DURING THOSE NEXT WEEKS, I spent almost no time with Kimi. We were both covering the football games and the home volleyball games, but she was on the court or on the field, and I was up in the stands. When the games ended, I'd download her photos, go home, write up the game, pick a photo, and e-mail Chet the Jet. I missed the time at Peet's and the excitement of chasing Angel, but mostly I missed being with her.
Lincoln's next four games were against weak teams—Lake Washington, Newport, Juanita, and Franklin. In each game, McNulty gave Angel a couple of series at middle linebacker, and he was on all the special teams. For the Lake Washington and Newport games he wore a new number, sixty-seven, but against Juanita and Franklin he was back to wearing forty-four. He was the only player whose number changed from game to game. No doubt about it—McNulty was trying to hide him.
Trying, but not entirely succeeding. Angel was just too good. On kickoff and punt coverage, he'd break through the opposing wedge as if it were made of sand. The Franklin game was typical. In the fourth quarter, Kenstowicz punted from deep in Lincoln's territory. The Franklin returner, hoping to break a long runback, didn't signal for a fair catch. He hauled the ball in, took one step, and then Angel jolted him with a teeth-rattling tackle that made everyone watching sit up. The ball popped free, and another Lincoln player recovered the fumble. The Franklin kid didn't get up for three minutes, and he never returned to the game. Angel forced fumbles in a couple of the other games, too, and had a couple of interceptions. Lincoln won all four games, pushing their record to 6–0 and moving them into the top ten in the state rankings.
I wrote up every game for the Seattle Times. My stories featured Horst, naturally. But when Angel did something great—like jarring the football loose in the Franklin game—I'd include a sentence about him. And every single time, Chet the Jet cut that sentence. The second time it happened, I called and asked him why. "I've been doing this for thirty years," he snapped. "You've been doing it for thirty days. Write your little story, take your fifty bucks, but leave the editing to me." After that I didn't have the guts to complain.
October is when the rain gets serious in Seattle. I knew it would be harder to run after school, but I didn't know how much harder. And not spending much time with Kimi sucked away part of my motivation. I skipped running one Friday, and then both Tuesday and Friday the next week. One day I had a hamburger and fries for lunch; a couple of days later I ate a Snickers. I was losing momentum, and I knew how dangerous that was. Roll a snowball down a steep hill, and it gets fat fast.