He was a football star from the time we were seven years old. A few weeks after my dad died, Birdie dressed me in a bright blue jersey and brand-new white football pants and shoved me out onto a field at the park with a bunch of other little boys whose helmets were too big for their heads. Elijah was the biggest kid in the grass that day, in a pair of Batman sneakers and grass-stained football pants from the charity bin at church. He was the first person to talk to me.

His size caught the coach’s eye right away. “You’re definitely on defense, Vance. We’re going to put those shoulders to good use,” the coach said after sizing him up. That same coach looked at me and screwed up his lips into a smirk. “Offense, I guess? Maybe try quarterback? Can you even throw the ball?”

I remember standing right off Elijah’s shoulder anytime the coach gave him a high five, hoping to lap up some of that praise, too. He never had to work for it the way I did. He was just naturally good at football. I studied the hell out of the plays, read books from the library about throwing the perfect spiral, and watched countless YouTube videos about what makes a good quarterback. I was the third-string quarterback through almost all our peewee years. But Elijah could just read the field on defense, even in elementary school. He knew exactly how to watch the tics, feel the tension from the opposite side, and put himself right into the middle of a major play. As he got older, he just got better.

I watch him stretch and wonder if he still has those same instincts.

“Bear crawls! Go!” I yell and watch the rest of the team groan while I retreat to the bench and grab my water bottle. One of the perks of being captain is that I can sit out of a warm-up exercise every so often and no one really says too much. Today my ribs are thankful for that.

I keep my eye on Elijah. He’s at the back of the pack, sweat trickling down the side of his cheek in the late-afternoon sun. Even though he’s clearly not in the same shape he was three years ago, the look on his face is a mixture of pure joy and gritty determination.

· eight ·

ELIJAH

I feel fifty pairs of eyes on me when I walk out of the locker room and onto the field. I stay off to the side, near the ice buckets, while I try to settle my stomach, but I can feel all of it. The judgment. The way some of the guys cut their eyes at me.