Page 7 of Most Valuable Player
I wish I’d known about the money situation earlier. I hadn’t found out about it until the end of sophomore year, which only gave me the summer to practice and build my body for junior year. I made the varsity team easy, but took a back seat to the senior quarterback, and couldn’t put my skills on display as frequently as I wanted. Even though Darius’s scout took note of me toward the end of the season, impressed by my capabilities when the senior quarterback twisted his ankle and needed to sit out, he still told Barnett that I wasn’t big enough to be fully considered. He promised he would return the following year to take one more look.
I would’ve been big enough if I’d taken football seriously in my younger years. Why hadn’t I cared? Especially considering I knew howgoodI could be?
Whatever. The recruitment thing isn’t even my only issue with the future. Financial concerns aside, willCam Morellithrive in college like he does in high school? Or am I going to have to rebuild myself from the ground up once again?
I groan at the empty interior of my car and watch the passing landscape to cool off. Elwood is a decently-sized town smothered with forestry and pricked with local businesses, restaurants, and a strip mall. Trees tower over every road, turns are sharp and angled,and ditches frame the streets, blanketed with dead leaves and branches as we sink into fall. I like this place. It’s more scenic than the dull, dingy suburbs we came from.
There was a state park down there, too. I used to take meandering walks through the trails behind the school so I could find rocks to paint and add to my collection. The trees were a place to escape to where I didn’t have to worry about fists and laughter.
Until they found out and started hunting me for sport.
I don’t have to worry about that anymore. I’m big enough that people won’t test me like they used to. If I wanted, I could probably find some woodland trails to go scavenging in. But…
Cam Morelli isn’t that kind of person.
After a few ninety-degree turns along unpaved roads, I make it to my little house, separated from the neighbors by a curtain of pine and maple trees. As October creeps closer, splashes of red and orange are becoming more visible on the leaves. This house is way smaller than our place downstate, but with its wide glass windows and ten-minute walk to Lake Evergreen, it’s more freeing and open than the prison we left behind.
It takes me a long while to collect myself enough to head inside. When I push through the door, I come to a horrific sight.
Mom is giggling like a fifth-grade girl with a secret, her peanut-brown waves pinned back. The scent of freshly baked brownies wafts through the air—probably an apology gift for having emotionally neglected me. “Nico,please,” she says at the kitchen sink, plunging her gloves into soapy water. “If I break any more dishes, we’re going to need a new set.”
Dad’s trying to sidle up behind her, ignoring her attempts to shrug his gigantic bear frame off. “Well,” he says smoothly, the criminal, “we can just take funds out of Cam’s minisafe.”
“Ah, poor Cammy. Writing the code on the bottom inSharpie…How’s he going to survive?” Mom grins and twists her head, allowing him to peck her lips.
I gag so loudly that I nearly make myself throw up. Which, based on today’s events, would be perfectly appropriate, if not expected.
Both of them whirl toward me. “Cammy!” Mom says happily, beelining for me so she can plant a squishy kiss on my forehead. She’s dressed in her favorite pink dress, which means she must’ve really been looking forward to abandoning me, her most precious person, for their traitorous date. “How was the game, bun?”
“Well,” I say, shifting my weight. Disappointing Mom is the worst thing in the world, next to being rejected by some water boy with a magnetic face. “Something happened.”
She arches her thin eyebrows, and I think I’d rather drown myself in the dishwater nearby than have to admit my wrongdoings. “Meaning?”
I glance at Dad, who’s looking all dapper and shit with his sleeves rolled up and his tie tossed over his shoulder. “I can’t listen?” he asks defensively.
I wrinkle my nose.
“All because I dared to steal your mother for a night.” He scrubs a muscular hand through his dark hair, sighing. “Come on, Cam. I’ve got a client who canonlycome in tomorrow night to finish his full body, and your mom and I haven’t gone out in months. Cut me some slack, yeah?”
I continue glaring at the villainous man. Mom thumps my head as if I’m to blame for this whole situation, then snaps, “Both of you, living room.”
I fold my arms, searching her face. The area around her eyes, where she’s painted concealer over dark circles from her late shifts in the OR. She’s been a nurse there for a few years, and agreed to take onexhausting weekly twelve-hour shifts so she could have Fridays off for my games. Yet another burden she has to shoulder because of me.
Dad lumbers over like the big, clunky man he is. I inherited his height, but his stout physique, scruff, and overabundance of tattoos swathing him from the neck down don’t help the fact that we look nothing alike. (I begged him to give me a sweet lioness tattoo when I turned eighteen, but he said he was booked solid at the studio. I checked his schedule. Haven’t trusted him since.)
But okay, while they chose the worst day to bond over medium-rare steak or whatever married people do, at least I walked in on them being happy. The air of our old house was tight, the silence unbearably loud. While my dad moved soundlessly, every step my mom took quaked the floorboards.
Bottom line, fine. Maybe I’ll let the date slide.
Mom pulls us into the living room, then sits me on the left cushion of the love seat and props herself on the right while Dad takes the recliner chair. “What happened?” she asks tentatively.
“Well…” The word comes choked. I feel like there’s a giant, swollen testicle in my throat. I blink through the burn in my eyes, which happens on the rare occasion that two eyelashes fall into them simultaneously. “I got benched because of my grades. And for hitting another player. So now I have to be tutored by this guy who rejected me. Otherwise, I’m not sure I’ll be on the field by the time that scout from Alpine University comes to look at me.”
It’s the barest bones of what I can offer. My parents take this in, silent, and I brace for a scolding session that’s going to leave me groveling at their feet and begging for forgiveness. Hearing that I might not even be able to do the bare minimum for them by getting a full ride…I’m sure this doesn’t feel good to hear. As expected, Mom looks at me in slight horror.
“You? My sweet baby?” she whispers. “Gotrejected?”
…Oh.
