Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (12 page)

“
Where you sittin’?”

“
Our section. Row...let me check.” I hear the click of keys. “Forty-one.”

“
I’ll be looking.”

“
I’ll be watching.”

I smile and rest my head back against the couch.

?

Game day starts cloudy, but the clouds burn off by the time I get to the stadium. My toe feels better, about a hundred percent now, and the Friday and Saturday practices have made Gerrard and Steez more confident in my execution of our new plays. I spend lunch breaks and evenings talking to reporters, but I haven’t gotten fined again, and I’m able to focus on football better. The rest of the team still acts chilly, but by Sunday, that’s overtaken with the rush of game day. This week, the extra incentive of the bye week hovers over us, the mini-vacation that will be much sweeter if we play well and win.

I love Sunday mornings. Whatever else happens during the week, Coach tells us to forget it. For a few hours, we need to be a team working together toward a common goal. This week, when we have our pre-game meeting, he gives us the same rah-rah speech he gives us every week.

This week, he adds something new. “We are a team,” he says. “Anyone comes after one of us, they come after all of us. We play together!” He waits for our answering ‘Yeah!’ “We fight together!”

“
Yeah!”

“
We win together! Firebirds!”

We all jump to our feet and cheer, “Firebirds!”

“
All right,” he says. “Keep your heads in the game. Turn off all your phones now and don’t turn ’em on again ’til we’re done.” He doesn’t look at me when he says it, but Gerrard does, and I don’t have any doubt about where this new thing came from. Especially when Charm comes over just as I’m turning off my phone. He swipes at it, grinning as I pull it out of reach.

“
Yeah, pretty-boy, save your fan club for after.”

I haven’t seen the big stallion much this week. When we’re not on the road, we’re not rooming together, and we practice separately. But he saw me get fined, and I guess he heard about the commercial. I fire back at him, “Such a pity you’re gonna have to wait to set up your date tonight ’til after the game.”

He laughs. “You kiddin’? I’ll just walk outside and grab my pick.”

“
Sorry,” I say, “did you say ‘pick’ or ‘prick’?”

He guffaws. “Hey, did I tell you how I lost my wallet that one time?”

“
Yes,” I say, and Gerrard, next to me, echoes that with a little more annoyance. The wallet story is Charm’s favorite sexual escapade story, only he keeps changing it. If it was ever based in reality, I’m sure it isn’t any more.

Charm jerks his thumb toward Gerrard. “Sometime when Coach isn’t around. I got a new version.”

He walks off to finish dressing. I put the phone in the locker, with a little bit of regret that I can’t text Lee during the game. It doesn’t quite go away when I realize that Ogleby and the reporters can’t call me either. It’s just me and the guys. I like that.

Though I would like to text Lee right before we run out. I’m sitting next to Fisher after Aston does his round of the locker room, punching all the starters. “How you think they’ll react?”

He punches the arm Aston didn’t. “You’re a Firebird. They’d love you if you murdered someone.”

I snort. “Murder? Really? You had to go there?”

“
Don’t worry. Come on, let’s go get ready to rumble.”

We join the rest of the defense, jumping around, getting fired up. I feel that energy surging through me, see it in the eyes of the tigers and foxes and coyotes around me, the heavy bears jumping as if they’re as light as we are, all of us feeling exactly the same thing in that moment. We are parts of a whole, bubbling with energy just waiting to be unleashed on the Millenport Orcas. In this pre-game moment, we are all potential, all hope and optimism and confidence. My ferocious grin is mirrored on fifty muzzles around me.

And then we break, and run through the tunnel. I can hear the screaming of the fans, I can see signs bobbing in the crowd across the field, and I think I see my name on at least one of them. My steps falter just as I get to the light. Fisher knocks into me from behind. “Get out there,” he growls.

I jog out to thunders of applause. I hear a guy yell “Yeah Miski!” I hear a shout of “You go, girl,” which I assume is directed at me, because I’ve never heard it on a football field before. Then I get out onto the field, and I look around.

There are signs with rainbows, signs with my name on them. I spot one that says “GO HOME-O, MISKI,” and others like that, but there are signs supporting me, too: “WE LOVE YOU #57” and what I think are three girls with a sign that says “DEV’S DIVAS.” I get a grateful swell of relief and raise a fist to the crowd nearest me. They respond with a huge cheer.

The sidelines are weird, too. There’s a whole lot of people there who aren’t players: equipment managers, waterboys, press. Usually you just ignore them and hang out with your group, but I see a few of them staring at me, looking away when I look at them. An armadillo, though, a guy who’s been setting out the drinks probably ever since the Firebirds moved to Chevali, he gives me a grin and a thumbs-up. Three cheerleaders, pretty weasels, come over and hug me on their way out. When I see Charm’s expression as they run right past him, that settles me down a little. Just a little. It’s game time. Nothing’s gonna settle me down ’til I run out onto the field.

I’m reminded of the Aventira game when we line up opposite Millenport for the first time, even though their uniforms are turquoise blue and white rather than navy blue and silver. There’s no lippy stallion to taunt me, this time. A black bear and their star boar line up on my side, with another boar on the outside. They don’t say a word, but the gleam of their eyes in the shadow of their helmets stays fixed on me. I have no doubt what’s on their mind.

The first series, they run the ball to my side, and the bear sidesteps Fisher to slam into my side, knocking me to the turf. “Keep your fucking mouth shut, pussy,” he growls as he gets up.

“
Nice to meet you, too.” I stand up and shake it off. He left his assignment to come tackle me, meaning Fisher was able to drop the runner for a loss. The bear still high-fives his friends as they get back into their set. “Asshole,” I mumble next to Gerrard.

“
Don’t worry about him,” Gerrard says. “If they spend the whole game focusing on you, they’re not gonna get anywhere. You can take it.”

“
Course I can.” I stand up and glare back at them. “They’re gonna try running it again.”

“
That’s my read too.” He nods. “Cover the runner.”

This time, I know the bear’s coming for me, so I keep an eye on him. But it’s the boar who dives through the line, trying to take me out. He’s not fast enough. I shoot past him, heading for the hole he left in the line. Gerrard’s there a half-step ahead of me. We drop the runner for another loss.

The next down, they have to throw. We drop back into coverage and break up the pass.

That sequence of events repeats itself over and over in the first half. Fisher never lets the bear get a head of steam up again, but on several plays the bear gets through when Fisher sees a chance to stop a run. We meet up three more times, though he doesn’t say anything again and neither of us goes down.

At halftime, we’re up 14-0, and Coach gives us a great pep talk. Gerrard grabs me and Carson and we go over some of the things we need to fix up with Steez. “If I’m rushing for a gap,” Gerrard says, “don’t follow me. Cover the slot guys in case they try to dump the ball off.” I just nod, even though on that play I didn’t even know he was going for the gap until I’d already started. None of us talks about me being targeted, except when Steez says, “They keep coming for you, they leave holes elsewhere. Heads not in game. We
use
this.”

And we do. Their coach must’ve talked to them at halftime, too, because they stop coming after me so directly. I see why the boar’s doing so well; on certain plays, he takes Fisher one-on-one and blocks him perfectly, frustrating Fisher so much that his tail’s lashing when he lines up. They only break off two good runs the whole third quarter, and by the fourth, when we’re up 21-0, they start throwing the ball a lot more. I bump their receiver, disrupt their patterns, and swat the ball down once. In fact, the fourth quarter is dull, dull, dull, right up until it gets horribly interesting.

It’s a blown play, supposed to be a run to the strong side, but our guys collapse the line on that side and the running back scrambles toward us, cocking his arm like he’s going to throw. I see this and drop back, looking for the slot guys behind me while Fisher and Brick take care of the bear and boars. I don’t see, until we watch it again on film, that Gerrard drops back too, that we’re both covering one guy, while Brick takes on their star boar all by himself.

That’s why Fisher has the bear and the other boar to himself. I swear they planned it. The bear blocks him backwards into the boar. The boar, going low, swings his head and catches Fisher right behind the knee with his tusks, swinging through viciously.

I only see this later, on the replay. The first thing I notice is Fisher falling, clutching his leg. Whistles blow all around and play stops. The boar tries to deny it, but he’s got blood on his tusk, for Christ’s sake. I’m over there before I know what I’m doing, screaming in his face, “What the hell was that?”

“
Hey, faggot,” he snarls, “it’s a game for guys with balls.”

“
You were getting up and you fucking gored him!”

He pushes me in the chest. I take a swing at him. “You wanna fight, homo?”

The line judge is trying to separate us, but even though he’s a big rhino, I don’t have any trouble getting around him. “Try me, sissy-boy,” I snarl. “Not so easy fighting someone face to face, is it?”

Brick is up next to me now, distracting the line judge, both of us pushing the boar back. His teammates flank him, and the ref comes over. “It was a cheap shot,” Brick says. “Just ’cause you couldn’t get past him all game.”

“
I can get past him whenever I want,” the boar growls.

“
Break it up here.” The ref is a stocky deer. He rattles his antlers against our helmets, pushing us apart.

“
Maybe you’ll decide you want to sometime tomorrow,” I taunt him.

The boar yells back at me, “Let’s see how you do without your butt-buddy to protect you.”

“
Did you see that cheap shot?” I yell at the ref, trying to ignore what he’s saying about me.

Brick isn’t so subtle. “You want a butt-buddy, go fuck your faggot friend there,” he yells, lunging. The rhino turns to stop him cold, but that leaves me a clear path, and, unfortunately, the boar gives me an excuse to use it.

“
Didn’t make your boyfriend any slower,” he yells. “Throw anyone you want at me.”

“
Take me,” I snap, and leap forward, raking claws across his snout.

He staggers back, clapping hands to his bleeding nose. Whistles shriek again, flags fly. Brick and Gerrard pull me away while the refs are making hand motions that I don’t understand until Gerrard pushes me toward the sideline. I want to beat the hell out of that boar. The blood on his snout isn’t near enough payment for Fisher’s leg.

Reality filters in when Zillo jogs out to replace me. Zillo has that same sneer on his muzzle that I always see when he looks at me, but when his eyes flick to where the trainers are surrounding Fisher, the sneer falters. He gives me another glance and then lowers his head and jogs to the line. He’s a big coyote, but still not as big as Gerrard, and definitely not as tall as me.

“
Calm it down, calm it down,” Coach yells. The trainers lift Fisher, supporting his weight as he hops on one leg. I run over to his side, ignoring the ref yelling at me to get off the field. I still haven’t quite processed that I’ve been thrown out of the game.

“
Don’t blow it,” he growls at me through gritted teeth. “Don’t let ’em get to you.”

“
Too late. How’s the leg?” I ask, anger surging again at the goddamn boar.

Fisher just gives me a strained look that tells me everything I need to know. Fisher’s backup, Pike, is already out too, walking off the fifteen yards with the rest of the defense. I walk back to the sidelines with Fisher; the refs stop yelling at me to get off the field when they see what I’m doing.

I walk back to the locker room with the trainers, and split time between watching Fisher get treatment and watching the game on the locker room TVs. Fisher gives me a thumbs-up, and then the sedative kicks in, and he gets kinda glassy-eyed. So I focus on the game.