no, Kimbra wrote, which was the truth. She felt April watching her quizzically and ignored her. She texted Joel:

want me to see what I can find out?

Please. Also is there any chance Dylan and KT might have been involved?

involved?

Romantically?

lololol i’ll ask around abt that half-time thing.

She looked up. She frowned. She realized he wasn’t joking. wait—what?

She found Whiskey Brazos, the team’s portly center, seated at a table in the school’s small library after lunch, exactly where his girlfriend April had said he would be. He held a book splayed open in front of him, his mouth screwed up in concentration.

“Is this seat taken?” Kimbra asked.

Whiskey shuddered. “You scared the shit out of me.”

She took that as a no. “Jumpy?”

Kimbra had always liked Whiskey: his harmless face, his country manners, his decency with April, who could be—to put it mildly—difficult. He always wore one of the same five plaid button-ups with the sleeves cut away at the shoulder, always had a fishhook slipped over the brim of his ball caps in case a desperate need for a bass ever presented itself. He asked her now, with what sounded like genuine concern, “Don’t you have class?”

“Depends who you ask. What’re you reading?”

He tilted up the spine of his book to reveal the cover: it displayed an airbrushed quarterback, his teeth a shade of white commonly known as “wealthy,” promising down-to-earth advice. “Dylan said I should read it.”

“That’s deep,” Kimbra said, wondering if Dylan had been as distracted by the handsome face on the cover as she was, and a second later she had to suppress the incredulous whistle that the thought had brought to her lips. Jesus Christ: Dylan Whitley, queer? When Joel had casually answered her question at lunch—I have it on good authority Dylan was gay. Did nobody know?—she had almost spilled spaghetti down her top.

Imagine the damage news like that could cause in this backward shit hole. Kimbra had been around football long enough to understand that its players weren’t just boys throwing a ball: they were everything the men of this town used to be, or never were, the walking realization of every frustrated hope and squandered opportunity and dream.

The men of Bentley would bulldoze their football field before they let a homo quarterback stand in for them under those Friday night lights. And their wives would be relieved.

Whiskey Brazos also regarded the book’s cover. He said, “I wonder if D ever could have had a shot at pro.”

“At least now he’ll never be disappointed.” Kimbra shrugged, and when Whiskey winced she added quickly, “Hey, did you see that thing on Friday night?”

“What thing?”

Scooting forward in her seat, Kimbra whispered, “KT wouldn’t tell me what it is. You know—that thing on your phone.”

“KT told you about that?” said a voice from the stacks of books, and a moment later T-Bay Baskin emerged. T-Bay, the son of the manager of the First Community Bank, was an oddity in Bentley: namely, a rich and black kid. Kimbra had mixed feelings about him. Like her, he acted as if he too were made of some finer substance than this town could appreciate. Unlike her, he never had to wonder how he’d leave.