Текст книги "Sacked"
Автор книги: Jen Frederick
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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 21 страниц)
2 Ellie
I should get up and leave. Actually, I should get up and sprint the hell out of Union Stadium like we’re in The Dark Knight Rises and Bane himself is blowing up the field. But I can’t. There’s a magnet fastening me to the wet turf—a magnet named Knox Masters. It could be that I’m shocked into passivity. I’ve been around football players my whole life, and not one of them had the gravitational pull of Masters.
“I need to go. Thanks for the run.” I push to my feet. I keep the words I won to myself. They’d be a red flag to his bull stomping.
“Won’t let me have a rematch?” He pushes onto an elbow and I have to force myself to look away from the damp fabric clinging to his chiseled abs. Why couldn’t he be a little round around the waist like some linemen? Does he have to be good looking and talented? In the football world, grown men get excited hearing his name. Here at Western, he’s the ruler of all he sees.
He doesn’t need to have a face that would fit in on a runway. I’m surprised someone hasn’t broken his nose yet, if not out of jealousy then sheer frustration that one guy has been given so much.
It’s unfair, criminally so. Advertisers will love him once he goes pro. That he intends to declare for the draft at the end of his junior year is no surprise. The fact that he told me, some nobody he’s never laid eyes on before, is a shock. What was that all about up there in the stands?
Can I blame it on the thin air, as he suggested? I feel like he’s playing me in some way, but I haven’t figured out his angle. Worse, I shouldn’t care what his angle is. “I’m quitting while I’m ahead. Besides, it’s getting late.”
Masters hops to his feet and smirks at my weak excuse. “Because you can get so much done on campus at six in the morning.”
I check my running watch. “It’s six twenty. The day’s almost over.”
He tilts his head. “Fair enough, but does that mean skipping breakfast? Because I’m capable of talking about lots of other topics. I’m pretty conversant in basketball, some baseball, and hockey.” He flicks up a finger for each sport. “Also, up on Assassin’s Creed, Angry Birds—although I’ll admit I haven’t played that since high school. I’m more Clash of Clans right now.” I laugh against my better judgment. His eyes twinkle as he continues. “I’m so-so on topics like fashion, but I’m partial to miniskirts, tube tops, and skinny jeans.”
He’s running out of fingers. I grab his hand and fold his fingers down to get him to stop. It surprises us both and I start to draw back, but his reflexes are quicker. He flips his hand over and pulls me flush against him.
His long, hard frame against mine causes my electrical system to hiccup, which is the only reason I recklessly say, “I don’t know if I own a tube top.”
When his bright smile turns hungry, I realize my error. Oh, Ellie, you are such a dumb girl. Stop flirting with the hot jock and get your ass out of here.
“If you don’t, I wouldn’t worry. Running shorts, work out T-shirts, and ponytails are moving to the top of the list of things I’m a fan of.”
He leans even closer, and the smell of fresh turf, sunshine, and earthy male fills my lungs and my frame quakes the tiniest bit when I gulp in that dangerous cocktail. This is very bad for me. Yet…I’m not moving.
“So, breakfast?” he prompts with a slightly raised eyebrow. “We can talk about our favorite running shoes and exchange minor details like names and phone numbers.”
“I’m a big fan of New Balance,” I murmur even though I know I should pull away.
“I’m a big fan of names.” He squeezes my hand. “Mine is—”
“Knox! Your smoothie is ready!” A cheery voice calls out from the player tunnel. The sound manages to shake me free from Masters.
“—Knox,” he finishes, as if we hadn’t gotten interrupted. His lips are inches from my ear. “What’s yours?” His hand finds mine again and grips me tight, as if he knows I’ll run away at any moment.
Just Knox? It’s like he’s still hiding. Not giving out his full name, not admitting he’s more familiar with the turf we’re standing on than 99% of the student body, not taking off those mirrored glasses or his hat. If he’s not giving it up, then neither am I. “It’s different,” is all I say.
My dad named me Eliot Campbell. He wanted a second son. He didn't get one, but I got the name regardless.
“Oh no!” cries the musical voice of the smoothie delivery person. “I’m so sorry, miss, but this facility is closed to the public at all times but game time.”
“That’s my cue,” I murmur, mostly to get my own ass in gear. With a twist, I free my hand. “I’m leaving.”
I give a brisk nod to the bouncy blonde in a royal-blue polo. She has the Warriors logo inked above her left breast and she rocks a pair of khaki shorts. Maybe everyone at Western is blessed in the looks department. In her hand, she carries a large Styrofoam cup with a paper-tipped straw.
The blonde nods in approval and shoves the drink into Masters’ empty fist. I use the diversion to sprint off the field and down the tunnel. Stymied by the smoothie-bearing girl and my quick feet, I’m gone before he can stop me.
Knox Masters is a beast in person. I’ve seen him plenty on television, but the screen deceives you on a football player’s size. With the pads, the helmet, the motion, and the angle of the camera, you forget that in real life some of the men are huge.
He’s six-and-a-half feet of hard-bodied, muscled perfection. When he first entered the stadium, he moved so fast I thought it was someone else, a running back or a tight end like my brother Jack. But as he stormed up the stadium steps like they’d insulted his mother, I’d realized who exactly was providing my early morning entertainment.
Masters is famous in the collegiate ranks to anyone who knows football. Even if you’re trying your best to stop caring about it, like it’s the ex-boyfriend you know is bad for you but can’t let go, you’d know who Knox Masters is. Which is why I don’t get his coyness. Not once during our conversation did he say a word that he played. Did he honestly think aviators and a trucker hat made an effective disguise? The guy was on the cover of the college edition of Sports Illustrated a couple of months ago, for crying out loud.
Not to mention, I asked him outright and he sidestepped my question. But he also admitted that he wanted to declare early—a fact widely talked about by the college analysts, but until it came out of his mouth, only speculation. If I wanted a little bit of fame, I could leak that to someone and ruin it for Masters.
I won’t. He knew that somehow.
I’m probably the one person who doesn’t want the stranger in the stadium to be a NFL-bound college football player. If he were some normal guy who liked watching football rather than playing, we’d be at breakfast right now, exchanging numbers, arguing about our fantasy football picks, and finding out exactly what colors of tube tops he liked. But football players and I don’t mix.
On my way back to the apartment, I stop at the campus coffee shop and pick up a caramel mocha latte with soy milk. My new roommate, Riley Hall, has an unfortunate dairy allergy, which means no ice cream for her. I don’t know how she copes with life. I want her to like me because I haven’t had a close female friend in a while, and I’m willing to bribe her with soy milk lattes every morning if that’s what it takes.
She’s up when I get into the apartment, bleary-eyed, leaning against the counter and staring at my tea maker with undisguised frustration.
“Riles, I got you,” I call as I kick the door shut.
She nearly squeals with glee when I hand her the coffee.
“You are a goddess. I knew you were exactly the right roommate for me when your response to my Craigslist ad was that you made a mean cup of coffee.” I open my mouth to confess that the best I know how to do is operate a Keurig, but she waves me off. “I know you lied. It’s enough that you understood that coffee is an essential part of the day.”
“I thought we were destined roommates because we’re two females with male names,” I quip. My first name is Eliot; hers Riley.
“That too.”
“You're up early.” I'm glad for the impulse to stop for coffee.
She takes a sip of coffee and blisses out for a few seconds before responding. “Your phone has been ringing off the hook.”
“Oh gosh, I'm sorry. I thought I left the ringer off.” I grab for the phone I plugged in by the stove before I left for my early morning jog.
“You did. It vibrated so much I thought it might fall off the counter, so I picked it up. I didn’t mean to pry, but it’s your mom.” She makes a sympathetic face. “It showed on your screen.”
The phone rings again and Riley waves goodbye as she disappears into her bedroom to savor her coffee. I want to go with her, because I’m sure whatever my mother is calling about at seven in the morning isn’t fun.
“Hey, Mom,” I answer right before voicemail kicks in.
“Eliot, why didn’t you answer?”
“I was running.”
She clicks her tongue in disapproval. “I’m sure that’s not good for your knee. If you’d watch what you ate, then you wouldn’t need to run.”
This is the power of motherhood. She’s great at criticizing me out of both sides of her mouth. I’m eating too much and engaging in unsafe activities. Boss mother status achieved in two sentences.
I drum my fingers against the cheap laminate counter, regretting I didn’t go to breakfast with Masters. It’s karmic punishment, I suppose. If I turn down the good things that come my way, why should I be shielded from the bad? “I only run on flat surfaces.”
“I hope you’re wearing your longer pants. That scar is so visible when you get brown, dear.”
She always adds the dear, as if the fake term of endearment removes the sting of her words. I look down at my bare legs stretching out from the running shorts I pulled on. The scar looks like a sideways grimace. Most of the time I forget it’s there, but trust my mom to bring it up. I drop into a kitchen chair and settle in for the rest of her lecture.
“I have pants,” I say, not ready to outright lie to her.
“Good. You want to start out your time at Western on a good note. You don’t want to alienate the nice young men by not putting forth a good appearance.” Mom is the queen of appearances. In her book, as long as we look good, we are good.
Knox Masters didn’t seem to care, I want to tell her. In fact, I’m pretty sure he looked at my legs with a hell of a lot of appreciation. I rub my hand over the mark, though, because talking to Mom makes me self-conscious.
“Yes, Mom.”
“But I didn’t call to talk about that. I have terrible news. Your brother signed up for classes without consulting us!”
Good for him.
“He didn’t sign up by himself. He had a student liaison help him,” I point out. Mom must know. She, Dad, and Jack all visited Western together.
“That girl did not do a very good job then, because two of Jack’s courses are simply too difficult for him to manage himself.”
Dread is like a stone. Sometimes it sits in your stomach and makes you want to vomit. Other times it lodges in your throat and chokes you. Either way dread makes you feel terrible. Right now, I feel I am stone.
One thing that sold Jack on Western, other than their very real chance of winning the BCS National Championship title, was all the academic resources they have. Every athlete has a student liaison—an upperclassman—assigned to help him or her register. Every class has a tutor available. I won’t lean so much on you, he’d told me. I was thrilled. No more taking classes I didn’t like to make sure I knew Jack’s assignments. No more pretending I was interested in Battle Maneuvers of WWII. Most importantly, no more guilty conscience.
I happily registered for classes that interested me, like Creative Nonfiction Writing and Grant Management, the latter being a self-directed course involving writing a real grant proposal, which will look great on my resume.
“Uh huh.” If I hang up will this conversation end?
“I’ve called the Provost’s office, and they’ve informed me that the two courses you need to sign up for are full, but you can audit them. You’ll need to go today, however, and sign up.”
She rattles them off. One is a political science course, the other a sociology course. Neither sounds interesting to me.
“Mom, the time for registering is over. I did that this summer.” As did Jack. “I can’t add two classes to my schedule. I’m taking fifteen credits. That’s a full load.”
It’s not your mom you’re turning your back on here. It’s Jack.
She continues as if I haven’t spoken. “That’s nice, dear, but I’m sure two more classes won’t be a burden.”
What she means is that it doesn’t matter if it is a burden.
“What, can’t Jack drop those classes?”
“We don’t drop classes,” she says with an air of impatience. “What would his advisor think? You simply sign up and help as you always have in the past.”
“I need all my classes to graduate within two years. Besides, I don’t think it works that way.”
“It does. Haven’t you been listening? I spoke to the Provost’s office. They will allow you to add these two classes in addition to the ones you already have, but you need to go today. What time will you go today?” Her voice is sharp, losing the genteel quality she likes to put on to pretend that she’s a nicer person than she is. Truth is, my mother is a shark, but she has to be to live with my dad. Maybe she was soft at one time, and his constant cheating and absences wore it all away until she was just sharp points that stabbed at you until you bled. It’s a little amazing how far her points extend. How they still hurt even though we are miles apart.
My temples begin to throb. I really, really should have accepted that breakfast invitation from Knox Masters. “Western provides all the athletes individualized tutors. They’ll do a better job than me. Are you certain that I need to take these classes?”
It’s not a question. I know I have to take them. Jack is great at numbers and sucks at reading and writing. I suspect he suffers from a mild form of dyslexia, or maybe that’s how his mind works. I’ve been helping Jack out for a long time. That’s why I went to junior college with him when he didn’t get any D1 offers that made sense to my dad. That’s why I’m here at Western, even though I’d have liked to go somewhere else. Anywhere else.
“Do you need to ask that? Aren’t we in this together? Do you want your brother to fail? Aren’t you already responsible for the fact he wasted two years at that awful two year school out West? He only has two years of eligibility left. What if he doesn’t start this year?”
The list of horribles goes on. I tune her out and pull up the course catalog. The descriptions do sound reading/writing intensive. I bet he’ll have to write papers. He can memorize facts and do math problems in his head, but analysis of facts, reasoned conclusions that can’t be expressed in digits, are damn hard for him.
Then she pulls out the big guns.
“Need I remind you that your father and I write the checks for your tuition, or did you get a scholarship that we don’t know about?”
Masters asked me if I loved football, and the real answer is sometimes. Because while I can’t deny the glory of it, the game holds me hostage—or will until Jack graduates.
Frustration and hurt crowd out all the good feelings of this morning. When I ran the campus this morning, I thought about how it would be a new start for me. I found what appears to be an awesome roommate in Riley.
I’d make good friends, work on courses designed to help me get a good job out of college. Maybe I’d find the man I would marry. At the very least, I could find someone to watch movies with and kiss on Valentine’s Day.
On impulse, I’d run by Union Stadium to see where Jack would play, and when the gate hung slightly open and no one was around, I crept inside. It was so silent and so beautiful that I climbed to the very top and pretended that I was cheering on my brother and enjoying everything I loved about the game—the feats of physical strength, the excitement of the battle, the romance of it all.
Then Knox Masters came in, running fast like an arrow shot from a crossbow, straight and beautiful in motion. We’d flirted. We’d shared secrets. And after we’d run across the turf, I felt so…joyous in the moment.
Only to come home to this.
“I’m on it, Mom.”
“You’ll go right now?” It’s more a command than a question.
“Right now. I’m leaving as we speak.”
She sighs, but it’s not relief she’s feeling, but regret that she had to spend so much time talking me into something I should have agreed to do the minute I heard about it. Hell, I should have prevented it from happening.
“Thank you, dear. I hope your move went well. Don’t tell me about it now. Call me after you enroll in those classes.” She hangs up.
I stare at the phone. “Love you, too.”
I look up the administrative hours on the website and see I can’t actually talk to anyone for an hour. I have enough time to shower, change, and eat breakfast.
In the kitchen, I find Riley pouring milk over a bowl of cereal.
“Captain Crunch or Fruit Loops?” she asks, glancing over her shoulder at me.
“My mom told me that my scar looked ugly and I should eat less so I didn’t show it to the world.”
“So Cocoa Puffs with chocolate milk.” She sets both boxes back into the cupboard and brings out slow death by sugar.
I shake my head. “I can’t. I ate your Fruit Loops yesterday and nearly went into diabetic shock by noon. I don’t know how you do it. You are all of five feet nothing, eat like a horse, and weigh less than a hundred soaking wet.”
She grins and flexes. “I’m small but mighty and need this nectar of the gods to keep me going. It fuels my metabolism.”
“That’s not how metabolism works.” I grab a bagel and pop it into the toaster. “Sugar slows down your metabolism and—”
Riley holds up a hand. “You can stop right there. I don’t want to hear your nutritionist-in-training truths. I’ve eaten this kind of cereal all my life and I can’t stop now. It’d be a cruel shock to my system.”
“I thought I told you I was an English major.” Technically, I planned to write for a living—grant applications, speeches, reports. After years of writing for Jack, I figured I might as well put my experience to good use.
“Oh, you did, but all the groceries you’ve bought are healthy stuff.” Riley pours herself a giant bowl of cereal and drenches it with her chocolate soy milk. My teeth ache watching her eat, but if eating sugary things for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is her worst trait, she’ll be the best roommate ever. “So what are your plans for today? My family is still in town if you want to hang out with us. I apologize in advance for my younger sister, Rachel. She’s at that awkward age between knowing it all and knowing nothing. Plus, we can’t have her anywhere near your hot brother or she may try to hump him.”
“After that convincing invitation, I’ll pass. No offense.” I’d met Rachel yesterday, and she acted every bit as sullen as Riley describes. “But thanks for the warning regarding Jack. I’m glad you seem to be immune. My roommate at junior college desperately wanted in the pants of a football player. I tried to warn her that so many of the players are one and done. That’s how they get the label player.”
“I’m not saying I’m immune, but I’m not dating my roommate’s brother. There lies madness.” She stabs her spoon at me to punctuate her point. “Besides, I’ve had my eye on this guy from my advanced economics last year. He was adorable and, according to his Facebook status, he’s still single.”
“Booyah,” I say and give her a high five.
“What about you? You into the football players?”
“No. I dated one in high school and that was enough for me.” That’s a bad memory I don’t want to revisit. It’s the source of so much guilt, which is why I shouldn’t have lingered in the stadium to flirt with Masters, and why I left before I could fall under the spell of his easy charisma. “I don’t know what I want, but it’s not a jock. I mean, I know football players are all different, but their focus is the same—winning, whether it’s on the field or off.”
“Yeah,” Riley sighs. “It’s the same everywhere. Most of the guys I’ve met just want to hook up.”
“I think I’d marry the first guy who hit on me in the bookstore.”
We share a commiserating sigh.
“That’s not a bad idea,” she says between giant bites of chocolate cereal.
My phone rings again. “Jeez. It’s like Grand Central in here.” But I pick up when I see Jack’s face.
“Hey, Jack. We were just talking about you.”
“About how awesome I am? That would be my topic of choice, too.”
“How about you’re not as interesting as an econ major.”
Riley winks at me and gives me another high five. “Sorry, Jack,” she yells. “You have too much body fat for me.”
“What?” he says, instantly outraged. “You tell your roommate my body fat is 8%. In no world is that too much.”
“Apparently it is in Riley’s world.” Riley gulps down the last of her cereal and heads back into her bedroom while I hit my own room to get ready to face administration.
“Your roommate needs a little education, Ellie Bellie.”
“First, do not call me that, and second, no dating the roommates.” I rifle through my closet to find an outfit that says I’m a serious student. I think that means a skirt and a button down shirt. I find a navy pencil skirt that looks like it belongs in my mother’s closet and a white Oxford shirt.
“Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Look, are you having dinner with me tonight? You blew me off last time to have dinner with your roommate, so you kind of owe me.”
“I can’t. I’m going over to the learning center to meet with the director. She can’t make time for me until after six. You should come with.” For one of my classes I’m writing a mock grant, and I chose the Agrippa Learning Center, a nonprofit that specializes in helping at risk kids who have learning disabilities.
“No, thanks. Why are you going now? Classes haven’t started.”
“I wanted to get a jump on things. Are you sure you don’t want to come with? It’s a cool place.”
Maybe you’d get inspired by seeing some kids working through their disabilities. They seemed so bright, interesting, and courageous. I wish Jack could see that, but he refused. As though even going near a center like that would make people think him dumb.
“Ellie, you told me it was painted the color of piss-yellow and smelled about the same.”
“I might have exaggerated.”
“Yeah, still not interested. You’re having dinner with me tomorrow then.”
Tomorrow would be Thursday. Did he have a team dinner then? I’d like to avoid the football team as much as possible. “I’ll think about it.”
“Either you come willingly or I’ll send the offensive line to carry you over,” he threatens.
“I said I’d think about it.”
“Too bad. It’s happening,” he says cheerfully. “Gotta run. Love you, Ellie Bellie. See you tomorrow at six.”
And for the second time before the clock even rolls to nine in the morning, someone in my family hangs up on me.
