27. Iris The Password
Iris The Password
“I keep thinking I see him everywhere,” I told Chloe. Chloe, Dabney, and I were sitting in the row of bleachers right in front of Greg, Ben, and their incredibly annoying posse of friends, and behind Emma and her cute little seventh-grade group of girls. I was glad Emma and I would be in high school together. Being a freshman could be tough between the senior boys excited for fresh meat (some were nice, some were not, and you needed an older girl to tell you the difference) and the older girls who were mad that you had stolen their social standing as cute new girl on the block.
Emma was adorable now, but you could tell that once she lost the braces and the babyish roundness to her face, she was going to be a knockout. I’d probably be jealous. But I’d still look out for her.
“Who?” Dabney asked.
“The man in the closet,” I whispered.
“We could barely see him in the photos,” Chloe said.
“Well, I know, but the more I think about it, I remember this, like, wavy brown hair with a little bit of gray in it and his eyes were strangely round. And very green.” I paused. “I think. I don’t know. They kind of glinted at me, and they seemed green, but they might not have been.”
Chloe rolled her eyes at Dabney. “With information like that, we should have gone straight to the police.”
“So basically, every middle-aged man looks like him?” Dabney asked me, shooting a you’re being a bitch look at Chloe.
I nodded. “Exactly.”
“I still think we should tell my parents,” Chloe said, slurping her soda. Chloe was funny because she could look so grown-up with a glass of champagne and practically ten years old with a paper Pepsi cup with a straw.
Maybe she was right. But I hated getting in trouble. And I was afraid that was the only thing that would come from telling the adults.
I glanced down at the field—the football was really secondary in this social outing—just as Merit snapped a pass. My heart dropped. He was so hot. And there was freaking Sophie cheering her heart out for him in a skirt so short you could literally see her butt cheeks.
“Hey,” Ben said, leaning over behind me. “Want some Whoppers?”
Whoppers were my favorite candy. “You’d share with me?” I put my hand to my heart. “Oh, Ben, what a gentleman.”
He rolled his eyes. “Only because I got the king-sized pack.”
“Hey, Chlo,” Greg said. “Want to go walk around for a minute?”
Dabney and I both glared at her because that was totally code for make out behind the field house . But she jumped up and said, “Sure! I’d love to!”
Dabney and I rolled our eyes at each other as they disappeared. Chloe had suggested that maybe we were jealous she had a boyfriend. Maybe we were. But, as Merit faked a pass, tucked the ball under his arm, and ran down toward the end zone, I knew that I wasn’t jealous that Greg was her boyfriend one little bit. Because I only had eyes for one boy. And he thought I was his sister. So, cool. Right on track.
Everyone was on their feet cheering, “Mer-it! Mer-it! Mer-it!” He was about to score when a huge linebacker came out of nowhere and pummeled him to the ground.
It was always rough to watch boys get tackled like that, but when it was Merit, it was like I actually felt the shock in my whole body.
“Um, he’s not getting up,” Ben said.
Before I could even register that Merit was lying flat on his back, I felt myself running down the concrete steps and onto the field, which was strictly forbidden. What was I doing? I looked like a total idiot! I wasn’t his girlfriend. I wasn’t his sister. I was capable of having all these very rational thoughts while in a full-out sprint across the field, where the hundreds of people in the stadium could see me. Those thoughts just weren’t strong enough to supersede the thought that I HAD TO GET TO HIM. Right now. Stupid Sophie beat me to it. But I knelt on the other side of him. Coaches and players were swarming. Merit looked around and said, “Iris.” I couldn’t help but look up at Sophie, who scowled at me. Things had been, um, tense between us since Belle Epoque. I’d mostly tried to avoid her.
Sophie said, “I’m right here, baby,” as if he’d said her name, which he very clearly hadn’t.
“Guys,” he said in his sure, steady Merit voice. “I am totally fine. Just got the wind knocked out of me. If you could give me, like, two inches of space, I’d love to get up now.”
Grace, from behind me, cried, “Merit!” and the seas parted. Mom trumps all.
He sat up and smiled. “I’m fine, Mom. I promise.”
She was crying. “You promised me that if you were quarterback you wouldn’t get hurt! You said you wouldn’t get tackled! So what would you call that if not a tackle?”
Coach Bradford put an arm around her and said, “I think he’s just fine, Mrs. McDonald, but the team doctor will get him all checked out in the field house. I promise you.”
“Well, I am going with him,” Grace said.
“Me too!” Sophie chimed in, getting up to walk beside the coach and Grace.
Sitting up on the field now, Merit looked over at me and smiled and rolled his eyes.
“You’re okay?” I whispered.
“Yeah. The not-breathing for a second was kind of scary, but I’m okay.”
“Promise?” I asked.
“Promise.” He paused. “Hey, you’re pretty fast when you want to be. Have you considered trying out for the football team?”
I smiled, half basking in the glow of his attention and half freaking out that he had seen how I broke Olympic speed records to get to him. But he had said my name, only mine, in his blacked-out, oxygen-lost moments. That had to mean something, didn’t it? “I wouldn’t want to show you up,” I said. “I know how important this quarterback thing is to you.”
“And you ran to me so quickly because…”
“Because I was nervous my surf lessons might get canceled,” I said smoothly.
Merit laughed.
“Okay, big guy,” said Dr. Montgomery, whom I’d seen a couple years ago for a sprained ankle. “Let’s get you checked out.”
Two of Juniper Shores’ biggest football players helped Merit up, and he put his arms around their shoulders. The crowd went wild. It was only then that I noticed both teams’ players were down on one knee. They all clapped as Merit got up.
“Well, this is embarrassing,” he said. “And, hey, could you please keep Mom and Sophie from coming into the field house.”
I shrugged. “Come on, Merit. I’ll do my best, but we both know that might be impossible.”
I walked over to Grace, unable to resist turning to look at Merit one more time. “Hey,” I said, “I think he’s okay. He doesn’t really want anyone in the field house.”
Ignoring me, Grace turned and made a beeline for the field house anyway.
“What are you, like, his spokesperson…” Sophie gave me the up-and-down, then added, “… freshman .” If she was mad about his saying my name, not hers, she wasn’t hiding it well.
I put my hands up. “Just passing along a message.”
Two other cheerleaders ran up beside her. “Yeah, and that’s all you’ll do with him, if you get my drift,” Sophie said.
Great. Just what I needed. To be on the entire cheerleading squad’s hit list.
“That’s practically all you do with him,” said Franklin, one of the girls.
Sophie shot her a look.
“What?” the other cheerleader asked.
“Never mind,” Sophie said. “I’m going to go check on my boyfriend .”
She said the word with special emphasis in my direction, as if half my thoughts weren’t centered on the fact that he was her boyfriend. Please. I was aware.
I was humiliated to have to walk all the way around the perimeter of the field and back to my seat as the players lined up again. As if I wasn’t feeling self-conscious enough, Dabney was waiting to say, “Smooth,” when I got to the bleachers.
“Is he okay?” one of Ben’s friends asked. I couldn’t help but notice that Ben was gone.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think so. They’re checking him out now.”
I sat down and whispered breathlessly to Dabney, “Sophie and I were on either side of him when he was kind of waking up, and he said Iris .” I said my own name like it was the password that unlocked the door to a magical kingdom.
Dabney and I both squealed. “He’s totally going to dump her for you!” she whisper-shrieked.
Chloe reappeared, hair mussed and lips red. “What did I miss?”
Dabney and I rolled our eyes at each other. “Subtle, Chloe,” Dabney said. “You can barely tell you’ve been making out.”
“Oh, good,” Chloe said, missing the sarcasm.
“What you missed is that Merit loves our girl, not Sophie.”
“What?” she asked breathlessly.
I shook my head. “That’s a serious overexaggeration.” But was it? As Dabney and Chloe chattered about what had just transpired, I thought of Merit, of the way he looked at me when he opened his eyes. I wasn’t reading into that, was I? It had been real. We had definitely had a moment. And I couldn’t wait to get home and find out if maybe, just maybe, we could have another one.