“Wait, where am I supposed to drive?” I asked, but they ignored me in the same way that they were ignoring each other.
“For once in your life, shut up. Shut up! I work with heavy machinery and I can’t get distracted by my phone. Think about someone besides yourself.” Mom left and a moment later, I heard the water pipes creak as she started the shower.
I watched my sister push herself up to a sitting position. She struggled with that but got mad if I helped her, so I waited and pretended not to notice.
“She’s such a bitch,” Willow told me.
I carefully put the tray over her legs. “Why were you texting her so much?”
“I want to do something. It’s no big deal but when she finally answered, she said that she’d be too tired. I was just asking her to drop me off there, but if you’re not going to work somewhere, you can do it instead.” She took a small bite of toast. “Is there butter on this?”
“Yes. Where do you want to go?”
“To a football game,” she said. She chewed, and then put down the bread, sighing. Dark shadows made half-circles under her eyes.
“Football? The Woodsmen season ended,” I noted. I was aware of this because at the school where I was doing my second semester of student teaching, the kids had been so sad that it was over. Anyway, Willow and I had never been fans, and we probably couldn’t have afforded the tickets for those games.
“I mean the Junior Woodsmen,” she corrected me. “Do you know about them?”
I did, because anything football-related in our area was hard to miss. The Junior Woodsmen were a lower-level team that fed into the big league. I had looked into the system a little last fall, after the whole thing with Everett Ford and his demotion, but I had mostly forgotten about all that in the months since. I had been busy, very busy, and I still was. I didn’t have time to sit around at some boring game.
Willow was already talking, not waiting for my response. “You can just walk right up and watch them, no ticket needed.”
“Don’t they play outside?” I looked through the window, at the clear sky that promised cold temperatures. “Since when did you start liking football?” But I thought that I knew what was going on: she was bored, and who could have blamed her? I was out all the time, running around and seeing people, while her life had drastically shrunk.
But football?
“Why?” I repeated, and she was so pale due to her indoor existence that when she blushed, her cheeks looked apple-red.
“Boyd is going,” she answered, and I ground my teeth. “Stop, Zoey!” she told me, her voice much louder.
And after a moment, I did let go of enough anger to be able to speak. “How do you know about Boyd? Are you following his social media again?”
“No, I don’t look anymore,” she told me, but she was staring at her breakfast tray instead of meeting my eyes. The eggs had stopped steaming. “Why does it matter to you?”
Because the situation with him upset her so much. Because he was so awful, and I hated him so much. Because I also hated that she still loved him so much.
“It’s not a big deal,” she said. “I just want to do something today. Come on, Zo.” She sighed. “I have to get out of here. You could come too and we could sit together.”
Of course I would have to come, because she couldn’t do it alone. I pressed my fingers into my brow bone, right at the curves above my eyes where the headache always started. “What time does the game start?” I asked her, and she grinned. She looked like her old self when she did that, and I didn’t even care much that she didn’t touch the eggs and took only another bite or two of her toast.
I was aware of the traffic before real Woodsmen games, because I was aware that you had to avoid the entire area surrounding the stadium for the entire day when they played at home. But the Junior Woodsmen? Some people watched them, as far as I knew, but they weren’t nearly as popular. Like, not even a fraction as popular, not even a crumb of the cold toast that I had finished after Willow had pushed it away this morning. That probably meant fewer cars due to fewer fans, so we didn’t need to get going very early. I also didn’t want to have to sit around there and wait for the game to start, because we would be sitting around for long enough already. I remembered from high school that football took forever, and it wasn’t good for my sister to be outside in the cold. But she was raring to go, so we did leave before I wanted to.
We arrived at a nearly empty parking lot. There were some other cars and a large tour bus, but no people. I glanced over at Willow, who had the mirror down to check her makeup. She’d always been really good at it, but no matter how much she’d put on today, she still looked pale and her cheeks still looked sunken. And it was hard to cover the circles under her eyes…anyway, she didn’t acknowledge that I’d been right about getting here so early.
The Junior Woodsmen played at the real Woodsmen’s practice facility, the one they used to get ready for the actual professional season. As far as I knew, the good team was only here in the summer, so this place was free in the winter for lower-level games. It was out in the country, far away from our house, and it was bleak. The practice facility building was huge and bright orange, but large signs had directed me to another area for the action today: a windswept field and bleachers that weren’t as big or as nice as the ones where Willow and I had gone to high school. There was also a chain link fence that separated the seats from the field, like they were afraid that the fans would rush out there.
What fans? Maybe it was only because we were here so early, but with the absence of traffic on the roads and the absence of many cars parked around us, I didn’t expect a huge crowd. There was no tailgating or partying like I’d heard happened at regular Woodsmen games. There was certainly nothing like the beautiful stadium I’d seen on our tour last fall.
“This is—” I had been about to say that this was sad, depressing. But this was also Willow’s excursion for the day. I experiencedanother wave of guilt when I tried to remember the last time I’d brought her out somewhere besides the grocery store or on another boring errand like that. I should have bought tickets to a Woodsmen game, a real one. I should have taken her to see a concert, or a movie, or something. I was a bad sister.
“You look beautiful,” I said to compensate, and she turned to me with the makeup brush still touching her cheek.
“Do you think so? Is my blush too bright?”
I studied her and shook my head. “No, it’s good. Stunning.” Little compliments had never done it for Willow—she wanted only the best, the most superlative. It was the least I could do.
She nodded and threw her makeup into her bag. “Ok, let’s go.”
