Brows furrowed, she clicked on the handle to check whether it was legit or if it was a student account trying to pose as a school-sanctioned account. She’d seen plenty of those, even in elementary ed. Fourth and fifth graders were social media savvy in some pretty scary ways.
The account was public, had one post and…704 followers?
705. No, 706.
What was happening?
She tapped the post, which was a reel of the Muskies mascot—a giant fish wearing a purple Muskies jersey and baseball cap—dancing to Taylor Swift’s “…Ready For It?” But the mascot wasn’t alone. On one side of the fish, Sarah Ramirez held out a Muskies tee,dancing awkwardly along with Teddy Kostas on the mascot’s opposite side. Below the reel, a caption read,Are you ready to watch #muskiessoccer dominate on the field tonight? Grab your tickets at the #linkinbio. Be one of the first 100 in the stands to grab your free Muskies T-shirt and a coupon for one free item at the concession stand (home team only). #gomuskies #giveaway #muskiessoccer #letsbeatmiddleton #freebies #muskiesspirit #catsruledogsdrool.
Haddie snorted when she read the final hashtag but realized she’d seen that hashtag before. A certain social media marketer she knew loved to sneakhashcats, as she liked to call them, into some of her professional posts.
She quickly brought up Emma’s contact on her phone and tapped the green button to call.
“Hads!” Emma answered on the first ring, but Haddie could barely hear her amid what sounded like cheering in the background. “Where are you? You’re missing all the pregame fun!”
“Did I just hear an air horn?” Haddie asked.
Emma laughed. “Yes! You need to get your ass over here! Levi somehow got his hands on a T-shirt cannon, and the crowd is going wild! It’s amazing.”
Haddie laughed, trying to reconcile what she was hearing from her friend with what she believed to be true.Noone showed up to Muskies soccer games other than a few scattered parents to watch their kids. An air horn? A T-shirt cannon? She wasn’t even sure the football game had the latter.
“I’m on my way!” Haddie replied, already out of her seat. “ButEms…did you start a Muskies Soccer account?”
“Nope!” Emma replied, further aiding in Haddie’s confusion. “I just gave the poster a few marketing and posting tips. You know, like using a reel instead of a post and a few good hashtags. Looks like he was gullible enough to do the hashcat one as well. Pancake made me do it.” Pancake…Emma’s cat who Emma was deathly allergic to, which forced her to take daily meds in order to be the cat lady she was always meant to be. “Don’t you want to know who the poster is and who is in the Muskie suit?”
Haddie didn’t need her friend to say it. She just needed to understand what was happening. Everything from the tumbler of coffee that magically appeared outside her door that morning to Levi dancing in a fish costume… What the hell had gotten into him, and why was all of it—fish costume notwithstanding—making her belly perform all sorts of acrobatics?
“I’ll be right there,” Haddie told her.
“Good!” Emma replied. “Because the bleachers are filling up! I might have also made a call to a couple of local papers, so you know…do what you always do and look pretty.”
Haddie laughed and ended the call. Local papers? What the hell was happening on that field, and what did it mean that it was all thanks to Levi?
The bleachers were not full when Haddie arrived, but they were more than half full, which was already an exponential increase from the crowds at previous games. While she had asked her team to be there to support the varsity boys, she wasn’t expecting to see them sitting together, in uniform, waving poster-board signs foreach player boasting their jersey numbers and well wishes. Though she should probably make Sarah Ramirez changeAsstoButton her poster for Teddy Kostas that stated a place he should kick Middleton’s team.
Come to think of it, she’d probably have to talk to her team about positive vs. negative school spirit in general, but for now, her heart swelled at the sight of everyone coming out to support Levi’s team, not only because she was happy for him but also because he’d done this. And somehow she knew that when she had her next home game, she’d see the same turnout if he had anything to say about it.
Haddie finally found Emma, Matteo, Tommy, and a pretty blond woman with a slicked-back ponytail who she guessed was Tommy’s new wife.
“Hads!” Emma called. “Come sit!”
To her credit, rather than one of her quirky tees, Emma was decked out in full Muskie attire—a hoodie and purple Muskie leggings.
Haddie looked down at her own outfit, a plain white T-shirt, floral maxi skirt, and her white Adidas court shoes. She’d been so caught up in slipping out before Levi that morning to grab her bribery coffees that she’d totally forgotten to bring a change of clothes for the game.
She shivered, rubbing the gooseflesh on her arms. As they approached mid-September, the afternoons and evenings were finally starting to feel like autumn.
The air horn blew, startling Haddie so hard that she stumbled,her ass crashing hard into the bleachers next to Emma. Ready to curse whoever chose that moment to sound the alarm and bruise her tailbone, she softened when her eyes met Levi’s where he stood on the track with the air horn in one hand and the T-shirt cannon hooked under his other arm.
He mouthed the wordSorry, then dropped the horn and aimed the T-shirt launcher in her direction. With a wink and one of his trademark Levi smiles that made her melt a little more every time he threw one her way.
And then he fired a T-shirt directly into her lap. Haddie unfolded the ball to find it wasn’t just any free T-shirt. It was a long-sleeved tee she knew was only given to faculty who coached or sponsored a team. Sure enough, the back of the shirt readCoach Rourke.
Haddie stared at him, eyes wide. What would students think if she was at a game wearing his shirt? What would Coach Crawford say if he saw? She imagined the over-the-top coffee beverages or pastries she would have to use to sweeten the pot for Ramirez and Kostas to keep their mouths shut.
“Uh-oh,” Emma said, pulling Haddie briefly from her spiral. “Someone is overthinking a T-shirt when she is clearly freezing her kittens off.”
Haddie laughed. “My kittens? What does that even mean?”
