“Why—”
“No one’s got stats like him, and no one’s gotten recruited like him. He blows the rest of the team out of the water. I printed you out a list of questions since I didn’t have your e-mail.” She shoved a sheaf of papers at me, and I accepted them, bewildered. “Speaking of, I’m going to need your contact information. So if you could shoot it over to me sometime, I would really appreciate it.” I opened my mouth to speak. “Thanks, Devon, you’re the best.” And she was gone.
I continued down the hall, turning the corner just in time to see Mrs. Wentworth emerge from her office with a large flyer.
“Oh, Devon!” Her face lit up. “Just the person I wanted to see.”
She held up the flyer. It described an impending trip to Reeding University in large, enthusiastic Comic Sans print. Under the description were eight lines for names; mine had already been printed on the top spot.
“I spoke with a rep over at Reeding and everything’s arranged,” Mrs. Wentworth said as she tacked the flyer to the bulletin board outside her office. “We’ll head down on a Thursday and stay overnight. You can sleep in the dorms, sit in on classes, everything.”
“Great.” I wasn’t sure how I should feel. I suppose I should’ve been grateful to Mrs. Wentworth for caring so much, but it was all a little overwhelming. It was September, college was light-years away, and I apparently had a newspaper article to research.
“The best part is, there’s a Saturday game that weekend, so you won’t even have to worry about missing your extracurricular.”
“Oh. Cool.” And by cool I meant ugh.
“See you on Wednesday!” And just like Rachel before her, Mrs. Wentworth was off.
“Devon.”
This was getting ridiculous. “What?” I whipped around fast.
Ezra Lynley stood behind me, looking slightly bewildered. He held up my copy of Sense and Sensibility.
“You left this,” he said.
I blinked. “Yeah, I know. I went back to get it and it was gone.”
“That’s because I picked it up for you.”
“I could’ve picked it up when I went back if you had just left it.”
I had no good reason to chastise Ezra. But I was already annoyed.
“I didn’t know you were going to go back. I was just … trying to help.”
I took it, and we stood for a moment.
“Thanks,” I said hastily, and shoved the book into my backpack.
When I looked back up, he was staring at me.
“Was there something else?”
“Yeah, uh … about what happened Sunday…”
“You mean your flattening Foster to the ground?”
“Yeah … sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing to me?”
“You seemed more upset than him.”
I had to admit it: “He was pretty ecstatic about it, actually.”
There was a pause.
“I just figured … well, he seemed scared. And I just thought it would be better to get it over with so he could see that it’s not such a big deal. And a surprise tackle is better than if he just had to stand there facing someone down, you know?”
It sort of made sense. But for some reason I tried to hold on to my indignation. For Foster’s sake. Right?
Before I could speak, Ezra frowned. “Why do you have a paper with my name on it?”
I realized I was still holding Rachel’s questions. INSIDE TEMPLE STERLING’S OWN EZRA LYNLEY was emblazoned across the top of the first page.
That was embarrassing on so many levels.
“Oh. Uh, Rachel just gave me these. You know Rachel Woodson?”
He just gave me that blank look.
“She wanted me to interview you about…” The first question read, As a high school football player today, do you value personal statistics over team victories? And the next, Do you feel as if the focus of high school football has shifted from the team to the individual?
Man, it was like an essay test. “Football stuff,” I finished.
“Okay.”
That was not the answer I was expecting. “Really?”
“Yeah. Whenever.”
“Um … cool. Great.”