He trotted out onto the field with Colton and the offense as the stadium erupted into a mix of weak cheers and deep, thunderous booing. Never, in his whole time at the school, had their team been booed. Shame ran thick and hot in his blood as he set up on the line.
“Hey fag.” One of the Mississippi linebackers leaned over his defensive end. He blew Wes three kisses. “Coming for you, fag.”
Colton called the snap late, and the play was doomed from the first quarter second. The offensive line was slow. Colton didn’t have good pass protection. He was under pressure too soon, and he couldn’t set up for a deep pass. Orlando was under coverage, and he wasn’t an option for a dump pass. Wes was on a slant route, the third bailout option for Colton.
He was open.
Colton’s eyes flicked to Wes’s. Wes saw the moment Colton decided not to throw, to keep the ball even though the offensive line had crumbled and a linebacker was coming right for him. He looked away from Wes, curled over the ball, and took the sack, hitting the field with a sick crunch, pads on pads. Half a second later, Wes was tackled from behind, technically a late hit, but so close to the end of the play it would never be called. He hit the dirt hard, his helmet digging into the grass deep enough that his face mask ripped it up. He grunted, tried to throw his tackler off.
“Like that, fag?” The same linebacker. He thrust his hips against Wes’s ass, once, twice. “I’m going to fucking destroy you.” And then he was up, clapping his hands for the television cameras, trying to pump up the crowd as he ran back to the defensive huddle.
Wes pushed himself up slowly. Ten yards behind him, Colton was doing the same. Art helped Colton to his feet. No one helped Wes.
He was a ghost in the huddle. He was never chosen as the pass receiver. When he blocked, he was left all alone, isolated, and the defensive guards tag teamed him, steamrolling him to the ground and leaving him choking on dirt.
By the end of the first drive, it was clear: the team had collapsed. Nothing worked. Not their plays, not their rhythm. Not their drive. None of the strength Coach had talked about the day before was there. None of the love they had for each other was on the field. Maybe it was gone forever.
The sideline was a seething mass of fury. Colton hurled his helmet to the ground after being sacked for the sixth time. The offensive line was fighting each other, throwing blame left and right. Orlando screamed at the offensive coordinator until he got his pads grabbed and he was thrown down to the bench to cool off. The defense was a broken bunch of lost souls, watching the offense collapse and feeling the ebb of failure suck their confidence like water racing away from the shore before a tsunami. They were raw tempers and naked fury, exposed nerves and hair triggers.
It took nothing at all to strike the match that lit the fuse.
Orlando shoved Wes in their locker room at the half. “Are you fucking happy?” he roared. “Happy with what you did?”
“I’m not playing like crap out there!” Wes snapped back. “I’m open! But Colton isn’t throwing to me!”
Colton snorted. He wouldn’t even look at Wes, hadn’t looked at him since he’d made the decision not to pass to him. He shook his head. His lip was split and swollen, and he was flexing and unflexing his throwing arm. Bruises were blossoming along his side from all the tackles he’d taken.
“Man, he can’t throw to you!” Art snapped. “You’ve got a damn target on your back. You can’t take a single step without getting your ass thrown to the ground.”
“Maybe if I had some coverage, I’d get somewhere!”
“Oh, now you want our help?” Art bellied up to Wes, flanked by Josh and Patrick. “Now you need us? Now you want us? That’s not how it works, motherfucker!”
Wes shoved Art hard, and then all four linemen got into it, throwing Wes back against his locker and shouting in his face about what a fucking liar he was, what a goddamn hypocrite. How he broke the team he claimed to love. The rest of the team joined in, and the locker room descended into the beginnings of an all-out brawl.