Spiked

So fuck them and their stupid opinions.

“Sasha?” a voice called, and rapped gently on the door. “Honey? Are you in there?”

“I am, Ms. Everett,” I called through the door. I pushed my shoulders back, gathered together my nerves and my confidence, and opened the door.

Ms. Everett smiled. “Honey. Jacob worries we might have upset you. Are you alright?”

“Perfectly,” I said coolly.

“Oh, good, good— I suspected he was overthinking it. There’s nothing at all wrong with you darling, you know that, right?” Ms. Everett said, edging into the bathroom. The door swung shut behind her, and the mix of Ms. Everett’s perfume with those essential oils smelled deadly.

“Oh, I know I have as many faults as anyone,” I said cheerfully. “Half the battle, though, is being aware that you’ve got them, isn’t it?”

Ms. Everett lifted her eyebrows. “Of course! Right. And we aren’t saying we wish he were with Jenna instead of you, sweetheart. We just know Jenna better, that’s all. She’s someone who understands how focused Jacob needs to be, in order to really achieve his full potential.”

I didn’t respond, but didn’t look down— didn’t even blink. It threw Ms. Everett off a bit; she rubbed her lips together, then seemed to have a sudden urge to freshen up her lipstick. She turned to the mirror and withdrew a gold tube, twisting it open as she went on. “We’re happy he’s enjoying his time in college, really, we are. We just want to make sure that nothing distracts him from his long term goals.”

“Are you worried I might be distracting him, Ms. Everett?” I asked.

She looked appalled at the suggestion. “Why, I wouldn’t know, honestly. But his reputation, and his skill, and his future…they’re quite a bit to handle, aren’t they? I can understand why it might be tempting to pull him away from all that, especially when an injury is keeping him from being his authentic self.”

“You think I don’t know the real Jacob?” I asked.

Ms. Everett applied the lipstick, then smiled at me in the mirror. “Well, honey, who can say? I suppose my point is just this: At some point, he’ll return to playing. When that happens, I hope you’ll let him return to the life he built for himself long before you entered the picture.”

“Oh,” I said. “I understand.”

“Good,” Ms. Everett said, smiling harder. “I think you really are a lovely girl, Sasha. But I become something of a mama bear with my boy!” She laughed.

“Of course,” I said. I reached for the door. “But don’t worry about Jacob. He can protect himself from all sorts of bad influences.”

Ms. Everett smiled again, but there was something cold in it. “Well. Good.”

16

“You know, Jacob, I’m beginning to think you’re brainwashing me,” I said that evening, staring out the window of Jacob’s apartment. The thud of bass from one of the other player’s rooms rattled everything on his bathroom counter, and I could see the spotlights of the various nightclubs swooping through the sky. It was dark in here though— Jacob felt the overhead lights caused him to sleep poorly, and they were rarely turned on, even if it meant leaving the room shrouded in shadow.

“Why’s that?” Jacob asked from behind me He was leaning against the little kitchenette’s counter, watching me.

“Because when I got to Harton, I didn’t give a damn about football, but now I’m looking at the stadium and it’s sort of…beautiful,” I said, motioning out the window. A handful of the stadium’s lights were on tonight so the flawlessly manicured grass could be tended to. The grounds crew walked back and forth across the field, each person a tiny speck in the stadium. Seeing so few people on the field made the space look overwhelmingly large, the huge walls of bleachers like green and gold mountainsides, the few lights turned on like suns on concrete horizons.

Jacob walked toward the window and stood beside me, watching the grounds crew work. He was silent for a moment, then said, “Playing on it feels like that. I mean, there’s that huge crowd and everyone’s screaming and there’s all those fucking vuvuzelas that people bring, but you don’t really hear any of it when you’re on the field. It’s weirdly silent in-between plays, right before the snap, and then it’s just crashing. Helmets and people and pads and then a whistle blows and it goes quiet again.”

“You really can’t hear any of the fans?” I asked.

“Nah. They’re more like white noise,” Jacob said, still staring at the grounds crew. They were marking off the design that would be painted in the center of the field for the homecoming game that weekend; the Ram was slowly coming to life as they sprayed its outline in white.

“What’s the point then?” I asked. I turned to Jacob, an eyebrow lifted. “All the screaming and face painting and whatnot? What’s the point?”