Rise (11 page)

chapter 13

I sprung out of bed in a panic. The once quiet house was suddenly erupting in noise, and the confusion of being half asleep and the unexpectedness of the sounds made it nearly impossible to figure out what I was hearing. My mind ran through the months of the year. It was August, not May, so the chances of it being a tornado were small; but then again, in Oklahoma you never knew what you might get—just like with Attie.

The volume continued to increase as I rubbed my eyes and swung my legs out of bed.

What in the world?

I recognized a rhythm. It wasn’t just noise; it was music. But what kind of music, and who would be blaring music at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning?

Drums pounded, horns joined in, and then it hit me.

“Oh, dear Lord.”

Disgusted, I lay back in bed. I knew exactly what it was and who was doing it. Who else could it have been?

“Riley!” Attie screamed for me from the living room.

I’m not sure why I didn’t expect something like this. It was August 30. To most people in the world, this day was nothing special, but to Attie it was the most important day of the year. Today was the first Oklahoma Sooner football game of the season, and Attie decided the entire house needed to start the day off by hearing the school fight song at an ear-splitting volume.

“Riley!”

“I’m comin’, for cryin’ out loud!” Not that she could even hear me yell back. “Hold your horses.”

I rushed around getting dressed as the floor vibrated under my feet until the song ended and it was finally silent.

“Thank God.”

The peace and quiet didn’t last long. Within seconds, “Oklahoma” blared from the speakers.

I peered over the stair railing and spotted Attie and my mother marching around the living room. They looked like complete idiots, while Dad stood watching them in slight amusement with his fingers plugging his ears.

Attie spotted me on the stairs and ran to me. She was dressed in jean shorts and a crimson T-shirt with a large OU printed in white on the front. She also wore the OU football helmet that normally sat on my bookshelf. It was several sizes too big for her tiny skull and rolled around on her head as she moved.

“It’s today! It’s today!” I noticed a large, red foam finger had swallowed her right hand.

“Uh-huh.”

“Aren’t you excited, Riley? It’s the most exciting day of the year.”

I was looking forward to it, but I couldn’t say my excitement level was anywhere near hers. “I can’t wait,” was all I could manage to scream over the music.

“Come on, babe, please get excited.”

“Well, let me wake up first.”

Through the face mask I could see that her face wore a pout. “And then you’ll get excited?”

“Yeah.”

Standing one stair below me, she smiled up at me. “Thanks.”

Seeing her excitement, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling back, even if I was completely annoyed.

“See,” she said. “You’re smiling. It’s going to be a great day.”

I gave the face mask a small tug, causing the helmet to cover her eyes. “Yeah, it’s gonna be great.”

Her neck bent back so that she could see me, and I leaned over and peeked into the helmet. Her smile had grown.

“Good Lord, you’re cute,” I admitted. “And it’s a good thing, ‘cause otherwise all of this would be very annoying.”

A flash of light caught the corner of my eye. Turning toward it, I noticed Mom had just taken our picture.

“That’s gonna be the most adorable picture I’ve ever seen. Riley, you’re gonna have to draw that one.”

Attie started to run off, but Mom stopped her. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but Riley, lift up the helmet a little and give Attie a kiss so I can take another picture.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. It’ll be so cute, I can’t pass it up.”

Dad threw his hands over his eyes.

I was happy to oblige, so I grabbed the face mask with my hand, lifted it up to her forehead, and leaned down to give Attie a kiss.

The camera flashed again.

I didn’t bother to stop kissing her. I figured I’d keep going until someone told me to stop. Attie’s body starting shaking as giggles consumed her. The camera kept flashing, and my lips stayed attached to hers. I was going to take full advantage of the opportunity to actually get to kiss her in the house.

Attie threw her arms around my neck, and through closed eyes I could still see flashes of light strobe in our direction.

“Enough already,” Dad interrupted. “How many pictures do you need?”

I kept kissing her.

“Enough,” he repeated.

Attie pulled away from me, turned around, and ran back down the stairs toward the stereo.

“Gramps and I have got it all figured out. The game starts at six, so we need to be there by five so that we can watch the players warm up. That means we need to be at Campus Corner by about four thirty, which means we need to leave here no later than two so we have time to swing by and pick up Gramps.”

I plopped onto the sofa. “Why do we need to get there so early?”

“I just told you. To watch the players warm up.”

“Why do we have to watch the players warm up?”

“Riley, we’ve got to get the entire experience. Plus, I want to show my support by being there when they warm up.”

“You don’t watch me when I warm up before a game.”

“That’s because I’m warming up. If I weren’t cheering, I’d show up an hour early and watch you warm up too.”

“You would?”

“Sure.” It sounded a little strange, but I appreciated her loyalty and enthusiasm.

“Okay.” She stood up, grabbed the remote control, and turned to face us. “Are we ready?”

“Ready for what?” Dad asked.

“Behold.” She turned and pointed the remote at the TV. “And God said, ‘Let there be ESPN.’” She pushed the power button, and the television came to life. “I just got chills.”

Dad looked over at me with a grin. “Where did this girl come from?”

“I have no idea. I just sit back and watch the spectacle.” I looked back at Attie, who had made herself comfortable on the floor in front of the TV. A reflection of the television bounced off the helmet as it still sat on her head. “You never know what she’s gonna do next, that’s for sure.”

Attie walked so fast that the rest of us could hardly keep up. The grown-ups finally handed us our tickets so they could take their time instead of running all the way to the stadium.

“But you’ll still be there to watch them warm up, right?” she asked, disappointed.

“We’ll be there,” Gramps said. “You two go on. We won’t be far behind.”

Attie wore the helmet all day until we finally left the house and she changed into an OU ball cap. I watched as she bounced along the sidewalk. Her ponytail, which she’d pulled through the opening in the back of the cap, swung in the air.

She gasped, stopped midstep, and latched onto my arm.

“What?”

Her eyes grew large, but she stayed silent.

“Charlie, what?”

She lifted the foam finger and pointed in front of her. It reminded me of the scene in E.T. when the small alien extends his ugly finger and points to the moon before saying “Home.”

My eyes followed the direction of the finger. She’d just spotted the stadium and was obviously in awe.

“Haven’t you ever seen the stadium before?” I asked, looking back at her.

She shook her head slowly. “Not since they added all the new stuff to it.”

I grabbed the cell phone out of my pocket and took her picture. She still didn’t move.

“That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” she said slowly.

She was fun to watch, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. I would imagine that the look on her face was similar to a kid walking into Disney World for the first time and laying their sights on Mickey Mouse.

As I stood in awe of her excitement, she grabbed a hold of my arm with her nonfoam hand and started dragging me along behind her. Her feet carried us as fast as they could go.

Now I’ve heard it said that males and females have an average amount of words that they use on a daily basis. Females, of course, use more words than males. I’d always thought that, like my mother, Attie probably exceeded her number of words every day by borrowing some of mine. Today, just from the time in the car and the walk toward the stadium, I knew for a fact she’d used her total allotment of words for the week—not to mention mine. She wouldn’t shut up, and I could barely keep up with the flow of words as they flew out of her mouth. I recognized some of the players’ names as she spouted them out, but other than that, it was just a lot of words.

We handed over our tickets to be scanned and finally made our way through the entrance. By this point, Attie was literally skipping. “We’ve got to get a hot dog and some waters and a chair back and a program. I pretty much memorized the roster, but we should still get a program because I want to see their faces.”

As she talked, I added up the amount of money she would be spending within the first five minutes of entering the stadium and realized that if we were going to do this every home game, I was going to need to get a job.

“Maybe a pretzel too? What do you think, Riley? A pretzel?”

“Whatever you want. I’m just along for the ride.”

“Well, you have to think it through. We can’t get up once we’re in our seats.”

“We can’t get up?”

“No. We might miss something.”

I felt my eyes roll but followed behind and held on to all the items as she bought them and shoved them into my arms.

Finally, we made our way from under the stadium and up the ramp to section nine. As soon as we walked out of the tunnel, the field appeared in front of us.

The players, dressed in their crimson jerseys, were warming up on the perfectly maintained field. Even I got a small rush from the sight.

Attie gasped. “I think I might cry.”

I turned to her in horror. “Don’t you dare cry.”

“I can’t help it.”

“There’s no crying in football.”

She gave me a puzzled look. “I thought there was no crying in baseball. Isn’t that the line? ‘There’s no crying in baseball’?”

“That was a line from a movie. This is real. There is no crying in football.”

“But it’s beautiful,” she said, looking back at the field.

“Football’s not beautiful, Charlie. Football’s cool or exciting; it’s anything but beautiful.”

“But look at how gorgeous the crimson helmets and jerseys look against the pretty green grass. It’s even prettier than on TV.”

I felt my eyes roll again.

A boy scout dressed in full uniform walked up to me. “Can I help you find your seat?”

“Yeah.” I showed him my ticket.

“You’re going to turn and head up these stairs, go up to row sixty-four, and the seats will be on the left side of the aisle.”

“Thanks. Come on, Charlie.”

She didn’t respond. She stood, jaw hanging wide open, watching the players.

“Come on, Charlie.”

I started up the stairs and after making it a quarter of the way looked and noticed that Attie wasn’t far behind. The binoculars hanging around her neck beat against her chest every time she bounded up the step in front of her.

“You okay back there?”

“I’m good, but did you see all those girls that are all dressed up for the game? I mean, who wears skirts to a football game, for crying out loud? And why would you? What guy would want to bring a girl to a football game wearing a skirt? Would you want me wearing a skirt, Riley?”

“If it was short enough.”

“Oh, shut up … ” She continued jabbering away, and I tried to ignore her.

I’d like to think that I’m in pretty good shape, but even for me, the climb was tiring. I spotted our row and then our seats and sat down to wait for Attie. About every ten rows or so, she would stop, turn around, and take a picture with her phone.

“When I die,” she said as she finally sat down next to me, “I hope heaven is just like this.”

I laughed. “You hope heaven is a football field?”

“No. I hope heaven is this football field.”

Without being obvious, I watched Attie out of the corner of my eye as the band played on the field during the pregame show. I wasn’t at all surprised when she burst into tears during the state song. Personally, I would have enjoyed the song more if it hadn’t been the fiftieth time I’d heard it that day. Attie had made us listen to it and “Boomer Sooner” over and over again during our drive into Norman.

The band continued, and I watched Attie as she sang the OU chant with her foam finger held high in the air, booed when they played the fight song of the other team, clapped along to “You’re A Grand Old Flag,” and held her hand over her heart during the national anthem.

She really got a kick out of it when, at the end of the national anthem, instead of singing “and the home of the brave,” seventy-five thousand people substituted “brave” by shouting “Sooners.” It caused her to jump up and down and scream at the top of her lungs.

Dad tapped me on the shoulder. “How’s she doing over there?”

“So far, so good, but ‘Boomer Sooner’ is about to start. She might just have a heart attack.”

As I expected, as soon as the drum line started playing the “Boomer Sooner” riff, Attie lost her mind but quickly settled into watching and clapping along as they marched off the field.

Attie turned to me and went on a description overload about what she thought of the pregame show. Her lips moved a mile a minute until she heard a loud church bell give one ring.

Her eyes grew large, and her mouth slammed shut.

Another bell chime.

Her mouth flew open, and she screamed in my face before turning around to look at the jumbo-tron.

The bell rang again, and she got silent, eyes plastered to the screen as head coach Bob Stoops suddenly appeared on the screen along with past and present players. She named each and every player as they appeared.

The purpose of the video was to get the crowd pumped up, and she was certainly that.

When the team exploded out of the tunnel, Attie screamed and hopped up and down to the point that I was afraid she was going to bump into the person to her right and cause a complete domino effect. I turned and noticed that the rest of our group was so busy laughing at her reaction they weren’t even bothering to watch the field.