MADISON MOVED SLOWLY on the walk from her locker to the fields. She had always been aware, in a dim and unaddressed way, that Amanda might pay attention to things like that magazine award. But normally nothing like that would ever be said between the two of them. Amanda almost never talked about Madison’s father. Amanda’s parents, when Madison was over at their house—which, until these past few months, she had been several times each week—looked at each other and exchanged thin, toothless smiles whenever she said her father’s name.
She saw Chip Abbott as soon as she got to the field. The other girls were huddled on the bleachers on the far side, so she kept her eye on him as she crossed the end zone. He stood with his hands on his hips, his shoulders hunched beneath his pads, his skinny legs squeezed into the shiny pants like straws in their paper wrappers.
She stumbled somewhat on a hidden divot in the field, the loose grass and bits of dirt flying up around her ankles, and she righted herself, brushed her skirt down over her thighs. She shook her head, just as she’d always done when an unpleasant thought crossed her mind in a public place, to dislodge anything like a frown from her face. Someone might be watching, noticing; she knew this, the awareness bred into her since babyhood by both parents. That your time, your face, your body—none of it was entirely your own, not when other people could see you.
There was a canvas, a slate, an Etch-A-Sketch, whatever. And she could control what was on it. What was visible inside her head. And what she wanted on there, the only thing she wanted on there today, was this: the fact that Chip Abbott had begun to say hello to her outside her third-period Trig class.
The first time had been one of the first days of the school year. Hey, he’d said to her, touching his fingertips to her left shoulder blade. He’d done it again the next day, at the same time, in the same crowded morning rush of the hallway. A boy down the hall had screamed, “Ball sack!” just as they made eye contact, and Chip raised his eyebrows and smiled at her, as if the rowdy eruption had been hers.
In the weeks since, that was essentially all that had happened. They had not had a real conversation. And yet it felt as though so much was going on. An entire catalog of glances and touches and jokes emerged, ready to be analyzed. A netherworld of nuance and suggestion rose up to greet her like an abandoned object suddenly emerging from the depths of a cobalt swimming pool; something she’d once lost, without knowing, and now had the unforeseen joy of retrieving. She had never felt, had only heard others bragging about, this constant excitement. This feeling that your body had been hollowed out and filled with something reactive that could be stirred, even by something so small as a smile in passing.
She kept her eyes low as she approached the bleachers, as she moved closer to him. Zo? and Allie saw her at the last moment, and waved.
“Are we winning?” she asked them. Allie was wearing leggings the same color as her own skin, so that from far away it looked, for a second, like she wasn’t wearing pants. Madison’s gaze darted back and forth from the girls to the field, Chip. This was what it felt like now, to be on a campus where she knew he was, somewhere. There was a part of her always drifting away from the conversation, floating into some untethered existence. Keeping her mind on one thing felt like keeping a room full of kindergarteners quiet and attentive.
“Winning?” Zo? said. “Of course, what’d you expect. It’s just a preseason game, it’s not serious. But Chip’s killing it. He could beat this defense with his eyes closed. He’s practically dancing around out there.”
Madison had known Chip, or known who he was, since she was five years old. They’d attended the same elementary school, and now he was a junior at Greenwich Prep. In middle school, sometimes she’d see him on the main quad, throwing a football around with some of the older players on the team. The ball arcing high through the air, his arm extending in one long line from his shoulder.
Last year, as a sophomore, Chip had been the second-string quarterback, but everyone knew that was only a courtesy to Justin Peck, who had patiently waited until his senior year for his chance as QB. Now, it was Chip’s turn, which seemed like a terrible idea to Madison. He was too lanky, too fragile. Chip was tall, and the ropy muscles in his arms jumped every time he raised his hand or shouldered his backpack, but even she knew that he was a shrimp compared to the varsity football players. These were the boys who spent their school days lounging around the same octagonal lunch table in the courtyard outside the cafeteria, their eyes permanently at half-mast, as though playing football for an affluent and predominantly white private school in Greenwich, Connecticut, was just about all they could be expected to handle in any given week.
But Chip: Chip smelled good, like soap mixed with fresh air and steam, like he was perpetually just stepping out from a hot shower. He clipped the strap of his backpack across his chest while he ran around campus, always fiddling with it, and sometimes he sang goofy songs at pep rallies and things. She had never known a single fact about football, a single rule, not even the scoring system. But she felt like she knew enough to worry about Chip, about the sound of his arm snapping beneath him when a bigger guy tackled him. About the way he would look with a black eye, with a fat lip. She’d already seen the way the football players walked on Monday mornings, that combination of swagger and a prancing sensitivity that favored their soreness, their multiple aches and pains. She sometimes thought that was how all men should walk: like they were all hiding something for your benefit, something that made them wince.
“Isn’t Chip,” Madison began with caution, “isn’t he kind of skinny? Compared to the other guys?”
Zo? ran a hand through her hair, swirling it over her head in one glossy motion, tucking the ends behind one ear. “You’re kidding, right? Madison! He’s the quarterback. He’s supposed to be small and fast, and then everyone else has to protect him. God, you really weren’t lying when you said you don’t know football.”
“You guys know a lot about it?”