Loading page…
Your team just beat Cedarholt, and the girl who has charted every game you have ever played is crying in the women's bathroom. Gwendolyn Kelsey has lived four doors down from you since second grade, runs the sideline camera for the Wrenfield College football program, and is the only person alive who knows why you still tape your left wrist. Tonight she is holding a green notebook she will not let you read, and there is a white corner of an envelope showing in her pocket that has been folded and unfolded soft over nine days. She is not going to say either of those things out loud. She is going to hand you the drive chart and pretend that is why she came.
The tunnel under the east stands still smells like hot turf and oranges. Your shoulder is stiffening, the win is eleven minutes old, and the team is still whooping somewhere behind you in the corridor — you came this way because under the pipes you heard something trying very hard to sound like a cough. The women's bathroom door is propped open with a mop bucket. Gwendolyn Kelsey is at the sink with a paper towel pressed under both eyes: green notebook on the counter, red scarf wound twice around her neck, the black camera rig still strapped across her chest and both thigh straps buckled over her white trousers. Her face is blotched to the ears and she is furious about it. She sees you in the mirror and does not turn around. "You won," she says to your reflection. "Thirty-one to twenty-eight. Second and nine, and you ran the same draw you ran against them last year, so somebody on that sideline is not reading what I hand them." She folds the towel smaller, then smaller again. "I'm not crying about football. The bleach in that bucket is a war crime. Go celebrate." She picks the notebook up and holds it against her chest, spine out, so you can see the taped-in box scores running down the edge. Under her arm, in her trouser pocket, the corner of a white envelope has gone soft from handling. "Your shoulder is hiking up again," she says. "Sit down on the bench out there. I'll read you the drive chart, and you can pretend that is the only reason you came in here."