Page 4 of The Last Five Yards

Coach flips through papers, distracted.

Reese tilts her head towards Maren. “You handle the numbers, I’ll handle the humans?”

“Something like that,” Coach says without looking up.

“Numbers are humans,” Maren mutters. “Their times are…”

Coach chuckles. “See? Perfect balance.”

“I balance all the time on the board,” Reese quips, already backing toward the door. “See you tomorrow, Coach Hensley.”

Maren hesitates, glancing at him before following.

“You’ll be great, kiddo,” he calls after her.

She pretends not to hear. Reese thinks this is a joke, her mind reels. Three years of work, and now I must share it.

Maren knows she should feel proud. That is what leadership means. Instead, it feels like someone loosened a bolt in her chest.

She has spent three years learning how to keep the deck silent, for herself. Now she will have to share it with the loudest person in the room.

She heads to the locker room, the floor slick under her bare feet. The others are gone. Only the hum of the filters and the faint drip of the shower heads remain. She sits on the bench, a towel around her shoulders, staring into her locker. The echo of the word ‘Co-Captain’ still rings in her ears. The word tastes wrong. Too crowded.

She used to picture this moment: Coach calling her name, teammates clapping, her name alone on the board. The image had weight, symmetry, the way numbers line up on a split sheet. She never imagined sharing the space. Now the future she rehearsed tilts slightly, off-balance, and she can’t find her footing.

She presses her palms against her knees until they sting, waiting for the sound in her head to settle, but it never does. The hum of the filters becomes its own metronome, slow and steady. She counts with it - one, two, three, for.

Somewhere in the locker room, Reese’s laughter rings again. It rolls through the tiled walls like sunlight and static.

Maren dresses and walks out into the hallway, finding Reese leaning against a locker waiting for her.

“Come on, co-captain. You’ll make us look good.”

Maren doesn’t answer. Co sits wrong in her mouth.

* * *

The front door slams hard enough to rattle the picture frames, down the hall. Maren winces. She didn’t mean to do that. Or maybe she did.

From the kitchen, she can hear her mom call, “If that was a ghost, tell it to take it shoes off. If it was you, same rule.”

Maren drops her backpack on the bench and pushes her shoes back under the bench. “Sorry, Mom.”

Her mom steps into view, holding a wooden spoon like a microphone. “Welcome home. On a scale of one to ten, how dramatic was that entrance supposed to be?”

Maren drags her hand down her face as she blows out a slow breath. “About a nine, I suppose.”

“Good. It felt like at least an eight from here,” her mom says, then softens. “What happened, kid?”

Maren hesitates and then blurts, “Coach made me CO captain.”

Her mom’s face brightens up. “Hey, that’s great!”

“With Reese Callahan.”

There is a pause. Her mom’s eyebrows rise. “Ahhh,” she draws out. “The human firecracker.”

Maren groans as she reaches down and grabs a carrot off the counter, “Exactly.”