Pass Interference (2 page)

Her senses were instantly assaulted by more than just loud music and conversation. The room smelled like a mixture of beer, pizza, chocolate, cheap perfume, and old tennis shoes, plus the faint smell of oranges. If cigarette smoking was allowed in dorms, she was sure that odor would have been added to the putrid mélange.
How can they stand it
, she wondered.

Scanning the various groupings around the room, she walked up to a cluster of six boys and girls and approached one of the guys from behind. She tapped his shoulder and loudly asked if he knew where Philip was. The guy barely turned to look at her and then turned away to continue talking with his friends.

Sara’s lips parted, appalled by his incivility, but she wasn’t really surprised. These jocks were the epitome of conceit. She walked farther into the room and set her sights on another jock. She tapped his arm and yelled to be heard above the noise. “Do you know where Philip Mason is?”

The guy faced her and eyed her up and down. “If you’re pregnant, then I have no idea where Philip is.” The guy elbowed a buddy, and the two of them had a good laugh over his lame joke.

Sara squinted at him, wondering if she stepped into an alternate universe. She was maybe a few pounds overweight, but there was no way she looked pregnant.

The guy looked like he was getting uncomfortable under Sara’s unrelenting glare, so he called out, “Hey Phillie, Mary’s here.”

“My name isn’t Mary, it’s—” she started to say.

“Are you sure about that, because from where I stand—”

“Coming through.” Philip’s deep, commanding voice cut through the cacophony of sounds. “Make way for the handicapped.” Philip wheeled his way around the crowd toward Sara. In the wheelchair, she could see a guy’s bare legs, one of them stiffened by a splint and bandaged at the knee. It was hard to see much more of him because his entire body was obstructed by a skinny blonde cheerleader wearing too much makeup who was sitting on his lap. Her head was cocked and her stick-straight hair cascaded over Philip’s face. Philip leaned sideways until he had a clear view of Sara.

“Oh, hey, hi.” He reached out to shake Sara’s hand. “You must be my tutor.”

It was an easy deduction for him. She was the one who looked out of place. “Right,” Sara said, shaking his hand while eying him suspiciously. “We have an appointment.”

“Yeah, sorry,” he said, but he didn’t look sorry at all. “As you can see, I’m kinda in the middle of something.”

Without missing a beat, Sara quipped, “Unless you’re sitting on another cheerleader’s lap, I’d say you’re underneath something, not in the middle of it.”

Philip’s brow knit, apparently puzzled by Sara’s overly literal interpretation of his statement. “Yeah well. At any rate, could you come back later? Or maybe tomorrow?”

Sara looked down at her cell phone for a long while, and then she turned her wrist so the display faced Philip, making it into a big gesture. “Maybe you forgot, but this text you sent me said to come over now. ‘No time like the present,’ remember?” But before Philip could respond, she said, “But sure,” with a hint of sarcasm in her voice. “Since you’re busy, I can come back in an hour, or a day, or even never.” Dropping her hand to her side, she looked directly at Philip. “I’m just doing this for extra credit, which I don’t really need. The truth is, it’s nothing to me if you flunk out of school. Won’t change my life any, but it’ll sure change yours. Bye.”

The lap-sitting cheerleader’s jaw dropped. “Do you know who you’re talking to?” she asked harshly, in defense of Philip. “Philip Mason is our star quarterback.”

“Aw, I can see he means so much to you,” Sara snarked.

Sara had no sooner turned around to leave when Philip called to her, “Mary, wait!”

She shut her eyes and turned back around. “It’s Sara,” she said, opening her eyes to look at Philip. “Sara Ross.”

“Hey everyone,” Philip called out in an authoritative tone, like he was calling a football play. Without breaking Sara’s gaze, he shouted, “Time to clear out. I have an appointment to keep.”

“Even me?” the cheerleader asked in a pouty, childlike voice.

“Even you,” Philip said as he smiled back. Before she left his lap, the cheerleader made a big show of tongue-kissing Philip. Sara figured Blondie was doing it for her benefit, so she folded her arms and decided not to watch.

As the other kids streamed out of the room, Sara made her way in. She stood next to Philip’s desk, which was covered with energy bar wrappers and CDs. She picked up a couple of discs. Some were videos, some were music, and some were highlights of football games Philip played in. Nowhere on the desk did she see anything that looked like school work.

The door shut and Philip wheeled himself toward Sara. As he passed the little kitchen table, he plucked an orange out of the fruit bowl and offered it to her. “Orange?”

Sara glanced sidelong at Philip, holding up an orange like he was getting ready to throw a baseball. She merely shook her head no.

“Suit yourself,” he groused, placing the orange back in the bowl. “So much for hospitality. Okay. Where do we start?”

She looked from Philip to the desk and back to Philip again. “I presume you read the email from Dean Landry that told you how to prepare for your tutoring session.”

“
Hmmm
.” He wrinkled his nose. “I um didn’t have a chance. Been busy,” Philip said flippantly.

Sara narrowed her eyes as she looked at him. “I can see that. Must be hard to sit on your butt all day and do nothing besides entertain a group of kids who wouldn’t know a participle from a popsicle.”

Philip chose to let that remark slide. “Landry is a little verbose, don’t you think?”

“Verbose! Oooh, a five dollar word.”

Wrinkling his brow, he asked, “What’s with the attitude, Mary?”

Sara looked away, a little startled by the direct question. She mindlessly rifled through the things on top of his desk. “Um. I told you. It’s Sara. And I prefer to tutor people who actually care about their grades.”

“What makes you think I don’t care?”

“Pretty much everything since I arrived.” She shrugged. “Like throwing a party when you’re supposed to be having a tutoring session.”

“I wasn’t throwing a party,” Philip shot back defensively. “Some of my teammates came over to see how I was doing, and then more people came and—”

Sara rolled her eyes and decided she knew what he was going to say before he finished. “And a party broke out. Sure, whatever you say.” She didn’t wait for a retort. “Look, I don’t care about your personal life, just your academic life, the one
you
don’t care about.” Sara scoffed. “Anyway, we’re wasting time. What do you want to cover first?”

“Cover? What do you mean?”

“I mean what subject?” She set her phone down on the desk and reached into her bag to take out her tablet. “What subjects do you need the most help with? Math? Science?”

“Uh.” Scratching his head, he mused, “I’m pretty good with math and science. But I can use some help with English. Literature. Composition. That kind of thing.”

“Perfect,” Sara said, her face brightening. This was something she could definitely sink her teeth into. “Do you have any samples of anything you’ve written this semester?”

Philip squinted at her and very slowly shook his head no.

“Okay, no worries. I want you to write something for me.” She lifted her eyes toward the ceiling. “Give me
hmmm
let’s start with a hundred words about how you feel about being sidelined.” Focusing on Philip, she asked, “Did I use the right term?”

“Yeah. A hundred words, huh? That’s a lot.”

Sara raised her brows. “No it’s not. A hundred words is nothing.”

“Why don’t I just do this for homework and I can hand it in next time we meet.”

Sara folded her arms and eyed Philip with distrust. Looking at him like this, she could see he’d been through a lot. It showed on his face. His jaw was clenched and tense, giving his angular face even more hard edges. His nose had two little bumps, like it had been broken more than once and never healed quite right. He had a scruff that made his face look thinner around the chin. His brown hair was unruly and could use a trim, or even a comb. His cinnamon brown eyes were close-set. His dark eyebrows were thick and brought all his features together in one striking picture. Taken all together, he was actually quite handsome. She could see what the girls saw in him, even though he wasn’t at all her type. “Nice try, Einstein, but I think you’d probably tell me your dog ate it.”

Philip shook his head. “Okay, fine, whatever,” he said with a sigh. Then he scratched his chin just before shuffling the materials on his desk in search of his tablet. He picked up Sara’s schoolbag and put it down again. His hair brushed her arm, surprising Sara, and sent an unexpected shiver through her body, so she took a step back to give him more space. He finally found a tablet stuffed under some CDs. He placed it on his lap and wheeled away from her.

She pulled out the desk chair and sat down, figuring this would be a good time for her to catch up on some of her own homework.

After about ten minutes, Sara heard Philip scoff. She lifted her head and noticed that it looked like he was reading something on his tablet rather than writing something.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

Philip’s expression was that of a little boy who got caught doing something he knew was wrong. “Um. Nothing.”

Sara rose from the desk chair and walked toward him. She was on a mission. “Don’t touch that,” she ordered, grabbing his tablet before he had a chance to close the cover. The browser was open to a sports article. She read the headline out loud. “Barracudas on Winning Streak Despite Missing Mason.” She squinted at him in an attempt to appear intimidating. “Really?”

“I know, right?” He took his tablet out of her hands. “I don’t know why every article about the Barracudas needs to mention me. Why can’t they just give credit to the guys on the field instead of saying they won despite the fact I wasn’t playing. It’s irrelevant. It diminishes the win.”

“You’re supposed to be writing, not reading,” she reminded him.

“Oh. Yeah, sorry,” he said a little sheepishly. “I’m sort of a sports news junkie.”

Sara stifled a laugh. She wanted to appear imposing, but there was something so impish about the way he looked at the moment that made it hard for her to act tough. She shook her head and said, “Get back to work, Mason,” as she walked back toward the desk and sat back down.

“Yes, Miss Ross,” he replied in a mocking tone.

A little while later, she heard Philip softly mumbling and she realized he was counting.

With her temple on her fist and her elbow on the desk, she turned her head to look at Philip. “What are you doing
now
?”

Lifting only his eyes, he said, “Doing a word count.” Then he looked back at his tablet on his lap.

Sara got up from her chair and walked over. “You’re doing a manual word count?”

“
Shhhh
,” he grumbled. “I’ll lose my place.”

Sara chuckled. “You don’t have to count by hand. There’s an automatic word count feature you can use.”

Philip looked embarrassed. “Oh. Um. I knew that.”

“You did not,” she said, laughing. “Here, I’ll show you.” Leaning over next to his wheelchair, she tapped the menu on his tablet and enabled the word-count feature. When she looked at him, she was a little unnerved to see he was looking at her instead of at the tablet. “Um. A hundred and seventeen words.”

A wide smile covered his face. “Super. I guess I’m done.”

Sara took a couple steps back. Placing her hands on her hips, she asked, “Did you proofread it?”

“Are you serious?”

“You’ll find in time that I never joke.”

“Yeah, I’m gettin’ that. Here.” He looked down at his tablet again. “What’s your email?”

“It’s Sara R 2 7 at E F U dot E D U. Oh, and Sara is spelled S-A-R-A. No H.”

“Cool.” He tapped out her address on the touchscreen keyboard. “Here it comes.”

Sara returned to the desk and checked the email on her mobile device to make sure Philip’s message arrived. “Great.” Stuffing her tablet back into her bag, she slung the pack over her shoulder and said, “Then I’ll see you next week.”

“What?” He looked at her with shock, his eyes following her as she walked toward the door. “Aren’t you gonna take a look now?”

“No, we can talk about it next time.”

“Hey, how come you get to take it home and work on it in your spare time and I don’t?”

Sara laughed lightly. “Because I’m calling the plays in
this
arena. If you think football has a lot of rules, wait until you see Sara’s playbook.” She smiled, enjoying her momentary authority. “Bye.”

After returning to her dorm room that evening, Sara grabbed a yogurt and an apple for dinner, finished her homework, and took a quick shower. She had a private bedroom in a third floor apartment she shared with a roommate in the Evanston Towers. Her dorm felt small to her now that she’d seen how EFU’s privileged athletes lived. Philip’s apartment overlooked a lake, but her building merely overlooked other buildings on campus. Even though it was an apartment for two, it was smaller than Philip’s place, but much neater.

When she finally settled into bed, she found herself thinking a lot about her new student. In some ways he was exactly what she expected—a jock whose shoe size was bigger than his IQ, but in other ways, he wasn’t at all what she’d imagined. After his friends left the room, Philip seemed like an ordinary guy. She had to admit, she’d enjoyed their banter.

She felt a little guilty for being so sharp with Philip. In truth, he had done nothing to deserve it. Blame it on that old defense mechanism which, by now, was sewn into the fabric of her personality. Her bravado was a habit, and she wasn’t sure how to turn it off.

Since she wasn’t tired enough to sleep yet, she reached for the tablet on her nightstand and clicked on Philip’s email. She was prepared for the worst, an incoherent essay filled with self-aggrandizement and typos. What she read surprised her. It wasn’t incoherent at all. Instead, it was earnest and emotional. He titled the composition “Being Sidelined Sucks
.
” Sara chuckled a little. It was a crude title for sure, but it instantly conveyed the point of the story, so she had to give him credit for that.