The Playmaker (A Big Play Novel Book 1) (10 page)

#17:

Shifting Letters

Tori

His room hasn’t changed much. I don’t know why this surprises me; Colt has always been a minimalist, and his room is a testament to that. His gray and blue patterned duvet is pulled over his bed, still wrinkled at the edges. The two pillows at the top are skewed, and I spot his boxer shorts dangling out the side. Football posters line the walls—all Denver Broncos players.

Colt stands by his desk, tapping the corner and looking slightly awkward. It’s weird, me being up here. Last time I was here, we were twelve and playing a game of charades with my older sister and his little brother. It had been a raucous summer afternoon…and then high school started and Colt was pulled into a world I didn’t belong in.

I grit my teeth and cross my arms, hating the awkward silence between us. My brain is scrambling for something funny to say, but everything I come up with is lame. I clear my throat and smile at him. He smiles back, then looks to the carpet, pressing his toe into the edge of his chair.

“Do you remember that time Cameron decided he wanted to be a world-famous hockey player and put a puck through the middle of the TV screen?” I have no idea where the memory comes from, but it makes Colt grin…then laugh.

I smile with him as he shakes his head. “I was about to get a high score on…” he frowns. “I don’t remember the game.”

“All I remember is the look on your face.” I giggle. “And then the look on his. I swear you were ready to kill him.”

“Hey, it was an epic high score and I never got that close again.” He winks, making my insides sizzle. “Too bad Dad was in the room next door. I never got a chance to kick Cam’s ass over that one.”

“You wouldn’t have, anyway.” I point at him and his blush tells me the truth. He’d never admit it to anyone, but he adores his younger brother.

Colt grins and looks to the floor again.

“Well, I’m guessing there won’t be any professional hockey players coming out of the Burgess home…but maybe a football one.” I give him a playful grin and he shakes his head at me, his eyebrows dipping for a second.

“Come on, you’re amazing. You’ll totally go all the way if you want to.”

“It’s not always a matter of want,” he mumbles, his gaze skipping over his cluttered desk. Textbooks are piled along one side and there’s a folder in the middle—Nelson Raiders Play Book— in front of his computer. He glares at the blank document on his computer screen.

At first, I think he’s referring to his parents’ major lack of support, but then my eyes catch the edge of our history assignment, peeking out beneath the playbook, and my lips part without meaning to.

“Have you not started that yet?” I move over to his desk and snatch the sheet out from under his folder, scanning the surrounding pages for any proof of notes or ideas.

Colt grabs the paper from me, his fierce frown making me step away from him.

“It’s not due until Friday,” he mutters.

“Yeah,
this
Friday. How are you going to get it done in time?”

He shrugs, his scowl deep and intense. The paper in his hand quivers, and I can’t help but wonder if he’s resisting the urge to scrunch it into a little ball.

I gently take it from him and lay it back on the desk. “I…I know you don’t love school, but surely you don’t want to fail. I mean, you want to graduate, right?”

“Of course I want to graduate!” he snaps.

I flinch at his sharp tone and try to hide it by tucking a lock of hair behind my ear.

He sighs. “I’m sorry. I’m not…mad. I just… I hate school, okay? I hate studying, but I’ve got to maintain a C average this season or Principal Matthis is going to make Coach bench me.”

“Well, you can do it. That’s easy.” I grin.

“No, Tori, it’s not easy!” Colt spins away from me and flicks his hand in the air. “Maybe for you, Miss Brainiac or whatever! But it doesn’t come easy for all of us.”

“I’m not…I’m not a brainiac. I have to work really hard for my grades.” My voice is in mouse-like contrast to his thunder. His shoulders sag, but he won’t turn to face me. “Maybe if you pretended to like school a little more, it wouldn’t be so hard.”

“It’s not about liking it. It’s…” He sighs again. “It doesn’t matter.” Pulling his shoulders back, he turns to face me. His brave face is firmly in place: locked jaw, tense muscles, chin dimple clearly on display. His blue eyes are stormy and bright, and my heart squeezes in my chest.

“I can…I can help you. You’re doing so much for me; let me return the favor. Come on, we can do it together. It’ll be fun.”

His staunch look unravels with skepticism and it makes me giggle. Pulling out his chair, I indicate for him to take a seat before pulling over the spare stool by the window. Perching on the varnished wood, I lean toward him and point to the assignment.

“Okay, so you get that the main point of this assignment is to research an aspect of American history, state the impact it had on society back then, and the follow-through impact it’s had on society today. And then the final part is to hypothesize on what society would be like if that particular event had not happened.”

Colt makes this weird little whine in his throat, like I’m somehow torturing him.

I nudge his arm with my elbow. “Come on, it’s not that bad. Just pick an event in American history that interests you.”

Colt winces, then looks straight at me. Oh man, his eyes are beautiful. “What are you doing?”

“Well, I chose slavery, which I know is kind of controversial, but it’s been really fascinating unpacking it, you know? It’s had such a huge impact on our country. I hate that it ever happened. It’s wrong on so many levels and I wish, wish, wish that it wasn’t part of our history, but when I started hypothesizing how different our country would be, it made me kind of sad. Think of all the awesome things African-American people have brought to our culture. So, even though I would still wish to change history so they wouldn’t have had to suffer that way, it’s made me realize that good things can come from awfulness.” I shrug. “I guess it kind of gives me hope that people can rise above suffering, and it makes me admire the culture so much more and gives me an even greater respect for them.”

His expression has changed while I’ve been talking. All the angst and anger from moments before has softened, and the beauty in his eyes has increased ten-fold. His lips rise with a brief smile before he jerks and looks back to his desk.

“Whoa.” He shuffles in his seat. “That’s awesome. And there’s no way I can do that.”

“I’m not asking you to.” I touch his arm. He flinches and I shift my hand away, tucking it under my leg. “I don’t want you copying me; that’d be cheating.”

I kick the leg of his chair in the hopes of scoring a smile. I succeed and it gives me the courage to keep going. “Um, why don’t you pick something that interests you, like…” I scan his desk, looking for inspiration, then gasp as the best idea ever pops into my head. “Football!” I tap his playbook. “That’s perfect, right? You could look at the introduction of football into American society. That’s had a huge impact on our culture, and then you could imagine America without it! Whoa, that would be so different.”

Colt’s head starts bobbing and he turns to me with a brilliant smile. “I like that. Yeah, I could do that.”

“Yay.” I clap my hands together and clasp my fingers. “Okay, so let’s look up the history of football.”

I bob my knee while he pulls the keyboard toward him and slowly types a search into Google. He makes two spelling mistakes, but quickly clicks the corrected query line. A page full of articles pops up, and I point to the top few. “Those two look pretty good.”

He nods and clicks on the first one. We both lean forward and start reading. I get to the bottom of the page quickly and wait for him to scan up. It’s taking a really long time. I glance at his finger on the mouse, expecting it to move any second, but he’s still staring intently at the screen, obviously reading.

My knee starts to bob with more vigor as I wait. It’s kind of taking a long time and eventually I can’t help myself. “You okay?”

“Huh?” He glances at me.

“Sorry, just checking to make sure you’re good. It’s taking you a…long time…to, you know…read it.”

His teeth clamp together and his lips flash with a quick frown.

Concern spikes through me and I touch his shoulder. “You can read, right?”

He clears his throat and shrugs my hand off him. “Yeah, I just… It’s…” He presses his lips together while air spurts out his nostrils.

“You can tell me. I won’t judge.”

For the second time that afternoon, his shoulders sag. “It takes me longer because the letters keep shifting.”

“Shifting?” I perk up in my chair and point to the screen. “So, when you look at the words, the letters move?”

“Yeah.” He shrugs. “That’s why it always takes me so long to read everything.”

“Sounds like dyslexia.”

His jaw works to the side and he presses his elbows into the desk, gripping his fist.

“I didn’t know you had that.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like I want to make it public knowledge.”

“Do your parents know?”

“Of course they know, but they agree that no one else has to!”

“Wow.” I look out the window, still a little shocked. Small memories of Colt flicker through my brain—the way he always avoided reading at any cost, and how he always chose comic books over chapter books. His revelation explains so much. “I just thought you hated school.”

“I do hate school. It’s frickin’ hard. If it wasn’t for football, I’d probably drop out.”

“Like your parents would let you.” I snicker.

He huffs out a reticent laugh and shakes his head. “They’ve hired me tutors and I guess it’s helped a little, but they’re all so old and boring. It takes up so much time doing stupid exercises to try and help my brain or some shit. It doesn’t help! I feel like no matter how hard I try, it’s always going to be difficult. Dyslexia isn’t something you can outgrow, and talking about it isn’t going to make any difference.”

“Are you kidding me? Talking about it will help you. It’ll help people understand where you’re coming from. It could get you special—”

“My parents don’t want the school giving me any kind of special treatment. I need to succeed at the same level as everyone else if I’m going to make it in the big, bad world,” he mutters darkly. “It’s bad enough being stupid. I don’t need my friends to know about it. I don’t want to be
understood
. I don’t need you to help me! It won’t change the fact that I’m not smart enough to do this frickin’ assignment!”

His voice rises with each sentence, and my eyes glass over before I can stop them. School must be so incredibly hard for him. I had no idea. All this time, I just thought he found school a joke and couldn’t be bothered to put in the effort, but that’s not the case. The effort he’s had to put in just to pass must have been incredible.

“You’re not stupid,” I murmur. “Dyslexia has nothing to do with intelligence.”

“And how do you know so much about it?”

“My mom has it.”

Colt lets out a derisive chuckle and tips his head back. “Great, so I can look forward to a life of soap making!”

I swallow. I’m smart enough to understand that his sarcasm and venom are coming from a place of embarrassment and frustration, but that doesn’t mean his words don’t sting.

Gripping the edge of the stool, I nibble my lip and wonder what my next move should be. I kind of feel like I should go, so I quietly rise and move away from his desk.

“Please don’t tell anybody about this,” he whispers.

“Of course I won’t.” I force a smile at his slumped shoulders, then head for the door. “Good luck with your assignment.”

He doesn’t say anything so I slip from the room, feeling a tangled ball of emotions that I can’t seem to separate. All I do know is that my plan to make Colt fall for me is not working out at all like I expected. Colt obviously doesn’t like me or he wouldn’t have flinched away from my touch or insulted my mother. I should just quit now before I end up breaking my heart.

But he needs my help.

If there’s one thing I know about Colt Burgess, it’s that football is his first love and if he doesn’t make the grades, he won’t be able to play anymore. And I’m not okay with that. Football makes him happy. It’s the core of who he is. Take that away and he’ll be lost.

I need to figure out a way to reach him, and
Operation Fall for Tori
needs to take second place to this new mission.

The sigh out of my mouth is thick and heavy. Looks like senior year can’t be all about me getting what I want after all.

#18:

A Sheet Of Paper

Colt

I feel like total shit after speaking to Tori the way I did.

It eats me alive until well after dark when I finally text her a lame-ass apology.

Sorry for being an asshole. Your the only person I’ve ever admited this stuff too and I didn’t do it very well.

I want to go on about how I hate feeling this dumb. Hell, I want to tell her about my days of running from the bullies, but I can’t. So I press Send after just two sentences and hope for the best.

But I get nothing.

When I wake in the morning, there’s still no reply from her, and I shuffle to the shower feeling like world-class scum. My body still hurts, and my black and blue skin looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. I finger the injury and wince before pulling a loose T-shirt over it.

“Morning, dude.” Cameron breezes past me, slapping my arm with the back of his hand. “You still look like crap.”

“Shut up.” I chuckle, shoving him into the wall as I head for my room. For a little brother, he’s really not too bad. Although since turning thirteen, he’s become a cocky little turd.

Stepping into my room, I throw my boxer shorts onto my unmade bed, then walk to my desk. Tori’s suggestion of researching football for the assignment has been plaguing me ever since she said it, but I was too pissed off with myself to study yesterday. So I ended up watching football clips on YouTube all afternoon, trying to pretend like that was somehow research.

But there’s only so long I can fool myself. I have to get this assignment done, or my football future is over. It makes me feel sick, but I force my body into my chair and pick up a pen.

It taps on my desk while I try to formulate some kind of plan for tackling this assignment. I open up the page Tori and I started reading the day before. I figure jotting down some notes on the text is probably a good start. The letters continue to frustrate me as I slowly read lines and then make spelling mistakes on my notepad. Eventually, I give up, throwing my pen down and heading to the kitchen for breakfast.

My leg bobs while I eat, and the urge to run to Finn’s house to spend the day on his PlayStation or watch football grows stronger with each bite. But as soon as my toast crusts are gone, Mom points for the stairs and gives me that no-nonsense look I don’t have the energy to battle.

The truth is she’s right. I’ve got to get this stuff done. Our motivations might be completely different, but at the end of the day, if I want to play college ball then I have to graduate high school.

If only it were that easy.

I plunk my butt back down and pull my notes toward me, forcing myself to focus. It’s a damn hard task, and isn’t helped when someone starts knocking on my door.

“I’m working, Mom! I swear!”

There’s a pause, and I’m hopeful she’s been scared off by my biting tone until the door creaks open. I spin around with a sharp frown that quickly evaporates.

“Tori.” I choke out the word.

“Hey.” She smiles, waving her petite fingers at me before gently closing the door behind her. There’s a bag on her shoulder and she grips the canvas strap. The rings on her fingers clink together when she slides it down her arm. She pulls a sheet of paper from the side pocket. “I know you don’t want my help. I tried to just drop this at your front door, but your mom said I had to bring it up myself. She wanted to know what it was and I know it’s a sensitive subject for you guys, so I lied and said we were working on an assignment together and then she said I had to come in and bring it up to you, so…”

I have no idea how she talks so fast. The words shoot out of her mouth like a torrent of water, and it takes me a second to catch up with them. She waves the paper in the air and I give her a curious frown.

Her smile is shaky, and I want to apologize again for being such a douche yesterday.

“It’s a list of famous people who have dyslexia. I wanted to show you that anything is possible…” She swallows then licks her lower lip, making it all glossy. “It’s, um… Albert Einstein’s on here and Leonardo Di Vinci…and, uh, Steven Spielberg, Muhammad Ali, and… Who else is on here?” she whispers to herself, opening the sheet and scanning the names. “Oh! Agatha Christie, F. Scott Fitzgerald. You know…
The Great Gatsby
?”

I nod, finding it hard to talk past the lump in my throat.

“I mean, if they can write books then you can definitely get a C average this year. It’s not going to stop you from going to Boise State and playing football.”

“It will if I can’t make the grades,” I mutter, my eyes gliding down her tight frame. I don’t mean to be checking her out, but it’s hard not to. She’s wearing these flares that hug her hips and hide her toes. As she walks toward me, I’m mesmerized by the way she moves. Then she crouches down between my legs and looks up at me with those gray eyes. The top she’s wearing doesn’t show off her curves like her most recent wardrobe choices, but with her hair loose and curling around her breasts, it’s damn impossible not to imagine what lies beneath the loose fabric.

Her hands rest on my knees, and I force my eyes to focus on her face.

“You can do this because you’re strong and determined.” Her eyes are rich with conviction. “You take some pretty big hits on that field and you get up every single time. You’re the strongest person I know.”

“And the dumbest.”

Her nose wrinkles as she frowns at me, then slaps my leg. “Dyslexia doesn’t make you stupid.”

“Ow!” I snicker, rubbing the sting as she stands tall and looks down at me.

“I’m not saying it doesn’t make reading and writing harder, but research shows that dyslexia is about pathways in the brain. Your pathways are different than others. It’s not about being smart or stupid. The fact that you’re one of the best running backs Nelson High has ever seen is a testament to your intelligence.”

Damn, Mack is one lucky guy. A burst of jealousy I don’t understand fires through me.

“The thing is, Colt, if you want something bad enough, you can make it happen. We’re not going to let some stupid little GPA stop you from becoming a superstar.” She winks. The smile growing on her lips is adorable, and I can’t help grinning back at her.

“So, um…” I scratch the back of my neck and point at my notes. “I don’t suppose you want to help me get a C in American History, do ya?”

She places her hand on my shoulder and leans down to look me in the eye. “Why do you think I’m here?”