—Coming? he asked me.
—No.
He ran to catch up. More royalty flashed past me, their shouts caroming off the walls. I started toward the bathroom to puke, steadying myself with the bricks again, and just as I was reaching the bathroom door I saw another group of my classmates spill out of a dorm room. The girls wore purple ribbons in their hair, playful little streaks of eye black on their cheeks. Several of the boys wore replica jerseys that featured Reshawn’s number. They were chanting:
One, one, two, three!
Who the fuck you came to see?!
King King motherfucker!
When I limped into the Team Room the next afternoon, only a handful of players were there, starters mostly, so spent from the victory and drowsy from the late flight that several had improvised sleep masks out of hand towels.
—You think Zeller’s gonna get Coach of the Week?
—What else you give somebody who took a team that didn’t win a fucking game and two years later is beating Notre Dame?
—Not even two years, young.
—Better be careful what y’all wish for, Jimbo said. Zeller only signed a two-year contract.
—So? King’s gonna give him whatever he wants.
—Yeah, unless he decides he wants a bigger program. I can name ten teams that’ll offer him a job end of this year.
—Zeller wouldn’t leave.
—Yo, y’all see that Simone chick talking to Zeller at the end of the game? She looked ready to bend over.
—Ah! Jimbo said.
He leapt from his chair and started the desktop computer that sat on a little counter recessed into the front wall. He used the computer to lower the projector screen. Once the screen was down, we could see what he was doing on the desktop: opening an Internet browser, searching for a video of last night’s game.
—What, Jimbo?
—Hold on. The bottom feeders were telling me about this.
He found the video and pressed Play. It started with the postgame interview that people had just been talking about, which was also the last thing I’d seen on TV before Silas and I left his room: Simone, the sideline reporter, interviewing Coach Zeller. But the coverage hadn’t ended there. After she finished speaking to Zeller, Simone had managed to lasso Reshawn.
—Great game tonight! she said to him.
Reshawn nodded, lowering his head to hear over the on-field jubilation.
—Tell me, she continued. How does it feel to have one of the biggest upsets in King history?!
—I would prefer not to!
Simone clasped her hand around her earpiece, the smile on her face indicating she thought she simply hadn’t heard right.
—All right! Tell me then, 206 yards and three touchdowns. What is it about this offense that was able to outplay a bigger Notre Dame defense?
Reshawn nodded encouragingly, like he was hanging on every word, and when he answered, he sounded even more upbeat.
—You know, Simone, I’d prefer not to answer that!
Simone heard him this time, and flashed a panicked look at the camera. But, professional that she was, she recovered and tried once again, making what she must have thought was a master counterstroke by asking Reshawn a question no decent human being would answer facetiously on national television.
—This victory must be a special one for you and your family. Is there anything you’d like to say to them tonight?
Reshawn did something I never expected to see him do—he crossed himself and pointed up at the sky. Then he dipped his head and said the phrase once again, using yet another intonation, this one solemn though appreciative, graciously devout.
—I would prefer not to.
My ankle skin was a slush of sickening colors, soft-banana yellow, Popsicle green, Windex blue. And yet the hideousness was a good sign, and on Monday a trainer informed me I could try to practice half-speed tomorrow.
I was finishing the last exercise of my rehab regimen when a call came down from the fifth floor—Coach Zeller wanted me to stop by his office. My head coach hadn’t deigned to speak to me since our post-demotion exchange on the practice field last week, not even to give condolences for my sprained ankle, and I had no idea what he wanted now.
I took the elevator upstairs. The secretaries seemed to be awaiting my arrival and immediately waved me back to the corner office.
—Close that door, Zeller told me.
I sat in a chair across the desk from him. Zeller was leaning back, fingers interlocked over his belly.
—How’s the ankle? he asked.
I relaxed, forgiving him for not asking about my injury before. He was busy, it must have just slipped his mind. I felt guilty, again, for having drunkenly cheered against my own team on Saturday.
—Better, Coach. I’m allowed to go fifty percent tomorrow.
Zeller nodded.
—You’ve had a rough couple weeks, haven’t you, son? He knew. He knew about Gwen. He’d brought me here to comfort me. I wanted to lunge across the desk and hug him.
—Yes sir, I said.
—We get raised thinkin’ women are the ones who can’t stop gossipin’, but you ask me, a sewin’ circle of bra-burnin’ feminists ain’t half as bad as a college football team. These rumors, they’re just mean-spirited. I don’t believe a word, by the way.
—That means a lot, Coach.
He tilted his head, as if to say it was the least he could do.
—Names stick in football, don’t they? he asked.
—Yes sir.
—They do. They do. And that’s what’s got me worried ‘bout you, Miles. You still got four years of eligibility. Four years of gettin’ called that? Just don’t seem fair.
—I can ignore it, I quickly said. I’m gonna get back out there and shut people up with how I play.
He reached down to open a desk drawer and took out a can of Skoal, stuffing a plug of tobacco in his cheek. When he resumed speaking, he seemed not to have heard me.
—You know, he said. For all the guarantees us coaches make when we recruit players, it really comes down to a crapshoot. A boy’s gotta choose a school and then see whether the place suits him. Suits his
