Chapter 29 Blue and Gold

Chapter 29 Blue and Gold
Daisy

"I've seen the post-game celebration," Maya said. Informatively. "There's a lot of proximity involved."

"I don't care about proximity," I said.

"Good," Sarah said. "Then it won't bother you at all when Tiffany is proximate."

I turned another page.

"She literally told you yesterday that Liam belongs to her," Sarah continued.

"In front of the entire cafeteria. With milk." She let that sit for three seconds.

"And you're going to stay home and do integration problems while she stands on that field in her cheer uniform reminding the entire school of that opinion."

The history chapter was about the Progressive Era. I had already read it. I was not retaining a single word.

"You're doing a thing," I said.

"I'm eating lunch," Sarah said innocently.

"You're doing the thing where you say things that you know are going to get in my head and then wait for them to work."

"I'm just a person having lunch with my friend."

"Maya," I said. "Tell her to stop."

"I'm neutral," Maya replied.

"You're driving."

"Neutrally," Maya said.

I closed the history chapter.

I sat for a moment with my hands flat on the table, which was apparently becoming a recurring posture in my life, and thought about the post-game field and Tiffany's cheer uniform and the look Tiffany had given me this morning outside the trophy case that was not cruelty but was something colder and more strategic than cruelty.

I thought about what Liam had said in the car.

I had a conversation with her yesterday.

And what he hadn't said, which was what the conversation actually contained.

I thought about the secret. The pause. One second.

"What time does the game start?" I said.

Sarah's face did not move. She was very good. "Seven."

"I'd need to be back by nine thirty for the study session."

"The game ends by nine," Maya said.  " Usually."

"I'm not going because of Tiffany," I said clearly. "I want that stated for the record. I genuinely do not care what Tiffany does on a football field."

"Absolutely," Sarah said, nodding.

"I'm going because Chloe will be there and it's a home game and it would look strange for me not to attend as his—" I paused at the word again, "—as someone who lives in his house."

"Completely," Sarah said. "Very practical reasoning."

"Maya, can you drive?"

"I can drive,"

I picked up my history chapter and opened it back to the page I'd been on and looked at a paragraph about Theodore Roosevelt that I read three times without absorbing any of it.

"I'm going to need something to wear to this game," I said.

"We'll figure it out," Sarah said.

"And to the party."

"Thursday shopping," Sarah said immediately. "I've been ready for this."

The Oakwood High stadium at seven PM was a completely different organism from the school I navigated every weekday.

In the daylight, Oakwood was a place I had learned to move through efficiently, head down, routes memorized, and exits identified.

But at night, with the stadium lights cutting white columns through the dark and the bleachers packed blue and gold and the bass from the marching band vibrating through the concrete under my feet, it was something else entirely. Louder. Warmer. The kind of place that had a pulse.

I stood at the entrance with Maya on my left and Sarah on my right, holding a cup of hot chocolate Chloe had pressed into my hands approximately forty-five seconds after we found her in the third row of the family section.

"You came!" Chloe had grabbed my arm with both hands, her Oakwood scarf wrapped twice around her neck, her face bright with the uncomplicated excitement of someone who had not yet learned to be strategic about happiness.

"I came," I confirmed.

"Liam doesn't know you're here." She said it with the specific satisfaction of someone who had filed this information as useful.

"He'll see you in the stands."

"That's fine," I said. "It's not a big deal, Chloe."

Chloe looked at me with her twelve-year-old eyes that saw forty percent more than they let on and said nothing, which was somehow more communicative than anything she could have said out loud.

Now I was standing in the bleachers with hot chocolate warming my hands, wearing the dark blue knit sweater Maya had produced from her car, like she had planned for this specific occasion, which she probably had.

"Good spot," Sarah said, settling in beside me and scanning the field with the focused attention of someone who had seen this movie before and knew where all the important scenes happened.

Down on the field the teams were warming up. The Oakwood players moved through their drills in the bright stadium light, and even from the third row of the family section, I could pick out Liam immediately, not because I was looking for him specifically, but because Liam Martinez in his element had a quality of movement that was genuinely difficult to look away from.  

"Tiffany's already in formation," Sarah said, chin tilted toward the near sideline where the cheer squad was assembled in two perfect rows.

I did not follow her eyeline. "I'm not looking at Tiffany."

"I know. I'm just—"

"Sarah."

"Noting," she finished.

Maya, sitting on my other side, turned a page in the book she had brought because Maya had brought a book to a football game, which was the most Maya thing she had ever done, and said nothing.



By halftime Oakwood was up fourteen to seven, and the stadium had the specific escalating energy of a crowd that had tasted a win and wanted more of it.

Chloe had migrated from two rows down to directly beside me somewhere in the second quarter, inserting herself between me and Sarah with the confidence of someone who had decided where she belonged and had simply gone there.

"He's going to call the forty-two play next," she said, studying the field with her arms crossed.

"How do you know?" Sarah asked, leaning around me.

"He always scratches the back of his neck before he does. Watch." Chloe pointed at the huddle breaking up on the field below us.