Page 37 of Campus Heat

I looked down, and the front page sent my fury to a whole new level. In big, bold letters it said, “Highlanders in Freefall: Is it inexperience or ego? By Penny Donovan.”

I was way too angry to read the whole thing, so I just scanned it. And a few of the things she said really stood out.

“... an unproven coach experimenting with systems unsuited for Division play…”

“... And at the center, quarterback Ethan Rose, whose hero-ball tendencies raise serious concern about leadership…”

“... There’s no ‘I’ in team, but there appears to be one in offense.”

My throat closed, and unbidden tears blurred my eyes. Down on the field, a whistle blew sharply, drawing my attention. I looked up. Ethan stood near the forty-yard line. His helmet was off and his chest was heaving. Sweat darkened his hair at the temples. Lucas animatedly said something to him, then Ethan looked up.

Our eyes locked, and for the briefest of moments, I thought he might’ve seen me. That he saw the empty bleachers and knew what I had done for them, but something flashed across his face. It wasn’t gratitude or relief. It was frustration and embarrassment. He shook his head once, small and sharp, before looking away.

All I could do was stand there, newspaper crumpled in my fist, heart still pounding with my rage and wonder. Did my actions help?

Or did they make everything worse?

15

Ethan

I had just settled into the best dream I’d had in years when a whistle ripped through the darkness like a tornado. With a groan, I looked at my phone. It was 4:58 am, and I was nowhere near ready to get up.

It wasn’t morning yet. It wasn’t even close. The sky was a thick, unbroken black, and my eyes were refusing to answer Harris’s call. I just needed a couple more hours, not too much.

“Come on, man,” Lucas said, literally rolling out of his bed.

I huffed out my best attempt at a protest, but someone grabbed my blanket and ripped it off. There was no way I could start Hell Week late. The guys wouldn’t allow it. So I rolled out of bed and pulled my shirt over my head.

“Where’s Coach?” I asked as I stumbled into the hallway.

“Field,” Malik mumbled, wiping the sleep out of his eyes.

We dragged our asses out of the building and suddenly the stadium lights creaked to life. Their reluctant hum flooded the bleachers with a harsh white glare that gave me an instant headache. The air was icy enough to sting my lungs with the first breath I inhaled, but none of that helped my mind come to life.

It was another one of those nights where I tried and failed to fall asleep because my mind had been preoccupied. I got maybe an hour, if I was lucky two, before that whistle interrupted. It was more of a nap than a good night’s rest.

“Start with the stairs,” Harris shouted as the last of the guys arrived.

There was no greeting, or speech to get us motivated. He didn’t even tell us what we could expect to be doing that day. It was as if he wanted nothing more than to punish us until we begged for mercy. Most of us had already reached that point.

We lined up at the base of the concrete steps. Our cleats scraped and our shoulder pads shifted. None of us was ready for it. Our breaths were coming out in short white bursts of semi-frozen air while goosebumps had broken out across quite a few skins.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Lucas whispered under his breath.

“You’ll go all the way to the top and come back again,” Harris said, looking like the devil reincarnated. “You’ll do it five times and you have ninety seconds for each set.”

Dylan stared up at the looming wall of concrete. “You want us to run up and down all these stairs in ninety seconds? And you want us to do it five times?”

“Yes,” Coach said, looking overly confident.

“Have you lost your mind somewhere in the last few hours?” Dylan said, looking as if someone had punched him in the face.

Harris shrugged and blew the whistle. At first, nobody moved, but then we remembered that we only had ninety seconds. My feet moved of their own accord, and before I knew it, I was standing at the top of the stairs. Adrenaline pumped through my system, and I used it to my advantage.

I sprinted down and started back up, but it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I was about halfway through when my legs felt like they were on fire. By the third ascend I felt like I was going to die. My calves were screaming from the pressure, and my lungs felt like they were too small for the amount of air my body required. The concrete blurred beneath my feet, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it much longer.

By the fourth climb, things took a drastic turn. It was no longer an exercise session. It had become about survival, and I wasn’t sure if I was up to the task. I always knew that I wasn’t the fittest person in school, but I never imagined that I was that unfit. My legs were shaking, my vision had narrowed, and it felt like my heart was pounding against my skull.