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CHAPTERONE
MAEVE
End of Freshman Year
Some things are set in stone.
The length of a second. How many days fill each month. If you’re from Glenmont, then you’re obligated to hate anyone from Alleghany.
But even stone can be altered. Some seconds feel hours long. August passes too quickly; March drags too long. And a girl from Glenmont could hate how much shedoesn’thate a boy from Alleghany.
I’ve lived in Glenmont my entire life. I know the tiny town better than the grooves of my own palm. Its small downtown area where my mother’s real estate office is located; the wooded running paths that surround the high school; the stretch of sandy beach that encircles our half of the lake. And I say “our half” in acknowledgement of Glenmont’s single most defining characteristic: its hatred of the town that owns most of the remaining lakeshore, Alleghany. The town of Fayetteville has the misfortune of being sandwiched between us on one side.
I have no idea how the rivalry with Alleghany started, only that it’s been a divisive force for longer than I’ve been alive. My father grew up in Glenmont; he was the hometown football star here before going on to play at nearby Arlington University, and then eventually to coach there.
Based on the stories he’s told to my twin brother Liam and me, tensions ran just as high then.
At least until last September.
This past fall, the scales tipped. The tides changed. And not in the direction of being one big happy family singing around a campfire.
Things changed for one reason, composed of two words: Weston Cole.
The rivalry between Alleghany and Glenmont has never been ordinary, or normal. It’s always been petty and vicious. We compete for everything, but there are striations to it. Some victories are worth more than others.
At the top of the hierarchy? High school football.
The two teams and their respective hometowns hate each other just as much on the one Friday night they clash as on the other three hundred and sixty-four nights of the year. For several consecutive seasons, Glenmont won. Starting the very first year my father left his coaching job at Arlington University and became Glenmont High’s head football coach instead.
This past fall was meant to be different. Better. It marked the start of Liam and I’s high school careers.
I entered the halls of Glenmont High as an afterthought, but Liam entered as a legend. The heir to the Stevens football dynasty. Glenmont’s golden ticket to another four years of victory.
In what seemed like a perfect twist of fate at the time, the first game of the regular season was against Alleghany. Nothing like beating your mortal enemy to start the season off right. Instead? Liam stepped on the field as the starting quarterback, but so did another freshman, who had just moved to Alleghany over the summer. Weston Cole.
And we lost.
Badly.
Weston Cole stepped out onto the field and ruined the start of what was meant to be a four-year legacy. That one game would have been bad enough, but as a freshman, he led the Alleghany Eagles to their first state football championship during my father’s tenure as head coach.
His name is uttered reverentially in Alleghany and with hatred in Glenmont; no more so than in my house.
Liam has always been serious and focused, especially with football, but this past season pushed him beyond his normal bounds. I spent the remainder of my freshman year after his first clash with Weston Cole being woken up early each morning to the sound of clanging weights on the other side of the wall we share. Not the most pleasant way to start the day, but I’ve never said anything to him about it.
Liam and I rarely discuss the rivalry or its repercussions. I know Liam feels like he let everyone down last fall: our dad, our town, and our school. But his personal rivalry with Weston Cole goes beyond football. Liam tends to be quiet and reserved. Football is where he’s always excelled.
I know it gets to him that Weston is rumored to have the cocky swagger characteristic of most quarterbacks. That he’s known to be popular and charming and manages to do so with little effort. He may be hated in Glenmont, but that doesn’t preclude him from the high school’s gossip mill. If anything, he features more prominently because of it. And the rumors are far from limited to just football.
The ceaseless lights of Glenmont’s football stadium flash by on the right, and I add being on the track, running sprints, to the list of things I would rather be doing right now.
I was the only freshman to make Glenmont’s varsity girls soccer team, and I’m determined to do more than just ride the bench sophomore year. I have a training plan for the entire summer already mapped out, even though the last day of school was only yesterday.
When my best friend Maggie saw it, she rolled her eyes so hard I was worried they’d fall out of her head. But I can’t help it. Like Liam, I tend to be serious, steadfast, and predictable. I’m a rule follower. A planner. Some would call me boring. Maggie did, until I agreed to tag along on this outing.
That’s why I’m currently in a car with Maggie and her older sister, headed to a party in Fayetteville.
I make the safe, responsible choices so that other people can make stupid ones. Which is the main reason I’m spending my night attending this Fayetteville party. Some sophomore guy Maggie met outside her dance studio invited her, and I refuse to let her become a crime statistic. Our other two best friends, Brooke and Sarah, left this morning to be camp counselors in Maine for the summer, and I knew if I refused to go, Maggie would forge ahead alone.
