Miller offers me a bite of his foot-long hot dog smothered with mustard and relish, and I shake my head, wondering how he could possibly eat at a time like this. Glancing around the stadium, I try to soak up the atmosphere, but am too gripped by fear to really appreciate the pageantry. My palms are sweaty, my stomach is queasy, and my heart is racing. Bottom line, I know that nothing about this game will be fun—and the best I can hope for is the absence of misery.
I feel Lucy tap me on the shoulder and turn to look at her in the row behind us, sandwiched between my mom and Lawton. “Will you please talk to me? I’m bored.”
“I can’t, Lucy,” I say, mystified by the mere notion of boredom with the countdown now at six minutes and twenty seconds.
“Are you getting sick, too?” she asks, adjusting the big loopy bow on her teal silk blouse. “Maybe you picked it up from Caroline?”
“No. I’m not sick. It’s just the game, Luce,” I say, trying to suppress a fresh wave of resentment, not the first since I arrived in Pasadena last night. It isn’t only that she quashed a relationship before it ever really began but that she acts as if nothing ever happened.
“Oh, c’mon!” she says, slapping my arm. “Have a little faith. We’re going to win! I just know we are!”
“Yeah, I have a good feeling about this, too,” Lawton says. “And would you believe it? Dad actually found a cricket out at some random park yesterday afternoon.”
I smile, picturing him with his Mason jar. “Really?”
“True story,” Lawton says, holding his fingers up in a scout’s pledge. “I was with him.”
I nod, as if reassured, even though my usual pessimism has taken root. Fortunately, I’m not the coach, because I’d likely advise my team not to lose, rather than to win, always a recipe for defeat. I try to imagine what Coach is saying now in the locker room, and although I can conjure his words and the fire in them, I’m having trouble remembering the sound of his voice. I have not heard it since the night we ended things, which feels like a lifetime ago.
“You still look like you’re going to throw up,” Lucy says to me.
“That’s because I might,” I say, as I wave to a group of former Walker colleagues sitting one section over, many of whom I chatted with last night at the hotel lobby bar. They’d all heard about me getting fired, of course, and assumed that it was because I wouldn’t write negative things about our program and the ongoing investigation.
Do you think the rumors are true? I was asked repeatedly. Was an official notice of inquiry coming? Would we ultimately be slapped with sanctions?
I said I didn’t know, that it often took years for these things to be resolved. I am still clinging to the hope that we’ll ultimately be cleared, at least of the big charges, and that Coach will be vindicated. I no longer hold him to mythic standards, and instead see him as a flawed man and a fallible leader. But, in an unexpected way, this only makes my faith and trust in him stronger.
“Tell Shea we’re going to win,” Lucy instructs my mother now, as if any of our predictions actually matter.
“We’re going to win!” my mother says, clapping along with our cheerleaders. She, too, has blithely ignored everything that happened before Christmas, not once mentioning Coach despite ample opportunity in our shared hotel room. The implication is that she is doing me a favor, instead of the other way around, which only intensifies my bitterness.
Miller informs us all that even Vegas has changed its mind, the line moving to one point in our favor after two injuries hit the Crimson Tide. You never want anyone to get seriously hurt, but well-timed minor injuries are another story, and I’m not-so-secretly grateful for the sprained wrist and hip contusion within the Alabama ranks. I’m even more grateful that I’m not up in the press box right now, pretending that this is just another day at the office.
“Did you bet on the game?” my mom asks Miller.
With a mouthful of hot dog, Miller says, “Hell, yeah, I bet on the game. Five hundred bucks. Easy money!”
My mother says, “Is it too late for me?”
“Nope.” Miller pulls his phone out of his pocket and says, “I can call my guy!”
I can’t keep myself from shouting, “Enough! Both of you! Would you please shut up?”
“Jeezy-peasy, sorry!” my mom says. “Forgot who we’re dealing with. Miss Doom and Gloom.”
I roll my eyes and stare straight ahead, bracing myself for a painful few hours of college football. And that’s if the game goes well.
But the first half goes anything but well. We come out flat and totally unprepared for Alabama’s physical play, quickly trailing by ten. Obviously it’s not an insurmountable deficit, but a hard gap to close against a team as good as Bama. While my mother and Lucy resort to Walker chants and cheers, and Miller and Lawton opt for cursing a blue streak at the refs, I pray and barter and promise, appealing to the football gods—and even God Himself. If we can pull off a comeback, I will settle for a dozen utterly forgettable, lackluster seasons. I’ll even take a few losing seasons, including humiliating losses to the Longhorns. I will never text Coach again. I will take a job in New York, leave Texas, and never look back.