I looked at the bleachers and saw Maggie standing and cheering. I winked at her, not that she could see my eyes from behind my helmet.

Next, Luke was in at quarterback, me still at running back. I knew he would try to keep the ball out of my hands. But on the third play, he got ready to snap it, he audibled, and then he turned back to me to say he’d hand it off. I was ready.

Just like all my plays that day, this one seemed to unfold in slow motion. Luke jammed the ball into my rib cage, and I darted toward where the hole was supposed to open up in the line. But no one on my team was blocking. Instead, the offensive line let everyone pass, and six guys, most of them mammoth, bore down on me in unison. I had nowhere to juke, nowhere to spin, nowhere to move. They led with their helmets, and I was pummeled—in my ankles, knees, torso, and, with a blazing, blinding crash after my feet lifted off the ground, my head.

I went down, face grinding into the dirt, the crush of bodies steamrolling over me and staying there. I tried to yell but had no air in my lungs. I gasped beneath a thousand-plus pounds of sweaty football players and their bulky equipment.

Then all went dark.

Where was I? I was still on the field, but now it looked postapocalyptic: torn up, parched, overgrown with weeds in a hazy rusty light, as if the sun couldn’t make it past clouds of dirt in the air. Then came a twinge of déjà vu and a foggy speck emerging in the middle of my vision. The speck grew, moved closer, accompanied by a sound that suggested both laughing and crying. Voices came from all around me, behind me, where I couldn’t turn to look.

The spot got bigger and brighter and morphed into a face: male, but with skin pulled back and stretched out like shrink-wrap. He was grinning a big, wide, evil grin—like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, like Jack Nicholson as the Joker, like Jack Nicholson as the Green Goblin.

No, the Green Goblin wasn’t Jack Nicholson. That was Willem Dafoe. Or James Franco. Or Dane DeHaan.

For God’s sake, Jordan, focus!

The face, so close in front of me, began to burn along its jaw, flickers moving upward, the skin blackening and crisping before actual flames appeared. Blisters rose and grew and popped.

Gross.

The creature laughed, his eyes the only things unaffected by the heat.

Then the fire spread to … me. Arms, legs, head … it was white-hot and excruciating and …

Darkness. Again.

CHAPTER 6

Maggie

JORDAN DIDN’T MOVE. He was out.

I ran down from the bleachers, ducking through the fence to get onto the football field. Those assholes. It was obvious what had happened: Luke called a screen to the team but told Jordan it was a draw, so when the play started, the offensive line let the defenders past them, and Jordan got hammered and went airborne. The crack of the helmet-to-helmet contact was loud and sickening.