Logline

In fulfilling a promise she made to her twin on his deathbed, Peyton Thomas disguises herself as a boy and tries out for football, unleashing a chain of events that force her to grapple with her identity, her guilt, and her family's grief.

Blurb

I have a lot of secrets.

Trying out for my new school's football team disguised as a boy is only the beginning. As much as I hate to admit it, I'm developing a disturbing crush on a teammate.

But that's not my worst secret.

Nobody here knows I have a twin brother named Pax. Or that he died last year. And that I might be delusional because I see him and hear him, everywhere.

Or maybe it's the guilt that haunts me. Because I know deep down that my father is the one who killed him. And keeping that secret somehow makes me complicit.

But my biggest secret of all is that I'm afraid that I'll never be able to forgive my dad for Pax's death.

Until I can put that ghost to rest, my brother's spirit will be forever lost in the liminal space between this world and the next. And I am lost in this world without him.

~Chapter One~

Shaving My Head, and Other Jackass Moves

If you're going to shave your head, I recommend a power song to get you through it. Mine's "This Kid's Not Alright."

I'm barricaded in my bathroom, scissors in one hand and a pale lock of hair in the other. I swallow hard and take a good look at myself in the mirror.

This might be your worst idea ever.

"You're probably right," I tell the voice that has taken up residence in my head. I glance down at the flier I snuck into my pocket at school registration. "Looking for a few good men," it says.

I take a deep breath and scrutinize the reflection gazing back at me. "It's only hair. It'll grow back."

Fine. You wanna be the badass? Then be the badass.

"Okay, okay. Here it goes," I mutter.

I hack away at the hair gathered at the nape of my neck until the entire thing is severed. Then, starting on the left side of my skull, I trace the curve of my ear and neck with the clippers, trying not to get too distracted as the remaining hair drifts to the ground like dismembered dove wings.

Long strands of hair cling to my arms and shoulders, the way corn silk sticks to your hands when you shuck an ear of corn. I don't think I adequately prepared myself for that visual. My heart thuds against my ribcage, threatening to leap out as reality sinks in. I pick up the pace before I chicken out completely.

When I get to the section at the top of my head where my part lies, I hesitate. Once you begin a gesture like this, it's fatal not to go through with it. I gulp down the lump forming in my throat and keep going. This is it. No turning back now. The vibration of the clippers as they skirt along the center of my skull rattles my teeth. I clench my jaw, determined to see this through.

Take no prisoners.

When I'm done, the specter gazing back at me through the mirror gives me the shivers. If I hadn't watched him die last year, I'd think it was my twin brother.

I don't normally see a lot of dead people. But I see him everywhere.

And he still talks to me.

Constantly.

Using my forefinger, I smear eye-black on the plane of each cheekbone like war paint. My shaved head combined with the face markings makes me look like a gladiator.

You should be fine, I hear him say. As long as you don't smile.

I scramble up my pile of hair, shoving all traces of it into a crumpled-up plastic HEB bag, which I stuff in the duffel with my helmet and protective gear. I tidy up the bathroom, turn out the light, tiptoe down the hall and down the stairs. On the final step, I stop short.

My dad is slouched over the kitchen table. He's passed out, his head buried in his arms, clearly rocked to sleep by that empty bottle of Jack. I stand there gazing down at him, the sick knot curdling in my stomach again.

Something's gotta change.

I glance back down at the flyer, eyes roving over the "Are you man enough to fight with the Warriors?" in bold red ink.

I sneak out the back door, escaping undetected.

I may not be a man, but I sure as hell have a fight to pick with someone.

*****

There are some days you feel like a straight-up baller, and some days you need an adult diaper.

This day is the latter.

I'm sweating so much that my helmet is sliding around on my freshly shaved scalp. Sweat is blurring my eyes like hot, salty tears, dripping from my nose like snot. The aggressive humidity isn't helping, and I might pass out from heat stroke. During the month of July in East Texas, you expect it to be an oven outside, but this is ridiculous. Try getting suited up in pads and a helmet and then talk to me about hot.

"All right men!" the coach yells. "This is the Blue Lake High School football combine. If you're a pansy, I suggest you put on your big girl panties, get yourself some pom-poms, and go try out for cheerleader."

I'm the new kid, but nobody's paying much attention to me. At five foot ten and barely a hundred forty pounds, I'm on the skinny side. It's not exactly like any of these guys are shaking in their Nike Vapor cleats at the prospect of getting hit by me.

"We're gonna to put you boys through the pig chute. We wanna see you run, hit, catch, throw, and jump. There are five stations. Coaches Baird and Roberts will take A-K. L-Z is coming with me and Coach Murphy. And if I catch any of y'all lollygagging, I'm gonna punch you in the goddamn kidneys. It's hotter than a squirrel with his nuts on fire, and I ain't in the mood to herd cats all day." Coach Carson is built like a bulldog, round with short arms and legs and a thick neck. Sweat drips from his jowls and seeps through the front of his shirt. Of the four total coaches, he seems to be the one in charge.

At my last school, the varsity football team had twelve coaches, including offensive and defensive coordinators, special teams, skilled position, and line coaches.

Another reminder that I'd been relocated to Podunk. Blue Lake, Texas. Population 5,972, to be precise. Located about forty miles east of the Texas State Penitentiary. There's nothing here but a Dairy Queen, a Whataburger, and an Exxon. Hell, they don't even have a Starbucks. Kids here grow up dreaming about escape.

Lucky me, my family just moved here.

As I follow the L-Z herd to the first drill, I start sizing up my competition. A lot of these kids have been fed way too much chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes. perfect for the offensive line.

Then there are the skinny ones, like me. Talent on this team must be wholly contained in the twin towers: Little and Jackson. They appear to have gone through puberty by age nine and are totally swole, their biceps bulging, straining against their practice jerseys.

The first drill is agility. Run, touch cone, cut back, touch other cone, run forward, tackle dummy, pick up ball placed atop dummy. They stop timing when you secure the ball.

"Little!" Coach yells. His name is the only little thing about this guy. He is about 6'2" and two hundred pounds of pure muscle. He runs the drill, and I feel a little sorry for that tackling dummy.

"5.95 seconds! I'd like to see any one of you girls come close to that time."

This girl is up for the challenge. He goes through the alphabet. Mason weighs in easily at three hundie, and his time is around eleventy-million seconds. Next, comes a bunch of middle-roaders like Nolan. The agility drill reveals that most of the team isn't very agile. Ramirez is fast and nimble, but small. Smaller than me even. Little's time stands as fastest, no surprise.

Coach Murphy mutters, "Some of y'all are slower than molasses in January. Must've been couch taters all summer."

Then Coach Carson gets to the T's.

"Thomas!"

Try not to trip.

"Thanks, Pax," I mutter.

I haven't been to a football tryout in two years. My brother and I always went together, and he calmed my nerves. I take a deep breath and dig down for the hard pit that has been in my stomach for the past year. I wrap my nerves around it like an anchor.

Everything else goes away.

"On your mark! Get set! Go!" someone hollers, and away I go. It's pretty easy. Pax and I ran drills like this when we played on my dad's team in peewee.

"5.99! Good work, uh-" Coach stammers as he looks down at his clip board. "Good work, Thomas!"

5.99. It's a good time. Maybe it's a fluke. It's hard to time it on a stopwatch and be exactly right. Human error and all.

Mistake or not, my invisible status is fading. You know how you can feel the sideways glances people give you? That's what it is. I don't dare look at anybody and keep my face averted. Little and I have the two fastest times in the L-Z set, and as we go to the catch station, Little shoves me on the shoulder pad.

"Nice run, man."

We go through the other drills. My performance is solid. While I can throw the ball, I'm no Tom Brady. I can catch too, better than a lot of these Yahoos. But my main talent, the thing I'm most proud of, is my raw speed in the forty-yard-dash, the gold standard for measuring skilled players.

Our coaches gather us all to run the forty as one group. Coach Carson is at the starting line calling out runners, Coaches Murphy and Roberts are at the finish with stopwatches, and Baird is recording the times on his clipboard. By now, it's ten in the morning and feels like we're all swimming in a pot of stew. The players have taken off their helmets waiting for their turn.

Everyone except me.

"Baker!" Coach Carson yells.

Baker slogs forty yards in slow-mo.

Coach Murphy yells, "6.5 seconds, Baker. Son, you run like a snail scootin' through peanut butter!"

Cash Carson is up next. Don't know if he's related to the coach, but I make a mental note to find out. He's six feet tall with an athletic build. An All-American quarter-back pretty boy. Not much of a runner though and he clocks in at 5.8 seconds. He kicks one of the tires when coach yells it out.

"Chaplin?" Coach Carson calls.

This Chaplin guy is interesting. Objectively speaking, he's attractive. He's pushing 6'3," and I estimate two hundred and twenty pounds of farm-raised beef. He saunters over to the starting line trying to look relaxed, but the sinews and muscles in his forearms contract, straining against he clenches and unclenches his fists nervously. His arms are golden-brown from the summer sun, with tawny hair that falls over his eyes under his helmet. Something about him, the easy way he moves and jokes with the other players, makes me wonder if he's any good or just here to socialize.

He runs his forty in a respectable 5.1, which is fast considering he's a whitey and huge. When he hears his time, he mutters expletives under his breath.

I can't help smiling. It reminds me of how frustrated Pax used to get at tryouts even though he'd done perfectly fine.

When I glance up, Chaplin is staring at me. He appears a little pissed off at first, and then another emotion bubbles up in his Coca-Cola eyes.

Looks like suspicion.

"Great," I mutter, pretending to focus my attention on the next racer.

After several more guys attempt to impress with their superhuman speed, it becomes pretty clear that swiftness will not be the Warriors' secret weapon. Little can fly, with Jackson almost beating him.

"4.28!" Coach yells.

By the time the coach calls my name, I'm light-headed. I can barely see for sweat running down my face, and all of the allergens in this crappy East Texas summer air.

"Thomas!"

Deep breath.

The lead ball is still there in my stomach, gnawing away. I have two choices: crap my pants or wrap my core around it. I focus on containing the pain and hold it in. I get down in a three-point stance, and the peanut gallery starts to murmur. Nobody else has done that.

"Oh, great," I grumble.

But that's how Dad taught us to do it.

"I know, but I still feel like a moron," I say to him under my breath.

The coach doesn't seem concerned, so I inhale deeply and train my eyes on a spot about six inches in front of my foot on the ground and wait. When I hear the signal, my body reacts instinctively. I launch forward, head still down. My momentum builds, but it feels like I'm moving in quicksand. All those guys must be laughing right now watching me struggle like a slug in a salt trail. The anger that I am failing pushes me to reach for full speed about twenty feet before the finish and maintain it through the line.

"A 7.2!" I hear coach Murphy call. The lead ball sinks through my stomach and into my lower intestines, and I take a quick step to steady myself. Running is pretty much my thing. 7.2?

Coach Baird is recording the times, and calls from the bleachers, "Coach Murphy! Isn't that a 4.72?"

Coach Murphy yells back, "Yep! 4.72!" He looks me over, eyes narrowed, sizing me up. "Thomas, says here you transferred from Woodland Heights?"

Still gasping for air, I nod my helmet, wishing he hadn't said that so loudly.

"Son, welcome to Blue Lake Football!" And then he smiles big at Coach Carson.

I pinch my mouth into a line to stifle the urge to smile back. To contain my sheer excitement. It's a pretty good time. Second only to Little's. I forgot how much I love that feeling.

The forty is the last contest of the day. The coaches send us to the showers. I'm not about to head in that direction, so I nonchalantly make my way to the parking lot. I catch someone trailing a few yards behind me, closing in. I ignore him.

The tap on the shoulder startles me. "Thomas?" he asks.

I turn my head to look at him. It's Jack Chaplin. He studies my face like he's searching for something but isn't quite sure what.

He's totally onto you.

"Shit, I think you're right," I mutter to Pax under my breath. Then I force myself to meet Jack's gaze.