Chapter 1
If I ignored her, maybe she would stop. That strategy had never worked for me in the past, but neither had arguing or yelling. Neither had bribery or persuasion, and neither had anything else. When my sister wanted something, one of us eventually gave in.
That person was rarely her. “Zoey!” she yelled again.
I sighed, but quietly. Self-pity had never done anything for me, either.
“Coming,” I answered, but I still didn’t make a move.
Instead, I watched as little white clouds formed from my breath because the heat didn’t reach well into the second floor where I had my bedroom.
December hadn’t been bad, but January had been frigid so far.
I didn’t mind the cold, especially when I got to stay cozy in my bed, but—
My sister Willow yelled my name again, and this time, guilt forced me up and out of the warm cocoon of blankets.
I pulled on a sweatshirt before I went down to her room on the first floor, the one that had belonged to my parents.
She was also under a pile of blankets, although it was a lot warmer here.
I could only see the top of her blonde head on her pillow.
“What do you need?” I asked.
“I’m hungry,” she told me. I could hear from her voice that she’d had a bad night and I immediately felt sorry that I’d made her wait.
I had contemplated ignoring her, too, which was just mean.
Another sigh turned into a yawn as I went to the kitchen, but I had to get my morning going anyway because weekends were for catch-up.
On Saturdays, I usually cleaned, grocery shopped, and then tried to eke out time to do homework and class-prep stuff before I had to head to Jannie’s bar for my shift there.
It would have been nice, I decided as I cracked an egg, to snuggle in my bed all day, watch stupid videos, catch up on the shows that people talked about, and read a good book.
Then, when it got later, I would go out to dinner with friends.
I changed my mind. I would go out for drinks with friends, and then I’d meet up with my boyfriend…no, we wouldn’t meet. He would come to my new place, because I had my own apartment in this daydream. I had a nice car, too, but he would pick me up.
“You look beautiful,” he’d tell me when he stopped in front of my building. Actually, he would come to my front door, because he would want to walk me down to his own car, which was a brand-new—
“Is it ready?” Willow yelled, and I carefully flipped the egg and pushed down the lever to make the toast.
“Almost,” I called. I noticed the time on the clock on the microwave and, right on schedule, my mom came in. She worked the third shift so as usual, she looked very tired.
“Hi,” I greeted her, and she nodded slightly. “Want some breakfast?”
“No.” She untied her boots and then went to Willow’s room, which my parents had previously shared for more than fifteen years.
Now Mom was in the basement, which we’d converted to a sleeping space, so that my sister could be close to the bathroom on the ground floor.
I heard them talking together, Willow’s voice rising as the conversation went on.
I didn’t pay attention to the specific words since they didn’t matter very much, but when I put the breakfast dishes on the tray and carried it into the bedroom, I did catch part of their argument.
It seemed to be on parallel tracks—like, they were both angry and fighting, but they weren’t engaging with each other.
“I want to go,” my sister said. “I want to have a life but you don’t care!”
“You can’t text me so much when I’m at work,” my mom answered. “I can’t be checking my phone all the time.” She didn’t say it, but she was afraid to ignore the messages in case there was an emergency. That had happened. “It’s ridiculous and you’re acting like a kid.”
“If Zoey drives me, I can do it,” Willow responded. “I’m going and I don’t need your help anyway.”
“Wait, where am I supposed to drive?” I asked, but they ignored me in the same way that they were ignoring each other.
“For once in your life, shut up. Shut up! I work with heavy machinery and I can’t get distracted by my phone. Think about someone besides yourself.” Mom left and a moment later, I heard the water pipes creak as she started the shower.
I watched my sister push herself up to a sitting position. She struggled with that but got mad if I helped her, so I waited and pretended not to notice.
“She’s such a bitch,” Willow told me.
I carefully put the tray over her legs. “Why were you texting her so much?”
“I want to do something. It’s no big deal but when she finally answered, she said that she’d be too tired. I was just asking her to drop me off there, but if you’re not going to work somewhere, you can do it instead.” She took a small bite of toast. “Is there butter on this?”
“Yes. Where do you want to go?”
“To a football game,” she said. She chewed, and then put down the bread, sighing. Dark shadows made half-circles under her eyes.
“Football? The Woodsmen season ended,” I noted.
I was aware of this because at the school where I was doing my second semester of student teaching, the kids had been so sad that it was over.
Anyway, Willow and I had never been fans, and we probably couldn’t have afforded the tickets for those games.
“I mean the Junior Woodsmen,” she corrected me. “Do you know about them?”
I did, because anything football-related in our area was hard to miss.
The Junior Woodsmen were a lower-level team that fed into the big league.
I had looked into the system a little last fall, after the whole thing with Everett Ford and his demotion, but I had mostly forgotten about all that in the months since.
I had been busy, very busy, and I still was.
I didn’t have time to sit around at some boring game.
Willow was already talking, not waiting for my response. “You can just walk right up and watch them, no ticket needed.”
“Don’t they play outside?” I looked through the window, at the clear sky that promised cold temperatures.
“Since when did you start liking football?” But I thought that I knew what was going on: she was bored, and who could have blamed her?
I was out all the time, running around and seeing people, while her life had drastically shrunk.
But football?
“Why?” I repeated, and she was so pale due to her indoor existence that when she blushed, her cheeks looked apple-red.
“Boyd is going,” she answered, and I ground my teeth. “Stop, Zoey!” she told me, her voice much louder.
And after a moment, I did let go of enough anger to be able to speak. “How do you know about Boyd? Are you following his social media again?”
“No, I don’t look anymore,” she told me, but she was staring at her breakfast tray instead of meeting my eyes. The eggs had stopped steaming. “Why does it matter to you?”
Because the situation with him upset her so much. Because he was so awful, and I hated him so much. Because I also hated that she still loved him so much.
“It’s not a big deal,” she said. “I just want to do something today. Come on, Zo.” She sighed. “I have to get out of here. You could come too and we could sit together.”
Of course I would have to come, because she couldn’t do it alone.
I pressed my fingers into my brow bone, right at the curves above my eyes where the headache always started.
“What time does the game start?” I asked her, and she grinned.
She looked like her old self when she did that, and I didn’t even care much that she didn’t touch the eggs and took only another bite or two of her toast.
I was aware of the traffic before real Woodsmen games, because I was aware that you had to avoid the entire area surrounding the stadium for the entire day when they played at home.
But the Junior Woodsmen? Some people watched them, as far as I knew, but they weren’t nearly as popular.
Like, not even a fraction as popular, not even a crumb of the cold toast that I had finished after Willow had pushed it away this morning.
That probably meant fewer cars due to fewer fans, so we didn’t need to get going very early.
I also didn’t want to have to sit around there and wait for the game to start, because we would be sitting around for long enough already.
I remembered from high school that football took forever, and it wasn’t good for my sister to be outside in the cold.
But she was raring to go, so we did leave before I wanted to.
We arrived at a nearly empty parking lot.
There were some other cars and a large tour bus, but no people.
I glanced over at Willow, who had the mirror down to check her makeup.
She’d always been really good at it, but no matter how much she’d put on today, she still looked pale and her cheeks still looked sunken.
And it was hard to cover the circles under her eyes…
anyway, she didn’t acknowledge that I’d been right about getting here so early.
The Junior Woodsmen played at the real Woodsmen’s practice facility, the one they used to get ready for the actual professional season.
As far as I knew, the good team was only here in the summer, so this place was free in the winter for lower-level games.
It was out in the country, far away from our house, and it was bleak.
The practice facility building was huge and bright orange, but large signs had directed me to another area for the action today: a windswept field and bleachers that weren’t as big or as nice as the ones where Willow and I had gone to high school.
There was also a chain link fence that separated the seats from the field, like they were afraid that the fans would rush out there.