—Introduce yourself!
—I’m Miles.
—Giles?!
—Miles.
—Got a last name?!
—Furling.
—Hurling?!
This was all Chase.
—So what the fuck you waiting for?!
Over a childhood of churchgoing I had developed something close to a beautiful singing voice, to the point where our priest insisted I sing solos during Lent. But there had been a serious hitch—while my speaking voice lowered over the years, my natural singing voice had remained a clean, clear alto, which had been red meat to classmates who attended our church and who, come Monday in the lunchroom, would tell everyone else I sang like a girl. Over time, I had learned to force myself down to a baritone, which was still good but nowhere near my alto.
I would sing baritone now, no question, and after one last trembling breath I let the meter of the song guide my singing.
Reign, reign, Monarchs,
Rule your realm with an iron fist.
Claim, claim, Monarchs,
All you see and all you wish.
I could see the remainder of the song. But I could also see that not a single veteran was smiling—not at my agile voice, not at my memorization.
Score, score, Monarchs,
Touchdown, field goal, try, and safety.
—The fuck?! Fade yelled in disgust.
Not even Devonté, kind Devonté, was happy with how well I was doing. I realized I had already given Coach Zeller the correct answer in our meeting, and if I were to get through the song now without a mistake, I risked earning a reputation as a coach’s pet—a reputation that would be hard to shake.
I looked up at the ceiling, as if suddenly stymied.
King … sing? For …
—BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I stepped down from my chair. I never thought I’d be so grateful to be heckled.
The afternoon break lasted seventy-five minutes and was the longest stretch of free time we had all day. It wasn’t quite long enough to, say, catch a movie, and most players just returned to the Hay to nap on the locker room’s soft purple carpet until it was time for afternoon meetings. This made it so that every day, from 12:30 to 1:30, the locker room looked like a day care center for Brobdingnagian toddlers.
Exhausted though I was from the long drive, I lasted maybe twenty seconds lying in front of my locker. I was too agitated by Chase’s antagonism, too nervous about our first practice this afternoon, too I-don’t-know-what by the proximity of all these big bodies slumbering next to me. I stood and tiptoed between dozing cubemates, looking for something to do, and saw Reshawn was awake the next cube over. He was sitting on the floor, leaning his back against his locker seat and reading a book so thick I initially thought it was the Bible, a not uncommon object in a locker room. But on second glance I saw it was poetry, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. I’d read Dickinson too, but that didn’t mean I needed to announce it ostentatiously.
A group of vets were sprawled out on the floor in a corner. They waved me over and invited me to sit.
—Chase is on you, boy. That’s good—means he’s scared you’re gonna take his spot.
This was said by a defensive back named Jimbo Jaredson, a tall, wiry veteran who wore a cumulus-shaped Afro. I was struck by how hairy Jimbo’s body was: His forearms and shins were thickly scrawled with curls, and he had chest hair so extravagant it reached out of the top of his T-shirt collar like an invasive species. I hadn’t known black men could have heavy body hair like white men did.
—You think? I asked.
—Fuck, yes. Coach Hightower doesn’t want anything to do with his ass. Not after the spring game. The other vets nodded sadly.
—Dude had a great winter, Jimbo continued. Workouts. Conditioning. Everything. You’d see Coach Bruz’s eyes tear up whenever he watched Chase hang clean. Then spring practices start and he’s playing better than ever. Everyone was convinced he was gonna take the starting spot from Fade. He was on, you could see that, that … I don’t know, beatific—
—Be a what? another vet asked.
—Saintly, Jimbo said. That saintly shine on his face.
—Furling, you know Jimbo’s got two majors? Philosophy and, um—
—Philology, Jimbo said. Anyway. So we get deeper into spring ball, and by now Chase knows he’s riding something special. He starts the little routines you do when you don’t want the universe fucking with your momentum. Starts coming into the locker room the same time every afternoon—and I mean the same minute, 1:54. If he got to the Hay early, you’d see him wait out in the hallway until the clock turned over. He gets dressed in the same order—strips ass naked, slides his pads into his girdle, slides his girdle on, right leg, left leg, pulls on his football pants. We’d go to meetings, and when we got back down to the locker room to finish dressing, he would slide on his shoulder pads and call his girl, Sadie. Sadie lived down the hall from us freshman year but then transferred to Georgetown. They did the long-distance thing. So like I said, Chase calls Sadie, Hi honey, love you honey, can’t wait to see you sweetie, smooch. Sounded like he was chanting when they talked.
Jimbo paused, clamping his lips shut and pushing air out of his nose.
—We get to the week of the spring game. Chase keeps up the routine, but now when he calls Sadie, you can hear this tension in his voice. She doesn’t answer sometimes. Or she will, and they bicker and she hangs up. You could see Chase trying not to let that shit disrupt his routine, and he keeps playing like a maniac. But I knew he was going to break.
—The hell you did. That’s—what’s the word? Revisionism. Revisionist history.
—I told y’all he seemed off! Jimbo exclaimed. But y’all didn’t want to believe me. Talk to me about revisionism, you had observer bias.
I was lost. Jimbo saw it.
—Look, what I
