It wasn’t a particularly good game. Not too exciting, I mean, because we gained a three-touchdown lead in the first half and maintained it for the rest of the game. It pushed ahead to a five-touchdown lead in the last fifteen minutes. Emir was practically beaming at the prospect of his wager.
I let my mind wander through the better part of the game; I had been rereading Sense and Sensibility—I called it my favorite, but every Jane Austen book was my favorite every time I read it. The only one I couldn’t completely throw myself behind was Mansfield Park, because—spoiler alert—the main character has a huge thing for her cousin. I know things were different back then, and maybe it was completely acceptable in their eyes, but the idea of cousins declaring romantic love for each other made me feel a little queasy, especially since Foster had arrived in our lives.
The only other complaint I had about Jane’s books, cousin-loving aside, was the getting-together part. They were stories of such unconquerable love, such strong feelings. You follow these characters through the ups and downs of an emotional roller coaster, this breathtaking will they or won’t they, and is it too much to ask for a little more time spent on the I love you and want to be with you part? It was the very best part, and I wanted to draw it out. I wanted kisses—good, long, passionate ones. Jane never wrote about those.
She didn’t write about high school football, either, so I wondered how I would do it, how to explain the pride Miss Tennyson felt when watching Mr. Kincaid rush ten yards. The crimson glow of TS helmets sparkling in the light of the flood lamps. The faint scent of marijuana hanging on Emir. Would anyone have dared to write about weed back then? Jane would probably be shocked.
Foster didn’t talk at all through the entire game. I glanced over at him every so often to make sure he was still breathing, and each time found his eyes glued to the field.
“Did you have fun?” I asked as we joined the crowd flooding into the parking lot after the game.
He replied in typical Foster fashion, not with an answer but with another question: “How do you think they learn to beat up on total strangers?”
“I don’t know … it’s not really beating up, is it? Just tackling.”
“But how do you throw yourself at somebody without really hating them?”
“You don’t have to hate them. You just have to want them not to win.”
He considered this for some time and only spoke again when we were in the car heading home. “That Ezra guy’s good,” he said, just in the same way Emir had. “He was like a … ball magnet.”
I couldn’t help but snort. “A what?”
“A ball magnet. He was the magnet and the ball was the metal. It just flew to him and stuck every time.”
All-American. Four-year varsity starter. Ball magnet. I wondered how the great and powerful Ezra Lynley would feel knowing he had acquired such a title.
“Cas dropped the ball,” he said after a moment. It was true—Cas had fumbled in the third quarter. “He’s a ball dropper.”
I couldn’t even be indignant. I just snorted again.
4
Foster must’ve been in some deep contemplation that night; he didn’t even think to invite himself to the postgame party until I pulled up to our house and he was halfway out of the car.
“Are you sure I can’t go? I’ll be quiet and I’ll stay out of the way and if you want to get drunk, I won’t even tell Aunt Kathy.”
My eyes darted to the house to make sure the windows weren’t open.
“I’m not getting drunk,” I said. “No one’s getting drunk. And it’s already past your curfew, so get inside.”
Foster’s curfew was just what mine had been at his age—ten o’clock. At seventeen, I was up to eleven thirty. For a difference of three years, an hour and a half hardly seemed fair, but I wasn’t going to push it.
“I’m not even tired,” Foster argued, still standing with the door half open.
“Curfew doesn’t mean you have to be tired, it just means you have to be home.”
“But you need me there to look after you.”