particular. Determinedly—almost stubbornly—I take my sweet time clicking the ‘next’ arrow. I feel a swell of jubilation when I find the touchdown photo, a still frame of number 32 just as his hands make contact with the ball. It’s not exactly framed professionally, but it’s clear and crisp, a nicer snapshot of an action moment than I thought myself capable of, and I feel a bright spike of satisfaction.
Crushing it!
I flip through more—Emory, Sydney, Afton Cross, Ben Shackleford—until I reach The One.
The second his dimpled face fills the screen, I almost click back to the previous picture. Seeing him like this feels wrong somehow, like at any moment my parents are going to jump out of the shadows and start asking a whole lot of questions that I’m in no way prepared to answer. It makes me curl closer to the screen as I look at it, not at all unlike I’ve seen Reynolds curled around his lunch tray—a vaguely possessive, shielding move.
It’s a fantastic picture. There’s something strangely guarded in the way his eyes are trained off into the distance. Sweaty hair clings to his forehead in chaotic slashes, and his mouth is parted with his smile, like he’s still trying to catch his breath.
It’s a seemingly perfect mixture of the old Reynolds and the new.
I can only look at it for a few moments before the anxious fluttering in my stomach becomes too much. I close it all out before shooting a wary glance toward my window.
I blame the insomnia—or all the caffeine—for turning me into a nosy neighbor, or at least that’s what I tell myself as I sit here on my bed, watching his dark window for signs of activity. It’s already past midnight and he’s not the only one who hasn’t come home yet. My brother hasn’t returned either.
I check social media, scanning Emory’s account and even Aubrey Willis’, but if they’re together, they’ve kept it on the DL. I yet again restrain myself from seeing whether or not Reynolds has an account. That’s like the isosceles triangle of slippery slopes. But I do scroll through a dozen other accounts of Preston Prep classmates hoping he’ll pop up. He doesn’t, even in the photos from a party where Sydney is claiming to have the time of her life.
I close the laptop and fall back on my bed, sighing.
I drum my fingers against my stomach. FOMO isn’t something I’m used to feeling so acutely. The meds usually dulled those kinds of things. But now it’s just frustratingly, achingly obvious that I’m the only one at home on a Friday night, sitting in my room, creeping on the off-limits neighbor I can barely even manage eye contact with. Jesus, the realization that I need a life has never been clearer.
I decide to risk going down to the kitchen. It’s late enough that Mom and Dad should be asleep. Dad snores like a freight train and my mom has started sleeping with a noise machine. It’s given me a little more freedom to move around at night, but I still play it safe, not even daring to turn on a light to illuminate my way down the stairs, through the house.
At the refrigerator, I open the freezer and stick my head in so that the cool air blasts across my face. I dig out an ice pop and am in the middle of tearing the package with my teeth when I hear a meow at the kitchen window. Firefly’s climbed the flower box and is peering in at me with his shrewd eyes.
“Hey bud,” I say, mostly to myself. It’s not like the cat can hear me. He continues to meow, louder and a touch more obnoxiously than normal. At the door, I pause, because I know my cat. Usually, that much noise means he’s brought a ‘gift’. I ease the door open, just a crack, and look down. Sure enough...
“Ugh, Firefly, are you kidding me?”
Firefly is holding the brown, striped body of a chipmunk in his mouth. I know if I let him, he’ll dart in, probably leaving the thing somewhere horribly inconvenient. Instead, I squeeze out to confront him.
“Let go of that!” I hiss. “Drop the chipmunk!”
Firefly isn’t having it. As soon as I get near enough to grab him, he’s jolting away. I chase him across the yard, grateful that no one’s come home yet, because I can’t even imagine how stupid I look, hobbling around after a cat and his chipmunk. I ultimately pick