Ollie’s slump deepened. “Sorry. This sucks.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Makani scraped the mud from her sneakers against the bottom of his car. His boots weren’t nearly as caked. “Besides, now we only half lied to my grandma. I promised her that I’d be home for dinner.”
He didn’t respond, so she asked before losing her nerve, “Why did you take the call in here? You didn’t want me to hear you talking to your boss?”
It nudged him back into the present. “Sometimes I get a stronger signal in here. Something to do with the old police wiring, I don’t know.”
“I couldn’t even get a text to send earlier.”
He shrugged. “Maybe we need CB radios, like the jocks and ags.”
She pointed an accusing finger. “Bite your tongue.”
Leaning forward, he lightly took her finger between his teeth. She smiled. “I could call my manager back,” he said, a few minutes later. “Make an excuse.”
But Makani needed to believe that Ollie would return. She kissed him twice, one kiss on each temple, and closed the door. Haley’s school photo vanished from her thoughts.
“Drive,” she said. “We’ll have plenty of time for that later.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
They were undefeated. The best team in the state. And they were playing one of the worst tomorrow night. So why was Hooker being such a fucking dickweed?
For the last forty minutes, Matt Butler had been standing in the locker room showers with his eyes closed. Practice was over. The sun was down. Everyone was gone. He’d told the guys that he’d catch up with them at Sonic, but he wasn’t even sure if that was true. He wanted to be alone, enveloped in water and quiet and steam, forever.
It had been a rough week. The pressure of the playoffs, pressure of the recruiters, pressure of his parents. Haley. That stupid fight in the quad and the disappointed lectures from Principal Stanton and Coach Hooker that followed. Lauren. She’d been ragging on him again for not texting her back fast enough. Worse, she was acting like she’d known Haley—like she’d been personally devastated by the tragic loss of a dear friend—when, as far as he knew, Lauren and Haley had never hung out. Not once. It was okay to be upset about someone’s death, even if you never really knew the person. But Matt hated the way his girlfriend was making the tragedy about herself.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Haley’s parents. The media was placing ample suspicion on her father, but every time Matt saw him in the news, Don Whitehall looked gutted. His eyelids were so swollen that he could hardly keep them open. Only a psychopath could fake that kind of reaction. Then again, only a psychopath could commit that kind of murder. Haley’s mom had issued a televised statement. She’d begged anyone in the community to step forward if they knew the perpetrator’s real identity, but she could barely speak through her grief. Something about her physical appearance reminded him of his own mom. That made it worse.
He still felt the shock of when Buddy had ripped down the Sweeney Todd banner. His best friend hadn’t known what he was doing—Matt could see that now, they were cool—but it had made the entire team look like assholes.
Both Hooker and his father grilled him constantly about the importance of appearance. And Matt was trying to keep up appearances, but the stress of everything, of everyone relying on him, had been getting to him all semester. It was making him pick these fights. Obsess over the Whitehalls. Misplace his belongings. Matt had been losing his essentials (phone, keys, wallet) in the strangest places (sock drawer, vegetable crisper, patio table) with no memory of having moved them there.
Unless . . . it wasn’t the stress.
Matt’s muscles clenched as three letters chorused in his mind: CTE.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy was a disease caused by repetitive blows to the head. Early symptoms included memory loss, disorientation, and erratic behavior. Later symptoms included dementia, impeded speech, and suicide. Basically, it destroyed your brain, and football players everywhere were suffering and dying from it. Mostly old guys, who’d played pro. But plenty of young guys, too. Even high schoolers.
It was the disease that the NFL and universities didn’t want to discuss, because it hurt their bottom line. Matt’s teammates didn’t want to talk about it, either. Ignoring it made it easier to pretend that it wasn’t serious, made it easier to keep playing ball. No one wanted to ruin the game they all loved.
But Matt thought about CTE. He thought about it a lot.
Professional football was the only future he’d ever wanted. It was what his father, whose own dreams were shattered when he tore up his left knee on the field at Memorial Stadium, had always wanted.
His mother, on the other hand. She used to want it. Now every time a story hit ESPN, he’d find a printed-out article sitting on his place mat at the breakfast table. Her silent plea. To Matt’s everlasting shame, he always made a show of crumpling up the articles in front of his dad. They’d been working so hard for this, for so long.
But, secretly, Matt had started pocketing them.
The first article he’d kept was about Tony Dorsett, a college and pro Hall of Fame running back. Matt was a running back, too. He was the best in the Midwest, with the Division I FBS recruiters serenading his front door to prove it, but every time he found his phone in the wrong place, he broke into a cold sweat.
CTE? Is that you?
Because what would he do if he couldn’t play football?
On the mantelpiece in his living room, a framed photograph was prominently displayed. It was taken on the day he was born, and he was swaddled in a scarlet Huskers blanket. Now, only a few short months remained before he had to officially commit to one school. Because he would commit. He would keep playing.
The choice wasn’t an actual choice.
Matt turned off the water. He examined his hands, which were pruned and gelatin white. The weak showerhead dripped water onto the tile floor. Somewhere during this exhausted mulling, Matt had decided to join his friends at Sonic.
Tomorrow was the last game of the regular season, and it was important to keep focused on their opponent and not look past them into the playoffs—even though everybody knew it was a win. It’s why practice had been so frustrating. Hooker had drilled them harder than ever, yelling in an unparalleled, spittle-faced volume that they were getting too comfortable. Matt was confident, but he wasn’t comfortable. He wouldn’t feel comfortable until he’d made it through playoffs without injury.