Chapter 1 #4
At least I was doing something a little different, not just squeezing in homework or heading back to the restaurant for another chore that I hated. I wasn’t curled in bed like my sister, never leaving my dirty room, and I wasn’t running around wasting money, like my brother.
There were more people at the game than I expected.
For as long as I could remember, everyone in our area had considered this team to be a bit of a joke.
But the parking lot had plenty of cars, and when I thought about it, I did realize that there had been a lot more advertising for the Junior Woodsmen this year than in prior seasons.
It looked different at their facility, too.
I had been at this place before, in the summer when the real Woodmen were here to practice.
It had been when my brother and I were still friends and we had hung around to watch the players come out of the front of the building.
They usually stopped to talk and sign autographs.
Once, Max had wanted to see inside, so he had parked in this back area and we’d looked for a way in (we hadn’t succeeded and he had gotten a bad rash from poison ivy).
I remembered some things differently. Hadn’t the parking lot been dirt?
Now it was paved. The bleachers looked familiar but there were big canopies built over them, which I also didn’t recall.
The field seemed normal, but that wasn’t clear in my mind from when I was ten and running around with Max, pretending we were spies. It had been fun.
“Molly. Molly Scheffler.”
I looked up at the crowd in the bleachers toward the sound of my name, cupping my mittened hand over my eyes so that I wasn’t blinded by the sun.
It really was nice today, but damned cold.
I spotted an arm waving and thought I recognized the man to whom it belonged, under sunglasses and a baseball cap, so I climbed up the metal risers with my gear.
Then I saw that it definitely was him, the non-quarterback from the week before who was also the high-maintenance customer that my dad hated.
The Junior Woodsmen had come in since then for lunch and dinner but I hadn’t seen Shane Bishop again, not until now.
“Hi,” I said and he nodded back.
“Have a seat,” he offered. There were people around but there was plenty of room, especially in the top row where he had placed himself.
I put myself next to him. “I’m surprised you remembered me. I’m even more surprised that you recognized me.” I wasn’t in my Navy/restaurant uniform and now I was also wearing a fleece-lined beanie and sunglasses, along with the brown puffer coat that went down past my knees.
He held up a pair of binoculars. “These make everything pretty clear. You can get a great visual from up here.”
“You must be a big Junior Woodsmen fan, if you’re watching them that closely,” I said. But I had asked him before about the players and he’d been no more knowledgeable than I was.
“I’m not, not really.”
“Then why are you here?” I wondered.
He hesitated for a moment and then said, “I work for the Woodsmen. They want to keep a better eye on the Juniors, to watch for more homegrown talent. Hence, me and my binoculars.”
“You work for the Woodsmen? As a coach?” This could have been awesome! Here was a direct conduit to the team, someone who knew the players personally and could easily introduce me.
“Not a coach, a scout,” he corrected. “Here they come.”
Both teams were jogging out of the orange building and he got very focused. He watched through his binoculars as they warmed up and he started writing notes with a stylus on his tablet, the same one he had studied so intently as he’d eaten his low-salt lunch with extra tomatoes and a lettuce bun.
“I remember how you said that you were going to be an asshole about ordering at our restaurant. Are you always into healthy eating? And if so, why did you bother going to a hamburger place?” I asked.
“Hm?” He jotted something else. “I’m a what?”
“An asshole. Didn’t you say that?” I tried another tactic to engage him. “How’d you end up working for the Woodsmen?”
The referee was telling the players to come to the center of the field and the action was about to start. Shane glanced over at me. “Did you just ask me something?”
I shrugged and he looked through the binoculars again.
“You’re working so I’ll see you later,” I said.
“If you want to come by Walter’s, I’ll have some tasteless fries ready.
” I didn’t think he heard me—at least, he didn’t respond.
Maybe he hadn’t been shooting his shot at the restaurant, like I’d imagined, and maybe he had just been saying hello today when he’d waved, instead of inviting me to sit with him.
I stood, picked up my chair, my blanket, and my thermos of hot coffee, and headed down the bleachers.
This guy wasn’t going to be any help to me in snagging a Woodsmen, but maybe one could find me instead.
He’d have to look at the restaurant, because I’d already gotten five texts from my mom asking when I was going to show up there.
“Molly,” I sighed quietly in her disappointed voice.
Then I walked back to the paved parking lot and went to my car.