“Nothing. I just wondered if you banged your head. When you walked into it.”
I raise my hands. “I give up. You win.”
“Hurray for me.” She laughs, giving me a peck on the cheek before she gets on the bus.
Mountain Ridge’s stadium is big for how small their school is. They’re a division below us, but we play them because we’re in the same school district. I hate away games. The energy is always different when our team is playing at another school. Mountain Ridge is almost an hour away, and the main road to get here is a two-way highway, so we don’t get many students and fans who will travel. But I’m surprised to see the stadium over half full when we pull up, and there’s still over an hour before the game starts.
“Look at that,” Cam says, pointing to our side of the stadium. “You’re forming a fan base Cross.”
“Oh, shut it. It takes an entire team to win a football game.”
“I know that, but people want to say they watched Crawford Cross play high school football before he became one of the NFL greats.”
“Too bad that will never happen.” I groan, looking back out at the stadium.
“You’ve got to believe it to achieve it, bro.” Cam pats my back and stands up, getting in line to get off the bus.
“If that’s what I wanted,” I mutter to myself.
I glance back at the bus behind ours as the cheerleaders disembark. Hannah jumps off the last step of the bus with a smile. She looks fantastic tonight. She’s added temporary tattoos to her face, arms, legs, and even more glitter since I saw her before we left. It makes her sparkle. She glances at me, gives me a cheesy smile, and winks. She turns her head and taps her neck for me to see that she’s put a number ten tattoo where my favorite place to kiss her is. My heart sputters, and I let out a groan.
“You’ve got it bad.” Ty slaps my back.
“I know, and I don’t even care.”
“Want me to guard the bus for fifteen minutes?” Ty asks with a stupid grin on his face. I wrap my arm around his head, pinning him in a headlock.
“Say the magic words,” I tease, ruffling his hair.
“Ford is a sports God.”
I laugh, letting go of him.
“How long have we been using that stupid phrase?”
“Sixth grade.” Jack comes up behind T. doing the same thing I just did.
“Son of a…you two are making my hair all frizzy.”
“Say it.” Jack laughs.
Tyler mumbles, “Jack is a sports God.” And he lets go. “That never gets old.”
We do warmups, and the seats continue to fill. With only ten minutes left of warm up, they announce that the stadium is at capacity.
“Damn!” T. shakes his head.
I just nod. My stomach skips the butterflies and goes straight to the crows. “It’s just another game. We need to treat it like that.”
We huddle at our end of the field for a pep talk, but Coach Anderson defers to me. I look out at the overflowing stadium and clear my throat. “All these people came to see the best football team in the state. That team is you. This isn’t my team or Ty’s or Jack’s. It’s ours. Every one of us who puts this uniform on. You who dedicate hours upon hours of work to making this team what it is. Tonight, don’t go out there for the crowd. Go out there for yourself. Go out there for all your hard work. Tonight, make yourself proud. Make your team proud.”
“HELL YEAH!” Ty jumps up, screaming.
We yell our mantra together. We see an enormous banneracross the field for the other team. It reads: “Your winning streak is about to end!”
Tyler shrieks and falls to the ground in a fit of laughter. “That’s the best joke I’ve heard all week.”
I chuckle. I love my friend, and I turn to my team. “Who’s Number One?”
