Lindsay let out a peal of laughter. “Ezra’s a sweetheart, but those signs in the bathrooms everywhere are pretty creepy, aren’t they? Like, I can hardly go with him watching me like that.”
I couldn’t help but smile.
Rachel presented me with a sideline pass the morning after the Temple Sterling C Team Cavaliers managed a small victory against the Freeport Bulldogs. She forced the long, rectangular pass into my hand on her way through the hall before lunch and told me to meet Mr. Harper, the faculty adviser of the Herald, on the field at six thirty. Then, in a flurry of paper and handheld electronics, she was gone.
I wore the pass proudly that evening. It was laminated and everything. I felt like a VIP, parting ways with Foster as we reached the bleachers, flashing the pass at the fence, and continuing on to the field. Foster had plans to watch the game with some of the Future Science Revolutionaries. I think they were going to calculate ball trajectories or something. If not that, I’m sure they would find some other way to make everyone around them feel simultaneously uncomfortable and mentally inferior.
I scanned the sidelines for Mr. Harper and spotted him at the thirty-yard line. He was holding a tripod and had an enormous black camera bag slung over one shoulder.
After I introduced myself, I waited, as any normal person would, for him to hand me the camera. But Mr. Harper handed me the camera bag instead.
He held the camera up wordlessly and took a few shots of the field. For a moment I thought he was demonstrating how to work it, but then he turned and started down the field, camera still in hand.
What were Rachel’s exact words? I think I could work something out for you? As the players took the field and the game began, I came to realize that I was little more than a glorified luggage rack.
At least I had a good view of the game.
There were a few other photographers on the sidelines, but they definitely weren’t for the Herald. These were real photographers for real papers. They were commonplace around the end of last season—the team was headed to the Class 3 championship—but this was just a regular-season game. I wondered what the big story was, but it was clear as soon as we got close.
“Twenty-five,” one guy said to another as a new play started on the field. “That’s him. Watch twenty-five.”
As if he knew they were watching, Ezra emerged from the fray in a full sprint toward the goal line. He had the ball tucked under his arm and his head down, shouldering off a particularly large Freeport lineman and darting to the left as another Freeport player threw himself at Ezra’s legs. The last of the defenses failed; the last few yards were free and clear. The touchdown was Ezra’s.
“And in the second half? When the Freeport guy bobbled the ball and Ezra stole it and did that hairpin turn, did you see that? When he just took off in the opposite direction and Jordan tackled that guy like two seconds before he was going to get Ezra? Did you see it, Dev?”
Foster talked the entire way home. He paused the commentary only when we pulled into the driveway. “Are you going to go to the party tonight?”
“No.” I didn’t know the host of tonight’s soiree, and I wasn’t in the mood for a party. My shoulder ached from lugging that stupid bag around.
“Why not?”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“Do you like those parties? Ezra says he doesn’t. He says it’s just a bunch of people getting wasted and acting like idiots.”
I looked at Foster as we approached the back door. “When were you talking to Ezra?”
“During gym. When we ran the mile.”
I had been too focused running my own mile to pay attention to anything else, let alone carry on a conversation.
“We’re going to start training for real on Sunday. Not tomorrow, ’cause he has plans tomorrow, but on Sunday.”