Chapter Thirteen

Jake

There are a few moments in a game where seconds can feel like hours. One of those is waiting to see if the kick is good. Montgomery kicks, and the ball floats through the air like some sort of rocket feather—fast like a rocket, smooth like a feather. None of us wants to breathe too loudly in case the wind pushes the ball in the wrong direction. The crowd is cheering, but you can’t hear anything except your heart pounding in your chest for the longest five seconds of your life.

My eye is on the ball, on the goal posts, and the second it goes between them, I scream. We all scream. The crowd comes back to life, the team is cheering. Instant.

We’re all running over to Montgomery, slamming hugs into each other. It’s a pure celebration.

Culler has beaten West Side.

By one point.

Damn, nothing like it.

“We did it!” Howell screams after we’ve shaken the last hand. A howl rolls through the air. The band plays louder than ever. The crowd is roaring. People stopped expecting it years ago. I can’t believe it. I’m running onto the field with my teammates, cheering, sweating, throat aching from yelling, but it makes me scream louder. I see Haley hugging her brother, and then she’s in my arms, too. I stop screaming, take in the feel of her against me, and everything in the world is perfect.

After the team goes to eat, I find myself back at the Howells’ house. I can’t help it, really. Before, it was to escape my house, but now, it’s a lot more. I don’t know really what all the reasons are.

“I can’t believe you watch The Mailroom,” Howell says, rolling his eyes.

“It’s hilarious.” He gives me a disgusted look. “You don’t have refined taste like your sister and me,” I say, and Haley gives me a high five.

“I told him he’d love it. Especially Pete.”

I laugh. “Yes! Howell is totally a Pete.”

She laughs, too, and starts talking about one of Pete’s best scenes, where he takes all the boxes, bags, and carts out of the mailroom—really anything you can carry—and makes his coworkers have a bet to see who can deliver mail the fastest. He cheats, but the others don’t know how he’s doing it so fast.

“Shut up, you two,” Howell says, and he stands up from the couch.

“Aw, don’t run away, brother.”

“I’m not. I’m getting more ice cream,” he says.

Haley laughs again, and for the first time, I look at her. I’ve been trying not to pay her too much attention because I didn’t want Howell to notice me staring at his sister. But now that I am, I see she’s drawing in a notebook. It’s a perfect image from tonight’s game—Will standing back, watching the sky to see where his kick is going to go.

“That’s beautiful,” I say.

She smiles back at me. “Thanks.”

I try to look more closely at the picture, but she covers it up. Something about it seems familiar, but I can’t place what that is. Maybe it’s the moment she captured and how she drew on his face what we were all feeling.

“I didn’t know you could draw.” She shrugs like it’s not a big deal. “Do you have more?”

“Yeah, I do.”

I stare at her for a second. “Can I see?”

She shakes her head, and I’m a little disappointed, but then she stands up. “Come upstairs. I’ll show you a few.”

Haley seems nervous, but she’s up the stairs before I have time to say anything else about it. I follow her up, but my heart pounds a little as we approach her bedroom door. The inner sanctum. I’ve never been in Haley Howell’s room before, as many times as I’ve been in this house. Haley is already pulling out a few pieces and putting them on the bed when she notices me standing in the doorway.

“Are you a vampire who needs an invite?” Her smile is faint.

“No,” I say, and I gulp down my weird feelings about being in her personal space. I’ve never been in her room, but it’s exactly her. The colors are muted, almost a light purple, with string lights all over the room, pictures of her and friends scattered around. Artwork is up in white frames—is it hers or someone else’s? Her bed is white and teal, with other pops of colors like pink and green spread around the room. It’s calm and playful, innocent almost. I feel out of place in it, wearing my black shirt and jeans.

“You might recognize this one,” she says, pointing to one of the pieces of artwork on the bed. It’s a sketch of our bridge, and it looks really good. She lays another in the pile. “I did watercolors,” she says, putting a color version of the same drawing on top of it. It’s so vibrant, it’s as if we are standing there right now on that same sunny day.

“Wow, Hals. It’s really beautiful.”

Her face glows when I say that, and it’s hard to look away from her and back to the artwork. I slowly turn through a couple of the pieces. Mrs. Baker in a fortune teller outfit at the last festival. Her brother reading. Abby laughing. Will and Spencer at the Montgomery wedding. They’re all tangible, and I feel like I’m in the room with them.

“This is remarkable, Haley. I don’t know shit about art, but this is brilliant.”

“I mean, I have a long way to go, but it’s really fun. I’ve been drawing since forever.”

Wow. I keep flipping through some of her art. “You’re so good. I bet you can draw anything.”

“Not anything.”

“You should share this with everyone,” I say, looking at her.

Haley rubs a hand down her other arm. “No, no, no. Art is, like, mine. I don’t really want to share it. You, Abby, and Chris are, like, the only people who even know I draw.” I turn toward her, and her eyes are wide. “You can’t tell anyone. I have one of your secrets, now you have one of mine.”

I cross my heart. “Your secret is safe. I promise.” I’ve never meant anything more right now.

“As is yours,” she says. Her body is so close to mine, and my heart is racing. I’ve shared more with her lately than anyone in my life. It’s almost easy to trust her, even when it’s not like that with anyone else. Even Howell. What else have I missed out on by not knowing her before?

“I wasn’t worried about that,” I say. I look back at the art. “You’re really talented.”

“Thank you.”

Silence falls between us for a moment before Howell comes in and looks between us. I realize immediately how close she is to me and how it could look to him. I take a step back.

“I like this new one,” he says, looking at the watercolor of our bridge.

“Yeah, Haley was showing me.”

Howell nods, and I wish I could know what he was thinking. “She’s pretty talented, even though she doesn’t like to think that,” he says. Then he looks at me. “Wanna go play a game?”

I nod and put down a picture of Abby. “Yeah, I’ll go kick your ass in some racing.”

“You wish,” he says.

“Thanks for showing me,” I tell Haley.

She nods, and I give her one last look before I follow Howell off to his room. On the way there he says, “She doesn’t show many people her art.”

“Really?” I say.

“Yeah, it’s pretty sacred. I didn’t realize y’all were that close.”

I don’t say anything because honestly, I don’t know what else to say.

An hour later, mid-killing some zombies, Howell says, “Is there something going on with you and my sister?”

“No,” I say to him.

“You aren’t trying to, like, date her? It’d be kinda like dating me.”

“Yeah, that’s what I think, too,” I say. But my heart is racing, screaming how untrue that is. I ignore it. I have to for my friendship.

“It’d be really complicated if my best friend was interested in my sister.”

I feel bad for lying, but it’s not actually a lie. There is not anything going on—but that doesn’t mean part of me doesn’t want that answer to be yes.