Chapter One

CeCe

As I followed a line of students up the stairs of the administration building I started to note the double takes and neck swivels in my direction. I passed two girls heading toward me, and one of them, sporting blonde hair with the ends dyed a washed-out blue, caught sight of my face and faltered. She grabbed her friend’s arm as if she had gone weak.

“Oh my God,” Blue Hair said, loudly enough that her friend and I and half the campus could hear.

I paused for a moment to give her a good look at the right side of my face. It wasn’t the place for a lesson in manners, so I opted for my death glare, which had been known to instill terror in the cockiest of freshman volleyball recruits.

I summoned my best serial killer voice. “You should see the other girl’s face.”

Blue Hair’s eyes widened. I gave her another hard shove with my eyes before she grabbed her friend’s arm and hurried down the steps. I turned and headed for the entrance doors, careful not to make eye contact with anyone else, determined to ignore the piercing stares, bruising comments, and all the weapons the world could brandish.

Despite the mob of students milling inside the building, the lobby space felt unusually peaceful. A baby grand piano stood in the corner of the room under a glass-roofed atrium. The musician was playing something classical. I stopped and glanced at an easel by the door that read “Student Wellness Initiative. Co-sponsored by the Health Services and Edgelake Music Department.” The piano piece sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. Not enough notes for Mozart, not tragic enough for Beethoven. I knew Shazam didn’t work on live music—no embedded RIAA code—but I surreptitiously pulled out my phone anyway and recorded a few seconds of the song. Maybe I could identify it later.

Before I turned, a crowd of students parted and I briefly glimpsed the musician’s hands. His long, supple fingers moved expertly over the keys. I could see the tendons in his tanned forearms working to make the music sound effortless.

My phone suddenly buzzed, jolting me back to my reason for being here. I pulled it out of my pocked and glanced at the screen reminder—my first class of fall semester was beginning in two minutes.

The piano player had started another song. This one I recognized as Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” Morning sunlight fell through the atrium ceiling, illuminating the room like a cathedral. I felt a sudden surge of the despair that I usually held at bay. It must be the Beethoven.

I wove through a maze of hallways until I found Honors Shakespeare. Even science-minded students like me had to take six credits of literature, and I’d already read some of Shakespeare’s plays freshman year.

I walked into a small discussion room with three long tables set up in a “U” formation. Choosing a seat was easy. I always sat at the far right end of the table nearest the door. All the other seats were across from me or to my left. It was easier if I let people get to know me a bit before I gave them a good look at the right side of my face. Or maybe it was just out of habit. The room filled up quickly. Most of the students seemed to know each other already. This was an honors-only class and most of the students were aspiring English professors. They probably already had acceptance letters to Ivy League schools.

“I know it’s a tight squeeze,” said the professor, identified on the syllabus as Dr. Sarah Watford. “They wanted to put us in a lecture hall, but I wouldn’t let them. They offered to give us this meeting room. It’s so much more intimate, isn’t it?” She had a melodic voice, surprisingly low for such a tiny person. Her blonde hair fell slightly below her chin and had streaks of silver in it.

She began her introduction, starting with her teaching background, until the door creaked open and a student walked in. She stopped mid-sentence and stared at the intruder. I looked over and caught his brown hair as he turned, looking for an open seat. All of the chairs were taken.

He cleared his throat and mumbled an apology for being late. Watford spotted a stack of chairs in the corner of the room behind her podium.

“We’re a little crowded in here,” she said. She walked over and tried to tug a chair off the top of the stack but it was stuck.

“Here, let me,” said Late Boy. He towered over her, broad shoulders flexing under his T-shirt as he pulled the chair off.

“You can sit at the end of the table,” Watford said, and pointed in my general direction. I moved my books and coffee mug over to give him room, irritated by his intrusion into my space. I usually shifted my face so only my left profile was exposed, especially under the scrutiny of male eyes. But aside from shoving the hood of my sweatshirt around my face, I had no way to hide. Even my long, dark hair wasn’t an option, uselessly constrained in a French braid.

Sitting down, he unzipped a canvas backpack and pulled out a notebook. It was a fancy one, bright orange and opening at the top instead of the side like my spiral-bound Mead. Out of his back pocket he pulled a mechanical pencil. Its metal casing gleamed. It looked heavy.

The professor interrupted my observations. “In case anyone else is lost, this is Honors Shakespeare. If you’re not signed up to take Honors Shakespeare, you may want to leave now.” A girl giggled. Someone shifted in their seat. No one left. Professor Watford began introducing herself again. The smooth alto tones faded into the background as I continued to watch Late Boy. He was writing something in his notebook. His head was bent over the page, light brown hair obscuring his face. He was left-handed. A regular spiral notebook would have been awkward.

“Now that I’ve told you a bit about me…”

I had missed it all.

“…I’d like you to partner with the person next to you and take turns interviewing each other. Then we’ll go around the room and you’ll introduce one another.”

…

Emmett

I looked up from my notebook and raised my eyebrow at the teacher. She was going to make us do an icebreaker? In an advanced class?

The girl next to me shifted in her seat. When I looked over, my eyes were immediately drawn to a thick, puckered line that ran all the way down the side of her face, splitting past her cheek, nearly grazing her lips. It branched out in small, spider veins like the path of an intricate web. It was intriguing as hell, like staring at a bolt of lightning flashing against her skin.

I met her eyes—dark brown and impenetrable, with an air of confidence that bordered on hostile. I’ve been around a lot of athletes and they carry an arsenal of attitude. I’m used to these kinds of expressions on the field. But women don’t usually look at me like this, putting up a Do-Not-Mess-With-Me force field.

She kept her eyes on mine, like this was some kind of a stare down and the first person to look away was a coward. I didn’t even know this girl, but one thing was certain—she was a force you didn’t want to mess with. I started to smile because her badass scar completely fit.

She looked surprised, like she wasn’t used to drawing smiles out of strangers. I nodded in her direction.

“Ladies first,” I said, after it was apparent she wasn’t jumping at the chance to do an icebreaker. It took her off guard.

She raised her eyebrows. “Do I detect southern manners?” she asked.

“Does southern Pennsylvania count as the South?”

She leaned her head to the side.

“Why were you late?” she asked. “Freshman?”

“Transfer.” I sounded more irritated than I intended. But I knew I didn’t look like a damn scrawny-limbed freshman.

“Well, if being female wins me the coin toss, I guess I’ll interview you first,” she said.

“Okay, shoot.”

“Who’s your hero?” she asked.

I frowned just a little. “I thought we were covering the basics. You know? Name, major, hometown?”

“That’s boring. If we have to engage in this ridiculous exercise, I’d at least like to ask real questions. Who’s your hero?”

“My dad.” The answer blew off my tongue before I could hold it back. This was the last place I wanted to bring up my dad. It wasn’t an icebreaker. More like an ice generator.

She shook her head. “That doesn’t count.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It needs to be a public figure,” she clarified.

“Mike Reid,” I said without hesitating.

“Mike…Reid. I’m drawing a blank.”

“He played football for the Cincinnati Bengals.”

“Your hero is a pro football player?” she asked, sounding disappointed. And bored.

“In between seasons he was a concert pianist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. After he retired from football he became a singer/songwriter.”

This detail seemed to peak her interest. “You’re a fan of football and music?”

“Yeah. A fan.” I smiled, looking down as I fiddled with my pencil. I noticed she was staring at my arm, which I realized was invading her work space. I pulled it back, and she looked at me like she was struck with sudden déjà vu. She tilted her head back like she was trying to see me from a different angle.

“What?” I asked.

“Were you by any chance playing the piano in the atrium before class?”

Now I cocked my head to the side. “Yeah. We all have to do volunteer hours. I was getting mine over with before the season starts.”

“The football season?” she guessed, and I nodded.

“Where did you transfer from?”

“You ask a lot of questions,” I said.

“It’s the standard interview process.”

I smiled. “It’s a small school in Pennsylvania. You wouldn’t have heard of it. I wanted to stay close to home. And they had a decent football team.”

“Then why did you transfer?” she asked.

“I didn’t want to be close to home anymore.”

I knew it was a cryptic answer. She waited for more, but I didn’t offer up any details.

She tapped her fingers on her notebook, probably wondering why someone would transfer their senior year of high school. I noticed a red Adidas gym bag on the floor, next to her feet. I had the same one. They were only issued to student athletes.

I looked back at her, piecing a few things together. So she was an athlete. That explained her don’t-fuck-with-me gaze.

“Time’s up,” Professor Watford interrupted us. “Who would like to begin?”

I leaned closer to her. “I don’t know anything about you,” I whispered.

She threw me a cocky smile, like she was daring me. “Make something up.”

I smiled back, a scheming smile. Challenge accepted.

Professor Watford started with me. I cleared my throat, gearing up for my monologue.

“My partner prefers to be called by her nickname, Sparkles,” I said. “She grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, and she can’t wait to go to college to pursue a major in Poultry Science.”

I looked down at my notebook and pretended to refer to interview notes.

“Her favorite sport is cheerleading. Her hobby is body painting. She collects elephant figurines. Oh, and she’s allergic to tree nuts,” I added, carrying off my speech with the cheeky aplomb of someone who had just aced a public speaking class.

The class was quiet and a room of unbelieving eyes stared at us. The girl next to me cleared her throat and opened her mouth, probably to one-up me in the creative bullshit department when Professor Watford cut her off. She moved on to the next group of partners before she had a shot at retribution.

By the time we made it around the room, I had forgotten all the trite details about everyone’s life. And that’s when the other shoe dropped.

“Now you all know someone in the class, if you didn’t already,” Professor Watford announced. She went on dramatically, “This is a reading-intensive course. Each week, two people will be assigned to lead a class discussion. You have just become acquainted with your first discussion partner.”

Her eyes turned directly to me and my newfound partner. “In the future, understand that all of my teaching methods, despite how trivial they may seem to some of you, have a purpose and will be taken seriously.”

I looked down at my notebook and blew out a sigh. Great first impression.

I leaned over to the girl sitting next to me. I figured it was time to make amends. “Nice to meet you. I’m Emmett.” I held out my hand. She stared down at it for a second, hesitating, and then cautiously extended her own. We shook, and it felt like a truce.

…

CeCe

When class ended, Emmett scooted his chair back and shrugged his backpack over his shoulders. I grabbed my duffel bag as he walked out the door ahead of me.

“Hey,” I said to his back once we were in the hallway. “You got me in trouble today.”

I normally don’t stalk after guys, especially the type of guys that were probably used to a female fan parade, but I had the habit of speaking my mind when someone irritated me. After all, if you don’t call people out on their bullshit, you are just perpetuating a generation of assholes.

He turned and smiled widely, and I tried to appear unaffected by the way his smile hit me, like a drum banging in my chest. I was still trying to process the fact that this guy sitting next to me was playing classical music an hour ago.

“You told me to make stuff up,” he said.

I frowned. “I wasn’t expecting a creative writing essay,” I said.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have pinned me for a dumb jock here purely on a sport’s contract.”

I looked away, annoyed he completely read what I had been thinking. I couldn’t shake the way he had studied me during the lecture. I had kept waiting for the usual expression of sympathy, or disgust, or awkward embarrassment to settle on his face. But he never looked put off, more thoughtful.

“If Watford docks my attendance grade because she thinks my name is Sparkles, I have you to blame,” I said.

He shook his head. “Do you really think Professor Watford would do anything as conventional as take attendance?”

I turned away, a little at a loss for words. I had met enough football players to assume the terms quick and agile applied to muscles outside of their brains. People rarely surprised me, but in the last hour he had surprised me more times than I could count.

Emmett glanced down at my duffle bag. “So, I take it cheerleading isn’t your sport?”

I could feel his eyes on me. It was unnerving. I wanted to turn his face away with the shove of my hand.

“You’re pretty short for basketball or volleyball,” he mused. “Maybe tennis? Or maybe you just like to smack the shit out of something. Golf?”

I narrowed my eyes, but it only made him grin. The smile lit up his face, especially his eyes, but I looked away before I could determine their exact shade.

At the exit he held the door for me. I stopped and regarded him before I walked through. He pressed his back against the door to keep it open.

“Did you learn that at cotillion?” I asked.

“I don’t think they have cotillion classes in Harrisburg,” he said.

“Then what is up with the southern gentleman act? It’s a bit much for around here,” I said.

“I was born below the Mason-Dixon line,” he stated.

I walked through the door just as a train of women headed our way, leaving him holding the door for all of them. “I still didn’t get your name,” he called after me. I laughed in response and kept walking. I hoped he would be stuck holding the door all day. Let him pay the price for having excessive manners.

It was a beautiful late summer morning, a blue sky without a trace of clouds and crisp air that smelled like leaves and hinted at fall. The sun warmed my skin as I headed down the steps. I still felt unnerved, gripped by the urge to get away from Emmett’s sight. He had already seen my scar—that wasn’t it. Maybe I was uncomfortable with the fact that it didn’t seem to affect him.

A ten minute walk took me to the slanting parking lot across from the looming Field House, a hundred-year-old arena. Tuba was waiting for me outside the stadium entrance. She was our starting setter, my house mate, and my best friend. Tuba’s real name was Christine, but no one ever called her that just as no one ever called our middle hitter Mac by her real name, Molly, or our outside hitter VanBree by Vanessa.

“Bryn’s starting today,” she reminded me, her brown eyes filled with excitement at the prospect of our new offensive weapon. Bryn DeNeuville was a transfer, fresh off of summer training camp with Olympic coaches in La Jolla, California. I hadn’t met Bryn yet, but I had seen game film. If she played half as well as she looked on tape, our team wanted to make her feel very welcome.

The familiar damp concrete smell invaded my nostrils as we made our way through the tunnels to the women’s volleyball locker room.

The minute I set foot in the doorway I looked around the locker room for our new outside hitter. I had seen enough of Bryn’s image on screen to vaguely recognize the new junior seated on the rug, one impossibly long leg stretched out in front of her and the other bent like a pretzel as she twisted across her perfectly muscled thigh.

Mac was deep in conversation with her. Mac was the tallest girl on the team. She was also a local girl. Both her parents were cops, her dad a mere six foot two, her mom a badass six four. They were both usually armed, and some of their scary law-enforcement authority must have rubbed off on Mac because despite her rosy cheeks and strawberry blonde hair, she could be intimidating.

Whatever Mac was saying to Bryn, VanBree was agreeing with. VanBree grew up in a tough suburb of Chicago. She was the other girl on the team who you did not want to mess with—other than me, that was. And she was focusing all her do-not-mess-with-me juju on Bryn, leaning into her ear, speaking low.

Bryn looked back and forth between them, eyebrows raised. I couldn’t tell what expression was on her face. She didn’t look intimidated. Mostly just sweet and blank. I wondered what nickname Bryn would go by. Bambi? The door swung closed behind me.

Mac rose from her triangle pose to see who had walked in. She nudged the transfer. “Bryn. This is CeCe. Team captain.” She cleared her throat. “I told you all about her, remember?”

“Sorry we weren’t able to connect earlier.” I smiled as she looked up and met my eyes. Her sweet blank face fell, literally fell, her mouth agape and her eyes wide. The room went dead quiet, as if every living body—even the fruit flies the custodial staff couldn’t seem to get rid of—was holding its breath.

“Oh my God!” Bryn cried as she rose to her feet, managing to be graceful despite her obvious distress.

Shit. Were we really going to do this?

Her beautiful eyes were glued to the one very noticeable feature on my face. I looked over at Tuba and she slowly shook her head. More faces cautiously peeked out from the aisles of lockers and the bathroom. But Bryn, the little shit bag, didn’t notice any of the signals. Maybe we should have gotten this first meeting over with on neutral territory. Instead we were doing it in front of most of the volleyball team. And I could occasionally be explosive.

She took a few steps toward me, cocking her head to the side as she examined my scar. I filled my lungs and counted as I slowly released my breath.

“What did you do to your face?” she cried as if her own face was throbbing in pain.

I think I heard a sound, or maybe it was just in my head. It was a ping, like the snap of a tightly wound fiddle string. As I looked into her utterly sincere eyes, my tension simply broke. I think I might have laughed. Did she actually think I did this to myself?

“I mean, they said you had a bad scar,” she said. “But, I didn’t realize it was bad, bad.”

The words should have made me want to slap her stupid. But she was already there. Was she some type of wise fool? A modern-day idiot savant?

I looked past Bryn’s shoulder at Tuba while I steadied myself. She was wincing. Bryn was still staring. This time I really did laugh, if a bit maniacally. I mean, honestly, I had to consider Bryn’s word choice. Bad, bad?

“Could we try another adjective?” I asked Bryn. “Like revolting? Horrific? Macabre?”

“I’m not that good with words,” she said.

As she stared longer and longer at my face, I could feel the same burning heat that put the scar there eight years ago. My mind snapped back to the red sports car losing control on the highway, and careening into our lane. Before my mom could react, the car smashed into us head-on and a searing heat had cut through my face, like a knife soaked in flames.

It happened in one second. One second, one unexpected meeting, is all it takes for a life to change forever.

I could only recall flashbacks after the accident, fading in and out of consciousness. I remembered trying to mouth the word Mom, but when I had tried to move my jaw, my body answered with a throbbing pain. I could still smell the burning, plastic odor defusing from the airbags. I remembered the pressure in my head while I was hanging upside down, trying to unbuckle my seatbelt, and how every time I moved it felt like someone pressed a hot poker against the side of my face.

I shook my head to clear the memory of the accident. My mind snapped back to the locker room, to yet another painful encounter.

Bryn’s eyes were still focused on my scar. Her face was so close I could have counted her pores if she had any. Bryn was unquestionably the most beautiful woman I had ever encountered. In fact, the only uncertainty about her beauty was which feature made her the most stunning. Her long, wavy caramel-brown hair, sun streaked with blonde highlights, or her lush, heart-shaped lips. Her slender, sloping nose was sprinkled with perfectly placed freckles, as if applied by an artist’s hand. Maybe it was her high cheekbones, angled so finely you could run a finger along their smooth contour. Maybe it was her saucer-shaped eyes, the way they shimmered between dark and light blue, like waves.

No one had ever reacted to my scar this way. The only appropriate reaction was to ignore the scar. Now this sweet-faced simpleton was giving me the most honest reaction I had ever faced. I was good at pretending the scar wasn’t there. I was even better at dealing with heckling and mean-spirited teasing. But sincerity? I felt like I was talking to a child.

What did I do to my face?

I thought about her question. What would be a fitting response? I used to be a prostitute in Amsterdam until I got knifed by a jealous rival in a turf war. I was a stunt woman in a flying circus and fell face-first into a propeller. I’d been mauled while hunting big game in Africa.

But Bryn was my teammate, and I was team captain. I had a role to live up to. I could have verbally eviscerated her, humiliated her in front of everyone. Instead, I told her the banal, utterly lame truth.

“Car accident,” I said.

She reached her hand out toward me and I quickly leaned away, throwing my hand up to cut her off. Asking about the scar was one thing, but no one was ever allowed to touch it.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Does it still hurt?” she asked.

I wanted to give her my death-glare so badly that my eyes started to itch. I eyed the rest of the team in warning.

“It happened years ago, Bryn,” I assured her. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“It just looks so painful,” she said.

Damn. She had crossed the line in so many places it was a zigzag. Enough was enough. “Well it isn’t. And if it hurts so much to stare at it then here’s a simple solution. Stop.”

“Sorry,” she said and finally averted her eyes. She looked down at her school-issued Adidas practice shoes.

Nervous eyes continued to watch my every movement. A few of my teammates stood near the door as if they were waiting for some kind of delayed reaction and wanted to secure access to the nearest exit. I cleared my throat.

“Bryn,” I said, my voice thoughtful. “You’re lucky. Today’s warm-up is captain’s choice.” A wide smile stretched across my face.

“What?” Bryn said and looked around the room at the other players. “I thought we were just lifting?”

“Have you ever run stadium steps?” I asked, ignoring her comment.

She blinked at my question with confusion.

Our outdoor football stadium, Camp Rodgers, had forty-eight steps—fifteen sets of them. And it was a nice, balmy eighty-eight degrees outside—probably the same percent in humidity.

“We’ll take it easy on you since you’re a newbie. Just two full stadiums today. Timed,” I said. “We want to see what you can do.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “That’s today’s workout?” she asked me.

“That’s today’s warm up,” I clarified. I grabbed a timer off the bench and pulled a baseball cap over my hair. The cap kept my hair in place so it covered my scar. It had drawn enough attention for one day.

I slapped Bryn’s shoulder and guided her toward the door. I heard a few snickers behind me, and I turned to smile at Tuba before we left. I wasn’t above a little payback.

…

Emmett

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Aaron running toward me like a bull released from a cage. I cursed through my mouth guard. I had two seconds, max. I gripped the ball harder and felt an unusual ache in my finger joints. I realized the problem. Note to self: don’t play the piano for three hours right before practice. Coach Keller would kick your ass. You’re here to play football.

I tucked the ball hard against my ribs. Part of my brain said to take the hit and go down easy. No one wants to risk an injury in pre-season. But you wouldn’t last five minutes in this game with that kind of surrender mentality. You looked a challenge full in the face and charged back at full speed, like knights in a jousting match.

Aaron dove toward me just as I caught sight of our running back ten feet away. I turned and lobbed him the pass as Aaron threw his arms around my shoulders and shoved me to the ground. I landed face first into the grass and my helmet shoveled up a spray of rubber granules. It wasn’t a hard hit. But Aaron still thought he beat me.

“How’s the turf taste, Brady?” he joked, smiling wide through his facemask. I stood up and laughed, because he hadn’t seen the last minute lob. When he realized I wasn’t holding the ball, he looked down the field to see players celebrating thirty yards away.

He pounded the grass next to him.

“If you weren’t going to help us win state this year, I’d pulverize you,” he said. I gave him a half smile, because I knew he wasn’t joking.

I pulled Aaron up and Coach called us over to review the play. As we headed to the sidelines, I noticed a flutter of movement at the end of the field. A dozen girls jogged onto the stadium steps, clad in sports bras and shorts. Their tan muscles glowed in the humid heat of the sun.

“Is that the black spandex mafia?” I asked Aaron.

He pulled off his helmet and wiped a rivulet of sweat away with his wristband. “Close. Varsity volleyball,” he said. He raised his chin toward the bleachers. “There’s a hot new transfer,” he said.

I looked where his eyes were pointing and noticed a girl leaping up the steps, all toned legs and long, svelte arms. Her golden hair whipped behind her, and caught the sunlight like a church steeple. Even from a distance, I could see she was striking. It was impossible not to notice her, like you would notice the most impressive sky rise in a city skyline.

“Bryn DeNeuville,” Aaron told me. “Take a number and get in line.” He grinned.

The girls caught us looking as they plodded down the steps and a few of them waved in our direction. Their ponytails lapped behind them.

Before I glanced away, another girl stood out. She was turned away from us, but I still noticed her. Maybe it was because her hair was loose, and underneath a baseball cap it fell long over her shoulders in dark waves. Maybe it was because I had a weakness for girls in baseball caps. Or, maybe she stood out because she was shouting like a drill sergeant leading boot camp. She screamed, heckling the girls to move it up the steps. She was the only girl who didn’t look our way, like she was immune to distraction.

...

After practice Coach Keller slapped a student newspaper in my hand.

“You’re the campus celebrity now,” he informed me.

I looked down at the cover and winced at the picture of me that consumed the entire front page. The photograph made me look like some kind of resurrected Roman Olympian, striking a javelin throwing pose. I knew they were running a feature on me, but I wasn’t expecting to be the only lead story.

I stared at the bold headline. LAST MINUTE TRANSFER: Can He Save the Cardinals? I studied the daunting question, like the answer meant the difference between life and death.

I ran a hand through my hair, still damp from the shower.

“No pressure,” I said.

Coach Keller gave my back an encouraging slap. “Take it one week at a time, Brady. One game. If you think beyond that, you’ll break.”

I looked over at him. His light blue eyes stood out against his sunburned cheeks. I wondered if his advice was referring to football or to life in general. I tucked the article under my arm and headed out of the stadium. I didn’t need to read it. I remembered the short, formal responses I gave to the reporter last week. I kept the conversation surface level and listed all the reasons I transferred here, namely that Coach Keller had spent the last fifteen years building one of the best high school football programs in the country, and I wanted to be the quarterback who took them to state. I spouted out all the quotes needed for an inspiring feature story. The article probably made me sound one-dimensional, like every brain cell in my head was attached to football, but at least people would know I was here to do my job.

When the reporter brought up my past and why I waited until my senior year to transfer, I detoured around the question. I didn’t want to go into my history. There was too much baggage. What’s another word for it? Scars. Way too many scars. It had been almost a year since my dad died, and it still felt like my insides were slashed.

I passed through the opened stadium gate and stalled.

Music streamed across the parking lot. The campus was crawling with students arriving for welcome week. Edgelake High School was a private prep school in downtown Madison, and it shared a campus with its sister school, Edgelake College. Local high school students attended for the day, but there was boarding for international students and people like me—student-athletes who came for the exposure, the coaches, the state of the art sport facilities, and the competitive schedule that made us visible to college recruiters.

I watched the mobs of cars and strangers that choked the roads and filled up the parking spots. Something held me rooted to the ground and a doubt resurfaced that I couldn’t shake.

Did I make the right decision? I burned a lot of bridges coming here. My teammates back home felt betrayed. Who jets the last year of their high school season? It was the most selfish decision I had ever made.

But nobody understood. I had to leave. It was the only way to move on. Moving here was more than fighting to prove I could lead this team to state. I was fighting to prove I could take control of my life.

What if things had been different? Would I be here?

I headed across the parking lot. I had to stop focusing on the what-ifs that plagued my mind. You can spend your whole life contemplating the what-ifs.

All I was certain of was this: I couldn’t change the past and I sure as hell couldn’t control the future. There was just this moment. Instead of what-if, I had to train my mind to focus on what now?