Gordon finally put Bodie in the game at the beginning of the fourth quarter.

He took the field like a thunderstorm.

His first few passing attempts sailed clear over the grasping hands of his receivers and into the sidelines. He was too hopped up on adrenaline to reign in his arm. Fourth down came and went. While Stanford worked on scoring another touchdown on us, I saw Gordon grab Andre by the shoulder-pad on our sideline.

I didn't realize what he was up to until we were back on offense.

After the hike, Andre took off like a shot. Bodie's pass was just as much of an overshoot as the ones before it—but this time, Andre was there.

He caught it and carried it home to the endzone. It was his first touchdown in a regular season game. I made a strangled noise at the back of my throat that I tried to disguise as a cough.

Unfortunately, despite the heroics, it was too late.

The game was practically over.

Even with Andre's touchdown, Garland was still down by more than 30 points. I heard a broadcaster from ESPN say to his colleague that, if the score held, it would be the biggest margin of a loss our team had experienced in over seven years.

Joey tapped me on the shoulder.

"C'mon," he said, rising from his seat beside me. "Let's head down so we're first at the gate when they let the media on the field."

Ellison had given me two sheets of post-game questions, one entitled if we win and the other if we lose. She'd further divided up the questions into a few categories—offense-specific, defense-specific, and for the coaches.

I quietly shuffled to the if we lose document.

Joey and I packed into the elevator with a few other journalists, including a female broadcaster with Stanford-red lipstick and a Sports Illustrated badge around her neck. She kept staring at me and my media pass in the reflection of the doors, like she couldn't quite place where she'd heard my name before.

I ducked my head and tried to hide behind Joey.

"So, I just, like, walk up to them?" I asked him in a low whisper. "And what do I say? Hey, I'm Laurel for the Daily?"

"I think they'll know who you are," Joey replied with a snort.

I let out a distressed whine.

"What do I do if they won't talk to me?" I asked.

I wasn't a beat reporter, so I hadn't built up a rapport with any of the players the same way Joey and the other sports writers had. Even if one of them managed not to recognize that I was the same girl who'd helped author the article that toppled Vaughn's career, it wasn't like they'd be comfortable enough giving me great sound bites.

Joey seemed to know exactly what I was thinking.

"Vaughn's got the whole team trained to be tight-lipped," he said. "They're all really rehearsed, when you ask them about what's going on behind the scenes—they've got this mentality, like, what happens on the team stays on the team. But you're controversial. Yeah, okay, some of the guys probably won't look at you twice—but maybe you'll crack one of them."

I snorted. That seemed unlikely.

"You cracked St. James," Joey pointed out. "He gave you more in that Vaughn interview than anybody else has managed to get out of him."

I blushed. I don't know why I blushed.

"Here's your tape recorder," Joey said, handing me a rectangular hunk of plastic that looked straight out of the nineties. "For the interviews. You'll want audio clips of the players just in case you need to transcribe something later."

"Can't I just use my phone?" I asked.

"The sound quality won't be any good," Joey said. "It gets really loud out on the field."

Fantastic. Not like I had a raging headache or anything.

❖ ❖ ❖

Hanna had once shown me a YouTube compilation of Black Friday stampedes. I don't know why she found humor in the complete degradation of human composure and empathy—or why so many of them had taken place in Walmarts. But those videos were all I could think about as Joey and I waited amongst the herd of journalists and photographers and cameramen itching to get on the field first.

The final whistle sounded.

Chaos.

We were off, a hundred A-type personalities shoving their way forward onto the field in pursuit of the players and coaches.

The roar of the stadium was deafening.

I'd brought this suffering upon myself last night when I mixed reds and whites. Was it Dionysus who was the god of drunk idiots? Hanna would know. She'd taken an art history class about Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. She could tell me who my hubris had offended.

"Who should I grab?" I shouted over the tumult. "Do we want Shepherd?"

It was wishful thinking.

"No, hold on—there! Get St. James!" Joey urged me forward with a shove to my shoulder.

I spotted Bodie through the crowd. There was a giant grass stain down back of his right thigh and sweat beaded on his bare arms, shimmering under the stadium lights. The red-lipped reporter from Sports Illustrated stood at his side, grinning wickedly into a microphone as a guy with an enormous camera propped on his shoulder filmed their interaction.

As Joey and I pushed towards them, I caught the tail end of whatever Bodie was saying to her.

"—two years from now, he'll be a great leader."

"Bodie?"

I'm not sure how he managed to hear me over the roar of the stadium, but the moment his name was out of my mouth, his head whipped around.

His eyes were cast in shadow under his helmet, dark as storm clouds.

His lips pinched into a flat line.

I knew he wanted to bolt.

"Can I ask you a few questions for the Daily?" I practically screamed, in a tone that made it clear I would sooner tackle him to the ground—in full view of fifty thousand spectators—than let him get away without an interview.

His eyes slid down to my chest. It took me a split second to remember I was wearing my field pass around my neck. He was checking out my credentials, not my cleavage.

"Fine," he snapped.

His voice was hoarse, like he'd spent the last three hours shouting at the top of his lungs.

"How would you describe Copeland's performance?" I asked.

The question was drowned out by a burst of cheers from Stanford's section.

"What?" Bodie shouted, ducking his head and offering me his ear.

I rolled up onto my tiptoes and tried to ignore the scent of grass and sweat lingering on him. Something about it made me feel warm. Although maybe that was just the blazing sun.

"How did Copeland do?" I yelled.

My voice cracked. It was awful.

"He's a true freshman," Bodie replied, stepping back from me. His eyes straying towards the stands like he was bored. "He played hard out there. I'm proud of his effort. Two years from now, he'll be a great leader."

Unbelievable.

He was giving me the same canned answer he'd given the reporter from Sports Illustrated.

"What about Gordon's coaching?" I asked. "Do you think his offensive strategies work against a team as strong defensively as Stanford?"

Of course he didn't think Gordon's offensive strategies were working—he'd spent most of the game on the bench, unable to do anything but watch the team's miserable train wreck of a performance unfold. That's exactly why I'd chosen the question.

I caught the spark in Bodie's eyes before he managed to tamp it down.

"Our coaching staff always gives a hundred percent," he said.

The reply was so rehearsed, it made me grind my teeth. I looked down at the list of questions on my clipboard, scanning them for one that might trip him up and get him to drop the robot act.

How has Truman Vaughn's betrayal affected team morale?

I couldn't do it. I couldn't grill him. He'd had a shitty game on top of a shitty month, and there was no reason for me to prod him other than my own wicked satisfaction at seeing him twitch.

So instead I lied and said, "You looked really good out there."

Bodie went very still.

"I mean—like, you played well," I clarified. "You made smart passes."

It was categorically untrue.

He'd played horribly, except for that pass Andre had caught. So I understand why Bodie took it the way he did. I understood why his whole body tensed defensively, even if I couldn't tell whether he was more embarrassed or furious.

I was still as he reached out and gingerly unclipped the laminated field pass at the end of my lanyard. His knuckles brushed against my shirt. The fabric tickled my skin. He looked me dead in the eye as he tore straight through the lamination, shredding both paper and plastic, and let the two halves of what'd formerly been my field pass flutter to the grass.

Maybe it should've scared me—the skittish hurt in his eyes paired with the fact that he loomed half a foot taller than me and almost twice as wide.

But I wasn't afraid of him.

I lifted my tape recorder to my mouth and said, "Editorial note. Pick up new field pass."

There was already guilt coloring Bodie's cheeks.

"Laurel—"

"I know," I snapped, interrupting the apology I neither wanted nor needed to hear. "Look, I'm not gonna lie and say you were perfect out there, but if you'd had more than one quarter of playing time you guys might've been able to pull out a win."

I meant this to sound consolatory. Instead, it came out accusatory.

Bodie bristled.

"It's not my fault Gordon's being passive aggressive about—"

Joey chose that moment to lift his Nikon and snap a picture.

Bodie, who had clearly forgotten we were surrounded by a stadium full of people with cameras, flinched. He glanced down at my clipboard and narrowed his eyes like he was tempted to smack it out of my hands. But he didn't. Of course he didn't.

Without another word, Bodie stormed past us towards the sidelines, squeezing through the mobs of reporters hounding him for a quote. Reporters like me.

Joey stared after him in wide-eyed awe.

"Holy shit," he said. "You cracked him."

I really wished I hadn't.

_________________

My cinnamon-roll-I-fished-out-of-the-garbage son is suffering and being over-sensitive and I'm mad about it. Even though I know this chapter is an important point in a large narrative. So let's focus on the fact that I'm very proud of Laurel! I know a lot of people predicted she'd puke or get into a fight with somebody on the field, but our girl held it together (I mean, she sorta got into it with Bodie, but what's new). A lot of people guessed Kyle would be the one to start beef. I can't spoil anything, obviously, but... see y'all on Friday.

Your friendly author,

Kate