Page 42 of Notice Me, Jameson Hart
I grimace internally as the car erupts.
“HIS FEET?!” Robbie shrieks.
“Bro, you have a foot fetish?” Tyler asks, sounding weirdly delighted.
“No, I don’t have a—I was trying to?—”
“This explains so much,” Matthew says gleefully. “The way you always stare at the ground…”
“I’m shy!” I protest. “That’s why I look at the ground!”
“Sure, sure,” Adam says, trying not to laugh and failing. “It’s definitely not because you’re checking out everyone’s feet.”
“It was a joke!”
“Aboutmyfeetspecifically,” Tyler adds, wiggling his toes in his flip-flops. “Which, I mean, they are pretty impressive. Size thirteen, baby.”
“Please stop,” I beg.
“We need to protect the team,” Robbie says seriously. “No one goes barefoot around Kevin anymore.”
“I’m dropping out of school,” I announce. “I’m going to become a cave-dweller. Live in the woods. Never speak to any of you again.”
“But then how will you indulge your foot thing?” Matthew asks, smirking.
“I DON’T HAVE A FOOT THING!”
Adam pulls into the school parking lot, and I’ve never been this grateful to see Arcadia High in my life. “We’re here,” he announces unnecessarily.
I climb over Tyler, but in my desperation to escape the van, my foot catches on his leg, and I stumble out. I stop myself in the nick of time from smacking my face on the asphalt.
“Careful,” Tyler calls out. “Don’t want you hurting yourself before you get to see all those cleats up close.”
I flip him off, which makes them all laugh harder.
The guys grab their gear bags from the back while I stand there, trying to will my face back to a normal color. The parking lot is already half-full of cars, and I can see other players heading toward the field.
“Hey,” Adam says quietly, appearing at my side, “they’re messing with you because they like you.”
“Weird way of showing it,” I grumble.
“Yeah, well.” He shrugs. “That’s kind of our thing.”
Matthew and Tyler are already halfway to the field, their voices carrying back to us as they continue to joke about foot sizes. Robbie bounces between them, adding some colorful commentary.
“You good?” Adam asks.
I take a deep breath. “Yeah. Just…maybe don’t ever leave me alone with them?”
“No promises,” he says, slinging an arm around my shoulders and steering me down the hill. “Come on, foot fetishist. Let’s get you to the bleachers in one piece.”
“I’m never living this down, am I?”
“Absolutely not.”
The metal bleachersare determined to cook the bottom half of my body alive. They radiate trapped sunlight, burning lines into my thighs through my shorts when I shift. The football field isn’t faring much better. It simmers under an intense August sun that’s making the players’ water bottles deflate in real time.
From where I sit, I have a bird’s-eye view of the full spectacle that is football practice at Arcadia High. The players are in matching mesh jerseys, moving with a kind of collective choreography that resembles a swarm of beefy bees. They shout at each other constantly, things like “Go wide!” and “Eyes up!” The coaches prowl the sidelines, clipboards in their hands and whistles around their necks, and the few parents who bothered showing up are hunched over their phones.
