First & Then(14)

She looked taken aback, like I had just suggested slitting our palms open and doing a blood pact, but, nevertheless, she trotted over to a spot across from me and turned to catch the ball.

She was wearing a particularly thick layer of makeup—dark eyeliner, sparkly shadow, iridescent lip gloss. Her shirt was tied up in the back, too, but unlike the buxom PT, you could see the ponytail holder she used to fix it up.

I glanced over at Ezra and Foster as she retrieved a missed pass, just in time to see Foster wind his arm back and throw a rogue ball. It spiraled up and backward, landing just beyond the visitors’ bench behind him.

“Oops!” Foster went galloping after it. I cringed inwardly. Ezra Lynley was a jerk, sure, but he was still the grand prodigy of TS football, and Foster was currently blaspheming his craft.

“That’s your brother, right?” my PT asked, following my gaze.

“No, he’s my cousin.”

“Really? Because he said he’s your brother.”

“Why would I lie?”

She looked at me unwaveringly beneath sparkly eyelids. “Why would he?”

I was quibbling with a prostitot.

I turned my gaze back to my “brother.” He had reached the ball and bent to snatch it up.

Don’t throw it back, Foster, I willed. Don’t throw it back.

Once upright, Foster pulled his foot back, released the ball, and kicked it. It looked like the easiest, most effortless motion.

The ball skyrocketed in a grand arc over our heads and landed somewhere in the bleachers on the other side of the field.

We all stood there, stunned, except for my PT, who chose that moment to lob the ball at me. It bounced dully off my shoulder. I didn’t even notice.

Foster broke the silence first, yelling “Sorry!” and jogging back across the field. He emerged from under the bleachers, trotted up to Ezra, and handed him the ball.

“Sorry about that,” Foster said, grinning sheepishly.

Ezra looked at the ball like Foster had just handed him a potato, and then regarded Foster like he was … I don’t know, someone who had just handed him a potato.

“Kicker,” Ezra said.

“Foster,” he replied. “But you’re close!”

“He can kick.” Ezra looked to Mr. Sellers. “Did you see that?”

It was the first time I had seen Ezra express anything more than lazy detachment. Mr. Sellers sauntered over with his arms folded, clearly ready to offer his expert opinion. Foster just looked confused.

The punt was good, I had to agree, but it had to have been a fluke. The wind and the angle of his foot and the weight of the ball must’ve all teamed up to create it. Maybe there was some sort of special rubber in the sneakers my mother had bought him.

Ezra waved Foster over, knelt, and placed the tip of the ball on the ground. “Have you ever done placekicking?” he asked.

Foster shook his head. I watched as Ezra told Foster what to do, and a sense of uneasiness penetrated my chest. This wasn’t right.

Foster backed up a few yards and angled himself. It dawned on me what was about to happen here—Ezra would pull the football away and Foster would fly up and land flat on his back like in those old Charlie Brown comic strips. Undeniably, it would’ve been funny, but it was also just plain mean, so I started to move toward them.

“Wait, Foster—”

Then Foster kicked.

It flew rogue this time, flying end over end and landing twenty feet shy and sharply left of the goalposts.

So it was a fluke. Foster looked vaguely interested, but not too concerned. Ezra, on the other hand, was all determination.

“Again,” he said. “Let’s do it again.”

Mr. Sellers jogged over and retrieved the mesh bag of footballs, while Ezra talked quietly to Foster, gesturing to the ground and then to the goalposts.

“I want to see some passing!” Mr. Sellers bellowed as he passed through the partner pairs back to Ezra and Foster.

I spotted my own football a few feet away and picked it up, but my PT had drifted off to join another group. They weren’t passing so much as handing each other the ball while gabbing a mile a minute, probably about Ezra Lynley’s favorite brand of socks or something equally irrelevant.

I resolved to stay solo rather than be at the mercy of any conversation in that vein. I held the football so I could at least aim it in the direction of one of the groups if Mr. Sellers looked over, meanwhile edging my way around the other pairs to get closer to where Foster and Ezra stood.

Ezra knelt with the new ball and gestured Foster forward. “Try it again.”

This time the ball nicked the left goalpost and bounced off into the sidelines.

“Closer.” Ezra eyed Foster. “Again.”

He lined up another ball. This one did the trick.

That same powerhouse blast, the same cannonball force of Foster’s accidental punt, launched this ball cleanly between the goalposts.

“Shit,” I heard a freshboy next to me murmur. He punched the arm of the guy next to him. It was Kenyon, the kid Mr. Sellers had called “our new up-and-comer,” who received the blow. Kenyon, broader than two Ezras or three Fosters, was standing with his mouth wide open. “Shit, d’you see that?” the freshboy said again.

Foster kicked four more times, two rogue shots and two that nailed it. Then Ezra demonstrated a proper punt. Foster copied his movements, and his ball landed ten yards past where Ezra’s own had fallen.