“See? I’ve been trying to tell you. Now…heads up. It’s the end of the first quarter, so they’ll have to fill some time on the jumbotron while the players stand around and spit out Gatorade. How do I look?”
She tousled her hair, adjusted her jersey, and faced him. Honestly, she looked perfect. She was pure enthusiasm and joy; it radiated out of her. Her earnestness and, he had to admit, probably naivety, that she was ever going to get on this jumbotron—she, out of seventy thousand people—was childlike and incredible. It was intoxicating. He wished he could bottle it and drink it himself.
“You’re looking at me like you love me,” she said.
“Busted.”
She blushed, just briefly, before: “Should I show more cleavage? I’m not above it, might as well put these things to good use.”
“You—”
“Screw it, no time!” She gawked up at the scoreboard. They were showing more screaming fans. Wren stood up and threw her arms in the air, waved them back and forth, yelled so loud that to Arthur the veins in her face looked like they might explode.
“Arthur, this is it! They’re making their way around the stadium, see. The camera’s panning this way. Get up and scream!”
Arthur stood reluctantly, watched the faces pan by on the video screen, and clapped his hands together gently in rhythm with the crowd and the thumping music. He had all the zest and enthusiasm of someone half applauding a singer-songwriter in a sleepy café.
“It’s not golf, Arthur! Make some noise, for God’s sake!” Wren had grabbed him by the arm and was shaking him back and forth.
He tried again.
“Ahhhhhhhh!” he yelled. Better, but only slightly—this time he mustered all the conviction of someone who’d just been stabbed in a middle school production ofHamlet.
“LOUDER!”
He turned red. Yes, there were thousands of people around, many of them standing and screaming, but he hated anything that might draw attention to himself. What if he looked stupid? He could imagine everyone stopping in unison to stare at him for doing it wrong. For not fitting in. What if, God forbid, the camera operator decided to puthimon the jumbotron? In front of all these people?! He’d simply combust, that’s all. Vanish into a pink mist and cease to exist.
Wren was out of patience. She grabbed his face and pulled it to hers. “IF YOU LOVE ME YOU WILL FUCKING SCREAM!! AHHHHHHHH!!”
He couldn’t help but join her; whether it was out of terror or love, he wasn’t sure. But he did scream. Some guttural, scratchy sound formed somewhere between his chest and his belly and clawed its way out of his throat and into the nighttime air. And with it, so much of the tension he’d been holding. His shoulders dropped several inches and his chest relaxed instantly. How come no one ever told him how good it felt to scream?
Then someone tapped him on the shoulder. Arthur turned to look at the fan seated next to him, a silver-haired man who looked an awful lot like his dad. The man gestured back toward the aisle, where a stern usher was pointing directly at him.
“Babe,” he said.
But Wren wasn’t listening. She was beating her chest like a gorilla and howling like a wolf at the same time.
The usher was now gesturing for Arthur and Wren to make their exit. They were caught. They didn’t belong and now the stadium staff knew it. Arthur’s face ran hot. This is what he got for making a spectacle! For screaming like one of his feral middle schoolers! And now there would be consequences. Hedid not enjoy breaking the rules, getting in trouble. He was a teacher, a respected member of the community. Not respected by his students or their parents or any of the people he worked with, but respected in theory, as an educator. He was not the kind to get thrown out of a sporting event, or worse, locked away in the seedy little jail they kept in the basement for the ultra-drunk and disorderly.
“Wren, we have to go,” he said. But she didn’t hear him. She was still screaming and watching the screen. And now the usher was shimmying her way down the aisle, scooting along and stepping over beers. Closing in on them. Were ushers authorized to use force? Was he about to be beaten with a hidden baton? “Wren!”
“Screw it,” she said, grabbing the railing in front of her and climbing the barrier’s rungs like a ladder.
“Stop, what are you doing?” She was standing six rungs high, waving her arms still like a maniac, towering a good two to three feet over all the other standing fans. Arthur reached for her but simultaneously felt a strong hand squeeze his shoulder, and he looked up and made eye contact with Wren, whose face was pure elation as she pointed up at the RavensVision jumbotron. He followed her eyes and saw her there, pixelated and shouting for joy, and he also saw himself, and the usher grabbing him and leering. Arthur heard the cheers, a raucous wave of approval. He peeled his eyes away from the board and looked at Wren. She’d lifted up her shirt and was pointing to her exposed belly where she’d writtenFuture Ravens Fan. But this wasn’t safe, he had to get her down, except he couldn’t because the usher was pulling him in the other direction.
And then she fell.
She fell four whole feet onto the field, into a pair of soft arms waiting to catch her. Well, not arms, exactly, but wings.
7
“I can’t believe I metPoe!” Wren exclaimed from the passenger seat. With the seat slid all the way back, she just barely fit in the front of Charlie’s near microscopic car. Which was somehow packed with far more garbage than it had any business holding on to, like a tiny ant carrying an entire potato chip. Though well-manicured on the outside, her friend had always been a slob, and that much hadn’t changed.
Charlie, driving, was incredulous. “You didn’t meet him, youfellon him, Wren. He tore his ACL. They say he’ll miss the season.”
“Wait, where did you read that?”
“Barstool.”
