I don’t have a coach telling me when to go in. I’m not there for the locker room shit. I hear cheering sound off in the gym, but I have no idea if anyone’s coming to get me, or if I’m just supposed to know when it’s my turn to storm in.

I know every single play by heart, but I don’t know when to enter a fucking pep rally.

Superstar!!! Morgan texts back with a bunch of different emojis, and I’ve never felt less like one. Thank Jesus they cannot see me right now.

The cheers get louder, so the football players must’ve started jogging in. Every fifteen seconds or so they rise up a little extra, suggesting one of the more popular guys—Devlin or Sawyer or whoever—has run in. It makes sense for me to be last, I think, being the QB. But how do I know when they’re done? Are they just gonna forget about me, or—

Fierce banging on the locker room door jolts me out of my thoughts, so fucking terrifying it makes my heart race. But I guess that’s my cue. I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to wear my helmet or not—yet another thing no one’s told me—so I carry it, and figure I can put it on if I see the other guys wearing theirs. At least the cheering’s still going on, so it’s not like I’ve missed everything.

Except that when I run in to the fog-and-flashing-light-filled room, it’s like I somehow pulled out the plug. The effects keep going, but the room goes quiet. For a second I think maybe “Number six, your quarterback, Jack Walsh!” was all in my head, but I know better.

The emcee—whoever it is—definitely said it out loud, and it sucked all the pep out of the room.

At that instant, if someone straight-up asked me, I would give this up. I would tell my brothers I was wrong, tell my parents I want to go home, tell Morgan and Sage I’m a loser, and tell little kid Jack, who never even dreamed she’d get this shot, to trust me, she doesn’t want it.

If I had a sword I could fall on out of shame, I would.

Before I can look for the nearest sharp object, I hear what I’m pretty sure is a muttered “For fuck’s sake,” and then Miguel Santiago emerges from the blob of players and holds out his arms. Amber neatly flies into his hands and the crowd goes wild as they do this vomitously adorable little dance routine that I think was somehow a favor to me but might make me feel even worse.