“Take it easy there, Cap,” Bucky Redd says to me, tightening his shoulder pads. I’m not sure why we all still call him Bucky instead of Brian, even though orthodontia worked its magic in middle school, but I guess when you’re saddled with a nickname in second grade, sometimes it just sticks.

I flop down on the bench between him and Nate Connors and throw my bag on the floor.

“What’s eating you?” Nate asks, straightening his socks and pulling on his grass-stained cleats.

“Did you know Elijah Vance was going to be on the team again?” I turn to both of them.

Nate nods, looking everywhere but at me. “I just found out this morning. I ran into Elijah outside the guidance office before first period, and he told me Coach Marcus was giving him an unofficial tryout this afternoon.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me this?”

“Sorry, Cap. I thought you knew,” Nate says.

“What about you?” I ask Bucky, not even trying to keep the accusatory tone out of my voice anymore.

“I found out from Connors at lunch.” Bucky swallows hard.

“You told him and not me?” I stick my thumb out at Bucky and stare at Nate.

Nate busies himself with his other shoe and doesn’t look up.

“Didn’t either of you think that this might be information I might be interested in?” Now neither one of them will look at me. I roll my school shorts and sneakers into a ball and throw them into my locker. The heap makes a satisfying ping against the metal. “There’s a new player on the team, and no one thinks to tell me about it?” I slam the door and spin the lock before walking out of the locker room and onto the field.

Behind me, I hear Bucky. “Yikes. Someone better calm his ass down or we’ll be doing bear-crawl warm-ups all afternoon.”

Bear crawls. Now, that’s not a terrible idea.

I’ve always worked my ass off at football. It makes sense to me. There are rules and formations and a playbook to follow. Dad started teaching me the basics practically as soon as I could walk, and Birdie regaled me with stories about his football career at Crenshaw, and later Coastal Texas. I knew I could be just like my dad if I worked hard enough. Birdie thought I could be even better.

“I’ve never seen anyone work so hard,” she’d tell me after peewee and middle school practices. Football and grades. They were what mattered. Those two things, I hoped, might be my ticket to bigger and better things. It had been drilled into my brain since I was knee-high to a grasshopper that football could take me places if I put in the effort. All that work has always been for one reason: I want to be the kind of man my father would have been proud of.