She shrugs. “I’m not. But he’s fun. That’s all it is.”

My phone buzzes.

I wish we were already there.

“He’d be wishing a lot harder if you’d added my suggestion.”

“Why don’t you go mentally scar a band member or something?”

She takes me seriously and starts scanning the bleachers next to us for potential victims.

I want to keep texting Carson, but I don’t want to distract him. This was going to be a tough game to win before everything that’s happened. The whole team will need to really focus and come together to pull it off.

So I shove my phone back in my pocket and sit down. I bounce my knees and force myself to think about something else.

I’m really close to mastering the dance I choreographed on the night of Dad’s birthday. I’ve been working on it gradually, trying to re-create the piece that I imagined in my head.

It hasn’t been easy. In my imagination, I was stronger and more flexible. But I’ve almost got it down. And when I do, I think I’m going to show it to Carson. He’s been bugging me to dance for him, and that piece was inadvertently inspired by him.

Between thoughts of dance and Stella, I manage to keep from texting Carson before kickoff.

The Dragons win the coin flip, and they choose to receive first. As the guys line up, everyone in the student section raises their right hand, shaped like a claw for our mascot, the wildcats. They shout and scream and go wild, and the sound races around the stadium, filling up the entire space with noise. I pick out Carson on the sidelines, number twelve. He’s bouncing back and forth on his toes, shaking out his arms, trying to stay loose.

If the first run of the game is any indication, we’re in for a world of hurt.

The opposing team breaks through our defenses, finding every hole and returning the opening kick sixty-eight yards all the way to our thirty-yard line. I squeeze my fist tight and press the back of my hand against my mouth. They get two first downs in a row, and then score on the third play. The kicker makes good on the extra point, and just like that Carson’s going in, and we’re already down by seven.

Stella holds my hand, and I resist the urge to close my eyes.

He can do this. He works so hard. He’s got it.

He takes the snap, looking to hand off to Silas. But when the defensive end crashes down on him, Carson keeps the ball and makes a break through the gap, surprising everyone with his speed. The safety takes him down with a hard hit that makes me grip Stella’s hand a little tighter, but not before Carson’s pulled in a twelve-yard gain.

I breathe a little easier.

On the next play, the defense has wised up to the fact that he can run, and they’re more conservative in the options they give him. He gets a decent look with one of his receivers, but the pass goes a little too far left and ends up incomplete. He shakes it off and follows it up with a handoff to Silas that gets a small gain. It’s third down, five yards to go. When he drops back, he doesn’t have more than a second to scan the field before a Dragon player breaks through the line like it’s nothing. He slams into Carson from behind, and he hits the ground so hard I gasp.

He gets up and he has held on to the ball, which is something, but I can tell from the way that he holds his body that he felt that one. And we lost ground on the play, too.

It’s fourth and twelve, and we’re still deep in our own territory.

Dad opts for the punt, trying to get the ball as far away from our end zone as possible.

On the sideline, Dad looks like he’s tearing the offensive line apart. His arms are waving so wildly that no one has to hear him to know he’s pissed. Carson is farther down the field, bouncing on his toes just like he was at the beginning.

Please don’t let this affect you. It wasn’t your fault. You’ve got this.

While the band blares away beside us, the Dragons score again. The crowd around us grows restless. I hear Levi’s name a few times, and my stomach clenches.

Before Carson takes the field again, Dad stops him with a hand on his helmet. He leans close, talking to him for a few seconds, and I hope Dad knows what he’s doing. I hope he’s as good as people have always said he is.

“Go Carson!” I scream.

I know he can’t hear me, but it’s more for me anyway. I just want to feel like I’m doing something.

Whatever Dad said, it works.

Right out of the gate, Carson hits one of his receivers for a forty-yard gain, putting us in Dragon territory for the first time. He follows it up with his own carry for fifteen, and all the douche-bags who’ve been grumbling around me are cheering.

Next, he hands off to Silas, who skirts two, three, four defenders before he finally gets dragged down by two guys on the fifteen-yard line.

The screaming around me is so loud, I swear I can feel it vibrating the metal bleachers. The student section starts chanting “Go Red. Fight Red. Bleed Red.” And even though it’s morbid, I scream along with them.

And when we score with a reverse pitch to Torres, a wide receiver, the sound is deafening. The band immediately picks up with the RU fight song, and for a few seconds, I remember what it was like to love football. Before Dad and I fought so much and before Levi ruined me more than I already was, there had been something special about the game for me. I loved the way one person could start a chant, and soon a stadium of thousands had picked it up and were screaming in unison. I loved that kids who didn’t give a crap about school were suddenly belting the school song from the top of their lungs. I loved those tense moments before the start of a play when everyone is wishing and hoping exactly the same thing, and the whole stadium holds its breath.

Even now . . . I can admit that there’s something a little bit magical about it.

And I get why Dad does it. Not just football, but his whole thing. To take a team and a town that doesn’t believe and bring them together, I can see how that would fill him up, to the brim, just like dance does for me.

Chapter 23

Carson

I taste blood from a busted lip. Nausea rolls in my stomach. Every part of me aches . . . inside and out.

Because we lost.

I know we all went into this expecting it, but . . . I still hoped. And now all that hope sits rock hard in my stomach, rotting and gnawing at me, asking, What if?

What if Levi had been here? Would we still have lost?

I sit at my cubby, a towel over my head, while sweat drips down from my forehead and stings my eyes. I hear a pair of pads crash into the wall, and guess that it’s Silas, but I don’t know for sure.