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“You gotta focus better than that when practice starts, man,” Navin said, suddenly appearing next to me.
I flinched, caught off guard. “What?”
He jutted his chin out toward the stands. “Why are you always looking out there? Like, zoning out. Lost in thoughts.”
“Nah, man, it’s nothing.” I turned away and tugged my skull wrap on, slipping it into place over my forehead.
Navin copied me, adjusting his and fluffing his shaggy charcoal hair over the top of it. He spent way more time on his hairdo than I usually did, even making sure it looked good while we played. I knew it was a lost cause for me, becoming a sweaty, plastered mess by the end of a game.
“This have anything to do with a girl?” Navin asked, swiping his water bottle from the ground and following me to the bench.
“Just out of it today. Hard to focus lately. Especially with the playoffs, you know?” Lying wasn’t something that came naturally to me, but at least some of that was true. I was out of it. And playoffs were causing alotof pressure. Dad reminded me of it almost every day.
Navin nodded slowly, tucking his bottom lip in and chewing on it for a moment. “Hard to focus, huh? Yeah, bro, I get it. Pressure and stuff.”
Nothing about his statement made me think he was telling the truth. Navin was a horrible secret keeper, but he was also horrendous at lying. He was holding something back, but didn’t want to come out and say it. Maybe the pressure of the playoffs was getting to him, too.
“See? I tell you man, things are crazy around here.”
Navin slapped me on the back, exhaling a deep breath. “The world is getting flipped upside down. Soccer is taking overalmostevery spare brain cell. Except for the last one you have to spare that’s thinking about Una.”
“Bro, do you know how good she is at soccer?”
“I do.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but that’s when it hit me. What I said. What he said. I replayed every single word three times, trying to figure out what had just happened.
Why did he bring up Una? How did I fall into his trap so quickly? I had already pinpointed the fact that he had been holding something back a second ago. Then, he slips it into conversation that easily and I fell for it?
There was one thing more important than my inability to catch on to things, though.
What did he know?
“I saw her playing on a field in Teller the other day.”
I had never experienced a heart attack before, but I could only imagine this is how it felt. The squeeze in my chest causing so much pressure it felt as though I was about to explode. Sweat dotting my brow, my palms becoming clammy.
Breathing was also difficult, as taking a deep breath was now impossible.
Coming to a complete stop, I whirled around and faced him. Navin’s face, while usually accompanied by a goofy smile, was completely void of emotion except for a raised eyebrow.
He knew.
He saw.
Whathe saw was the next question. But I couldn’t go there without trying to deny things first. Maybe he caught her in her car. But that wouldn’t make sense when he said she was playing.
The only time Una was after the ball was when I was on the field with her.
“What were you doing out in Teller?” I asked, trying desperately to steer the conversation away.
“On my way back from somewhere.” He didn’t elaborate, and kept his gaze trained on me, waiting.
I reached up and scrubbed at my face, dragging my hands down slowly, pulling my cheeks and mouth with them. “What did you see?”
A small smirk came on his lips, but the joy didn’t reach his eyes. “Enough.”
Yup. That one word made all the blood in my body turn to ice, the sheer panic causing my brain to go haywire.
