Talented as he knew he was, Jamal never complained about this. He’d learned long ago that in Texas there were some things you just had to accept.
“Do you feel the wind out there yet?” Dylan said, sidling up beside Jamal to open his locker and check his phone. The game’s first half had ended moments before, just as the Bison defense had (miraculously) prevented another Cougar goal.
“You made the right call at the toss,” Jamal said, thumping Dylan on the shoulder, because that was another thing Jamal had learned: the true role of the backbench player was to be a cheerleader in the places the girls couldn’t reach.
KT Staler, the Bison’s skinny tight end, opened his locker. “You hear the way that kid was choking?”
Dylan raised his phone, pushed his hair out of his eyes, pulled KT and Jamal into frame. “Cheese to my brother.” He smiled deftly. The screen flashed white.
“My eyes look funny.” KT peered at the photo.
“He’s here?” said Jamal.
Dylan typed something. He didn’t look up. “Landed an hour ago.”
“About fucking time,” KT said.
Coach Parter’s voice came booming from the doorway. “Aches? Pains? Whitley, how you faring?”
Dylan hardly glanced at him. “Fine, Coach.”
When Parter was out of earshot, Dylan murmured to Jamal, “I’ll try and get you some field time in the fourth. The Fat Man’s barely looked at you all season.”
An unwelcome voice came from behind them. “If this wind turns around it’ll be right in our faces.”
Luke Evers, the team’s muscled running back, approached them with his gloves still on.
“It won’t turn,” Dylan said.
“Brazos is already flagging. Malacek too. We should have hit them harder at the kick, Whitley. We could have had this in the bag by now.”
Dylan grinned. “You don’t trust this arm?”
“I don’t trust your head.”
“It ain’t your call, bro,” Jamal said to Luke.
“I’m the offensive captain, Reynolds.”
“They’ll remember that when they make the movie,” said KT.
“Fuck off, Staler.”
“Boys. Whiteboard. Now.” Coach Wesford, the offensive coordinator, snapped his fingers. “I said now.”
With Dylan gone, KT’s attention turned to his phone. He typed a message, stared at his screen, typed something else. He concealed the screen deep inside his locker.
The sight unsettled Jamal. Since when was KT able to keep a secret?
Jamal went to fill his water bottle. The players were raucous as usual tonight—athletic cups lobbed and dodged, nipples twisted, shoulders knuckled—but as Jamal made his way around a puddle of what he could only hope was water he felt something taut and anxious in the air, a muted electric charge, as if the storm brewing outside had trailed into the field house on the tops of their helmets.
“Is it j-j-just me—” Benny Garcia, one of the other backbenchers, stood beside the rusted water fountain and scratched his nuts. “Or d-d-does it l-l-look l-l-like they’re p-p-plotting something?”
Jamal looked over his shoulder. B-B-Benny was right. It wasn’t just KT. At every other locker stood a player staring intently at a phone. Jamal caught Mitchell Malacek, the team’s starting halfback, murmuring something to the Turner twins. The twins shared one of their eerie mirrored smiles.
“I can’t believe it.” Garrett Mason, the massive defensive safety, shuddered at something on KT’s phone as Jamal returned to his own locker. KT flipped the screen over when he saw Jamal watching.
Garrett had a scowl that could knock a bird from the sky. He licked blood from his lip. “You ain’t got enough business of your own, Reynolds?”
Jamal forced a grin, said nothing.
A few minutes later, Dylan returned. “Hey,” Dylan said, scooting up to Jamal’s locker. “You’ve got my back, right?”
“Of course, bro,” Jamal said, though he found it odd Dylan would even ask.
When he looked up, he saw that Dylan had spoken not to him, but to KT.
At the sound of Jamal’s voice, Dylan gave an embarrassed little laugh. He draped his Million-Dollar Arm over Jamal’s shoulder. “I never have to worry about you, do I?”
When Dylan’s attention was turned away, Jamal saw a little frown cross KT’s face, a pinch of something pained and frightened. Ashamed.
And then it was gone.
“I got you, man,” KT said.
“Always?” Dylan said, smiling to the two of them.
“Always.”
Jamal wrapped his arm around him. Skin to skin, muscle to bone. They were, briefly, unbreakable.
JOEL
His analyst’s mind ran the odds. Of all the residents of Bentley, how could the first person Joel met upon his arrival be the one woman he was truly afraid to see? The woman who had been just as unpopular in high school as he but ten times harder, the woman permanently outshone by her famous older brother, the woman who would always be Joel’s first and final girlfriend: Starsha Marilynn Clark, though God help the man dumb enough to call her by all three names.
Three thousand to one, he thought. He supposed his luck could only improve from here.
Joel went for a handshake, saw her hesitate. Nodding toward the dim line of trucks, where he’d just enjoyed the pleasure of watching an old bully’s arrest, Joel said, “You’re a professional.”
“And we have an audience.” She shook his hand quickly, lit her cigarette.
“Jason turned out about how I expected.”
“We’ve all gotten a little worse for wear around here.”
She held the cigarette with her teeth, adjusted a bun of muddy brown hair. She’d always been short and oddly proportioned: legs too long, arms too brief—“the velociraptor,” they’d called her in school—but there was a nervy strength to her limbs now. Her nose had been broken at some point. She still had her brother’s startling jade eyes, and Joel saw that she was running odds behind those eyes, just like him. She wasn’t happy.
In a way, Joel was grateful for Clark’s chilliness. After everything he had put her through ten years ago—and wasn’t that a polite way of putting it—he was relieved she hadn’t decided to knock a few bright teeth from his mouth.
The young deputy beside her, a cute guy covered in tattoos, smiled with a cordial scorn Joel remembered well from his time here. The man nodded at the convertible. “You think that little beauty can handle these roads here?”