9 - Ethan
Ethan
The car wash obviously didn’t bring in enough money for us to buy our own bus. However, we did raise enough to rent one. As I stepped inside, it was the smell that hit me first. A mix of old vinyl and the scent of something sweet that was trying to cover it up.
My eyes roamed over the seats. Every single one of them was cracked.
Some more than others. Coach turned the key, and things just got worse.
The air conditioner rattled louder than the engine, and the one window wouldn’t close all the way.
So we’d be serenaded by the howl of the wind for the entire two-hour drive.
We couldn’t afford to put our logo on the side, or to have it painted with our school colors. All that was visible on the outside was a smiling cockroach tipping his tophat—Burt’s Pest Control logo that was so old and faded, it was peeling away from the paint. An embarrassment, to say the least.
Much like our struggling team.
I guess it was a match made in hell.
After an insanely terrifying and annoying two hours, we finally pulled into the WestConn Stadium parking lot. There were two massive charter coaches in front of us. Their cool wrapping was a perfect platform for the Wolves’ logo to taunt us from, while our bus clanked and wheezed to a stop.
I couldn’t explain how relieved I was that the trip was over. There were a few uphills that nearly gave me a coronary. And, of course, the bus often made threatening sounds that had us all holding our breath, but none of us said anything. We just filed out in silence and headed to the locker room.
I hurried to get ready because I was curious.
I wanted to know what the stadium looked like, and what we could expect for the day.
So I walked through the tunnel and stood at its edge.
Their field wasn’t only clean, it was neat too.
There were crisp yard lines and bright numbers, but the best sight was that of our opposing team.
They ran drills that looked so well-rehearsed it made me want to cry. They had sharp breaks, synchronized warmups, and staff that moved around like they had an actual clue. It was the dream I’d wanted to be a part of since I was a kid. The reason I’d left Stamford.
But what I wanted, and what I got were two completely different things.
My team walked out and started stretching. The embarrassing part was that they couldn’t even form an organized line. Yet, there was something different about them this time. They were chatting. It wasn’t stupid talk or loud predictions. It was focused and sure.
“Remember about the inside leverage,” Lucas said. “And watch the safety rotation.”
“And keep your feet moving,” Cam added.
I was proud of them. They were taking this very seriously. We had been humiliated once before, and none of us wanted to go through that again. Feeling a little better about the situation, I headed over to the most recent cause of my distractions.
“Are you still up for sharing that good luck of yours?” I asked a little hesitantly. After what happened at the pool bar, I’d decided to play things a lot more closed. I couldn’t read where she was at, and needed time to feel things out.
Elizabeth gave me a smile that nearly brought me to my knees. “Well, hello there, stranger. How are you holding up?”
She held out her granola bar, and I took one big bite. My eyes didn’t leave hers for a second. She looked so beautiful that day that I wanted to swoop her into my arms and kiss her, but somehow I managed to contain my urges.
“I’m good. Just a little nervous,” I admitted.
She glanced at the field and said, “One play at time, Decoy. One play at a time.”
I laughed as I returned to the field, wondering how on earth she’d come up with that nickname.
“It’s time for the lineup,” I said, and we hit first.
The opening kickoff was clean, and the defense swarmed. On the third down, Malik actually contained the edge instead of chasing inside.
“Did you see that?” one of the spectators said.
Three and out. For a brief moment, I felt something steady settle in my chest, and I thought that maybe this time could be different.
Our first drive crossed midfield. We had short passes and quick outs. It was a draw play that finally looked like it belonged in football, instead of a diagram from another sport. We didn’t score because we stalled in the red zone, but we got points and that was everything.
“3-0!” Lucas cheered as the score hit the board.
It was small and fragile, but it was ours. After everything we had been through, we deserved it. And Coach… He was electric as he stood on the sideline.
“That’s pace!” he shouted. “That’s tempo!”
We didn’t correct his terminology, because at that point it didn’t matter. We were finally competing. But then Harris called a new package.
“Motion stack!” he yelled. “We overload one side, then reverse pivot.”
My stomach dropped. What he wanted was a modified version of a basketball high-low set. It would have two receivers stacked tight, one on short motion. Dylan would have to flare wide like a wing and wait for a kick-out pass.
“What does he want?” Malik said.
“The idea is to pull the defense laterally. Fake the screen, then throw back across the field to the tight end slipping behind coverage.”
In theory, it was a misdirection. In reality, we weren’t fluid enough.
There was a snap. The slot receiver mis-timed the motion and nearly collided with Lucas. The fake screen developed too slowly, and the defensive back didn’t bite. I pump-faked once. The pocket collapsed.
“Shit!” I tried to reset my feet, but I hit the tight end crossing late.
A defensive end got a hand up. The ball fluttered, and got intercepted before returning to the ten. By that time the home crowd woke up, and two plays later they got a touchdown. 7-3. The shift in our motivation was instant, but we decided to try it again in the second quarter.
“Trust it,” Harris said.
That time, Dylan dropped the fake screen. The ball bounced awkwardly off his hands and into open grass. A linebacker scooped it up and ran untouched. 14-3.
I could feel it slipping. Not our effort, but our confidence in the structure. We were still playing hard, but we were playing unsure. And by half-time it was 21-6.
“It wasn’t an annihilation,” Lucas mumbled.
It was so much worse. It was actually competitive enough to believe, but far enough behind to feel it fading.
In the third quarter, we decided to abandon Harris’s experimental package.
“We're going back to the basics,” I said to the team.
It helped, but only for a while. We had a sustained drive, and a touchdown pass on a simple slant-flat concept that worked because it was clean and practiced.
“21-13!” It was more of a curse than an announcement from my side.
Our sideline had life, but then special teams broke down. We missed a tackle on a punt return. There was one cut, then they had an open field. 28-13.
After that, the margin widened quietly. We had a missed block here, and a dropped pass there. A coverage bust that shouldn’t have happened, but did because someone hesitated for half a second.
“Final score 35-13,” I sighed.
It wasn’t as humiliating as our last attempt but it was a definitive loss.
After the game, the tension in the locker room was as heavy as our beat-up bus. There was no shouting, and no jokes. The guys were defeated, and none of us were in the mood to put up an act.
So all you could hear was the sound of the tape being torn off our wrists, and our shoulder pads hitting the metal benches. A graveyard had more life left in it than we did on that day.
Coach paced in front of us with his hands on his hips. “I know you guys aren’t happy with the result, but I couldn’t be more proud of you. We did great today. We scored points. There was no humiliation or backhanded comments. Come on, guys, this is a reason to celebrate.”
None of us responded to him. We didn’t even look up. We understood what he meant and were satisfied because of it, but it wasn’t a reason to celebrate. It was a reason to mourn, and that was exactly what we were doing.
Harris groaned and sank onto a bench. “You played with your heart tonight. That’s growth. It’s culture. We’re getting somewhere. We’re building something.”
“Yeah, but we lost, Coach, and it wasn’t just by a few points,” Cam said.
“They won because they executed better. That’s it. We were close, and that’s what counts.”
Close… I stared at the floor. Close was being down by three scores. It was an interception off a tipped ball because the play developed too slowly. A fumble born from confusion. But it definitely wasn’t what we had that day.
“Effort travels,” Coach continued. “Identity travels. If we bring this same energy next week, we’ll flip the score in our favor.”
Once again, there was silence. I wanted to believe him. I wanted his speech to fill the cavity in my chest where something kept tightening, but our effort wasn’t the issue. It was the structure. The timing. The lack of discipline.
I looked around the room. My teammates weren’t angry. They weren’t fired up, and they were in no mood to argue. They were tired, dejected in a quieter way than they were after the last game. What we felt was the kind of disappointment that settled in without a noise.
Coach opened his mouth to continue, but I heard the faint beep from the bus. So I grabbed my bag and walked out without giving him another second of my time. The rest of the guys followed, but we didn’t rush. Our pace matched our emotions: slow and sluggish.
Outside, the bus waited. The struggling engine idled and amazingly it was still rattling.
The cheer squad looked at us from the window while their coach waved us over.
They looked happy. It was annoying to think everyone saw this game as some kind of achievement while we felt like it was a bigger loss than the last one.
“Dude?” Malik said as he caught up with me. “Is there something wrong with us? How can everyone be so happy with the outcome of this game while we feel like death?”
“There’s nothing wrong with us,” I assured. “They don’t get it. They’re happy because we managed to get a few points but they don’t understand that we could’ve done a lot better if we hadn’t tried the stupid basketball trick.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking, but then I wondered why we saw it and they couldn’t.”
“They watch from the sidelines. We’re the ones in the game, taking the punches and going back for more. They’ll never understand it the way we do.”
He squeezed my shoulder and got into the poor excuse for a bus. I took a deep breath, said a silent prayer, and followed. As I was walking through the rows of seats, making my way to the back, Elizabeth put her hand on mine and stopped me in my tracks.
“Wanna sit with me?” she asked.
I knew I should’ve refused so I could drown in my sorrows all on my own, but there was nothing I wanted more than to rest my head on her shoulder while she comforted me.
Then my eyes roamed over her body and my heart nearly exploded.
Her tiny skirt was hitched up. Her firm stomach was exposed and those gorgeous breasts that begged for my touch at the car wash were modestly hidden beneath her cheer top.
I knew at that moment that if I accepted her offer, things would go much further than I was comfortable with.