My Saturday morning began with Advil, half a bottle of Gatorade, and a piece of untoasted white bread—all of which I threw up.

I'd never been so hungover before.

While Hanna headed to the Art House to pregame with Mehri, to whom I'd transferred my student ticket so my beloved roommate wouldn't be alone in the stands, I tried to pull myself together. Ellison Michaels was expecting ESPN-grade coverage of this game and, by God, I was going to deliver.

Even if it killed me.

Which, as I marched across campus, I thought it might.

I'd never realized how bright the sun was (blinding, even through Andre's sunglasses) or how loud thousands of people could be when they'd all started drinking at ten o'clock in the morning (deafening). I was on the parkway when Garland's marching band started their pre-kick-off rally outside the student union. I decided, on the spot, that our fight song was the most obnoxious harmony ever composed.

I hated this school. I hated everyone in it. I was never drinking wine ever again.

❖ ❖ ❖

Joey Aldridge was waiting for me outside the media entrance on the far side of the stadium. He looked like the idealized image of a student journalist, with his white Garland University polo shirt and neatly combed hair, an enormous Nikon camera in his hands and a lanyard bearing his media pass slung over his neck.

I marched up to him, knowing full well that I looked like something that'd be plunged out of a public toilet, and pushed my sunglasses on top of my head.

"Hey, Joey."

His smile wavered as he took in the sight of me.

"H—hey, Laurel!" he greeted. "Did you bring your media pass?"

I'd shoved all my crap into a reusable tote from Target. I now regretted this, seeing as our opponent for the day was Stanford, whose colors were also red and white. My glorified shopping bag also provided no organizational benefits, which meant it took me several long, uncomfortable moments of digging around to find my media pass.

"Gotcha," I grumbled in triumph.

I looped my pass over my neck. The lanyard caught on my ponytail. I grumbled out an expletive under my breath.

"Are you—are you good?" Joey asked, eyes wide.

"I'm fine," I snapped. Then I sighed and said, "No. I'm really hungover."

Turns out drinking the equivalent of a bottle and a half of wine will do that to you.

"Oh, same," Joey said with a grin. "We had this massive party at the A Cappella House last night. I had like eight Four Lokos. I don't know how I'm alive right now."

It seemed cosmically unfair that alcohol could affect two people so differently. But I was glad for Joey's clearheadedness as he led me through the security line and explained what kind of notes I should take during the game and when we'd be allowed to walk down to the field and approach the players and coaching staff for interviews.

We took an elevator up past the concourse and the luxury suites, all the way to the long, windowed room perched high over the stadium—the press box. I'd never been inside it before. Most home games, I was somewhere in the student section with Hanna, so all I knew was that I loved the press box because it cast a pleasant shadow across the field during brutally hot afternoon games. Joey informed me that things worked a little differently up here, high above the commoners.

There was no favoritism and no cheering allowed in the press box (which I wasn't complaining about, considering my throbbing hangover headache).

Joey and I had to display our passes at the door, and then we were in.

The press box was almost two stories tall, with floor to ceiling windows looking out over the stadium and three rows of solid desk space to house laptops and clipboards and paper cups of coffee. Each row was twice as wide and twice as tall as traditional stadium seating; you could walk behind the lines of desk chairs without blocking the view of anyone in the next row up.

All around us were journalists and broadcasters from the Los Angeles Times, Bleacher Report, Sports Illustrated, CBS, NBC, ESPN, Fox Sports—every major media outlet in the collegiate sports scene. It was a journalism major's networking heaven.

I felt suddenly and unshakably inadequate.

Everybody in the room had resumes that made mine look like I'd written it in crayon. Even the other writers from the Daily—four seniors and two juniors who, like Joey, had been sports beat reporting since their first semesters at Garland—made me feel like two children stacked under a trench coat, just masquerading as a real adult.

As Joey and I shuffled down to the second row and took our seats alongside the other Daily writers, I felt eyes on my back.

People were staring at me.

"Do I look, like, super hungover?" I whispered, wiping my palms on the front of the dark green blouse I'd worn in substitute of my usual Gameday outfit (I'd figured a sweat-stained practice jersey didn't exactly exude professionalism).

Joey glanced over his shoulder and must've caught more than a few people watching us.

"Your name was on the Vaughn article," he said. "Don't worry about it. They're probably just butthurt they didn't break the story first."

I couldn't figure out if I wanted to throw up because I was hungover, or because I felt like a bug pinned under a microscope.

I turned my attention to the field.

It took me an embarrassingly short measure of time to spot Bodie in the sea of uniformed players stretching and warming up.

Just seeing his jersey number made me sink lower in my seat.

I had, perhaps, gotten too drunk last night.

It was so embarrassing to think about. The moment I'd heard Fogarty walk into the Baseball House, I'd know that I should cut my losses and call it a night. I'd known, and still—as soon as I'd seen Bodie, I'd looked for reasons to hover. I'd wanted to talk to him, even though I'd known it would only lead to another dead end and additional outrage.

Because I'd been drunk. And wine-drunk Laurel had categorically no chill to speak of.

I'd stuck around for a fight.

It shouldn't have mattered so much that he didn't believe our article—most of the football team didn't—and I certainly shouldn't have been spending mental energy thinking of ways to convince him I was sincere when I was sure that both the police and the university would come back with even stronger evidence against Vaughn at the end of their respective investigations.

He just made me so frustrated.

"It's go time," Joey said.

They were clearing the field. It was almost time for kick-off.

I hunched over my clipboard and finished labeling the columns on my stats chart. Since my experience as a sports beat writer was lacking, I could at least fake my way through today with an almost asinine dedication to organization. I'd take note of every play. No detail would slip by me.

A murmur of confusion rolled through the press box.

Fuck. I'd missed something already.

"What happened?" I asked, looking between Joey's wide-eyed expression and the field, where Fogarty and a Stanford player were at the fifty-yard line for the coin toss.

Joey shook his head, his eyes focused out on the field.

"Fogarty isn't starting," he murmured. "And neither is St. James."

Instead, Gordon had put in Andre (my darling boy) and the second string quarterback, Copeland—a narrow-shouldered sophomore who I'd only ever seen play when Bodie was injured or completely worn out. The kid was quick on his feet, but his passing wasn't nearly as sharp as Bodie's.

Gordon's benching him because his grades are tanking.

The words were on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed them back down in the name of journalistic integrity. Bodie's academic failings weren't mine to share—not when he and Gordon had discussed them privately.

Beside. Right now, we needed to focus on what was happening on the field.

Stanford won the coin toss. We went on the offensive.

On the first play, Andre caught a half-decent pass for a twelve-yard run and I had to remind myself there was no cheering allowed in the press box. On the second play, Copeland was sacked. And then, on the third play, Stanford scored a pick and six off Copeland's pass, and I could see the trajectory of the game laid out before me like a movie for which I'd already read the plot summary on Wikipedia.

Stanford was going to slaughter us.

_________________

I have never been inside a press box, so we're just gonna gloss over the intricacies of how they work. The one point of this chapter I absolutely did not have to research is wine hangovers, which are the closest a human being can get to death without actually dying. Please drink responsibly.

Part two of the football game will be coming on Monday. Each of these chapters is many, many hours of labor for five minutes of your entertainment. Instead of telling me you hope I update soon, tell me what you hope will happen when Laurel and Joey take the field for interviews (it's a lot more fun for me).

Your friendly author,

Kate