The light came through the front window and fell across the carpet in a long rectangle, the dust turning through it in slow spirals. The windowsill behind the couch was bare, the wood showing rings where the bottoms of cans had left marks in the finish. A dark circle sat pressed into the carpet near the wall, the fibers gone flat inside it.
Kody Stevens sat in the recliner with a folder open on his knee and a Tarleton State polo tucked into his khakis, his posture straight against the cushion. Beau sat across from him on the couch with his elbows on his knees and a bottle of water in his hands, turning it once between his palms.
Stevens tapped the folder with his finger. “We been watching your film all spring, Beau. You run the ball the way our offense is built to use a running back. Downhill, physical, no wasted motion.”
Beau nodded.
“We think you’d be a great fit for what we’re building.” Stevens leaned forward on the recliner, the folder shifting on his knee. “And I think you know we already got a Stanton in the backfield.”
“Yeah.” Beau smiled. “Mikey’s been doing his thing out there.”
“Mike’s been one of our best players since he stepped on campus. We think pairing you two up, splitting carries, running that two-back system. Could be something special. Two Stantons in the same backfield.”
Beau turned the water bottle in his hands. “Mikey could always run. Even when we were little he was faster than me. I just hit harder.”
Stevens laughed. “That’s exactly what we need.” He flipped a page in the folder, his eyes scanning the top of the sheet before he looked back up. “What are you thinking about for after high school, Beau? Beyond football, I mean. What do you want to study, what are your plans?”
Beau leaned back on the couch, the cushion giving under his shoulders. He held the water bottle against his thigh.
“I just want to play football, sir. That’s all I ever wanted to do. Play football and enjoy my life.”
Stevens nodded. “Nothing wrong with that.” He looked down at the folder then back up. “We’d love to have you come up for an official visit this summer. See the campus, meet the coaches, see where Mike’s been living. Get a feel for it.”
“Yeah. I’d like that.”
Stevens closed the folder, pressed his palms against the armrests and stood. He held his hand out and Beau rose from the couch and took it.
“We’ll be in touch. Tell your folks we said hello.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll do that.”
Beau walked him to the door and pulled it open. Stevens crossed the driveway, his body turning sideways to pass between the trucks parked at angles in the yard. He reached his car, lifted a hand and got in. The engine started and the car backed out slow, the tires finding the street, and then it was gone.
Beau closed the door then stood there with the water bottle in his hand, the house quiet behind him.
Saint sat at a table in the back of the library with his notebook open in front of him, his left arm curled around the top of the page, his body angled forward over the drawing. The afternoon light came through the windows along the far wall and lay in long strips across the carpet between the shelves. He worked a graphite pencil across the page in short strokes, building the shading along the woman’s jaw, the line of it running from her ear down to her chin where the skin softened and folded against her neck.
She sat on a porch in the drawing, her hands resting on a wooden railing, her body settled into a chair with the weight of someone who had been sitting there a long time. Behind her a levee rose in a long earthen slope, the grass on it rendered in tight crosshatching, and beyond that the river stretched flat and wide, the water suggested in long horizontal lines that ran to the edge of the page.
Remy sat across from him with his phone flat on the table and one earbud in, the other hanging against his chest. He turned the phone toward Saint and tapped play, the track coming through the single earbud low enough that it stayed between them. Saint leaned in, his pencil pausing on the page. The drums came in first, then a bass line underneath, the two of them riding together.
“I been trying to get away from straight rap melodies.” Remy pulled the phone back an inch, his thumb hovering over the screen. “Like, I want to do something where the beat can breathe a little more. Some melody underneath it.”
Saint nodded, his pencil finding the page again. “That one’s fire. Shit’s clean.”
“I been listening to a lot of stuff outside of what I usually listen to. Like some R&B shit, some soul samples. Trying to figure out how to layer it so it don’t sound like I’m just copying another nigga.”
“You ain’t copying nobody. You just learning how they did it and making it yours.”
Remy nodded. He pulled the phone back and scrolled through his files, his thumb flicking the screen twice before he stopped on one and turned the phone toward Saint again. “Check this shit out. Tell me what you think.”
He tapped play. Saint listened, his pencil still moving across the page, the woman’s hands coming up out of the railing in small careful curves, the knuckles shaded darker where they gripped the wood. The beat was harder than the last one, the drums hitting heavier, a sample buried underneath that gave it something the first one hadn’t reached for.
“This hitting harder than the last one.” Saint lifted the pencil off the page and pointed the end of it at the phone. “Somebody could hop on that.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.” Remy set the phone down and leaned back in his chair. “I just need somebody who can actually do something with it. We is in West fucking Texas”
Saint looked up from the notebook.
Remy held his hands up. “I’m just saying.”
Saint shook his head and went back to the drawing. They sat like that for a while longer, Remy playing him beats one after another, Saint giving his take on each one between strokes of the pencil, the two of them keeping their voices low enough that the librarian at the front desk never looked up from her screen.
Saint finished the shading along the woman’s hairline, the gray coming up at her temples where the pencil had been worked lighter, then closed the notebook and slid it into his bag. Remy pocketed his phone, grabbed his bag by the strap and the two of them stood and started toward the exit.
They passed a row of shelves near the back wall and Saint’s eyes went down the aisle. Wyatt. Lane and Cole stood at the far end, the three of them crowded close around a girl pressed against the shelf behind her. Millie. Wyatt’s Pepette. Their voices were low, the words not carrying past the spines of the books on either side. Millie’s shoulders sat tight against the shelf.
Cole felt the eyes first. He turned his head, looked back over his shoulder and found Saint standing at the mouth of the aisle. A smirk pulled across his face and his chin came up once.
Saint shook his head and kept walking.
Remy fell into step beside him as they pushed through the library doors into the hall, the noise of the school rising around them.
“I thought y’all all had y’all own bitch.”
Saint snorted a laugh.
The blocking pads stood in two rows along a narrow alley on the turf, the lane running twenty yards between them, five defenders staggered at different angles inside. The sun sat high, pressing down on the field, the empty bleachers, the press box standing dark above the far end zone, the wind carrying dust and the faint sulfur smell of the patch across the flats.
Meeks stood at the far end of the alley with his visor pulled low and his arms folded across his chest. On the far sideline Kendrick stood with his whistle hanging from his neck and his hat pulled low, his arms crossed.
Meeks pointed at Beau.
Beau took the ball and hit the alley at a dead run. He dropped his shoulder on Lane and drove him backward into the pad behind him, the collision ringing flat across the turf, the defender’s cleats sliding against the rubber pellets as his body gave ground. He hit Josue the same way, pad level low, his legs churning, the pop carrying past the bleachers. He ran through Marcus and Cruz without changing direction, each hit landing square, the defenders bouncing off his shoulder pads or getting dragged along until their feet gave and the turf took them. He stiff-armed Andres and jogged out the end of the alley, tossing the ball back to Meeks with one hand, his shoulders loose, his breathing easy.
Meeks clapped once. “That’s how you run the damn drill.”
He pointed at Jamie.
Jamie took the ball and came into the alley with his helmet bobbing and his pad level too high, his feet landing flat on the turf instead of rolling off the balls. Lane hit him and he absorbed it, his legs holding under him, his body rocking back half a step before he pushed through. Josue caught him off-balance and he stumbled, his hand going down to the turf to keep himself upright. He got past the Marcus but his momentum was gone and the Cruz and Andres read it and came together from both sides, their bodies converging on him in the lane. They piled him into the turf, the three of them going down in a tangle of pads and helmet and limbs, Jamie’s back hitting the rubber, his arms still wrapped around the ball.
Meeks waved him off.
He pointed at Eduardo.
Eduardo took the ball and came into the alley and Lane cracked him from the left, the hit catching him across the ribs, his body rocking sideways, his feet scrambling against the turf. He gathered himself and pushed forward and Josue drove into him low, shoulder catching his thigh, his knees buckling under the contact. He went down, the ball coming loose against the turf and bouncing once on the rubber pellets before it rolled to a stop against the base of a pad.
Meeks shook his head.
He pointed at Saint.
Saint took the ball and hit the alley. Lane broke down and angled toward him, his arms spread wide, his feet chopping the turf as he closed the gap. Saint chopped his feet in three quick beats, his weight settling over his hips, and Lane’s weight committed forward a half second too early. Saint planted his right foot and cut past him, his shoulder turning sideways through the space, the defender’s hands grabbing at air where Saint’s body had been. Josue came from a wider angle and Saint dropped his hips and spun through the contact, his arms sweeping behind him as he came out of the rotation. He juked past Marcus with a shoulder dip, stutter-stepped Cruz into a false read and slipped past as the fourth’s feet tangled with his own momentum. Andres came up and Saint dipped past him, the contact brushing across his jersey without catching. He jogged out the end of the alley with the ball tucked against his ribs.
Meeks looked at him then walked to the alley, his hands finding the tops of the pads on both sides, and started shoving them inward. The lane narrowed, the pads grinding against the turf as he pushed them closer, until the alley was barely wider than Saint’s shoulders. A man could touch both walls with his elbows bent. Meeks stepped back and looked down the length of it.
“Run it again.”
Saint took the ball and hit the narrowed alley. Lane was first, coming hard from a tight angle, his arms spread wide, his body low and driving. Saint ducked at the last second, his back flattening under Lane’s arms, and Lane’s momentum carried him up and over, his legs going over Saint’s back, his body flipping and hitting the turf behind him with a sound that carried across the field. Josue dropped low to wrap Saint’s legs and Saint jumped, pulling his knees to his chest, arms sweeping through the air under him. He landed and Marcus was already there, coming from the right, and Saint spun through the contact inside the tight space, the hit glancing off his hip as his body turned. Cruz got a hand on his jersey and Saint twisted against the grip, the fabric pulling tight across his chest, stretching against the fist, and then it slipped free and he was past him. Andres filled the narrow lane with his body, his arms out, his feet set. Saint put a stiff arm under his chin, the heel of his palm catching the bottom of the facemask, his head snapping back, his body clearing the lane as Saint drove through.
Saint jogged out the end of the alley and turned around.
Meeks stood at the other end with his visor in his hand. He shook his head. The wind moved across the turf and behind the pads the defenders were picking themselves up off the ground, brushing rubber pellets from their forearms and the fronts of their jerseys.
Meeks looked at Saint for a beat.
“Beau, run it again.”
Brynn sat cross-legged on Dakota’s bed with her back against the wall, the sheets bunched up between them where the bed had gone unmade. Music played through Dakota’s phone. A candle burned on the dresser across the room, the flame steady in the still air, the wax pooling around the wick. Smoke from the joint hung in a thin layer near the ceiling, drifting in the light that came through the window.
Dakota lay on her stomach with her feet kicked up behind her, her phone in one hand, the joint pinched between the fingers of the other. She held it out toward Brynn, her eyes still on her screen. Brynn took it, brought it to her lips and pulled, the cherry glowing orange as the smoke filled her chest. She held it for a beat then let it go toward the ceiling in a slow stream that broke apart before it reached the layer above them.
“I swear if I have to do one more group project where I do all the work and everybody else just puts their name on it, I’m gonna lose my shit.”
Dakota scrolled her phone with her thumb. “Just stop doing the work then.”
“Then I fail.”
“Oh well. We’re all gonna be fucking broke anyway.”
Brynn took another hit and passed the joint back, the paper warm between her fingers. “That’s comforting.”
“I’m just saying. That’s why I stopped giving a shit about school.”
“Look at where that got you. I’m trying to get the fuck out of here in a couple years.”
Dakota flipped her off, her eyes still on her screen, a smile pulling at the corner of her mouth.
The door swung open and hit the wall behind it, the knob cracking against the drywall. Rylan stood in the frame with his shoulders squared against the doorjamb, his eyes moving from Dakota to Brynn and back.
“Where’s the fucking money that was in the ashtray in the kitchen?”
Dakota kept her eyes on her phone. “I don’t know. Fuck off.”
Rylan stepped into the room. “I had forty dollars in that ashtray this morning and now it ain’t fucking there.”
“I said I don’t fucking know. Maybe you spent it. I ain’t keeping track of your shit.”
Rylan’s mouth opened and then his eyes moved to Brynn. Brynn turned her head, her eyes finding the wall beside the bed, her shoulders drawing inward, her body going still against the headboard.
He held for a second.
“I’m gonna go ask your mama if she seen it. And if she ain’t, I know you fucking took it.”
“Go suck a dick, Rylan.”
He shook his head and walked out of the room. Dakota pushed herself up off the bed, crossed to the door and turned the lock then came back and sat down, pulling her legs under her.
“He’s such a dick.”
Brynn looked at the door, the lock, the door again. “We probably shouldn’t have took that money.”
Dakota shrugged. “Not my fault. He shouldn’t have left it around.”
She reached over to the nightstand and pulled the drawer open. Her hand came back with a small baggie of pills, the plastic crinkling between her fingers as she held it up.
“You down?”
Brynn looked at the baggie. The pills sat inside it in a small cluster, white and round.
“Yeah.”
Dakota opened the bag, shook a pill into her palm and held it out. Brynn took it from her hand, rolling it between her thumb and index finger before popping it into her mouth and swallowing.
