“I don’t know,” he had told me. He’d been asked about the issue the day before, when he’d left a meeting with the offense and had run into a reporter. He’d smiled at her and said that the coaches would make the decision and he’d leave it to them, and he’d looked calm and confident.
He hadn’t looked anything like confident this morning when we’d said goodbye.
“I don’t know,” he’d repeated, frowning. “It seems that way but I never heard of something so ass-backwards like this. Waitinguntil the day before the home opener? That’s lunacy. There’s something wrong.”
“Maybe they want to build suspense,” I had suggested. “Maybe it’s a marketing thing.”
“Fine, keep it from the public, but it’s not right to keep it from us,” he’d said. “Dallas threw up in the bathroom yesterday and he told me it was a stomach bug. It was nerves.”
So now, both Woodsmen quarterbacks had puked at the stadium, which was interesting—no, it wasn’t really. I felt sorry for Dallas Laforet and I felt angry about the situation the coaches had created. “I bet it’s because of the mean guy, the one who yelled at you,” I’d told Everett, and that had made him smile.
“You’ll never forgive him. Coach Nour made an enemy in you.”
He had, and I would see that coach tomorrow when I saw Everett—because I was going to the game. He’d gotten me a seat (just one) that was much closer to the action, since I didn’t need to worry about my sister going up and down the steep stadium stairs. I worried about her doing other things, though. Without the ability to withdraw my money from our joint account, how would she get by? She still got assistance from the state but it wasn’t enough without a job, unless Boyd was taking over all her expenses.
My phone rang and interrupted those worries, but then I also got concerned when I saw the name on my screen. Concerned and excited. “Hello,” I told Everett.
“Hi, Zoey.”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to have your phone,” I said. “I thought they took them, like they do in the middle and high schools.”
“I have until ten o’clock, and then we start the digital lockdown. How’s the bar?”
I looked around. “There’s a customer.”
“Just the one? Are you bored?”
“I brought my laptop so I can look for more jobs.” There might have been a teaching position open anywhere, like Virginia, Florida, or Texas. I could be like my mom and move around.
“No bookkeeping tonight?”
“No, thank goodness.” I hesitated. “I didn’t want to bother you, but have you heard…”
“I’m the starter tomorrow against Portland.”
“Oh, good! I’m very, very glad,” I breathed out as relief flooded me. But he hadn’t sounded as happy as I might have expected.
“Yeah, it’s great.”
That didn’t sound happy at all.
“We had a meeting about it, me, the head coach, the QBs coach, and the offensive coordinator, the one you don’t like. They gave me a list of reasons about why I shouldn’t have the job.”
“What?” I sounded breathy again, this time due to my shock. “Anyone who knows anything will tell you that they approached that completely wrong. You should never tell someone that they suck, even if you really believe it! They’re saying, ‘Well, we don’thave any faith in you and we hate you, but go ahead and try to lead our team to a victory.’ It doesn’t make any sense at all!”
Everett was silent for a moment. “No one said that they hated me. They also didn’t say that I sucked and that they had no faith in me,” he stated.
“Oh.Sorry.”
“They did say that they had expected to give the job to Dallas, but that I had shown potential to do great shit in our league. No, Coach Roberts didn’t actually swear,” he corrected himself.
“That all sounds really good,” I said. “Very promising. When did they get to the bad part?”
“Right after that, they started in on the same stuff I’d heard before from Coach Nour. They’re worried about my consistency, my fitness, my attitude, my…Jesus. Damn. The only thing they didn’t complain about was my haircut.”
He did have great hair. “I still don’t understand the point of all that,” I said. “They didn’t exactly express that you sucked, not in so many words—”
“Zoey! Don’t say ‘sucked’ again,” he told me. “I think they were trying to make sure that I take this seriously. That was one of the things that came up when I was getting drafted.” He changed his voice, making it kind of oily and nasal. “How much can we trust Ford? Is he going to come through, or is he going to hang his teammates out to dry?’”
