“Remember, just run as hard as you can,” she says. “Do you hear me? No one’s been guarding you, so you can get open. I’ll throw to you.”
My heart starts to pound. “What?”
“Come on, girls!” she calls out. “We can do this!”
“Wait—what?”
I should have paid more attention. I should have offered another idea for a play, not that my football knowledge is in any way sufficient. I should have intercepted the bee sting so that I could have taken a medical leave of yet another impending failure I was volunteered for by a grown-up.
As we set up, Greta looks down the line at me, her glare shooting across the bent backs of our teammates.
“You better fricking run,” she says.
I look away in a panic. If we don’t even the score and go into overtime, I’m the one she’ll find responsible for the murder of her ambition in this game. If I don’t do what I’m supposed to, if I don’t catch the ball and haul it like I’ve never run before, there will be retributions, even worse than the casual, offhand pranks she’s pulled so far. My throat promptly goes dry and my stomach churns on its load of ham and turkey and bread. I want to throw up, and nearly do, as a sickening flush goes through me. The sun feels a thousand times hotter on my black clothes, and I cease to be able to feel my legs, a problem as I have been commanded to be fleet of foot.
When the snap happens, all of the bodies on the field shift positions with the graceless shuffle of Claymation. Ms. Crenshaw catches the ball like she’s wearing a huge set of slippery mittens, the fumbling grab nearly ending in early disaster. She looks at me, but for once says nothing, a secret kept. This is my cue to run, but I don’t take it from her. I take it from Greta, who’s evidently agreed this is the best strategy. Maybe this is my chance to get into her good graces. If I do score, so that she can mete out a punishment upon a married man who seems to not care she’s angry at him, maybe my life will hit a flight path at Ambrose with a better cruising speed and an altitude that puts me above my current turbulence.
Calling upon my legs, I beg them to move, and shift they do, left, right, left, right. I run the way Ms. Crenshaw catches snaps, as if there are things impeding my activity, things that are weighty and take me off balance. I am a hobbling mess as I cover distance toward the red-flagged stakes at the other end of the field, but the assessment made in the huddle, that no one will see me or care about me, has proven correct. I break away as the others argue with their hands, pushing and shoving at the line.
I look over my shoulder. My hair gets in my face. My lungs burn and still I move, my sneakers trampling grass. Ms. Crenshaw is backing up, not with the bounce of Hot RA, but in the manner of my stride, nearly tripping on nothing at all. She’s waiting for me to get into position, as if she can throw that far, as if I can catch anything coming at me.
This is a bad plan. This is going to result in calamity.
Ms. Crenshaw draws back and releases her throw, sending the pigskin into the air. Its path is wobbly and ugly. Her incompetence has contaminated the football through the contact of her palm, robbing it of the lilting, magical flight that Hot RA’s unicorn grip brought out of its molecular makeup. Meanwhile, against all odds, I cross over into the end zone, and a saving geometric grace is served upon me, my terrible run bringing me inexplicably to the exact curving terminal of a terrible throw. All I’ve got to do is hold out my hands to receive the blessing.
The girls on both teams are looking at me from across the field with shock on their faces, their contorted bodies freezing in mid-scrimmage, all bad angles and off-balance stances. They cannot believe this any more than I can. On the sidelines, Hot RA’s mouth is open wide, but not because he’s cheering his team. He’s dumbfounded. Ms. Crenshaw’s mouth is also open, but she’s screaming in excitement, her hands in fists up close to her chin, her body poised to jump with joy from the ground.
In the midst of this tableau depicting the win/loss tipping point between the teams, I see only Greta with true clarity. The rest are sketches; she’s the full pen-and-ink drawing. She’s not excited. She’s not exhibiting anything even on the cusp of happiness. She’s furious. I’m about to provide her with what she wants, this score to survive in a game that means nothing, and yet she’s full of rage because she’d rather be the one catching the ball.
Then again, Greta would never have gotten down this far because she’s not incompetent like me and would have been guarded. It’s only through my lack of coordination and participation that I’m in this position, and no doubt the contradictions in all this are part of what makes her furious. Or maybe it’s simpler than all that. Perhaps it’s just because I am the only option to get her what she wants.
The ball is coming closer, and now that I am safely in the end zone, I turn my full body around and brace for impact. I put my hands out, cupping my palms together, my bent forearms a landing basket, my chest a brick wall. There is nothing more for me to do. The whims of fate have dictated this unlikely success, proving that, for all the possibles for which we wish that are not granted, there remain out in the ether a given number of improbables that will roost at random and without regard to our exaltations or our lamentations.
This is proof that chaos theory is a far better thing to believe in than the existence of God.
As luck would have it, Greta is in my line of sight, the flight path of the ball intersecting our stares and blocking her glare, for a moment. And while the vision of her is cut off, something rises within me, something that’s been stirring beneath my fear, my worry, my cleanup of her pranks. With incalculable mental speed, I picture Greta missing the tackle that enraged her so, Hot RA skipping around her, dodging her hands and effectively landing her perfect nose in the grass. I think of her laser sight on Ms. Crenshaw in the huddle. I think of her barking at me as we lined up at center field, and then narrowing her eyes as I hobbled down here alone to get into a position to receive.
I think of her ditching her two best friends in the rain without a care.
I think of my shampoo, my clothes, and that memo.
I think of her on that mountain with Nick Hollis.
The ball smacks into my chest, the impact stinging my sternum and making a sharp noise. Distantly, I hear the cheer of my teammates, and I see them turn to each other, already celebrating, congratulating themselves for staying alive in the game. Ms. Crenshaw likewise leaps into the air as Hot RA cringes back in an exaggeration of frustration on the sidelines.
Across the field, Greta’s expression does not change. And that’s when I realize that if I do this for her, things’ll only get worse because she’ll be pissed I was the one who scored and kept us going. But if I don’t even up this game for her, things’ll only get worse because I’ll have denied her what she demanded of me.
Succeed or fail, I cannot win.
So I don’t close my hands. I don’t curl my arms up to my meager chest and capture the ball. I let that which was intended by some invisible, irrational force for me and me alone to bounce free, another arc created at the transfer of energy, one that results in the football bouncing across the ground, until it comes to rest just out of bounds.