Page 15 of Home Field Advantage

To

Play.

Nothing else matters.

I barely get through the rest of my classes, spending the time mentally running through the playbook and drawing the number six over and over like the self-absorbed bastard I am.

Finally, it’s time.

The cheerleaders have been wearing their uniforms all day, so I have the locker room to myself to change and spend an extra minute marveling at the sight of myself in my game-day jersey. Damn, I really do make this look good. I send a selfie to Sage and Morgan, smoothing down my tightly pulled hair one last time, and then… wait.

I don’t have a coach telling me when to go in. I’m not there for the locker room shit. I hear cheering sound off in the gym, but I have no idea if anyone’s coming to get me, or if I’m just supposed toknowwhen it’s my turn to storm in.

I know every single play by heart, but I don’t know when to enter a fucking pep rally.

Superstar!!!Morgan texts back with a bunch of different emojis, and I’ve never felt less like one. Thank Jesus they cannot see me right now.

The cheers get louder, so the football players must’ve started jogging in. Every fifteen seconds or so they rise up a little extra, suggesting one of the more popular guys—Devlin or Sawyer or whoever—has run in. It makes sense for me to be last, I think, being the QB. But how do I know when they’re done? Are they just gonna forget about me, or—

Fierce banging on the locker room door jolts me out of my thoughts, so fucking terrifying it makes my heart race. But I guess that’s my cue. I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to wear my helmet or not—yet another thing no one’s told me—so I carry it, and figure I can put it on if I see the other guys wearing theirs. At least the cheering’s still going on, so it’s not like I’ve missed everything.

Except that when I run in to the fog-and-flashing-light-filled room, it’s like I somehow pulled out the plug. The effects keep going, but the room goes quiet. For a second I think maybe “Number six, your quarterback, Jack Walsh!” was all in my head, but I know better.

The emcee—whoever it is—definitely said it out loud, and it sucked all the pep out of the room.

At that instant, if someone straight-up asked me, I would give this up. I would tell my brothers I was wrong, tell my parents I want to go home, tell Morgan and Sage I’m a loser, and tell little kid Jack, who never even dreamed she’d get this shot, to trust me, she doesn’t want it.

If I had a sword I could fall on out of shame, I would.

Before I can look for the nearest sharp object, I hear what I’m pretty sure is a muttered “For fuck’s sake,” and then Miguel Santiago emerges from the blob of players and holds out his arms. Amber neatly flies into his hands and the crowd goes wild as they do this vomitously adorable little dance routine that I think was somehow a favor to me but might make me feel even worse.

The next fifteen minutes of cheers and marching band tunes go off without a hitch while I mentally disappear into the only thing that matters: the game. I let the plays fill my brain, the scouting report of Lawndale flood my memory, and the adrenaline course through my veins all through the rally, the shuffling onto the bus, and the pregame meal. While I shovel chicken and mashed potatoes into my mouth, barely tasting anything, I think about Sanchez’s blind spot, Burke’s tendency to look down at the ball too often, and every single one of our other flaws that got picked apart on film at practice earlier this week.

Let the guys fuck around and use this time to talk about“kicking Lawndale ass” (with nothing to back it up) and which cheerleaders are looking particularly good this year, which involves a lot of elbowing Miguel.

Let the guys take me for granted, even if those same films showed me playing with near-flawless form and accuracy.

Let my brothers stay home, refusing to show up with my parents and support me.

Let the entire school stay silent at the sound of my name.

Let everyone underestimate me. Because they have no idea what I can do.

But they’re about to.

Channeling immense amounts of negative energy does epic things for my arm, as it turns out.

By halftime, I’ve thrown for two TDs and run one in, and even the most hard-core of Robbie’s worship squad have stopped trying to crowd me as if I can’t aim more than ten feet in front of me. They may not wanna acknowledge to my face that I’m good, but it’s just embarrassing for them if they can’t acknowledge it to the crowd. We’re up 20–7, and we’d be up by more if they’d trusted me sooner. But two of those touchdowns have come in the last ten minutes, and there’s a frisson of electricity passing through the entire team at the certainty there will be more.

I chug my Gatorade as we huddle up and Coach Sundstrom lays out plays for the second half, but I can’t help my gaze drifting over to the cheerleaders setting up in the middle of the field. There’s no special chant for me the way there is for Devlin, Burke, Santiago, and Sanchez—the way I’m sure there was for Robbie—but they have no choice but to kick and shout with every first down and every score, and the crowd’s energy is soaring now as the girls form an impressive pyramid.

I really need to stop staring at Amber McCloud’s pom-poms.

She’s dating one of my teammates. It doesn’t matter if she was flirting with me or why. It doesn’t matter if she came to my rescue at the pep rally, or got me to Midnight Breakfast, or thinks I look cute in my glasses. If I’m not letting all the other shit distract me, I’mcertainlynot letting a pair of legs do it.

Not even really good legs that can do absolutely mind-blowing things.

“You’re doing great, Walsh,” Sundstrom says, bringing my attention back to the huddle. A couple of the guys grunt in agreement. I can’t look around to see who without being obvious, but my money’s on Santiago and Burke, the only two guys who ever give me so much as a nod. “This is our game to lose, and we get to slow things down now.” He turns to me. “You ready to run again? Or you need a rest?”

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