1. Isla #2
I want to trust Grandma’s read on the situation. She’s lived in this neighborhood for more than thirty years and knows Christine and the rest of the board. To her, they’re familiar, predictable, mostly harmless.
But Grandma didn’t grow up the way I did, getting laughed out of homeroom because some kid decided Isla Pickel sounded like a deli order.
She didn’t spend four years of high school learning that the people who seem like they’re all bark eventually find their teeth, usually right when you’ve stopped bracing for it.
I’d rather overprepare and be wrong than the other way around.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you, girls,” I murmur.
Cardigan is roosting on the lower bar of the coop, already half asleep.
Marjorie is pecking at something in the dirt, totally focused.
Betty and Tennessee are doing their evening lap around the yard like they want to get their steps in before settling in for the night.
Starlight is missing for one heart-stopping second before I spot her tucked under the lavender bush.
Brad Pitt is perched on top of the coop itself. He surveys his kingdom with the unearned confidence of a man who has never once paid rent.
“Nobody is taking you anywhere,” I tell them. Maybe it’s not something a normal eighteen-year-old says out loud to poultry, but I’ve made peace with the fact that I’ll never be normal. I mean, I named my chickens after Taylor Swift songs. “I won’t let them.”
Brad Pitt only blinks as if he already knew that. Typical male.
Once I’m sure they’re all set, I head back inside and grab my backpack from where I left it by the front door.
I have a discussion post due for my Intro to Sociology class by midnight and an exam on Friday I haven’t started studying for.
None of that goes away just because Grandma is riding a motorcycle without wearing a helmet, and my chickens are in jeopardy.
Once I’ve set everything up on the kitchen table, I hunt around in the fridge for something to eat.
Grandma isn’t exactly big on cooking, which pretty much fits her personality, but there’s cheese and pepperoni and hard-boiled eggs in here.
That will do for now. I set my snack down on the table and log in to my school email.
It’s a wall of notifications. Underneath that, there’s a group chat, which I don’t actually participate in because...
why would I? I go to class, I come home, and I do my homework.
The fact that there have been roughly forty messages in the past twenty minutes catches my attention, though. In the name of procrastinating, I open up the chat to see what’s going on.
Going tonight??
Obviously. It’s Everett’s first game back. I still can’t believe they only suspended him two games for that.
Dude broke a guy’s jaw. Two games is nothing for what he did.
lol. Honestly, I’d let him break my jaw.
Curiosity is what keeps me scrolling. I don’t follow football.
I never have. I couldn’t pick a single player out of a lineup if my entire future depended on it.
But the name keeps coming up. Everett. Everett is back tonight.
Everett is probably going to murder somebody on the field out of pure pent-up rage.
Somebody attached a video taken from the stands at some point this season. There’s a guy in a green and gold jersey absolutely leveling another player so hard, the entire section gasps in unison.
He is one scary motherfucker, and I respect it, someone writes under the video, followed by no fewer than four skull emojis.
I play the clip again. Then again, after that.
There’s something almost hypnotic about it. Not the violence, exactly. I’m not the kind of person who likes watching people get hurt. The first time I ever watched one of those funniest video shows, I burst out crying when somebody took a bad fall. The audience was laughing, and I was weeping.
It’s not the violence that keeps me watching. It’s the guy inflicting it. He’s just... calm. He doesn’t celebrate or anything. He just gets up, looks at the guy he flattened, then walks back to his side of the field like nothing happened. Meanwhile, the dude is still on his back, lights out.
One scary motherfucker.
What if I could hire somebody like him?
Not to hurt anyone, obviously. God, no. Just to exist near the HOA board in a way that suggests he might. A guy with the kind of vibe that would make Christine from the board decide she has better things to worry about than a bunch of chickens.
It’s a ridiculous idea. I’m completely aware of that. I don’t know this person. I don’t know if he’s even a real option for the kind of thing I’m apparently considering, which is, to be clear, not actually a real category of service that exists—at least, as far as I know.
It doesn’t stop me from searching his name.
Everett Stone. Linebacker, number 52. Junior.
There’s a photo of him with his helmet off.
He’s dead-eyed and unsmiling. He’s also kind of handsome in a scary, dangerous sort of way.
His eyes look almost black. Heavy brows.
A head full of unruly black hair that matches the stubble on his cheeks and jaw.
Do I stare at it longer than necessary? Maybe.
What does a person wear to a football game?
I genuinely have no idea, but I’m going to have to find out, because Cardinal Oaks is threatening my babies.
Grandma’s joke about hiring muscle won’t stop rattling around in my skull, and there happens to be a guy named Everett Stone who breaks jaws like it’s nothing.
I need to see him in action for myself.
So tonight, for the first time in my entire college career, I’m going to a football game.
Those chickens had better know how much I love them.