Did you though?
I struggle to breathe. “What does that mean?”
She doesn’t answer.
I blink.
The field is empty.
No crowd.
No band.
No players.
No cheerleaders.
No Maddison.
The stadium lights are still on, humming overhead, but every seat is vacant. The banners hang limp. The scoreboard is dark.
I’m standing alone at the fifty-yard line.
My helmet feels too heavy. My hands hurt again, throbbing, burning—but when I look down, there are no blisters. No bandages. Just clean skin and a tightness in my chest I can’t breathe past.
“Hello?” My voice disappears into the open air.
Something moves in the sky.
I look up.
A single balloon is floating up past the stadium lights.
Red.
Drifting higher. And higher.
I don’t know why, but panic slams into me like a hit I never saw coming.
“Wait!” I shout, breaking into a run. “Hey—wait!”
My cleats pound uselessly against the turf. The balloon keeps rising. Just out of reach. Just far enough away.
I trip.
Fall.
By the time I scramble back to my feet, it’s already gone.
Just empty sky.
Just empty stands.
Just—
I jolt awake in the dark, my heart trying to tear its way out of my chest.
The room’s cold, the city bleeding through the window in blue streaks. For a second, I don’t even know where I am. My pulse is still pounding from the dream, the field, the noise, her face.
