The first time I noticed Oliver O’Rourke, I snatched the football out of his hands and knocked him over. And then I stepped on him.
We were in peewee football. I was five. My mom made me apologize, but I wasn’t really sorry.
In his defense, we were on the same team, so technically I wasn’t supposed to do that. In my defense, he was just standing there, holding the ball, staring up at the sky as I screamed, “Throw it! Throw it!” He was about to get the flags pulled off his waist—the peewee equivalent of getting sacked—so … I took matters into my own hands. And I got the touchdown.
He maintains to this day that he heard a strange noise and got distracted. I think he was just watching a cloud that looked like a dinosaur or something. Anyway, we won the game. You gotta do what you gotta do.
After that, Ollie never let me run over him again. My twin brother, Austin, had been the star of the team, an already-talented offensive lineman at five years old, but suddenly Ollie was working harder, getting stronger, throwing a ball too big for his little hands more accurately every day. And since I was our best receiver, we spent every practice working together, me and Oliver, on the same team, but each of us determined to win.
NOW
I see the seconds ticking down in red: 0:09, 0:08, 0:07. There’s a girl bearing down on me, her shoes squeaking on the freshly waxed court. She’s tall and fast, with dark brown skin and an elastic in Braves’s school colors, red and blue, wrapped around her topknot. Teanne Coleman. The best center in our district. She was all over the tape I watched of the Eagles this week.
She could not look less like smirking, blue-eyed Oliver O’Rourke, but I see the same calculations in her eyes I always see in his. She thinks she’s faster than me. And she’s probably right, but she doesn’t know I’ve seen her do this trick before. As she tries to strip the ball, I dribble out of her reach, bound down the court, and make an easy layup.
The crowd screams. The buzzer sounds, drowning them out.
Halftime.
I jog to the bench and wipe my face with a Mountaintop Musketeers towel, dampening the forest-green and silver stripes with sweat.
“That’s our college star. Miss Lexie Hawthorne, ladies and gentlemen.” Jamila shoves me with her shoulder.
I smile back. Next week, I’m supposed to sign my letter of intent to play basketball at Western. I catch the water bottle Kelli tosses me, and join the team on the way to the locker room.
“You doing some kind of signing party?” Carmen asks.
I roll my eyes. “It’s not the draft,” I say, and bury my face in my towel so she won’t ask any more. For some reason, I don’t want to talk about it. Even before what Oliver said last night—and way more so now—every time someone asks me about college, I get this nervous, twitchy feeling in my stomach. I tell myself that’s normal. It’s a big decision.
Not that it was much of a decision. Western was the only school to offer me a basketball scholarship, and being a college athlete is what I’ve worked toward my whole life. So of course I’m going there, even if Western wouldn’t have been my first-choice school otherwise. Even if they don’t have the major I wanted. Even if—
I look ahead to the locker room. I’m captain, which means I’m doing the halftime pep talk and going over stats with Coach Lerner to make adjustments for the second half. But today captain duties are going to have to wait a few minutes.
“Gotta pee,” I say. “Meet you guys in there.”
I jog ahead. I swipe my phone out of my locker, take it into a bathroom stall, and pull up the Musketeer Minute, our school’s student portal. It’s where we keep track of our homework and our grades, and it also gives real-time scores of any games. First I see our score—Mountaintop Musketeers: 42, Braves High Eagles: 40. I feel a swell of pride over my last basket that put us in the lead.
I swipe to find the football team’s score for tonight’s district championship, which could send us into the state title game. The second quarter’s just started.
At first, I’m not sure I’m seeing correctly.
Mountaintop Musketeers: 0, Valley Vikings: 21.
I blink at the screen.
The locker room door bursts open, and the space echoes with yelling and laughing and the metallic slam of locker doors. I click off my phone, flushing the toilet for good measure.
Was Ollie actually going to lose today? And for the first time ever, did I want him to win?
THEN
The year we turned six, Ollie’s and my unspoken rivalry continued. Now I kept a silent score in my head: On any pass where we didn’t connect, was it his fault, or was it mine? On the days when his passes hit the mark but I had butterfingers, I could see a smug smile on his face, and I was sure he was tallying up just like I was.
Then we were seven, and we started to compare real stats. How many passing yards for him, and receiving yards for me? How many yards after the catch did I rack up? How many rushing yards did he put on the board?
I tried as hard as I could not to gloat when I won almost every time.
That was also the first year I noticed that I was the only girl. Not only on our team, but on any of the teams. My mom tried to switch me to cheer—my cousin Hayley had been doing it since we were five, and by the time we were in 8 and Under, my friends Mari and Cat were, too. But when Hayley gave me cartwheel lessons, I fell on my face and busted open my right eyebrow. Three stitches. I have the scar to this day.
Sure, I could have gotten better at it, but I didn’t love cheer. I loved football. I loved sizing up the other team before the game, picking out my marks. I loved catching a long, soaring pass the other team was not expecting, and seeing nothing but open field ahead of me as I sprinted to a touchdown. I loved that I knew the sevens times tables before I even learned how to add, from watching the scoreboard click up.
By the time we were in 9U, the other teams started complaining about a girl playing, pretending they were just “concerned” about my “safety.” I think they were concerned because between me and Ollie, we kicked everyone’s ass in the region.
That was when Ollie and I started the bets. If my stats were better, he had to bring me a mini bag of Cheetos to school on Monday. If he won, I had to sneak him whatever homemade treat my mom had made that weekend.
And it went on like that for third grade, fourth, fifth. I ate my weight in pilfered Cheetos. And if Ollie ever won two weeks in a row, it was a reminder to myself to work harder, get faster, be better.
The only problem was, he kept getting better, too.
By sixth grade, we were the best eleven-year-olds in the league. But after we won the 12U championship—on a forty-nine-yard Hail Mary pass I snatched from between the hands of two defenders—we had barely finished our celebratory pizza party when the hammer fell.
Turned out our league’s commissioner had “suggested” to my dad that we were too old for a girl to be playing against the boys. My dad—even though he’s Mountaintop’s varsity football coach and had the league commissioner wrapped around his finger—didn’t fight it.
The game we’d just played was going to be my last in football.
NOW
I look around at my teammates. Angie, our point guard, is wrapping her ankle. Hmm. Destiny is re-braiding her hair. Jamila’s sitting on the floor against her locker, one earbud in, head bopping silently.
“J,” I say. Her head snaps up and she turns off her music. “You’re faster than the girl they have on you, but she’s beating you to the line. You’ve gotta be more aggressive. Guys, the only one of them who’s really fast is number twelve. I’m thinking we should switch—” I glance to Coach for confirmation, and she nods. “Let’s switch to zone defense for the rest of the game.”
I finish my pep talk and everyone’s so hyped that the whole team bursts out of the locker room with a yell to start the second half.
I bring up the back, and before I hit the court, I pull my phone out of my sports bra to sneak another glance at the football score: 3–21. What is going on?
We are on in the second half. Jamila is hitting three-pointers like it’s nothing. We sub in Carmen for Angie, and she puts six points on the board immediately.
I, however, am distracted. I keep seeing that football score in my head, and then the whiteboard of plays in my dad’s office. I watched plenty of tape of Valley and helped my dad and the coaching staff refine almost every play. How did they have our number like this?
I miss a couple easy layups. I’m usually a robot about free throws—it’s one of the stats I can consistently hammer Ollie in—but when I get fouled, two in a row bounce off the rim.
Lucky for me, it doesn’t matter. As the clock counts down to two seconds, one, zero, Destiny hurls the ball toward the basket and collapses spread-eagle at center court. The scoreboard flashes as the buzzer rings out: 77–63.
The bench clears, and everybody dogpiles Destiny, all sweaty shirts and squeaking shoes, and Carmen’s braids whip me in the face as Kelli throws herself into my arms.
I stare up into the lights of the gym. Forget about the football game, I tell myself. This is my sport now. I love being on a team. I love this feeling, this glee. I love winning. I love—okay. I like basketball. I like it fine.
Just like playing next year, in college, will be fine. It’ll be good. Never mind that to be a college athlete, you have to be all in. You live and breathe your sport. Before classes, after classes, during meals, on weekends: Next year, my life will be all basketball, all the time.
I had started playing basketball in middle school. I had to stay in winning shape somehow, especially because I’d made Ollie a new bet: that I’d be back on the football team by high school. And after that, that I’d be the first female receiver ever to play in college.
First step: another sport to be good enough at that my dad would see the team needed me.
I had tried track. I was fast enough, but I hated the long runs. I twisted my knee my first week in soccer, and anyway, I’d have to catch up with all the girls who had been playing since elementary school. Softball should have been a natural fit, but the whole batting part just never came together for me.
The only thing that worked was basketball. At first, it was my height—I was still taller than everybody in eighth grade, and ninth. But I was good at it, too. And it was okay. It was something.
Carmen starts the Musketeers, one for all school chant. Everyone else jumps in the showers, but I pull out my phone again. The score is the same: 3–21. Middle of the third quarter.
I shake my head. As much as I tell myself otherwise, I just need to get to the football field before it drives me crazy. I yell out a rain check for post-game smoothies, pull a baseball cap over my two messy blond braids, and jog out of the gym toward the football field.
THEN
I’d gotten pretty good at basketball by the time I started at Mountaintop, and my dad noticed, just like I’d hoped. My next step was to worm my way back into the sport I wanted to be in. I started hanging around the athletic department. I scouted every team in the district, handing my dad dossiers every week.
One day I decided it was time. “So?” I said. “It’s good info, right?”
“Better info than my entire coaching staff has given me in months.”
I swelled with pride.
My dad closed the folder and looked up at me. “That still doesn’t mean I can let you play.”
“Come on!” I exploded, my whole rehearsed speech flying out of my head. Of course he had figured out what I was up to. “Are you really saying that Conner LaForce deserves to play football more than I do? He can barely lift a football. Or Jeremiah Garner? I saw him trip over his own shoe yesterday.”
“It’s not about who deserves—” my dad started, but when I huffed out a growl, he sighed. “Lexie, no one deserves to be part of this team more than you. You’d be just about the best football mind the Musketeers have ever seen, I can promise you that.”
“And I’m good, Dad. I’m still good. I’m in great shape. I still throw the ball every—”
“I know.”
“So let me play!”
My dad tapped his desk. “It’s not like you’re a kicker, Lex. Receivers get hit. Every time. Most of the cornerbacks are twice your weight, and only get stronger—”
“That’s not fair!”
“It’s not. But I’m not going to risk you getting hurt. You can’t play football at this level, Lexie. Case closed.”
After I left his office, I stood outside the door for a long time. I had really thought there was a chance. Looking back, I guess it had been naive. I just hadn’t let myself imagine a world where I wasn’t involved in football. But … here it was.
I had lost.
My favorite thing wasn’t for me anymore.
NOW
As I leave the gym, the last thing I’m expecting is to run into my mom pacing the parking lot.
“Lex.” She looks up from her phone, and her face is pinched.
My stomach knots. I swipe a strand of hair out of my face as I glance toward the lights of the football stadium. “What is it? Did something happen?”
“It’s Austin. His knee.”
My throat closes up. I forget about the football score, the basketball game, college, everything.
“ACL?” I croak out. Those are the scariest letters in the world to any athlete. If my brother tore his ACL—
“No,” my mom says, and I can breathe again. “The trainer thought it might be, and Dad took him straight to the hospital. But it looks like it’s just a sprain. He’ll need to stay off it for a few weeks.”
The whiplash from terror to relief is so heady it takes me a second to register the rest of what she said. “Dad took him? Who’s coaching the team?”
Mom sighs. “Coach Walter.”
Coach Walter is one of the assistants. He’s at least eighty-five years old, and brings Dr Pepper and shrink-wrapped brownies to every game.
“Get in,” my mom says, opening the door on her SUV. “We’re meeting Dad and Austin at the hospital.”
I glance at the stadium again. A steady stream of people is pouring out, in Musketeer green and silver. No real coach. Their star lineman out, injured. And fans deserting. The Musketeers could kiss the state championship goodbye.
“Tell Austin I’ll see him at home,” I say, and before my mom can stop me, I’ve thrown my duffel bag in the car and am running toward the stadium, dodging our fair-weather fans as I go.
I hop the turnstile and dash off a text to my brother: You’d better be okay. I’m not doing all your chores for two months just because you’re on crutches.
Austin responds with a middle finger emoji, and I know he’s going to be fine.
I stash the phone in the pocket of my hoodie and scan the stadium: 9–21. We’d managed two more field goals. My analytical mind switches on. Okay. So we’re down only two possessions because our defense is holding them. There are over four minutes remaining, which normally would be a decent amount of time. But … we haven’t made a touchdown all game. No way we’re getting two in a couple minutes.
On the other side of the field, half the Musketeers are sitting on the bench, heads in their hands. Oliver is making a phantom throwing motion, over and over and over, to no one. It’s his nervous tic. Mime falling back a couple steps, throw, repeat.
I don’t know what my plan is, but I make my way around the stadium, my eyes on Oliver the whole time.
THEN
The day after the talk with my dad that closed the door on football for good, I’d brought Ollie a double-layer chocolate-raspberry cake from A Cake Above. He’d won the bet, fair and square. He didn’t say a word to gloat, though. He just jogged to the cafeteria, came back with two plastic forks, and we dug in together.
It was only a one-day reprieve, though. The next day, the obnoxiousness that was Oliver O’Rourke came back in full force. He was real proud of himself for making varsity as a freshman, so he suggested there was no way my basketball stats could keep up with his football ones. I worked out an elaborate system of comparable stats for our bets, and now I had one new reason to work extra hard at basketball practice.
And a second new reason: I reminded him that though I had lost the first half of the bet I’d made, the second could still stand; I’d still play in college, just in a different sport. If I won, he had to do my bidding for a whole week. The fact that he agreed to that meant he didn’t believe I could do it, which only made me want it more.
The summer between freshman and sophomore year, Ollie’s family went to stay with his grandparents in Maine for two months. “I’m so glad he’s gone,” I sighed to my cousin Hayley. “He’s just so annoying. It’s so nice to have a couple months where he’s not looking over my shoulder asking about my training.”
Until, weirdly, I started to miss him. The person who would remind me if I did my weird flat-footed run that made my ankles hurt. The only person who was able to cure me when I’d gotten a bad case of the yips one time, because he understood what was going on before I did. And the only person who didn’t think I’d break in half if I touched a football. Oliver never tried to stop our decade-long tradition of throwing the ball at the park on Saturday mornings, and even as he got stronger and his throws got harder, I could tell from the sting in my palms that he never held back to spare my poor fragile girl body. And in return, I never stopped giving him shit when he aired one so far over my head he could have killed a pigeon.
When, after months of being dark, the upstairs windows in his house lit up the night before school started, I told myself the weird little nauseous turn my stomach did was about proving myself this year, and nothing more.
The first day of sophomore year, I was standing at my locker when a voice behind me said, “What do you say we make this whole year double or nothing?”
I turned around and looked up. And up and up. Oliver O’Rourke, whose head used to barely reach my shoulder, had grown taller than me, and his blue eyes were sparkling, and for some reason, I could barely squeak out an answer.
NOW
I make my way to the home sideline. Even the cheerleaders look wilted, their pom-poms in green and silver piles at their feet. Hayley gives me a half-hearted wave. The players’ families, at least, have stayed put on the bleachers, their painted faces anxious and pained.
A smattering of cheers breaks out when Valley has to punt. I climb to the edge of the bleachers to watch as Oliver and the offense take over.
It takes me all of three seconds to see the problem. Oliver is a scrambling quarterback, and there is no scrambling happening here. They’re blitzing every play, and he’s getting hammered. He gets sacked twice on this drive alone, and we turn it over on a three-and-out.
The crowd deflates further.
How is Coach Walter allowing this? The guy is nice, but I swear, he’s a couple shoulder pads short of a full uniform. We are going to lose this game.
Oliver is going to lose this game.
Even if this weren’t the district championship, it would be his last home game. And our last bet. Because in the fall, when I go to Western, he’ll be starting at State, four hours away.
THEN
“I guess I’ll have to find someone else to make bets with me next year,” Oliver said, coming up behind me in line in the cafeteria a month ago. “You’re not a good enough driver to bring me blueberry doughnuts long-distance every time I win.”
“Screw that,” I said, putting a fruit cup on my tray. “I am definitely making you drive to Western to clean my sneakers with a toothbrush when I win. Don’t think you’re getting off that easy.”
He snorted out a laugh. But it was out there. We both knew it. Our stats at the district championship would be our last bet. A rivalry played out over thirteen-plus years, and this was the end. Sure, we could text insults back and forth. Sure, we could keep comparing stats. But it would never be the same. It would never be like this.
NOW
My foot is shaking so fast everyone on the bleachers must feel it. Oliver just got sacked again. I wish I could talk to him. He looks so overwhelmed, I don’t know if he even sees the pattern. But I can’t exactly waltz onto the field in the middle of the game.
And then I see it.
On the team bench, right by the Gatorade cooler. It’s my dad’s headset.
I take the bleacher steps two at a time, and whisper to Hayley. She jogs to the bench, pretending to get a drink, and swipes the headset as she does.
I leap back up the steps. As Valley’s kicking team takes the field for a fourth down, I turn the headset on. There’s a squeal, and I see Oliver grab his ear. Good. He still has the earpiece in.
“Your offensive line is Swiss cheese with Austin gone,” I say. “You can’t scramble like this.”
Oliver’s head whips up. “Lexie?”
“My dad left his headset. You have a new Coach Hawthorne now.”
He’s still looking for me. I raise a hand, and he clocks me, a smile breaking across his face. “Did you guys win?” he asks.
“Obviously.”
“Is Austin—”
“It’s not his ACL. He’s going to be fine. Now come on. It’s still a two-possession game, but you can do this. Remember Whitfield?”
Oliver turns back to the field when a cheer rises. Archer Akhil has gained a good thirty yards on the punt return before he’s taken down, and for once, we’re starting with decent field position.
“Yeah,” Oliver says. “Okay. Yeah.”
“What’s the call?” I ask.
“Shovel pass to the sideline.”
I’m already shaking my head. “No. They have DeSilva in double coverage. You won’t get it off in time.” I survey the field. “You have to go long.”
Oliver hesitates. “Coach didn’t trust my arm yet.”
He tweaked his throwing shoulder six weeks ago. Even before the injury, Dad had been grooming him as a scrambling QB for years. It’s been good for me—his stats never get as high when his passing yards stay in the double digits.
“Do you trust your arm?” I ask.
He’s quiet for a second. “Yeah.”
So do I. Maybe it’s good for me in our rivalry, but I know Oliver. There’s no way he hasn’t been throwing every day anyway.
The offense takes the field. Oliver glances back at me, and a thrill runs through me. I might not be on the turf, but I’m in charge.
“Remember the 12U championship?” I ask.
I can hear the smile in his voice. “That Hail Mary.”
“Nobody’ll be expecting it on this play. Tell Sanchez to go long.”
I can see his eyes widen behind his face mask. “Are you trying to sabotage me, Hawthorne? I know you’ll do anything to win a bet.”
I grin. “You never know. I guess you’d better not screw it up.”
He huffs out a laugh. “Okay, Coach. Whatever you say.”
THEN
Every day for the past month, we’ve traded ideas about the final bet.
“Breakfast every day for a week?” he’d yelled down the hallway between classes.
“Wow. You got really boring,” I’d called back.
A few days later, I texted him. How about you buy me a car? You’re going to be rich and famous once you get to State, right?
Sure. Start checking out the Matchbox lineup, he texted back.
He suggested I run drills with him all winter break if I lose. I reminded him that would just make him feel inadequate. I proposed a song-and-dance routine dedicated to me at the winter formal, which will conveniently be the night of the games. “If your date will let you,” I added.
“I’m just going with the team,” he said.
“Yeah,” I answered, ignoring the little vibration in my chest. “Me too. With my team.”
So then, we came to last night. We were setting up for the formal, since we’re both on student council. As I went long and caught a roll of green streamers he lobbed across the gym, I yelled, “So the song-and-dance number it is? I hope you’ve been practicing.”
I climbed up a ladder and taped my end to the wall. He brought me the silver streamers to tape up next to it. “Or,” I said, climbing back down, “you shave your head.”
He seemed to consider it. “Okay. I’d look good with a shaved head.”
True. He would.
“So does that mean you’ll shave your head if I win?” he asked. He mussed my ponytail. “Nah, I kinda like your hair as it is.”
I looked up at him, and he cleared his throat and jogged across the gym to help Bryan Dao with the DJ table.
When we were done, Hayley and Mari and Cat went ahead, and I found Oliver leaning against the bleachers. “We have to choose the stakes before three tomorrow,” I said. “Let me know if you have any ideas that are actually good.”
He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then closed it. “Yeah,” he answered, and that was it.
An unexpected stab of disappointment ran through me. “Okay, well. Um. Night.”
I was halfway out the door when he said, “Lexie.” I turned back around. “If I win,” he said quickly, “you don’t go to Western. You come to State.”
Before I could wrap my head around what he’d just said, he was jogging the other way. “G’night,” he said over his shoulder.
I thought about it the whole way home, while Mari sang off-key and Cat painted her nails with green glitter in the back seat. The second I closed the door to my bedroom, I pulled up Oliver’s number.
“State didn’t give me a basketball scholarship,” I said, before he could even say hello.
“I know.” He paused. “Do you want to play basketball in college?”
I blinked at the wall behind my bed. It was covered in Musketeers pennants and pictures, newspaper articles about the NFL draft, and a whiteboard scrawled with football plays to propose to my dad. And one single photo of the basketball team.
“What?” I said.
No one had ever asked me whether I wanted to keep playing basketball. I’d been working toward getting recruited for years. Why, if they were giving me a scholarship, would I possibly not take it?
I hadn’t even asked myself.
But as usual, it was like Oliver was in my head. Usually it’s incredibly annoying. Now I’m shocked into silence.
“If you want the scholarship, if you want to play basketball, of course you go to Western,” Oliver said quietly. “Night, Lex.”
I kept staring at the phone long after he’d hung up.
NOW
Oliver huddles with the team. I can only imagine what they must be saying about the change in the play.
They line up. There’s the snap.
Oliver drops back. Anthony Sanchez splits off and sprints down the field, so fast nobody notices.
Throw it, I think. It feels just like that very first game in peewees all over again. The blitz is bearing down. This time, I’m not there to snatch it out of Ollie’s hand.
“Throw iiiit!” I scream.
This time he does.
The ball flies in a tight spiral down the field. There’s not a Valley Viking in sight. The only person down the field is Anthony.
The ball hits him right in the numbers. Fifteen-yard line. Ten. Five. Touchdown.
Our fans erupt in screams. I jam the headset back on my head. “You did it!” I yell, and on the field, I see Oliver wince and grab his ear, but he’s smiling.
I can hear through the headset as he convinces Coach Walter that yes, in fact, that was the play that had been called. At that moment, I know the rest of the game is in my hands.
There is nowhere else I’d rather be.
Our defense holds them. Less than two minutes now. We have no timeouts, and Oliver is looking over his shoulder. To me. Waiting for me to call the play.
Ollie’s arm looked so good I call a pass, then another—but they’re on to us, and not leaving anybody open. One more pass, and Oliver connects with DeSilva—but only for eight yards. Fourth down.
Eighteen seconds on the clock. We’re down by five.
A little doubt creeps in that I don’t actually know what I’m doing, but Coach Walter calls the team over, and I know I’m their only hope.
I take a deep breath. “Quarterback sneak,” I say in Oliver’s ear. He glances up at me. “We have them confused. And as much as I hate to admit it, you are a good runner. I think it’ll work.”
“I trust you,” comes the reply.
I watch, my knuckle between my teeth. I was right. They’re defending against another Hail Mary. Oliver breaks a tackle, and he’s got a first down—and more. He jukes past a final defender, who falls to the ground.
And … touchdown.
“Touchdown!” I scream, throwing my arms in the air.
The extra point sails through the uprights. Three seconds left. The kickoff. Fair catch. QB releases a long pass—and it’s knocked out of the air.
We won.
WE WON.
My scream is drowned out by the rest of the stadium. I’m rushing onto the field. I scan the sea of sweaty guys in forest-green uniforms—and there he is, helmet dangling from one hand, hair tousled and wild.
Oliver’s eyes meet mine through the crowd of jubilant bodies. He grins so wide I laugh out loud, and we push toward each other.
Oliver tosses the helmet aside and swoops me up in his arms.
I wrap my legs around his waist and bury my face in his sweaty neck and I’m laughing into his shoulder pads and he’s holding me so tight I can’t breathe.
“We did it,” he murmurs, squeezing me even tighter.
“You did it,” I say.
“There’s no way I could have done it without you. You did it.” He pulls back so we’re face-to-face. “Lex, what I said last night, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
Just then, a waterfall of icy blue Gatorade dumps on my head.
I scream, Oliver yelps, and I fall from his arms, wheeling to face the grinning team, holding the now-empty cooler.
“I may have told them you called the last few drives.” Oliver laughs.
“Nice win, Coach,” says Sanchez, with a high five, and a few more of the guys clap me on the shoulder as they jog away.
Coach.
I’m freezing, and sticky, but my smile feels like it’s going to break my face in half.
Maybe I can’t play football anymore, but this is what I love, isn’t it? The mental game. I love knowing how to get under our opponents’ skin. I love seeing the whole game laid out in front of me like a chessboard, and envisioning the moves to get to checkmate.
And no, there are not many female head coaches, either, but no one can tell me I’m too small, or I’ll get hurt, or I’m not qualified to do this.
I don’t think coaching is a college major, but my first choice was always State’s sports med program. I have the grades to get in. But then State didn’t recruit me for basketball, and Western did, and that was that.
But if I went to State … I could do the program I want, and be a trainer for the football team. Maybe become a manager. Work under the coaches. For one of the top football teams in the conference.
This one thought makes me more excited than basketball ever has. And it’s not like I’d have to stop playing. I’m sure there are intramural basketball teams. Basketball just wouldn’t be my life.
Oliver is shaking hands with the other team’s coach, and then he turns to me again. “What I was saying earlier—I’m sorry I said anything last night. Of course I didn’t mean you should give up basketball. It was stupid. I’m sorry I—”
I stop him. “If you’re trying to get out of bets next year, it’s not going to work. I will expect a smoothie at my dorm room door before class every time I win. And I still expect you at my beck and call for a week, since technically I did get a scholarship, and therefore, I won that bet.”
His eyes narrow. “Do you mean—”
“I think today has shown that you are nothing without my guidance, so me going to State is really the only way,” I say.
Oliver is still just staring at me, blinking. I’ll explain everything to him later. For now—
“We haven’t calculated stats, but if you did win today it was only because of me, so it’s really like I won,” I say. “Which means I demand the song-and-dance number we talked about tonight.”
I screech and dart away as he tries to grab me, and take off at a sprint toward the gym. I don’t slow as he calls out behind me that a head start is no fair.
I’m going to win.