth again, but I wasn't listening anymore. The girl had finished her song. We were back on. It was time to turn the night around.
I joined the rest of the team. Kylie was standing next to the other cheerleaders, a perfect smile on her lips, her eyes on someone that wasn't me. Everyone seemed to orbit around her like she was the sun. I looked away. We had learned a while ago that the sun wasn't the only star in the universe.
Jason was throwing a party to celebrate our victory tonight and I wasn't going because Derek had made a reservation at some fancy restaurant and counted me in. Why? I didn't know. We had stopped pretending to like each other a while ago.
I threw my bag in the trunk of his Tesla. He had made a case of driving us all tonight. Said he had missed driving his own car. Apparently, the one he used wherever he was in Africa was a rental. My father sat in the front. My mother and I in the back.
She looked at me, "What's that boy's name? The fast one?"
"Who?"
"Number 20," my father said.
"Isaac?" I asked. I wanted to open the door and throw myself out of the car already. "He's not on the team. He's just a stand-in."
"Well, if your coach's any smart, he'll keep him," my mother said. She didn't know anything about football. I wanted to tell her that, but I didn't. I kept my mouth shut.
"He was very good," my father added. "Very fast. I could barely keep track of him."
"I guess he's fast, yes," I managed.
"You guess?" This was Derek. Of course, he had something to say. He didn't know anything about football either. He had played tennis back in the day. Still, he was about the explain it to me. "You got tackled way more times that he did. Your numbers are ugly."
"What's a tackle, Derek?"
"Jacob, don't be patronizing," my mother said but she was looking at her phone, typing, and typing, and typing.
"How was that patronizing?" I asked, eyes on the moving landscape outside the window.
"You're asking him if he knows what that is as if you're going to explain it to him if he doesn't, but really you just want to embarrass him," my mother explained, still typing.
"No," I said. "I just wanted to know if he knew what he was talking about."
"So basically what I said," she said.
"No, I â"
She held a finger up, "Don't start, Jacob."
So, I kept quiet. Derek didn't. He had a lot to say about this and that, and that and this. He wouldn't shut up, all the way to the restaurant, then while we waited to go in, while we decided what to order, while we waited for the food, while we ate.
My parents were very proud of this and that, and that and this. Every now and then, my mother would look at me, and her eyes would say, you should be more like your brother.
Eventually my dad said it himself. He looked at me over his dessert, and said it with all the words, "You should be more like your brother."
I only smiled. I had been moving my food around my plate for a while, but I stopped it at once. Whatever it took me to smile made it impossible to keep the lie that I actually had an appetite. No one seemed to notice anyway.
They didn't say anything else about my game that night. Only that it had been too long. They asked me about my AP classes while waiting for the bill. Then why I hadn't made it to student president this year.
I told them I would rather focus on football, and my father said I shouldn't put all my eggs in the same basket. Apparently, that was something they learned in business school. I didn't answer. I didn't know how. I was too busy thinking whether or not I should go to the party after we were done. But I ended up just going to home. I was too tired.
When I finally made it to bed, I didn't fall asleep right away.
I didn't think I fell asleep at all.