Page 6 of The Bright Lands

“Brazos is already flagging. Malacek too. We should have hit them harder at the kick, Whitley. We could have had this in the bag by now.”

Dylan grinned. “You don’t trust this arm?”

“I don’t trust your head.”

“It ain’t your call, bro,” Jamal said to Luke.

“I’m the offensive captain, Reynolds.”

“They’ll remember that when they make the movie,” said KT.

“Fuck off, Staler.”

“Boys. Whiteboard. Now.” Coach Wesford, the offensive coordinator, snapped his fingers. “I saidnow.”

With Dylan gone, KT’s attention turned to his phone. He typed a message, stared at his screen, typed something else. He concealed the screen deep inside his locker.

The sight unsettled Jamal. Since when was KT able to keep a secret?

Jamal went to fill his water bottle. The players were raucous as usual tonight—athletic cups lobbed and dodged, nipples twisted, shoulders knuckled—but as Jamal made his way around a puddle of what he could only hope was water he felt something taut and anxious in the air, a muted electric charge, as if the storm brewing outside had trailed into the field house on the tops of their helmets.

“Is it j-j-just me—” Benny Garcia, one of the other backbenchers, stood beside the rusted water fountain and scratched his nuts. “Or d-d-does it l-l-look l-l-like they’re p-p-plotting something?”

Jamal looked over his shoulder. B-B-Benny was right. It wasn’t just KT. At every other locker stood a player staring intently at a phone. Jamal caught Mitchell Malacek, the team’s starting halfback, murmuring something to the Turner twins. The twins shared one of their eerie mirrored smiles.

“I can’t believe it.” Garrett Mason, the massive defensive safety, shuddered at something on KT’s phone as Jamal returned to his own locker. KT flipped the screen over when he saw Jamal watching.

Garrett had a scowl that could knock a bird from the sky. He licked blood from his lip. “You ain’t got enough business of your own, Reynolds?”

Jamal forced a grin, said nothing.

A few minutes later, Dylan returned. “Hey,” Dylan said, scooting up to Jamal’s locker. “You’ve got my back, right?”

“Of course, bro,” Jamal said, though he found it odd Dylan would even ask.

When he looked up, he saw that Dylan had spoken not to him, but to KT.

At the sound of Jamal’s voice, Dylan gave an embarrassed little laugh. He draped his Million-Dollar Arm over Jamal’s shoulder. “I never have to worry about you, do I?”

When Dylan’s attention was turned away, Jamal saw a little frown cross KT’s face, a pinch of something pained and frightened. Ashamed.

And then it was gone.

“I got you, man,” KT said.

“Always?” Dylan said, smiling to the two of them.

“Always.”

Jamal wrapped his arm around him. Skin to skin, muscle to bone. They were, briefly, unbreakable.

JOEL

His analyst’s mind ran the odds. Of all the residents of Bentley, how could the first person Joel met upon his arrival be the one woman he was truly afraid to see? The woman who had been just as unpopular in high school as he but ten times harder, the woman permanently outshone by her famous older brother, the woman who would always be Joel’s first and final girlfriend: Starsha Marilynn Clark, though God help the man dumb enough to call her by all three names.

Three thousand to one, he thought. He supposed his luck could only improve from here.

Joel went for a handshake, saw her hesitate. Nodding toward the dim line of trucks, where he’d just enjoyed the pleasure of watching an old bully’s arrest, Joel said, “You’re a professional.”