The Hard Count(9)

“It’s on the team, mostly. On the legacy and history, but also on what the pressure of it all does to people,” I say, sharing more than I planned. I hold my breath, digging in for an argument.

Nico looks back for his friends, and his eyes squint a little as his hand runs along the side of his neck. He stops walking, and I stop with him. Reaching for the shirt still tucked into his waistband, he pulls the dark gray tee loose, shaking it out and slipping it over his head and arms, fishing his black hat out when it gets stuck inside and putting it on backward. I expect the smirk and the dimple, and some response about how silly my idea is when he looks at me, but instead his mouth is a flat line, and his eyes bleed sympathy.

“I bet this sucks sometimes for your family, huh?” he says. His friends are still several feet away, and my family is still being judged out under the hot Friday lights.

I nod, just enough that he registers it and nods back, his eyes never leaving mine. Within seconds, his friends are close by, and Sasha hands him a backpack and longboard, the same ones he left the classroom with earlier.

“You’ve been here all afternoon?” I ask.

Nico drops his board to the ground and rolls it forward to the walkway, smirking on the side closest to me.

“So have you,” he says.

“Yeah, but I drive home. It’s dark out here, to ride a board…” I gesture to it. A few of his friends have already taken off on bikes, and two others are walking through the middle of the parking lot.

“I ride everywhere,” he shrugs, looping his backpack over his shoulders and adjusting his hat.

I look back to his friend Sasha who is pushing his board forward and back with his foot, pretending not to be hanging on our every word.

“If you can wait until the end of the game, I could…I don’t know…take you home?” I feel foolish the second I offer it, and the feeling only gets worse when I hear his friend let out a breathy laugh.

Nico chuckles, too, and I start to say something defensive, when he, per usual, cuts me off.

“You don’t need to drive through my neighborhood, baby girl,” he says, calling me the same condescending name he smacked his friends for using seconds before. I snap my head and take in a sharp breath that gets his attention. His smile falls quickly, the hard line once again on his mouth as he looks back into the dark parking lot. No apology follows, only more reasons why he doesn’t need me, and why I never should have left the safety of the bleachers. “I’m staying at Sasha’s. It’s only two blocks away, so we’ll be fine.”

“Whatever,” I mumble, a mixture of embarrassment and general pissed-offness brewing in my gut. I step up onto the walkway and begin my trek back into the spotlight, my fingers feeling for the comfort of the buttons on my camera at my side.

I want to turn around to see if he’s watching me with every step I take, but I don’t look until I get to the bottom of the bleachers and take the first few steps back to everything I was doing before—to the goals I never should have veered from. My film. My family. Screw Nico Medina. My hunch is confirmed when I look back to see him and Sasha rolling through the middle of the lot, stopping at the exit to the main road, bright red and blue lights flashing against their skin.

I’m so caught up in my head with Nico that I don’t realize the crowd behind me has hushed and that the ambulance is being guided out onto the field. My instincts kick in, and I push the record button, stepping up through the breezeway to the second set of bleacher steps, my camera following the medics until I stop on the trainer and teammates all huddled near the thirty-yard line, my brother flat on his back, his fists at his head, his cheeks red and flushed with sheer pain as everyone works to lift his body to a board.

His hands are moving, so I know his spine is likely okay. But his leg seems to be facing the wrong direction. As a second splint is slid under his right leg and my father folds a towel in quarters, practically shoving the material into my brother’s screaming mouth, I know it’s a break. I know it’s bad. I know that for my brother, this means his time on top—at least here at Cornwall—has come to a close. I also know that my father can’t even mask his real feelings right now. His son is in pain, but even worse, his quarterback is out for the season. The two thousand people around me all want to know what he’s going to do, and a few of them are rooting for him to fail.

I haven’t stopped filming. I capture it all, because despite the rush of guilt I feel, I’m no better or worse than any of the others. I have the answer—Nico Medina. And the angle of my story just became amazing.





3





The house has that eerie quiet about it. My mom has been pacing up and down the long hallway, first passing my bedroom, then my brother’s. She walks from her and my dad’s room back to the main living room, each time something different in her hands—a vase from there, moving to here, a new painting she picked up at the decorator store, better for the bedroom. She’s redecorating, as if sprucing up our little suburban paradise will make people on the outside think we’ve got everything handled—that my dad has everything handled.

I’ve had my headphones on and my laptop propped on my legs for the last two hours, splicing video—watching Nico. My brother is in his room, in bed; his leg is propped up in a sling, a new rod holding everything in place. Broken tibias, snapped in the way Noah’s did, take at least sixteen weeks to heal. Then comes rehab and a brutal schedule already mapped out with my brother’s personal trainer to make sure he’s ready for draft day. Two schools have already fallen off the radar, but luckily, the others see it as an edge—less competition to snag Noah later in the year.