“We’re moving to Alabama?” I ask, my stomach sick with the mixture of excitement and worry because I don’t want to move.
“Not until you graduate. I wouldn’t start until next year, fulltime, but I’m going to be working part-time for the rest of this season on the West Coast. I’ll be recruiting. I have games and practices I need to go to in California next week,” my dad says, excited for the first time since I can’t remember when. “Come fall, I’ll be the assistant offensive coordinator. Pay’s about the same as it is here, but it’s a foot in the door. Who knows, I might just find myself in a head gig down the road.”
“You will, oh my God, Daddy, I know you will!” I say, reaching over my mom’s lap and hugging my dad.
My father’s news forms an instant bubble around us, and even though I know there are people walking by, climbing to seats far away from us, not wanting to be associated with our family, I don’t care because they are the ones who are fools. They’re missing out on being a part of our celebration. I glance at the group of women my mom had her issues with last week, and I snicker to myself at the scowls on their faces, the way they try to give me the evil eye to prove a point. They are still stuck in their miserable world where one day someone is on top, and the next they’re tossed to the side. It could happen to any one of them next, and I’m so glad my mom has already escaped, however ungraceful her exit was.
It doesn’t dawn on me how close we are to game time until I hear the roar from the crowd on the other side of the field. We’re playing North, a school with a record just as good as ours, and a quarterback who is being touted as one of the best in the state.
The team runs through a tunnel of cheerleaders, and usually by this time, The Tradition is huddled beyond the lights, chanting and getting pumped to take the field. I look over at the space just outside the entry gates, though, and the space is empty.
“Where are they?” I ask.
“I don’t know…that’s…strange,” my dad says, standing to his feet and stretching to look beyond the darkness.
My eyes move from the clock ticking down the warm-up time, to the closed locker room door, and to the other team that has taken up the center of the field for their stretching. My knees start to shake, and my mom holds her hand on my right one.
“I don’t get this. Where are they?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says.
I check the frame in my camera, and capture footage of the other team, showing the time on the clock and our empty side of the field, until we’re down to two minutes.
“I see Jimmy…” my dad says, his head falling to the side as he slumps back down to sit. “He’s walking out with the other coaches, but that’s it.”
“They’re not coming out unless he starts Nico,” Noah says, cracking a single seed shell between his teeth, almost satisfactorily.
My dad glances to Noah, and so do I. My brother looks at us and shrugs.
“I told you they had it handled,” Noah smirks.
“Holy sh…” I stop when I see Nico’s mom walk in front of us, stopping with her brother and Alyssa at her side.
“Valerie, hi. Please, come sit with us,” my mom says, moving back behind me and giving the soft row lined with the blanket to Nico’s mom.
“Thank you,” she says, her voice raspy from lack of sleep.
She slips into the space next to me, Alyssa climbing to her lap and her brother moving to sit next to my father at the end.
“Nico says the scouts are here,” Valerie says, and I can see her eyes fighting to stay strong, not to shed any more tears.
“They are. We saw them walk up. They’re in the box,” I say, looking over my shoulder.
Valerie turns my direction and looks up, too, staring for a few seconds, breathing slowly. When she turns back, she stops when her eyes meet mine, and she smiles, but the kind that’s made from a broken heart. She squeezes my knee, and I cover her hand with mine. I don’t have any words to say that will make this better, so I leave it at a simple embrace and a look. I can’t fix her pain, and nothing will.
We turn back to the field as whistles begin to blow, and my eyes search for a clue. Coach O’Donahue is talking with the referees while one of his assistant coaches rushes back down the field, hopping the fence for the shortest route and sprinting to the locker room. The other team’s four captains are holding hands, waiting in the center of the field for the coin flip, and I start to worry that Jimmy’s not going to cave.
“They’re going to forfeit,” I whisper.
“Huh? Why? Why would they do that?” Nico’s mom asks, scooting forward, her eye worried and searching.
“Nah…they won’t,” Noah says, leaning forward and winking just as the chant of “hoorah!” echoes from the dark behind him.