First & Then(24)

11


Labor Day is really the last sweet taste of summer. One final pardon before all your Mondays become Mondays again. I tried to make the most of it, that weekend of Ezra and Foster’s training session.

But now it was over, and Rachel Woodson was cornering me in the hallway between classes.

“Are you pissed?” she said with no preamble.

“What—”

“About the whole camera bag thing. See, it’s not as bad as it seems. You just put it on the application as ‘Assistant Photographer’ and ‘Equipment Manager for the Herald.’ You could probably wrangle an athletic extracurricular out of it, too, like ‘Assistant to Sports Documentation’ or something like that. So it’s really not that bad, you see?”

“Assistant to Sports Documentation” did sound a lot better than “Camera Biatch.”

“I’m not mad.”

“Good. Because if I had told you everything, you wouldn’t have wanted to do it, since no one wanted to do it, not even a freshman or anything. So it’s all for the best.”

“Uh, right.”

“But what I really wanted to talk to you about was that idea you had for a sports article.”

“What idea?”

“About how high school football has gotten so political.”

As I recall, that was Rachel’s idea, but she didn’t give me time to protest.

“See, I really want to make a piece out of that, but I’m just so swamped. I thought maybe you could do some of the groundwork for me, maybe conduct some interviews and stuff? I’ll print out a list of questions and everything, and then you can add that to your résumé. I’ll even put you in the byline.” Rachel said this last part like she was offering me one of her kidneys.

“Oh … well, I guess—”

“I want the crux of the article to deal with how much the future of a person’s college football career is dependent on his high school stats. I’ve already sent a load of e-mails off to different sports recruiters and heads of programs from colleges in the state, but I want the student perspective, so I want you to interview Ezra Lynley, okay?”

“Why—”

“No one’s got stats like him, and no one’s gotten recruited like him. He blows the rest of the team out of the water. I printed you out a list of questions since I didn’t have your e-mail.” She shoved a sheaf of papers at me, and I accepted them, bewildered. “Speaking of, I’m going to need your contact information. So if you could shoot it over to me sometime, I would really appreciate it.” I opened my mouth to speak. “Thanks, Devon, you’re the best.” And she was gone.

I continued down the hall, turning the corner just in time to see Mrs. Wentworth emerge from her office with a large flyer.

“Oh, Devon!” Her face lit up. “Just the person I wanted to see.”

She held up the flyer. It described an impending trip to Reeding University in large, enthusiastic Comic Sans print. Under the description were eight lines for names; mine had already been printed on the top spot.

“I spoke with a rep over at Reeding and everything’s arranged,” Mrs. Wentworth said as she tacked the flyer to the bulletin board outside her office. “We’ll head down on a Thursday and stay overnight. You can sleep in the dorms, sit in on classes, everything.”

“Great.” I wasn’t sure how I should feel. I suppose I should’ve been grateful to Mrs. Wentworth for caring so much, but it was all a little overwhelming. It was September, college was light-years away, and I apparently had a newspaper article to research.

“The best part is, there’s a Saturday game that weekend, so you won’t even have to worry about missing your extracurricular.”

“Oh. Cool.” And by cool I meant ugh.

“See you on Wednesday!” And just like Rachel before her, Mrs. Wentworth was off.

“Devon.”

This was getting ridiculous. “What?” I whipped around fast.

Ezra Lynley stood behind me, looking slightly bewildered. He held up my copy of Sense and Sensibility.

“You left this,” he said.

I blinked. “Yeah, I know. I went back to get it and it was gone.”

“That’s because I picked it up for you.”

“I could’ve picked it up when I went back if you had just left it.”

I had no good reason to chastise Ezra. But I was already annoyed.

“I didn’t know you were going to go back. I was just … trying to help.”

I took it, and we stood for a moment.

“Thanks,” I said hastily, and shoved the book into my backpack.

When I looked back up, he was staring at me.

“Was there something else?”

“Yeah, uh … about what happened Sunday…”

“You mean your flattening Foster to the ground?”

“Yeah … sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing to me?”

“You seemed more upset than him.”

I had to admit it: “He was pretty ecstatic about it, actually.”

There was a pause.

“I just figured … well, he seemed scared. And I just thought it would be better to get it over with so he could see that it’s not such a big deal. And a surprise tackle is better than if he just had to stand there facing someone down, you know?”