Imaginary Lines (New York Leopards 3)

Mduduzi gloomily drained his pint. “I have the worst luck in the world.”

I turned to smile slightly without looking away from the screen. “Hm?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t start watching American football until I came to the States for college. My school’s team lost every game. I must be a glutton for punishment.”

I laughed. “To be fair, they’re usually really on top of it.”

“It makes it even worse when they lose. I feel like they’re stabbing me in the gut. That’s what my recap’s going to be. ‘Stabbed in Gut. Repeatedly.’”

“Maybe it will turn around,” I said hopefully. “Remember last year when they played Miami? They were at 22-0 at halftime, and the Leopards still turned it around and won.”

“Yeah.” He sighed, clearly not holding out much hope. “Maybe.”

Carlos came back with more beers to assuage the sadness, and apparently decided we might as well talk if we weren’t going to win. “So how’d you get into football, Tamar?”

I shrugged. “I was in the school newspaper in high school. And in marching band, which meant I went to every single football game. I also paid attention... It seemed pretty natural to write about it.”

The game did not turn around. Instead it fell apart. Jin didn’t even want to look in the end. I was pretty sure he was one beer away from cowering in the corner with his arms over his head.

Part of my heart hurt, but the rest of me was having a really good time.

When the Browns decided to go for it on the fourth down, everyone in the bar went dead silent, except for Jin, who sort of whispered, “No, no, no.”

They had two running backs and one wide receiver on the field. My brain went into overtime trying to decide how they were going to run it. A sneak? A handoff?

A handoff. Their quarterback passed it to one of the running backs, but Abe was there. He forced a fumble. When the limbs settled, he had the ball.

Waxy’s erupted in cheers.

The Leopards still lost that game, but at least we had something we could be proud of.

Though it also left Abe with a concussion.

* * *

That Monday, at the pitch meeting, I volunteered my first idea. “I was thinking of doing a feature piece on concussions and helmet regulations.”

Every head at the table turned toward me.

I’d already felt conspicuous, offering an idea, but now I started to sweat. “What?”

Tanya pushed her chair away from the table. “I need a drink.” She walked out.

Carlos smiled uneasily at me. “We don’t really do concussion stories.”

I blinked. “We don’t?”

“It’s tricky. We have to maintain a...delicate balance.”

“It’s not that tricky,” Mduduzi said. “We report on concussions, and the helmet manu

facturers pull their ads from Sports Today. It’s worth mentioning that their parent company would actually pull all their ads from all the Today Media platforms.”

“Wait, so...” I tried to sort it out. “Tanya said she wanted us to report hard news, not go along with whatever’s best for the team. But doesn’t this fall in that boat?”

“Yeah,” Carlos said, still clearly uncomfortable, “but there are still some lines we don’t cross.”

“How is that a line? Concussions seem like a pretty standard topic in the NFL right now. We’re just supposed to...not mention the correlation?”