The Hard Count(97)

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.

My chest fills with air and my body feels light, and I realize just how much my muscles have been clenching, on edge.

The team moves toward the field, and I see my friend holding a banner up while she sits on another cheerleader’s shoulders, stretching the hand-painted paper, perhaps the ugliest looking drawing of a Tiger I’ve ever seen, across several feet to another pair of cheerleaders on the other side. The team huddles and disappears behind the banner, their “woofing” and chest-pounding growing like thunder until they break through the center, Nico and Colton at the front, Travis right behind them.

My family and Nico’s stands and screams. I’m filled with adrenaline, and my nerves are out of control, my fingers tingling and my legs unable to stop moving. I apologize as I sit down next to Valerie, and she hugs me from the side.

“I can’t stop moving, either. It’s okay,” she says.

With my camera set and propped next to me, I let myself watch kickoff with my own eyes. The North team is huge—in both numbers and size—and they manage to gain twenty yards on their initial run. They make the fifty, and I start to worry—my father and Nico’s uncle both shouting the things they see wrong, agreeing and shouting louder.

In a blink, Sasha changes the course of the game. He pulls away from the line, shifting and staying with the targeted receiver, reading the pass perfectly and leaping in front at the right time. He’s only able to bring the ball down before the North offense tackles him, but he jumps and pounds his chest as he makes his way to our side, tossing the ball to the ref.

Coach O’Donahue has his offense pulled off to the side, and he’s holding up a hand to the ref, giving them instructions before yelling, “Break.” When Nico rushes to the field, I get to my feet, not caring that it’s only the first play. I’m so happy to see him out there, so proud and so relieved that Jimmy didn’t ruin this, too; I have to stand. My mom stands with me, and before long, I’ve started a movement, and the entire right side of the bleachers is on their feet, screaming.