but wouldn’t say it to my face. But I also knew there was no way she could have. We only had lunch together, and Jamie was always there. I could have texted Alexis about it, and I’d thought about it, but texts could be screenshotted and sent elsewhere, and the last thing I wanted was for Jamie to have physical, incontrovertible proof that I still cared. Alexis was my friend, but she was Jamie’s friend first, the same way Ronni was mine. If I gave Alexis material she could pass on to Jamie, she’d do it immediately, reflexively, out of loyalty. It was probably agonizing for her to not tell me about Jamie and Natalie herself, but I had to imagine that Jamie had asked her not to. Which was probably why Alexis had told Ronni instead: so Ronni would tell me, and Alexis could remain technically innocent while satisfying her urge to spread information. She operated by a strict, if slightly confusing, ethical code.
So I waited. Somehow time kept passing—hours and even days. At lunch, whenever Jamie was focused on her sandwich or looking at her phone, I stared at her, trying to see through her, analyzing her expressions to see if they seemed like those of a person in love. But she was as stoic as ever. So either nothing was happening…or something was.
By game time Saturday I was both exhausted and jittery. We were playing Albion, most of whose players were eight feet tall and blond and went to private school. Instead of a huddle, they held a prayer circle, and whenever they beat us we took comfort in reminding each other they had God on their side. To make matters worse, they were all polite, modest winners, which made us feel terrible for celebrating when we beat them.
With fifteen minutes to go before kickoff, the field on the visitors’ side of the bleachers was already packed with parents and friends wearing blue and white. Down below I spotted Hanna Ward, Albion’s sacrilegiously beautiful lead midfield, who used to play for us before she moved in seventh grade. After she moved, it became a recurring fantasy of mine that she and I would fall into forbidden love, Romeo and Juliet style, and get found together in the locker room showers. She caught me looking, so I gave her a little wave, and she smiled tightly. Progress.
I turned around for the hundredth time to survey our own set of bleachers, which were still three-quarters empty and would likely stay that way. My mom always came to a handful of my off-season club games, but, encouraged by me, saved most of her momly duty for the school season, when attendance felt like more of a value judgment. And anyway, it made me nervous to have her there, and she got too worked up over what she perceived as bad referee calls, which were all the ones that favored the other team. Most of the time I had no one special to look for in the bleachers, and no reason to scan them. Which was fine, because the people I really wanted to impress were on the field with me. But I couldn’t lie: I felt giddy scanning the bleachers for Ruby Ocampo.
Only I didn’t see her.
I dug my phone out of my bag: four minutes until game time, and no explanatory text messages from Ruby.
But it was cool to be a little late. I wasn’t happy about it, but it was.
Coach called us over for a pep talk, the usual stuff about playing our best and working together and remembering what we’d talked about in practice this week. We put our hands in and shouted the Surf Club chant, and then we dispersed to take final sips of water and stretch. I dipped a hand into my bag to check my phone again, but when I stood back up, Coach was right there.
“Ah!” I sort of shrieked.
“Do you need surgery?” Coach asked me, unsmiling.
“What?”
“To get that thing removed from your hand.” She pointed to my phone, and I instantly dropped it into my bag.
“Oh. Ha. No. All better.”
“You need to focus, Ryan,” she said. I