Micah Johnson Goes West (Get Out, #2)(19)

“No!”

“It’s the Cap, right? I mean, if I was to turn, I’d probably go for the Cap too.”

Micah wanted to crawl under the table. He hoped nobody else had heard over the hubbub of the dining room. “Not every gay guy is obsessed with sex, you know!” (Did his Grindr account beg to differ? He didn’t know.) Daril wrinkled his nose. “Who said anything about gay guys? I was talking about guys in general.”

“So who are you crushing on?”

“We were talking about you,” Daril fired back.

Micah sighed. “Look, if you must know….”

Daril leaned in.

“I was thinking about waffles.”

Daril leaned back.

“You don’t believe me,” Micah said.

Daril shook his head. “Oh, I can see by the look on your face that you’re telling the truth.”

“Just look at them, man. They’re over there, waiting to be covered in strawberries and that cream. When was the last time you had cream?”

Daril didn’t answer. He was staring at the waffles in a trance, the tip of his tongue poking out the side of his mouth in some Pavlovian dog’s response.

“Now you see why I’m in love.”

His teammate finally snapped out of his daze and stared dejectedly at his eggs. “I want a waffle.”

“Welcome to my world,” Micah said.




BUT WAFFLES were nothing compared to the feeling of running out onto the sacred grass of the MCG for his very first AFL game. Looking back, he could really only remember impressions rather than actual moments. Mainly because it was all over so quickly, but also because he felt overwhelmed. Following the team through the players’ race, which led from the change rooms onto the field, Micah felt like he was moving through treacle. He was drowning in it—even the sound of the crowd was muffled, and when Sam said something to him just before the light of day hit them, he couldn’t make it out.

Then his eyes adjusted, and he felt the concrete beneath his feet turn into grass. The roar of the crowd became clear, and Micah was so confused by it he almost ran in the opposite direction to the rest of the Dockers. Feeling foolish, he got back on track and ran under the team banner, catching up with everybody else on the other side.

“How are you feeling?” one of the guys asked him.

Micah couldn’t even tell who it was. “Yeah. Cool.”

That produced a snort. “Yeah. You look it.”

“You’ll be fine, rookie,” another voice said. “Just don’t puke.”

Micah wished he could make out who was saying what. He knew he had to focus. He was losing it. And he couldn’t do that—not on his very first game, especially if he didn’t want it to be his last game too.

The two teams lined up in the centre of the oval, and the national anthem started playing. Micah mouthed the words, not trusting himself to be capable of sound. Someone near him was raucously off-key, and their voice cracked on the words “girt by sea.” Instead he focused on the opposition, standing directly in front of him. And the guy directly across from him was huge—as if Hagrid from Harry Potter and the 50 Foot Woman from the fifties horror film had produced a love child whose sole desire was to play Australian football.

Suddenly feeling all of his eighteen, almost nineteen, years, Micah Johnson was a baby among giants. What the hell was he doing here? He was going to be crushed.

His thoughts were interrupted by the completion of “Advance Australia Fair,” and the two captains making their way to the coin toss. Fremantle won, and their captain chose the northern end to kick to. There was one last team huddle, and Micah knew he should have been paying attention to what their captain was saying, but he couldn’t concentrate. He was already sweating, believing that he shouldn’t be there. He was out of his element.

But when the siren sounded everything shifted into clear focus. Sound returned to its normal levels, no longer muffled; even his eyesight became crystal and finely attuned. He was alert, he was pumped, and he was ready to prove himself.

“You ready?” Sam asked as they ran to their positions.

“Hell yeah,” Micah said, and they did the customary hand slap. Sam added the butt slap for good measure.

Cheeky, Micah thought, and it was the last free thought he had for the first quarter.




HE WAS taken off for the second quarter, and Micah couldn’t blame the coaching team. He had barely seen any action, and when the ball had managed to come his way once, it slipped from beneath his fingers and bounded off in the opposite direction to him and into another player’s hands. It was gone before he could even contemplate his next move.

“We’re just resting you,” Nate said. “It’s not for the whole game.”

Micah hoped that was true. If that was the only play he’d get in his first game, it was hardly a salubrious debut. It would have to be quickly glossed over in his autobiography, if he had enough of a career to justify one. Right at this moment it didn’t seem likely.

By halftime they were nineteen points down. Sam came off the field, wincing slightly.

“I think I’ve turned my ankle,” he told one of the medical staff. They instantly swarmed over him as if he were a Formula 1 car careening into a pit stop. His boot was unlaced and pulled off in a fraction of the time Sam would have done so. Micah peered over the shoulders of the medics, and grimaced at the puffiness of Sam’s ankle.