Page 54 of Home Field Advantage

This is why we left you out of our plan.

But I’m not the only one they left out, and they’re not finding anything but confusion and a hint of anger among the seniors.

“This is why what, Claire?”

Butter would not melt in my fucking mouth.

You’d have no idea from the way she’s looking at me that Claire and I have known each other for years, been good enough friends to ride bikes together down the path behind her house in the springtime as kids and go shopping for the best Cheer Camp Casual that Thrifty Nick’s had to offer just this past summer. It’s scary to think how much has changed so quickly, and scarier still to know this is only the tip of the iceberg, assuming Cara hasn’t outed me yet.

But if captainship is gone, and my sort-of girlfriend is gone, and my best friends are gone… what else really matters at this point?

Claire doesn’t answer me. Instead, she whirls around to face everyone else, hands balled into fists. “No one was happy when Jack came here and joined the team. Not one of you. So why are we pretending she belongs? If you write her into that cheer, you’re saying she has a place on our team.”

“And if we don’t, we look to every single person in the stands like we don’t really support the Gators,” I shoot back. “Is that who you wanna be? We’re cheerleaders. This is ourjob.”

“Welcoming some lesbo with open arms isnotmy job.”

Both the sentiment and the word hit harder than I expected, and standing tall physically hurts when all I want to do is curl up into a ball. But this is it—this is when I see how the other girls view me, even if they don’t know it.

The room is silent, charged, the air feeling like a weighted blanket on my fiery skin.

And then, into the quiet, a voice I absolutely do not expect speaks up. “So let me get something clear,” says Nia, her voice as soft as always. “Wanting Jack gone—was that ever really about Robbie for you and the others? Or was it always because you’re a raging homophobe?”

Nia.Of all the girls on the team to stand up, it’s the one I’ve least bothered to get to know. The one who had nothing to offer me to get ahead, because she always just felt like another limb of Crystal’s. I know this is Claire’s moment of shame, but right now, it’s seeping into me, too, just a little bit.

Claire opens her mouth, and shuts it. None of us have ever been confronted by Nia, and I wouldn’t know how to answer her any more than Claire does. Piss her off, and you’re pissing off the captain. And Claire seems well past having pissed her off right now.

“Ella, maybe you can join Virany in the office and have them page Dayna to join us too, since Claire won’t be cheering tonight,” Crystal says, and we turn and look at Claire, who’s never once been benched. She’s on the verge of tears, and Ialmostfeel bad for her, until my brain replays the way she spat the wordlesboa solid fifty times in a row.

No, the only person I feel guilty about—the only person I care to make things up to right now—is Jack, and as Crystal turns to the rest of us and says, “Okay, let’s give this a shot—we’ll work on the moves later” while holding up the paper I copied at the Copy Shop two towns over this morning, Ipray this will go at least the tiniest way toward helping me do that.

-JACK-

At some point, Amber showed up to school—I spot her in the hallway for a split second before last period—but if she sees me, she doesn’t acknowledge it. Which is fine. She’s this close to becoming a distant memory, even if she doesn’t know it yet.

I leave my phone in my locker all morning, full of untyped texts to Sage and Morgan letting them know I’m coming home, photographs unsent of me in my uniform with my middle finger extended toward the mirror that lines the door of the coat closet that’s doubled as my storage space. There is way too much shit living in my brain rent free, and tonight, as soon as the buzzer ends the game, I know I’m going to explode with it. But right now, the combination of fury and relief pent up in my brain flows through my veins like the sharpest adrenaline, and despite everything—everything—the only thing my body wants to do is channel it into football.

It’s how I’m built. They can’t screw that out of me.

Books and Balls Day has everyone wearing their passions on their sleeves. The chess team members are easily pickedout by their all-black or all-white attire, capped off with horse heads, cone-shaped hats, or crowns. The Model UN kids have their flag tees, and in some cases even hair spray-dyed to match. The debate team literally had shirts made for this, all of which say “Go Ahead: Judge Me” in block letters. And of course, everyone with uniforms, from the band geeks to the tennis team to the cheer squad, is sporting them.

If I had a friend to ask, I’d pose the obvious question about what the kids do who aren’t in any clubs or on any teams, but I don’t. There are a few kids who don’t look like they’re showing off any particular attire, but once I see a bunch together, I realize they’re the skaters, and they’re just dressed the same way they always are, wallet chains and all.

I get it, how so much of who we are is shaped by what we spend our time doing—me and football, Sage and baking, Morgan and cosplay, Amber and cheerleading—but what happens when you don’t spend your time that way anymore? I’m not gonna stop being a person just because I stop doing the thing I love most in the world.

I’m pretty sure.

I’d kill for a weight-lifting period right now, something I’ll keep doing even after I’m gone from this team, from this sport, but there’s no lifting on game day, and I’m not about to break those rules. I’m going out on my own terms, which means resisting the urge to skip American history and sneak out to the weight room.

Instead, I sit through class, thinking, as usual, of how muchof our collective history is bullshit, which in turn makes me antsy to go to college so I can get the education I’ve been missing out on, which of course brings me back to sports and the way I was planning toaffordcollege.…

Not that a football scholarship was ever a real question. I’m not stupid enough to think a scout happening to be there was gonna suddenly change that. (I might be stupid enough to dream about it, but I’m not stupid enough not to know it’s nothing more than a dream.) But I need to be able to walk on tosomeschool’s softball team in the spring, or I can kiss that dream goodbye. Coach Sundstrom guaranteed I’d be able to do that in Atherton, but Coach Witherspoon at Butler is the vindictive type, and even though she’s technically never had to go a season without me (and still wouldn’t if I make it back this month), she might just be pissed enough at me for bailing to refuse to give my spot back.

Why is it that no matter how I look at this, no matter what I do, I’m well and truly fucked?

History blends into calculus and it doesn’t help that absolutely no one is listening to a damn thing a single teacher has to say today. Even the teachers clearly don’t wanna be doing this. Mr. Koenig literally points to equations on the board with a foam finger.

I wonder if they’d be so excited for tonight—if people would be chanting the cheers under their breath without even realizing it, if they’d be pouring chocolate milk out in the cafeteria for Robbie, if they’d be yelling “Go Gators!” at every footballplayer they pass in the hallway (even me, occasionally, if the person didn’t know better or get a good glimpse at the uniform)—if they knew their pathetic heroes were planning to throw the game to spite a girl.

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