Saturday, May 26

  The Valiant Stadium

  Mission:

  - Win the Tryouts Game

  - Find Suspicious Mole Activity

  - Try Not to Smash Andre’s Head In

  12:37

  I might as well have started screaming.

  Andre deliberately sabotaged me—just so this salamander, this frog, this thick-headed, bull-bodied, biscuit-skinned ballsack could take all the glory.

  We jogged back toward our original spots as the crowd lost its collective mind. The noise was insane—stomping, cheering, chanting—and somewhere in the mix, Jamal, Maddie, and Elf were moving around like they’d just watched the winning lottery numbers get called. Wild. Animated. Completely normal.

  Nothing suspicious.

  Just the three people who flooded an entire locker room for funsies.

  What did they even gain from that?

  Why flood the whole place? Why not something worse? Why not something better? Why that?

  And why was September still on those stairs, looking down like she’d dropped something important and couldn’t find it? What was she searching for? Was she on a mission?

  Why did Andre look like the failed prototype of a plastic surgery commercial?

  My brain was spiraling when someone tapped my shoulder. I turned to see Tisiah and Malachi.

  “Fair play,” Tisiah said, nodding at me.

  “What’d he do?” Malachi asked, genuinely confused.

  “Bro—Connor took that ball over halfway down the field. Sixty-five yards!” Tisiah shouted.

  “I thought that was Andre,” Malachi muttered.

  Tisiah stared at him with so much disappointment it physically hurt to witness. “You think Andre did that lightning spin move thing?” he demanded.

  “He didn’t?” Malachi asked.

  Tisiah wiped a hand down his face, pure disbelief. I would’ve done the same, but I’d already emotionally resigned from this conversation thirty seconds ago.

  “Let’s just get back to the team,” Tisiah sighed.

  Malachi shrugged and turned his head toward the stands—then that smug little smile crawled across his face.

  Yeah. I knew exactly who he was looking at.

  I followed his line of sight and saw her: September, standing along the stairs in Section C. Sunlight slid over her shoulder like it was obsessed with her. She smiled at Malachi—soft, sincere, almost shy.

  Then she looked at me.

  Her smile vanished.

  Malachi glanced at me for a solid two seconds, patted my shoulder once, and said, “Back to the team. Let’s go.”

  Sure. Why not. Nothing like emotional whiplash before the fourth quarter.

  Soon enough, we’d all gathered near the YMPA sideline. Andre was in the middle of a full-blown praise circle, getting patted, hugged, hyped up like a glazed donut at a cop convention.

  I stormed toward him, Perk humming hot in my hand.

  He turned just as I shoved him. He stumbled back, nearly cracked his head, then caught himself. His face flushed red instantly.

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  “Something wrong?” he chuckled.

  “Something wrong??” I echoed, shoving him again—or trying to.

  He slipped to the side, and I lunged past him like I’d never learned basic motor control. A couple of guys held in their laughter so hard their shoulders shook. I could practically feel steam squeeze out of my ears.

  Rage took over.

  I swung.

  He blocked the first shot, slipped the second—but the third clipped his chin.

  Andre’s entire body went down like a diagonal ruler. He hit the ground face-first, dirt puffing up all around him.

  That was when Coach Wallaby came sprinting over like a furious raccoon in khakis.

  “Whoa, hey, hey, hey—AY! HEY!” he shouted.

  The bench exploded with gawking heads stretching up like giraffes trying to see drama. Best show all game so far.

  “Come on, come on, what are we doing?” Coach Wallaby snapped. “You JUST got a touchdown and now you’re fighting? What part of teamwork don’t you understand?”

  He glared straight at me.

  Andre finally pushed himself up, one side of his face already blooming in purple.

  “Get yourself together,” Coach Wallaby hissed, jabbing a finger at my chest before stomping back toward the bench. The same players who’d been jumping and screaming for Andre thirty seconds ago now just stared, nervous and quiet.

  Andre looked back over his shoulder at me, heat radiating off him, then slowly smirked.

  “All that power. All that Perk,” he chuckled. “And you still only use it to fight me.”

  He spat blood at the ground in front of me. I stepped back just in time to avoid it splattering on my cleats.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tisiah and Malachi watching. Tisiah looked concerned. Malachi looked like he was low-key enjoying the show.

  “You good, bro?” Mike’s voice came from behind me. He walked up on my left, Mikey on my right.

  “Yeah. Just—nothing,” I sighed, even though it was very clearly something.

  Mike nodded anyway.

  The game rolled on.

  By the end of the third quarter, we’d dragged the deficit from four touchdowns down to two. I’d done my part—managed to hit first downs on a couple plays, kept the drive alive. But any time I caught sight of Andre, he was staring at me like he was planning a murder-suicide pact.

  I was fully convinced he’d appear behind me in a dark alley one day.

  “Alright, everyone huddle up!” Coach Wallaby called.

  We circled in. Heads bent. Backs curved like over-stretched licorice.

  “Listen closely,” he said.

  Everyone tried to look serious, which only made us look more confused.

  “How we win is going to depend on two factors,” he said. “Do you want to win fast or do you want to win slow?”

  Brows furrowed all around.

  “If you want to win as fast as possible, you need three touchdowns. You see this? Three.” He held up three fingers and waved them in our faces. “But at the very least, you need to get us to overtime. That’s two touchdowns. That’ll tie the game.”

  “What if we just do a two-point try?” someone blurted.

  Every head snapped toward Jackson.

  Instant regret was all over his face.

  “A two-point PAT?” the defensive coordinator repeated, sliding his sunglasses down his nose like he’d just been personally insulted.

  Jackson cleared his throat. “Y-yeah. Two points. We get the first touchdown, kick it like normal. But on the last touchdown…” He hesitated. “We let Connor run it.”

  “Connor?” Andre asked.

  “Connor,” Jackson said again, more firmly this time. “He is running back, isn’t he?”

  “We can take some liberties,” a guy next to Andre said. “We got options.”

  “No need for that,” Tisiah cut in. “You saw how he carried third quarter. It’s a risk, but I think we got this in the bag. He’s got this in the bag.”

  “Tisiah,” Malachi hissed.

  “What?” Tisiah asked, totally clueless.

  Malachi made a subtle gesture under his chin—tone it down. Tisiah flushed and immediately went to scratching the back of his neck like his life depended on it.

  Coach Wallaby exhaled, actually thinking for once. The scoreboard timer ticked down. Fifteen seconds.

  “At the final touchdown,” he said at last, “if we even get there, I want Connor to run that ball. Andre—” he locked his eyes on him, “—your job is to protect him. If he fails, you lose the tryout games.”

  The weight of that landed on the whole huddle at once. It felt like someone dropped a thunderstorm on our heads.

  “Alright,” Coach Wallaby said. “Let’s make it happen. YMPA on three—one, two, three—”

  “YMCA!” someone yelled.

  The huddle froze.

  Everyone looked around for the malfunctioning brain cell. Mikey stood on the edge, shoulders hunched, looking like he wanted to respawn in a different body.

  “...Anyway,” Coach Wallaby muttered, deeply disappointed. “Just get on the field.”

  As we jogged back out, I nudged Mikey’s shoulder.

  “Did Jamal, Maddie, and Elf tell you about any other pranks?” I asked.

  “I would’ve told you already,” he said.

  “You wouldn’t have,” I shot back.

  “Well, I’m telling you now,” Mikey said. “No. The locker room was supposed to put suspicion on you. Anything bigger would trigger a full investigation, and that would probably lead back to them.”

  “But it already threw suspicion on me,” I argued. “Forget suspicion—they’d just kill me. Even if it wasn’t me.”

  “Like I said,” Mikey replied. “They’d investigate. Sure, they’d give your mom a reason to host a funeral, but they’d still figure out how it happened. And once they do, they’ll track the source. They can’t let a repeat happen. That’s bad business.”

  “Yeah… that does kind of make sense,” I mumbled, hating that it did.

  “Speaking of which…” Mikey lifted his binoculars and scanned the stands. “Uh… hm…”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Uh… alright…” Mikey said slowly.

  “What?”

  “I can’t find September.”

  I shrugged, trying not to let that spike of panic show. “Maybe she went to the bathroom or something. She’ll probably come back.”

  Before we could obsess about it further, one of the defensive linemen smacked both our backs.

  “Come on,” he grinned. “Let’s go.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” we both said in messy unison, jogging back to the line.

  We lined up on CAMEO’s 30-yard line, staring down the length of the field.

  Fourth quarter.

  Two touchdowns to go.

  A mole somewhere in the chaos.

  And me, trying really hard not to punch my own teammate again.