Page 10

The Deal

Colt

T he looks of wonder on the team’s faces are all I need to know that they’ve never played in front of this kind of crowd.

Coach Dillon and I make our way over to the sidelines as they jog out onto the field with their sticks and goggles. The shouts of the audience we’ve drawn is unmistakable – it’s obvious what they’re here for, but a crowd is a crowd. May gazes up at the bleachers, at the nearly full student section, already getting rowdy in their game overalls, orange towels in hand, and then turns to shoot daggers from her eyes at me, framed by the hot pink of her goggles. The Dutch braid done for her by Brianna whips around over her shoulder, and if I were someone less acquainted with May Velasco, I’d probably be scared for my life. Instead, I manage a cheeky grin and a shrug. As much as May sees the video as a PR nightmare, one I’ll have to tell my team to erase sooner rather than later, it’s certainly secured the Riders a hell of an opening game, and it’s given Captain May a very, very amped-up team. We’d better enjoy it while it lasts.

‘You come with quite some sway,’ remarks Coach Dillon, scratching at her clipboard with her plastic stick pen. She looks up at a poster with squinted eyes. ‘God, these kids work fast. What’s that even say? “Bradlasco Lives On”,’ she reads. ‘Have the both of you got some sort of history I’m not aware of?’

‘Uhhh …’ Coach watches my face phase through about five different versions of confusion, and knowledge dawns on her slowly.

‘I’ve heard some insane stories in my time on the lacrosse circuit,’ she quips. ‘I have time for one more.’

‘Um, the thing is – you gotta understand this much first. We aren’t together,’ I start, adding a couple extra-dramatic waving motions with my hands to really sell it. ‘But someone took a video of us a few days back – and there’s been some speculation.’

Coach Dillon just raises an eyebrow at me for a minute. Then, she jabs an insistent thumb at the quickly growing crowd filling the stands. ‘Clearly! That’s the whole damn town out there!’

‘And so – they think we’re …’

‘Hmm.’ The coach hums in thought. ‘I just love the rumour mill among young people nowadays. The things it churns out. Priceless.’

‘It’s not real. I swear …’

‘Ah-ah-ah.’ She holds up a hand to stop me. I blink, taken aback. What is going on? ‘That’s the whole damn town out there,’ she repeats slowly. Her gaze falls on me, and then back to the bleachers. ‘Maybe they came for you. Or Bradlasco . Or whatever it is. But maybe … they’ll stay for these girls playing lacrosse.’

We watch as the team jogs onto the field to hearty cheering and chanting. They’re definitely not familiar with the atmosphere they’re experiencing. I can see it in the tension in their shoulders, the way their heads swivel, fully alert. I remember going through the same thing when I started playing in Boston, and years later, last October. I still feel it now – the same tension they do. Crowds are, at their core, terrifying. I think of every single person who watched me go down on the field. Eyes everywhere.

In the girls’ case, though, this crowd is a good thing. People stay for lacrosse. And that means lacrosse stays for the people. Budget improvements, bigger and bigger crowds, and the best bonus – an edge when it comes to Major League Lacrosse visibility.

‘If May and Jordan finish the senior season out with all eyes on them?’ Coach reads my mind, shaking her head. ‘By the time they declare for the draft, it’s open season.’

Ideas, all kinds of them, kick up a dust storm in my brain. When the first whistle blows, and the draw is on, the ideas are swirling. But it’s the moment that May captures the ball, passes straight down the middle to Maddie, and then to Jordan, and at last, when the ball smashes its way into the net, that it all comes together.

‘HOLY SHIT!’ someone yells excitedly from behind me. The field vibrates with the thrum of the chant – ‘RIDE ON, COWGIRL!’ Coach was right. Maybe this started out about me, but it’ll have brought this town together for something much greater.

‘May will never buy it, you know,’ I shout over the cheers to Coach Dillon as the girls set up for their next formation.

‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ the coach shouts back.

The Riders coast through the first game of their season against Arizona at Sedona, sitting pretty at a cool 12–7. It’s no secret they’re going to take this one home by the third quarter, but the audience hangs in there until the final buzzer sounds, and then orange and white towels go flying as the Oklahoma City Victory March plays, and the girls embrace on field. May, whose expression had been stony as a wall at the beginning of these four quarters, grins broadly along with her team. Coach’s hypothesis is great, of course, but May’s smile is the added perk I really, really wouldn’t mind.

It fades when she meets my eyes as the team separates and they head back towards the tunnel to the lockers once all the festivities slow down and fans start to trickle out. May’s one of the last to head back in. Coach Dillon stops her for just a moment before she hits the entrance to the tunnel. I can’t hear what they’re saying, as I’m somewhat occupied congratulating the girls as they file inside, but I have a little bit of an idea.

Then she comes my way, May, her braid only slightly matted, her pink goggles in hand, jersey and kilt dotted with grass stains, but attitude perfectly intact.

Said attitude is the reason I don’t expect anything at all when she jogs right up to me where I’m standing to the side of the tunnel about halfway inside. She gets close enough that I can make out barely discernible freckles across her nose, can count the empty piercing holes on her ears. Her dark eyebrows knit, and through gritted teeth, she chokes out the magic words.

‘Tell your PR team to back down. I’m in.’