I'd Rather Not Be Dead (10 page)

He holds up his middle finger
behind his helmet, where no one else can see it.

I grin at him. “Good luck.”

He grins back and takes the
field with his team.

As the captains gather with the
refs for the coin toss, I wander the stands and find a seat by my
family. I wind up having to perch on the steps because the benches
near them are full, but I'm close enough to Mom that she pulls out
a blanket and drapes it over her legs almost as soon as I
arrive.

The first quarter goes well
enough, but the defense falls apart in the second. Then, rather
than being rallied by whatever happens in the locker room at
halftime, they not only continue to crumble in the third but they
take the offensive line with them, leaving Finn open to be pounded
by four sacks. And I lose count of how many runs fail because
someone doesn't bother to block Yancy's defense.

If you look at the stats of Pine
Ridge's failures, the sacks, the lost yardage, the points allowed
by the defense... It says something really positive that they're
only down by ten at the end of the third. So far Finn's thrown four
touchdown passes and rushed for another. One of his receivers even
breaks a school record on the first drive of the final quarter.

I know this because my dad
repeats it over and over to my mom with an admiring excitement he
usually reserves for particularly well designed electronics.

I don't know where the other me
is. Probably with Cris, but maybe not. She'd rather sit in the
basement staring at the wall than come here, even though I wasn't
lying when I told Finn I don't dislike football itself. And that's
fine. It's cold here. The seats are hard metal. None of my friends
are here. But... I never did anything else with my family either,
other than be annoyed by their existence. With the exception of
Miss Whiskers, I'd honestly thought I'd be happy to be rid of
them.

On the field, the ball snaps and
within a heartbeat Finn's on the ground again. Sack number five. It
earns him some respect from me that he doesn't waste a second
moaning but instead leaps up and motions energetically to his team,
trying to rally them at a time when I, personally, would be
bellowing at the guys who weren't bothering to block for me.

The running back picks up a
first down, bringing the ball to what would be field goal range in
the NFL but isn't anywhere near in high school. The chains move and
a new play starts. Finn pulls back, looks downfield, and throws
straight toward the record-setting receiver.

A shattering crash resounds
through the night.

Finn flies several feet, landing
on his back with a thud I could probably hear from here if it
weren't for the stadium full of people suddenly yelling.

The receiver's too busy staring
with the rest of the us to catch the ball.

Finn doesn't move.

The crowd stops screaming about
the late hit and goes perfectly silent. Deathly silent.

When Finn finally starts to sit
up, we all breathe out in perfect synchronization. The coach and
the emergency staff haven't gotten onto the field yet before he's
climbed to his feet again. He wasn't down for a fraction as long as
it felt like. I could have sworn minutes had passed, not mere
seconds.

The group sigh of relief turns
to a cheer, but then it gets ugly. Because there's no flag. The ref
was standing right there. And. There's. No. Flag. My blood boils.
If that wasn't a text book example of an illegal hit, I'll bleach
my hair blond and start wearing pink.

The whole crowd jumps to their
feet and bellows at the officials. Even Rain's stopped texting her
friends to make threatening gestures. If unsportsmanlike conduct
could be called on the fans, we'd be getting penalized for it.

But it doesn't phase Finn in the
slightest. Nope, he just gathers his troops into a huddle and then
trots them out to the line of scrimmage with a cheerful little
series of signals to the sideline.

Then he rushes fifteen yards
before jumping out of bounds.

He hands the ball to the asshole
ref who failed to make the late hit call without a hint of
hostility.

Five plays later, the running
back's in the end zone and the extra point will make this a three
point game with less than five minutes to go. Except the kicker
shanks it, sending the ball careening way off to the left.

The crowd groans as we stay down
by four points, meaning the home team can't tie with a field goal.
Not that it matters. If the guy can't make an extra point, who'd
trust him with a field goal anyway?

Yancy eats up four minutes of
game time before turning the ball over and giving Finn another
shot.

The halfback sprints straight
into two defenders, leaving the clock to tick downward while I
wonder why in the world anyone would have called a running play
there.

The offense hurries into place
without conference, snapping the ball the instant everyone is set.
The defense, denied time to gather itself, allows a twenty yard
pass. So, we're midfield now but there's only fifteen seconds on
the clock and we're out of timeouts.

I bite my lip and hope the
offensive line holds. The defense is going to be coming hard
because there's no question as to whether Finn's going to try to
throw the ball, just how far downfield he'll be aiming.

The defense blitzes but Finn
gets the ball off as they crash into his line. He goes down in
another uncalled late hit but the receiver makes the catch before
being shoved out of bounds near the thirty.

No one's sitting as the teams
line up for the last play of the game.

Finn takes the ball and dashes
backward.

The lines slam into each
other.

Finn throws...

Our record-setting receiver is
under double coverage but the ball's right on target, homes
straight into his hands.

Sails right through his
hands.

The ball smacks against his
chest, falls to the ground somewhere in the vicinity of the one
yard line. And gets picked up by a Yancy player.

The guy from Yancy jogs across
the turf, making a pretense at moving the ball even though it's
obvious to everyone the pass was incomplete. No one even bothers to
try tackling him.

The clock ticks off the last
four seconds.

Only when the numbers on the
scoreboard make it down to zero does anyone blow a whistle. Which
is when it hits us. The ruling on the field is that the obviously
incomplete pass we just witnessed was a catch followed by a
fumble.

And this isn't the NFL. There's
no replay.

The game's over. The season's
over. And the official walking away from the field to the sound of
the entire population of Pine Ridge cursing at him gets to go home
and fear for his life.

Chapter Ten

I sprint out of the stands
before everyone else starts to leave, unwilling to be caught in the
middle of a potentially violent crowd even if they'd pass through
me.

Finn's first out of the locker
room. He's taken off his game uniform and tossed on the stuff he
wore over even though he didn't take the time to shower. He smiles
and waves to people on the way out, but doesn't stop for them.

We've passed the lights of the
parking lot and gone to the dimmer lighting of residential streets
before he says anything. “Well, that's over.”

It's said lightly, but with an
odd strain of finality that tell me he means more than the game.
“At least you went out with a completion.”

He lets out half of a laugh.
“Yeah. But poor Trent. His last play, possibly ever, and he handed
the ball over in a do-or-die situation.”

“Sucks,” I agree, surprised to
find myself feeling a bad for the guy. “But at least he can blame
the ref.”

“Yeah.” Finn rolls his eyes.
“Eighty years from now, he'll be sitting in a nursing home talking
about how he was robbed.”

It occurs to me that Finn really
doesn't appear all that upset for someone who just lost a game,
especially someone who just lost a very important one due in no
small part to atrocious officiating. This is the end of his high
school career. Is his head already on college ball?

“And you?” I ask. “You don't
seem too bothered.”

“What am I supposed to do? Rant
and curse? Break some windows?” He gives me a direct look. “It's
over. I'm no longer a starting quarterback.”

“Until next fall.”

He snorts. “I'm not going to be
starting at Blue Ridge.”

“Not how I heard it.”

“You believe everything you
hear?” His mouth quirks a little.

“Whatever.” I could argue. I
could point out that Blue Ridge State's current starter is
graduating, that his backup took a career-ending hit two weeks ago,
and that because they have absolutely no one in training Finn
actually does have a good shot at starting for them even as a true
freshman. But doing that would prove I know this crap. Which might
imply I care. Which I don't.

We trade a glance and I get the
distinct feeling he sees more than he lets on.

“Did you cheer?” he asks.

“Every sack.”

He grins. “At least you were
paying attention.”

When we get to his house, his
truck's still alone in the driveway. “Your mom still at the field?”
I ask.

“Nah, she never goes to the
games.” With a shrug he starts up the driveway. “It's not a lack of
support. She just can't handle seeing me get hit.”

He goes into the house and turns
on the light in the den, but heads straight for the stairs as soon
as the switch is flipped. “I'm hitting the shower,” he says.

“Please don't tell me I have to
wait with the teddy bears. They're freaky.”

Something passes across his
features. Something I recognize, although I never would have
thought to see it on Cooper Finnegan's face. Not directed toward
me.

My heart races but he doesn't
invite me to join him in the shower. “You can wait in my room.”

“Okay,” I squeak.

“Just try not to freak out my
girlfriend,” he adds.

My feet stop on the steps.
Girlfriend? Why does that thought make me feel ill?

“Or her brother,” he goes on,
continuing up. “He's easy to freak out.”

“Squeamish in-laws?” I trudge
behind him as he turns down a hallway. “Bummer.”

He opens a door and then heads
up another flight of stairs. Above us, there's a lot of scratching
and what sounds like clucking.

“Oh, speak again, bright angel,”
Finn says in a sing-song voice. “For thou art as glorious to this
night, being over my head, as is a winged messenger of heaven.”

Shakespeare? Is Cooper Finnegan
quoting Shakespeare? To a chicken?

There's a night light
illuminating a room that would be a lot less cramped were it not
for the large amount of real-estate dedicated to a mansion of a
ferret cage.

Finn turns the overhead light
on. “It is the east and Juliet is the sun.”

He goes straight to the cage,
opening the door for a mass of fur desperate to be let out. It
scurries up his arm and he cuddles it against his chest. “Missed
you too, Juliet.”

He clears his throat and looks
over the squirming bundle of ferret to me. “This is Juliet. The
less spastic one's Romeo.”

Romeo's still in the cage,
although he's come to the door. He looks at me with what I take to
be distrust. Not that I'm an expert on the expressions of
weasels.

“My sister named them,” Finn
says, distancing himself from responsibility on that score. “Just
before she decided she didn't want ferrets after all and gave them
to me.”

“Poor critters,” I mumble,
staring back at Romeo.

He crawls from the cage, walks
calmly up to me, and bats at my boot lace.

“Wow. He usually doesn't take to
strangers.”

Usually doesn't take to
strangers? I move my stare to Finn. “He's touching me.”

“Yeah.” He shrugs. “That's weird
too.”

I don't know if I want to hit
him or just cry.

“I'm going to take a shower.”
Finn bends to put Juliet down. “Don't pick Romeo up, he's scared of
heights.”

“Scared of heights?” I repeat
numbly.

“But not ghosts.” Finn shrugs
again. “Go figure.”

He goes to the dresser and
starts to pull some things out.

“You're not at all curious as to
why your pets can touch me?” I shriek. I don't mean to shriek, it
just happens that way.

“Of course I am,” he responds
with truly annoying calm. “But talking about it won't help. And
meanwhile, I'm dirty and in a lot of pain. I want a shower. A very
long and very hot one.”

“Pain?” I latch on to. “From
what?”

He looks somewhat hurt by the
question. “I thought you were watching the game.”

I roll my eyes and smother the
memory of the terror I felt after that hit we heard in the stands,
when he was lying motionless on the field. “You were knocked
around. So what? You were wearing a ton of padding.”

He just stares for a few
seconds, then tosses his clean clothes up onto the bed and grabs
the edge of his shirt, pulling it over his head to reveal a
smorgesboard of burgeoning bruises. “The pads lessen impact. They
don't take it away.”

Okay. Maybe he wasn't just being
whiny.

“Why do you do that?” I have to
ask, my hand drifting toward him.

His eyes tighten on my motion.
“I love it.”

“You're a masochist,” I
conclude.

“Tell me something I don't
know.”

My fingers brush across his
chest, even though I don't remember walking closer to him. I go
still, my hand against his flesh. He's completely motionless, not
even breathing, but his heart beat is strong, alive.

He moves back. “Don't do
that.”

My eyes are on his chest. On the
hand print on his chest. On the one patch of completely unmarred
skin.