Page 9 of Fight for Me
“You owe me for this,” a familiar voice said from the far corner, and Lexie’s mouth fell open as Jake appeared wearing Ronnie’s body from the neck down, complete with shoulder padsbeneath the custom football jersey. He lifted his gaze from his oversized feet and froze, locking eyes with Lexie across the room.
Her hands flew to her mouth but failed to stop the stream of laughter that poured out.
“Ta-dah!” Andy shouted.
Lexie’s giggles grew until she sank to the floor, her arms clutching her midsection. Every time she thought she had herself under control, she’d look at Jake standing there as half a bird and start all over again, tears streaming down her face.
“Why are you here?” Jake said, his face clearly pained. He shuffled forward, looking down at her over the edges of the costume.
“Oh, you haven’t heard? I get to make sure you don’t squash small children with your giant bird feet,” Lexie answered as she rose to stand, her wide grin still running wild.
Jake groaned and looked at Andy, who was obviously enjoying the exchange.
“Put on your beak,” Andy said as he lifted Ronnie’s gigantic head from the floor and placed it over Jake’s tiny one. He tightened the fasteners around the sides. “Let’s go over the ground rules again. What is mascot rule number one?”
“No talking while in costume,” Jake recited, his voice coming through the mesh that made up Ronnie’s mouth.
“Yes, strike one for breaking that already,” Andy said, grinning. “And you should be sure to...?”
“Take extra big steps,” Jake said, and Lexie could hear the scowl in his voice.
“Good, and also never . . . ?”
“Lean too far to one side, or I will fall down and not be able to get back up,” Jake supplied, earning another burst of laughter from Lexie.
“Great,” Andy replied. He consulted a list in his hand and then ran through another check of his photography bag. “Just walkaround for a few minutes and get used to the weight of it all, then we’ll get you through the door.”
“This is a one-time thing, I assure you,” Jake grumbled to Lexie. “The real Ronnie is sick, and I happen to fit the costume.”
“Oh, you don’t have to explain yourself to me,” she said gleefully. “If you want to moonlight as a giant bird, you go right ahead.”
Jake made several slow treks across the room, and Lexie pulled herself together long enough to help him make the turn at the end of each pass. Getting through the door was a bit difficult, requiring Jake to turn sideways and crouch to keep from knocking Ronnie’s head off, but they managed it on the second try.
“Alright, kids. I’ve got to get in there, but you hang around the back doors until you hear your intro, then let him loose,” Andy instructed, grinning at Lexie. “Don’t let the kids climb on him.”
When he was gone, Lexie turned to Ronnie and stretched up on her tiptoes to put her face in front of his giant beak. She could barely see Jake inside the dark costume, the only light coming from the mesh opening.
“Can you see anything?” she asked.
“Only what’s right in front of me. No peripheral vision,” he said.
“Okay, well, I’ll be your eyes, then,” Lexie replied. She ran her palm down the thick wing that covered his arm. “Where’s your hand?”
“Almost at the end, there’s a hole,” he said, raising his arm to show her where a brown glove peeked out just under the wing tip. Lexie grabbed his hand and, after a moment, felt his fingers close around hers in a tentative grip. For some reason, it felt like she was holding on to an electric fence.
“Feel good?” she asked. “About going out there?”
“Yeah,” Jake said, his voice faint from inside the costume. “Feels great.”
There was an awkward silence before someone with a megaphone called for a drumroll.
“Sounds like your cue!” Lexie blurted, grateful for the distraction. She tugged Jake toward the double doors, choosing to believe that the heat creeping up her neck had everything to do with the crowd and nothing to do with him.
“Yes, ma’am, I’vebeen doing my laundry,” Jake said, pacing in a circle outside the administration building, his phone pressed to his ear while his mother verified that he was actually a responsible, functioning adult. Even though he was barely half an hour from home, sometimes it seemed like Kathleen Tanner thought her only son had gone to live on the moon.
He stopped to lean against the warm brick, only partially listening as he watched several groups of students pass through the quad. He nodded politely to a few before catching sight of a familiar figure approaching through the afternoon sunlight.
“Hey, Mama, I’ve got to go,” he blurted, feeling only slightly guilty for interrupting what he was sure was a riveting story about his Uncle Rob and a goat that got stuck in the fence.
