“Yup, okay. Thanks.”
Ms. Crenshaw opens her mouth to keep talking, but before I can beg her to let the poor man go, Hot RA solves the problem by turning away as if somebody, across the field, or perhaps the country, has said his name urgently.
As he walks off, Ms. Crenshaw’s eyes are focused on what is below his waist on the back side, although there’s no lust in her face. It’s more like somebody in a museum coveting a piece of art that will never hang in their own home.
“Come on, Sarah,” she says, clapping me on the knee. “Let’s go play. You can be on my team and we’ll do this together.”
She leaves her half-eaten plate on the tabletop, all that slop fermenting in the sunshine. Eager to seize her moment, she jogs after Hot RA, ready to join him in a game I’d venture to say he’d prefer to play with anybody but her. When I don’t sign on for her parade of one, she motions to me with the same hapless insistence with which she beckons me to answer her in class.
The last thing I want to do is run around after a ball, but I slink off the table and shuffle through the grass in her wake. I don’t do well turning people down.
Then again, me being picked for anything happens so rarely that I am out of practice when it comes to refusing invitations.
With Hot RA involved, interest in whatever game is about to happen is strong, pulling many girls off tables and onto the field. Ms. Crenshaw inserts herself into his atmosphere as an asteroid so large it cannot be ignored by claiming the captainship of the other team, and she does this even though it is doubtful she has much experience with touch football. I can tell, as he looks over at her with exhaustion, that he wishes he’d proactively given the nod to one of the other residential advisors as his chosen opponent—like, before we even left the dorm. He’s stuck now, though. And no matter the outcome of the game, this is another car-window-watch-out situation, an opening for dialogue. At least on her side.
I picture them on campus ten years from now, with Ms. Crenshaw bringing up “that Mountain Day from nineteen ninety-one.” For the one hundredth time.
“Fine,” he says, his smile brightening as he looks at the girls who approach. “Let’s do touch football with five on each side.”
“Sarah’s on my team,” Ms. Crenshaw announces with a smile toward me.
In her mind, she’s reaching a hand across the divide of picked-last that she imagines I have always been on. She’s not at all far from the truth, but I wish she’d leave me out of everything. I’m like Hot RA, manipulated and stuck.
“I’m over here.”
As Greta steps free of the crowd and speaks up, I start to think of an excuse to get out of the game. With her on Hot RA’s side, she’s liable to come after me, tackling me into the grass, streaking my blacks now with green rather than brown—
Greta does not go to stand behind Hot RA. She comes over to me and Ms. Crenshaw. There’s a confused moment of quiet in the crowd. Even Hot RA does a double take, and so does Ms. Crenshaw. The only people who don’t seem shocked are the Brunettes, but then they care only about following Greta, not about any particular destination she may take them to—no, I’m wrong. Stacia is confused. Because Francesca goes and stands with Hot RA.
She doesn’t look at Greta. Greta doesn’t look at her. And it’s then that I see both girls have scuffed knees and dirt on their shorts—and what the hell happened to Francesca’s eye? Did things get physical behind the bathrooms?
The image of those two paddling their useless palms at each other is an unexpected high point of the whole day for me.
With their affiliations declared, Hot RA laughs in a relaxed way, as if everything is all right with him. “Who else wants to play?”
Stacia backs away toward the picnic table of pretties, like she doesn’t want to have anything to do with the faction that’s happening. Meanwhile, girls clamor to be led by Hot RA. They raise their hands and jump up and down when he’s picking, sit on their proverbial palms when Ms. Crenshaw does. We end up with both teams filled, and the rest melt away to the sidelines. While the rules are being explained, I find myself searching the crowd hoping that someone will rush into the fray to insist that they be provided a spot on the field. Strots and Keisha remain on their table in the shade, and I mentally urge them to join exactly the sort of competition they so readily engage in during their practices and at their games. It’s a no go. The true athletes among us are not participating with us lunch-laden amateurs.
And they are no doubt going to enjoy the show of fools.
Now we are in a huddle. Or the Ms. Crenshaw version of one, which is more like a group of strangers on public transportation, everybody trying not to catch someone else’s rhinovirus. Unlike Hot RA’s team, we don’t link our arms around each other’s shoulders. We’re not chanting. We’re not breaking apart with a clap of anticipatory triumph.
We are Ms. Crenshaw’s team, and not even Greta’s luminosity can elevate us. Apparently, being in the game is only exciting if you’re on Hot RA’s side of things.
“Let’s just go have a really good time,” Ms. Crenshaw says as she looks around at us. “That’s all that matters. Just have fun, girls.”
She claps, too, but not in the cool, hip way Hot RA does, palm against palm, a high five to himself. She claps in a patty-cake fashion, and Greta stares at her as if she’s wondering how Ms. Crenshaw is able to put her pants on right, much less operate a motor vehicle or teach the Pythagorean theorem.
Ms. Crenshaw and Hot RA are the quarterbacks and will have to alternate possessions or whatever the hell they’re called. The rest of us form lines and face off in the center of the field. Touching, no tackling, is the main rule, not that that’s relevant to me because I don’t intend on getting anywhere near the action. There’s also some kind of system of downs, but I don’t bother to track it, and there’s some sort of time limit, but I don’t remember what it is.
Hot RA has the ball first, so Ms. Crenshaw stands on the sidelines, and after we’re all in position, he calls hike and jogs back, springing lightly on his feet, looking for a receiver. Meanwhile, girls lock against girls, and Greta is surprisingly hearty about the pushing and shoving, although she avoids Francesca or maybe it’s the other way around. In contrast, I’m not enthusiastic. I don’t even do my job. I let the one I was supposed to block go right by me, and as she streaks past, I watch her like a well-wisher on the dock as a boat goes off to sea, bon voyage, traveler.
The pass is incomplete. Play stops. We reassemble.
“Do something this time,” someone snaps. “Don’t just stand there.”
I believe the person is addressing me, but it’s not Greta, so they’re easy to ignore. On the next hike or down or whatever it is, the same things happen. Hot RA gets the snap, in spite of it having a parabolic arc, and he springs backward like a gazelle, the ball cocked over his shoulder. I refuse to engage. People run by me. I let them go.
I’m hoping to be kicked out of the game. Instead, as we line up again—I’m not even sure what happened during this play—Ms. Crenshaw puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder.