The yell escaped my lips a moment too late.
I leaped to my feet and ran over. Ezra pulled himself back up. Foster was still on the ground, looking somewhat dazed.
“What the hell is your problem? You could’ve hurt him!”
“A lineman could hurt him, that’s how they do it.”
“He’s little, you can’t just do that!”
“Hey, Dev, you got a Kleenex?”
“I’m trying to help. He’s got to know what it’s like.”
There was a tug at my sleeve.
I looked down. Blood was pouring from Foster’s nose.
“Holy shit.” I knew Foster was prone to nosebleeds. I’m pretty sure a stiff wind or a crooked look could make Foster’s nose bleed. But I glared at Ezra anyway. “Look what you did.”
“He’s fine.” Ezra pulled Foster to his feet. “You’re fine.” There was something searching in his eyes that made it more of a question than a statement.
Foster cupped his nose with blood-smeared hands and nodded sagely.
I grabbed Foster’s elbow—“We’re going”—and pulled him across the field.
“Did you see that, Dev? Did you see me get tackled?”
“Yeah, I saw, I was sitting right there.”
“I got tackled by Ezra Lynley. When we’re adults, and Ezra’s gone pro, I can watch TV with my kids and be, like, that’s the guy who tackled me.”
I looked at Foster, only to see that the face under his bloody hands had broken into a grin.
“Give it up, Foster. He’s a dickhead, and you shouldn’t let him push you around like that.”
“He’s not pushing me around; he’s teaching me.”
When we reached the car, I yanked my door open and slammed it shut behind me with equal force.
It was only when we got home that I realized I had left Sense and Sensibility at the field. By the time I deposited Foster and drove back, the book, along with all traces of Ezra Lynley, was gone.
11
Labor Day is really the last sweet taste of summer. One final pardon before all your Mondays become Mondays again. I tried to make the most of it, that weekend of Ezra and Foster’s training session.
But now it was over, and Rachel Woodson was cornering me in the hallway between classes.
“Are you pissed?” she said with no preamble.
“What—”
“About the whole camera bag thing. See, it’s not as bad as it seems. You just put it on the application as ‘Assistant Photographer’ and ‘Equipment Manager for the Herald.’ You could probably wrangle an athletic extracurricular out of it, too, like ‘Assistant to Sports Documentation’ or something like that. So it’s really not that bad, you see?”
“Assistant to Sports Documentation” did sound a lot better than “Camera Biatch.”
“I’m not mad.”
“Good. Because if I had told you everything, you wouldn’t have wanted to do it, since no one wanted to do it, not even a freshman or anything. So it’s all for the best.”
“Uh, right.”
“But what I really wanted to talk to you about was that idea you had for a sports article.”
“What idea?”
“About how high school football has gotten so political.”
As I recall, that was Rachel’s idea, but she didn’t give me time to protest.
“See, I really want to make a piece out of that, but I’m just so swamped. I thought maybe you could do some of the groundwork for me, maybe conduct some interviews and stuff? I’ll print out a list of questions and everything, and then you can add that to your résumé. I’ll even put you in the byline.” Rachel said this last part like she was offering me one of her kidneys.
“Oh … well, I guess—”
“I want the crux of the article to deal with how much the future of a person’s college football career is dependent on his high school stats. I’ve already sent a load of e-mails off to different sports recruiters and heads of programs from colleges in the state, but I want the student perspective, so I want you to interview Ezra Lynley, okay?”