Chapter 3 #3
“Was that your sister who came out of the back room when we were leaving?” he asked me. “You look even more like her than you do with your brother.”
“Yes, that was Morgan, but we’re not very similar.” I was more than a little offended by the comparison.
He didn’t argue but he didn’t agree, either. “Has she been sick?” he asked.
She did look like that. “She’s all right,” I told him.
Mom had said that Morgan had started online therapy, and maybe it would work.
I didn’t usually talk much about our family but now I started to explain our relationships.
“Max and Morgan are five years apart and he’s twenty-nine.
But she and I are very close in age, which leads to speculation that I was a mistake.
Actually, Morgan might have been, too. I think my parents would have been happy with just a son but now they’re probably glad to have the extra hands at the restaurant. ”
“They’re usually your hands. I mean that you’re usually there,” he said, and I couldn’t argue with that. Then he pointed at the view through the windshield. “Look at this. Isn’t it amazing?”
We were turning into the long drive that led up to Woodsmen Stadium.
“It is,” I answered reverently. The huge football complex rose in the distance and the sight always did give me a thrill.
“We used to come for field trips and of course, I’m here for every Fan Day.
We always close the restaurant because we wouldn’t get any customers,” I explained.
“Did you ever go to a game?”
“Once. I won the tickets in a persuasive essay-writing contest for our school district. I argued that the Woodsmen were the greatest team ever, in all of recorded history. I guess the judges agreed.”
“I knew you were a big fan. That was why you kept on asking me to introduce you to the players.”
Sure, he could believe that. I didn’t need to acknowledge that I was also scheming about how to hook a Woodsmen for my own uses. “Right,” I said, nodding. “But they’re not here today.”
“Probably not. Most of the guys took a vacation when their season ended. By now, they’ll be back wherever they live, training to get ready for the next season. Just because they’re not playing, it doesn’t mean they’re not working.”
“What are you doing on the days that you don’t have to watch the Junior Woodsmen?” I asked.
As we slowly approached the building, Shane told me more about his job.
He was in charge of scouting several teams, not just the Juniors.
That explained his absence from our restaurant—that and the fact that he didn’t seem to like our food very much.
He traveled all around the Midwest to keep up on specific players and to watch for emerging talent, too.
It sounded busy and tiring, kind of like running Walter’s. But he seemed to like it.
He went around to the back of the stadium, which took a long time because of our speed and because it was huge, like a fortress.
Before I got out of his truck, I checked the mirror and saw that things were bad.
My eyes were red and puffy and my nose looked raw.
There wasn’t anything to do about it, though, so I snapped the visor closed and got out to join him.
We ended up at a much smaller door than the one I remembered entering when I’d won the tickets in the essay contest. It was very exciting, though, because there were signs that said this area was for authorized personnel only, no public access.
That meant it was for Woodsmen people and even if the players weren’t here at the moment, it was still so cool to be in a place that they usually inhabited.
It made me feel closer to them, closer to my goal.
“So, this is my office,” he remarked. He held the no-public-access door open for me and then he showed me around other places where fans were not allowed, like the locker room and even the showers, where the Woodsmen were naked!
We walked through the tunnel that they used to go to the field, which looked so much bigger up close.
I found the place in the stands, far, far, far in the distance, where I had sat with my brother when we had come to the game.
I had picked him to accompany me because I had worshiped him back then. We all had.
“What do you think?”
I turned to him, practically speechless. “I can’t believe you get to work here,” I managed to tell him.
“Not in this exact place.” He glanced over at the home team sideline, where the players and coaches in Woodsmen orange lined up for their games. “Maybe someday.”
“Where is your actual office?”
He hesitated but then nodded. “I’ll show you.”
We had to take a little walk to get there—it was actually a long walk.
More like a hike, which I had told him was something that people enjoyed doing in northern Michigan but which I hadn’t expected to do myself, today.
Luckily, I was wearing the ugly gym shoes that I always put on for extended time on my feet at the restaurant.
In spite of those, I did notice that maybe I wouldn’t have been great on a hike, like I previously claimed when he’d asked me about outdoor activities.
“How far is it?” I asked and he announced that we had arrived.
We were in a hallway that wasn’t particularly well-lit and he was squinting to see as he led the way.
His office door looked slightly battered, but it had his name on a plastic plaque resting in a frame.
Under that was another plaque, a metal one screwed into the wood that read “Asst. Area Scout.”
“You’re official,” I said approvingly, and he cracked a small smile.
“Notice that the name plate slides out,” Shane answered.
“Yes, but they had it printed. It’s not written with pencil,” I told him. “Can I see inside?”
He opened the door and I peeked in. “This is a really old stadium and when they built it, they didn’t need all the employees that work here now,” he explained.
“We’re short on space. They keep remodeling and they haven’t gotten to this part of the building yet, but my boss says that they’re hoping for improvements next season. ”
I shrugged. “It looks fine to me.” Small and dark (since it didn’t have any windows), but it was the same situation as our office at the restaurant.
You didn’t have to squeeze into the room to see that the desk was mostly bare—there were no personal items and nothing that looked like work.
“How much time do you even spend in here?”
“Not much, because I’m usually on the road. I’ll be in Iowa this weekend and then I’ll go to Wisconsin. There are a lot of teams to see.” He reached in for the handle and closed the door. “It’s late for lunch. Did you eat?”
“No. I usually have something after we finish our service, so I’m used to late meals.”
“Do you want to go to the cafeteria?”
“Am I allowed?” I wondered.
He shrugged. “Probably not, but we can say that you’re an insider with the Garnets, feeding me secret information. They’ll like to hear that I’m building out my spy network.”
“Football spies?”
“They’re everywhere,” Shane assured me. “They’re probably listening to us right now.”
“There’s more to your job than I thought. Is it another hike to the cafeteria?”
He nodded. “It’s about a five-mile walk so we’ll need to start now because otherwise, we’ll be having dinner.”
I checked my phone. Luckily, we were deeply entombed within the stadium, so I didn’t get enough signal to see if anyone was urgently texting from the restaurant, and I also didn’t have to see if anyone was trying to get in touch to discuss the incident at the frat party.
People I had vaguely known from high school or had met in college classes had come out of the woodwork to first commiserate and then try to pump me for information that they could share (and probably laugh about).
“Let’s go,” I told him and we started walking. Before I got winded, I did have something else to say. “Um, thanks.”
“You liked seeing my office?”
“I appreciate that you invited me here and I’m so glad to do something different.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “Are you still upset about that party thing?”
“You mean, the thing where I embarrassed myself to the point that I hate showing my face outside? Yes, I am.”
He looked at me closely. “You don’t look like you’ve been crying. Not anymore.” He leaned forward and bent down, too. “I thought your eyes were blue but now they look gray. I can’t tell what color they are.”
“It’s too dark in here to see.”
He stood up and somehow, he looked…disappointed? “Yeah, it’s probably the lack of light. Let’s go.”
It felt like more than five miles to the Woodsmen employee lunchroom, but we were mostly quiet along the way.
That gave me time to gawk at everything without having to focus on conversation, but it also gave me time to think more about the party and the aftermath, something I’d managed to put out of my mind for at least a few minutes.
Shane had said that people would forget. I wondered when that would occur, because I wanted my memory to be free of it, too. It couldn’t happen soon enough.