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Nineteen
Junior
I lied.
Thinking about Eliza Pierce sitting out there in those bleachers is absolutely psyching me out.
She’s there right now, watching every hike, every toss, every move I make and she’s going to notice if I fumble even the smallest screw-up.
I scan the crowd again, searching for her long, brown hair but I can’t look for very long before I have to get my head back in this game.
My eyes jump to the scoreboard and I cringe.
We are losing by eight points and there’s only one minute left in the game.
I look at my teammates and I see it on their faces, just as they can probably see it on mine.
It’s over.
The ref blows the whistle, signaling a time-out and I hear Cary Pierce bellow out my name from the sidelines. He waves me over and I sprint to meet him.
“What’s wrong, Junior?” he asks.
I stare at him through my face guard, hoping he can’t read the dirty thoughts running through my mind. “We’re losing.”
“So?” he shrugs. “Losing happens in your head first, not the other way around.”
“There’s less than a minute left, Coach,” I point out. “There’s no way we can—”
“No.”He shakes his head. “That’s plenty of time for a touchdown and a two-point conversion — that will tie us up and we’ll wipe them out in overtime.”
I pause and look over my shoulder at the field. He’s not wrong but it’s a risky play, especially with us sitting fifteen yards outside the red zone.
He knocks on the side of my helmet. “Get out of here. Get in here.” He lays a firm finger against my chest. “You know what I’m seeing right now?”
“What?”
“Weakness. It’s all over your damn face and I can guarantee they see it, too — and I’m not talking about the other team. I’m talking about yours, Junior. The quarterback falls and the rest follow. What are you going to do about it?”
I chew on my inner cheek. “I think—”
He knocks hard against my helmet again. “Get out of here. What are you going to do?”
My mind goes dark, surrounded by an ether of cold nothingness and I can’t for the life of me see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I see Eliza’s face instead, standing out amongst the dark gray wisps.
“I’m going to fake the hand-off,” I say through sudden clarity. “Put the focus on the halfback and run it in myself.”
He smiles. “Then go do it.”
I turn around and rush back out onto the field, igniting screams in the crowd around us. A little bit of that pure adrenaline fires through my limbs and it never stops tingling, even as we huddle up and I watch the look of shock on the team’s faces morph into a powerful confidence.
We’re going to fight this — right down to the very last second.
Suddenly, the idea of Eliza Pierce watching over my shoulder isn’t so bad.
My team stands in formation, creating phantom twitches to their left, making it as obvious to the other team as possible.
