“See?” Carter said. “The power of imagination.”
Elijah gave him a playful shove. “Man.”
Carter laughed, his chest amazingly light. He felt like his spine had come unbent during practice, his shoulders growing weightless and wide. He couldbreathe.
“Let’s run through it a few more times.”
They did, Elijah’s accuracy perfecting on each sequence. It was a warm evening, warmer than it had been so far, and when they were both sticky and uncomfortable with sweat, pleasantly sore and tired, they flopped down on the grass to drink water and catch their breath.
“It’s starting to feel like spring for real,” Carter observed, reclining back on his elbows, the evening warm and humid against his face. The air smelled of cut grass, and sweet flowers, and, faintly, the tang of the river, carried along on the breeze. He cracked an eye open, to find Elijah mirroring his posture a few feet away. “When does school let out for the summer?”
“Week after next. We’ll still have practice, but only a couple times a week.”
Carter nodded. He’d always liked summers – the football camp parts of it. No studying English, no slaving over pages of incomprehensible equations at night. He ate, slept, and breathed football, from the pre-dawn run, to the films he watched before passing out at night. He’d seen other kids laid out around pools, and headed to the mall – aimless, teenage fun. But he’d had work to do. It had felt, no matter how pathetic it sounded now, like his life held some importance. You didn’t become great without putting the time and effort in. And by God, he couldn’t make his dad a better father, and he couldn’t change his origins, but he could work, and work he had, until he’d had SEC schools knocking on his door, offering him opportunities he’d only ever dreamed of.
And then…
He closed his eyes again, the last rays of sun warm across his lids. “I guess we won’t be needing to meet anymore, then.” He was a little surprised at the note of sadness in his voice, but he shouldn’t have been: he’d enjoyed this. Enjoyed getting back to football; enjoyed being useful in a way he never felt with the club.
“Why not?” Elijah asked.
Carter turned his head, vision red-edged and blurry from the sun when he opened his eyes. “I think I’ve probably shared whatever wisdom I had. You’re doing great. You don’t need me.”
Elijah frowned and sat up, plucking idly at the grass with fingertips that looked nervous, suddenly. His face didn’t give much away, though, nor his voice, more like that careful, modulated tone he’d used when they first met, before he trusted Carter at all. “We’re gonna have some clinics at camp,” he said, studying his hands, “and Coach said something about getting a new offensive coordinator.”
“About time.”
“But.” His gaze cut over, questioning. He took a deep breath, and said, “But what if I wanted to keep meeting. Not all the time,” he said in a rush, trying not to sound too eager, Carter thought. “Just some of the time. But. To keep fresh.”
Carter couldn’t hold back the smile that bloomed. It must have looked crazy, judging by the way Elijah’s brows went up. He managed to keep his voice calm, though, when he said, “Yeah. Yeah, that’d be good.”
They regarded one another a moment, then Elijah nodded and glanced away. He plucked an especially long blade of grass and ran it slowly through his fingertips, again and again. “Second string might need a tune-up, too.”
Carter nodded, still grinning. “Bring him. Happy to help.”
Elijah stilled. “Shit, should I be, like, paying you? For coaching?”
“No. No, I don’t need the money.”
Another nod, and Elijah’s shoulders dropped in obvious relief.
Carter drained the rest of his water and glanced out across the field. Now that they’d stopped moving around, the birds from earlier had returned, fat robins hopping along with their heads cocked, pulling up worms from the soft grass. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this hopeful about something. And it was a small thing: giving free advice to high school players. But more and more he was deciding that that sort of hope wasn’t something to be mocked, no matter how small or inconsequential it seemed.
When Elijah spoke next, his voice had shifted. “Hey.” A heaviness now, something low and worried that had Carter’s head whipping around. Elijah’s brows had drawn together, and a frown plucked at his mouth.
“What’s wrong?”
“I wasn’t gonna say anything, but…Jimmy Connors.”
And just like that, hope was crowded by a familiar nervous dread.
“He was running his mouth yesterday in the cafeteria. I wasn’t even sitting at his table, but I heard him talking a buncha shit. He said Allie’s parents hired a detective, and that she was threatening him.”
Carter frowned. “Her parents did hire a detective, but she isn’t threatening him.”
“I didn’t figure. But. That’s what he’s saying. And he said the Lean Dogs were gonna be sorry.”
Carter snorted. “It wouldn’t be the first time somebody said that about us.”
