Out of Position (38 page)

I get back to the hotel early and spend some time making up details to tell Charm about Caroll’s anatomy. We get to sleep early, because we need to be rested for Sunday and the first real game of the season.

Opening day isn’t anything like my first game last year, but the vets say it’s never the same as your rookie year. It’s still pretty cool, though. We’re going out onto the field and it’s as beautiful as that first day on the practice field. The main difference is the noise and the smell. The stadium in Crystal City is full, sixty thousand people of all different species, a sea of blue and gold, a wave of scents all mixed together. The one thing practice can’t prepare you for, even pre-season can’t prepare you for, is playing this game in front of this crowd with the knowledge that it matters. This is where everything counts. You can’t laugh off mistakes any more. Everyone’s playing their hardest, and nothing comes easy.

Crystal City won their division last year. They’ve got a few key players, a stud QB and two hot wideouts he likes to spread the field with. We don’t match up great with them, but we hold our own ’til the second quarter, when they break it open with a long touchdown pass and another score set up by a long run. On the run, I see Killer miss a step and whiff on a tackle. Steez sees it too.

At the half, we’re down 21-10. Coach Samuelson gives a halftime speech that boils down to “we’re better than this.” I sit near Gerrard and Carson, and watch Killer lounge against the locker a few feet away. Charm’s the only other one who seems that relaxed, but he’s always relaxed.

Lee calls me on the phone with precise timing, in the ten minutes between the end of coach’s speech and when we have to get back out on the field. “Tell that cougar to keep his eye on his assignment,” he snaps.

“I got nothing to do with that,” I say.

“I know,” he says. “Actually, don’t tell him that. I’ll be riding your big, hot shaft within a week, the way he’s going.”

Charm notices me adjusting my uniform on the way back out the field. “Crystal City has the best fuckin’ cheerleaders in the league,” he says, elbowing me. “Which one you checkin’ out? The tigress? I got my eye on the vixen.”

The game doesn’t get much better for us in the third quarter. By the fourth, we’re into garbage time, and I get to go out with the second unit and play most of the quarter. This is my first real-game experience at my new position, but I don’t let it get to me. I think of Lee, I imagine him watching me on TV, and I make every tackle and drop their second-string RB for a loss once. By the end of the quarter, I like to think that the rest of the guys have caught my enthusiasm, mainly because I keep yelling at them, “Play with pride!” and Dix echoes me: “Don’t let them down the field!”

Our defensive effort allows the offense to catch up by the end of the game so that the final score is only 35-24. Coach Samuelson gathers us in the locker room and tells us we fought hard, and that this is a good beginning to the season. We’ve got our home opener the next week against Kerina, a division game against the only team that was worse than we were last year. I get a quick chat with Lee, enough time for him to tell me I did great, before we have to get on the plane.

It’s good to be home, even if we have to go to practice on Monday. We only get Monday off when we win, Coach says. So we’re off the plane Sunday night, falling into bed to get up bright and early for our practice, and that’s why it isn’t until Monday night that I get an e-mail from Ogleby with a link to Brian’s website.

It’s one of six links Ogleby sent me, but I recognize the name and go over there first, before the ESPN article. Brian’s posted something about me on it, not related to Caroll at all but to my performance in the game. “To those of us familiar with Miski’s college career, his performance was no surprise,” Brian’s written. “He seemed to be everywhere, adapting to his new position with ease, as adaptable as we remember from his Forester days.”

I try to go back and find what he wrote about me and Caroll, but I can’t navigate the damn website, and eventually I give up and go on to the other articles. I ask Lee about it that night.

“Did you see this thing ESPN wrote?”

“You got half a paragraph there. The guys at High and Bright did a whole paragraph.”

“Brian wrote nearly a whole article.”

I hear the click of his jaw snapping shut. “Yeah,” he says, drawing the word out. “Look, Dev, this isn’t a really good time…”

“I mean, it was actually pretty nice. What do you think’s got into him? I thought he hated me.”

“I should really get going,” Lee says. “Can I call you tomorrow?”

“Um, sure.” I glance at the clock. It’s only ten, eleven where he is. “Where you off to?”

“I’m just tired.”

I frown. “Everything okay?”

He answers quickly. “Fine, hon. Just, I gotta file my reports tomorrow and Morty moved the meeting up to eight.”

“All right,” I say slowly. In the background silence, I can hear the muffled drone of an airplane.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow night. Love you,” he says.

“Love you too.” I hang up and walk over to my window. To my right, I hear a rumble and look over into the sky in time to see the lights of a jet landing at Chevali International.

Come to think of it, Lee’s place in Hilltown isn’t that near an airport not that I remember. And past eleven is a pretty late hour for a plane to be landing over a residential area. For a couple of our flights last year, when I flew out with the Dragons, we had to stay over in a hotel on the road because our flight couldn’t land later than eleven at night.

But he couldn’t be… could he?

I flip the phone open and hold my finger over the button. I don’t want to just call and ask where he is; I’ve got nothing except a feeling to base it on. I wish I had something else, some other good reason to call him. Because I hate all the suspicions in my head, and it’s worse because I don’t even know what I suspect him of. He’s always kept to himself, but never given me any reason to doubt him.

My claw strokes the button. If I don’t call him, I won’t be able to sleep, now. If I do call him, I can’t take it back. I look up at the window and the reflection in it. You’re an idiot, I tell the tiger standing there. He might be traveling for work, or visiting family. Though he would have told me in that case, wouldn’t he? And it wouldn’t be so suspicious if we hadn’t just had that whole conversation about not seeing each other, which almost made sense, almost seemed logical. Now, watching the lights of the plane make their way into the distance, it seems odd. Why is he suddenly so worried about me learning the new position now? Why not a month ago?

The glass is cold to my paw. I stare out at the city in the night. There are places out there I never notice during the day. Not that I’m at home during the day much. I watch the neon, the people walking around under the streetlights, and all the while my claw is scraping back and forth over the Talk button. Just a little pressure, that’s all it would take.

But it’s probably nothing. And then he’d feel annoyed and I’d feel like an idiot, and a heel for doubting him. I don’t want to have that feeling, not with how good I felt after my performance in the game. Even though we lost, I feel proud of the effort I put in. I rub my thumb over the Talk button. I feel ashamed of the impulse to call, not proud of it.

That realization is what decides me. I growl, turn, and throw the phone across the room before crawling into bed.

As I knew it wouldn’t, sleep doesn’t come easily. I toss and turn and eventually drift off in the middle of the tenth imagined conversation with Lee. I wake up in the middle of the night still thinking about it, and it’s still on my mind in the morning. On the drive in to the stadium, I tell myself that what he wanted was for me to be able to focus on football, so whatever he’s doing, I need to put it out of my mind and focus on the practice and the game, and tomorrow, on the film.

It’s not as easy as that, but I get through the day without screwing up noticeably. In the evening, I’m calmer, and when I talk to Lee, I ask him where he watched the game from. He says it was a hotel near Alverston State. I ask when he got back to Hilltown, and he gets kind of quiet and then says it wasn’t ’til this morning. I start to push harder, but it occurs to me that I’m not going to get any answers from him over the phone. Like the time when I was evading his questions about the dinner. I’ll have to wait for him to meet me in person, and that means I need to earn that starting job.

 
I’ve got week four circled on my calendar, because that’s the week we’re at Hilltown, and if I’m not starting by then, it’ll kill me to be in Lee’s town and not see him. Week five would be okay, because we’re at Aventira, which is only a couple hours from his place in Hilltown. By then, I’ve got to be starting. I’m starting to believe I can do it, the way Killer played and the way I played.

Kerina’s pretty bad. We rack up 31 points and hold them to 24. More importantly, I play a good deal of the second half and stop two drives where they could’ve tied the game. After the game, I go out with Gerrard and Carson and the rest of the first-string defense. Killer doesn’t join us. I heard later that he went out with his own crew, griping about the lack of respect he was getting.

The following week in practice, either he finally realized what was happening, or someone had a talk with him, because he practices like a demon. He’s all over, screaming and pounding his chest, and making plays like I’ve never seen. I watch him, finally realizing how he got the starting job and what his potential is. Steez nods approvingly, and I start to get a nervous itch. Who knows why he decided to turn it on now, but if Killer keeps playing like that, my balls are going to explode by week six.

I catch Gerrard in the locker room after that practice and mention Killer’s play. “Yeah,” the coyote says, “we finally got through to him.”

“Oh, you talked to him?” I lean casually against the locker, trying to keep my claws in. A weird, uncomfortable feeling creeps over me.

“Yeah.” He grins at me. “You’re doing so well, we were wondering what it was going to take for him to see that you’re a real threat to take his job. Maybe he’ll come out and practice with us now.”

“So you won’t have to practice with me?” It comes out kind of bitter. Understandable, I think.

“Hey,” he says, “we liked practicing with you. You’re real good. But when he hits that next gear… phew.”

“You think he can keep playing at this level?”

Gerrard nods once. “Y’ever seen his tapes?” I shake my head. “Attitude’s always been his issue.”

“So you don’t think I’ll be starting anytime soon?”

He shrugs. “Wouldn’t be best for the team. But you never know what might happen. By the end of the season, if he can’t keep it up, you sure could sneak in.” He must see my expression, or my lashing tail, because he punches my shoulder. “Hey, you’re good. By the end of the season you’ll be a solid backup, or more. Another year and you could get a starting gig at half the teams in the league.”

Another year?
I suppress a growl of frustration and force a smile. “Thanks.”

I walk out of the stadium into the cool breeze of fall. Here in Chevali, that’s about eighty degrees. I think about the weather at home now, the smell of the fields and the ripening corn, how the breeze would bring the chill of autumn and I’d start to look up at the trees and see the spots of yellow on them. I think about Forester and Hilltown, where Lee is, and of the September chill that comes off the lake to let you know that it’s time for classes again, and that snow is just around the corner. All I get from the September Chevali breeze is a little relief that it’s not a hundred degrees at night anymore.

I roll the window of the car down as I drive home and let the warm air ruffle my fur. I think about Lee, how his thicker fur will be coming in and how he’ll need it in the Hilltown autumn. There’s a part of me that wants to drive to the airport instead of going home, hop on a last-minute flight to Hilltown, and surprise him. Agreement or no, I’m urged on by the double needs of wanting him and wanting to know what’s going on with him. And it would be so easy just to go up there. I know that once we were together in person, we’d work it all out just like we always do.

Well, usually do. I think of his last visit and that takes some of the energy out of that impulse. What if I got all the way up there and he was reserved again, distant? I think I’d freak out. No, I’ll go home like a good tiger and call him on the phone.

I mostly manage to keep myself from whining as I tell him what Gerrard says. He listens patiently and says, “I wondered if it were something like that.”

“You didn’t say anything to me about it.”

“I didn’t want to be right. But I saw Killer play last year, when he was angling for the new contract, and you did too.”

I’m lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”

“You’ll just have to get better,” he says.

I have a hard time handling that. “Maybe you didn’t hear me,” I growl. “I said it could be another year.”

His voice is serious, with a teasing edge. “You think I’m going to let you off the hook for that?”

“Well, what the hell am I gonna do? Smash him in the knees?”

“No,” he says. “This isn’t ice skating.”

I stare at the bars on my ceiling and wonder whether they’d support my weight. “So what, if I end the season and I haven’t started, we just won’t see each other the whole off-season?”

He responds lightly, almost flippantly. “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“No,” I say, “let’s cross it now. I want to know what the hell is going on with my life. Two weeks ago I had a boyfriend and a great shot at a starting position. Now I’ve got a voice on a phone and a “maybe in a year.” But hey, things with my fake girlfriend are going great. She wants to get fake married. The only good things in my life are make-believe.”

“Wait, what?”

“Make-believe. You know, like all my friendships on the team.”

“No, before that,” he says. “The fake marriage thing.”

“Oh.” I explain Ogleby’s engagement plan, without any of Caroll’s fancy justification. “But we probably won’t do it.”