Chapter 27 Everything to Lose
JAKE POV
The scout from Ohio State is wearing a red lanyard and standing at the forty-yard line as he owns it, and Jake knows because he can see him from the tunnel before he even steps onto the field.
He steps onto the field anyway.
This is the thing about Jake Mercer that nobody talks about, not the coaches, not the articles in the school paper, not Marcus, who narrates Jake's entire athletic career like a live sportscaster. The thing nobody talks about is that Jake is terrified every single time. Not of failing. Of being seen failing. Of the moment where the thing he is best at becomes the thing that proves he was never enough.
He tucks that terror into his chest the way he always does.
He plays.
He plays like the field is on fire.
Every throw is clean. Every read is right. He sees the defense shifting before it shifts, calls the audible, watches it work, and does not let himself feel good about it because feeling good is how you get sloppy. Marcus runs the route Jake draws in the air with two fingers and catches it in stride, and does a completely unnecessary celebration dance, and Jake almost smiles.
Almost.
Coach blows the whistle. "Mercer. Good."
Coming from Coach, good is a standing ovation.
Jake jogs back to the line.
He doesn't look at the scouts again for the rest of practice.
After, they stand with Coach near the equipment shed while the rest of the team peels off toward the locker room. Marcus stays because Marcus goes where Jake goes, and also because he has no concept of reading a room.
"You know I can make him leave," Jake says quietly.
"You know you'd miss me," Marcus says, not quietly.
The scout from Ohio State, whose lanyard says COLEMAN, shakes Jake's hand with the specific grip of someone who has shaken a thousand hands and is deciding in real time whether this one matters. "Strong game," he says. "We've been watching your tape since September."
Jake says thank you. He means it, and he doesn't show it.
Coleman talks about the program. About their QB situation next year. About academic requirements and what the scholarship structure looks like, Jake listens to every word and nods in the right places, and inside his chest, something is pulling very tight.
Academic requirements.
GPA minimums.
He thinks about English. About the essay that came back with a B-plus and his own name at the top and Penny's handwriting in the margins, neat and specific and completely unauthorized, and the reason that grade is not a D.
He thinks about the next essay due Friday.
He thinks about what happens if he writes it alone.
Coleman hands him a card. "We'll be in touch with your coach. Keep doing what you're doing." He looks at Jake for one extra second, the look that means you could be something, and walks away.
Jake looks at the card.
Marcus claps him on the shoulder hard enough to stagger him. "Ohio State, man. OHIO STATE "
"Stop."
"I'm just saying."
"I know what you're saying." Jake pockets the card. "I heard you."
Marcus goes quiet. Not hurt. Just reading him the way he sometimes can, when he slows down enough to try. "You good?"
"Yeah."
"You look like someone told you bad news."
Jake looks at the field. The other scout is talking to the sophomore wide receiver now. The afternoon light is going orange and flat. In two hours, he needs to be home.
"I'm good," he says. "Let's go."
He drives home thinking about the essay.
Not the scout. Not Ohio State or the card in his pocket or the way Coleman looked at him like he was a future worth investing in. The essay. Four pages on thematic symbolism in a book Jake read in three days because it was assigned three weeks ago and he kept putting it off, and the ideas are there, they are always there, tangled and half-formed and real but the shape of them on paper comes out wrong, like trying to describe a color you can see perfectly but have no word for.
Penny has the word. She always has the word.
He sits in the driveway for a moment after he turns off the engine.
He has not talked to her today. Not since the hallway last night. Not since she stood up and went back to her room and closed the door and left him sitting on the floor alone with the specific feeling of someone who has said the truest thing he knows and has no idea what happens next.
I won't.
He meant it.
He doesn't know if she believed him.
He goes inside.
They are at the kitchen table.
Lily is in her chair with a book propped open against the fruit bowl, the one about the girl who discovers she can talk to birds, and Penny is next to her with her chin resting on one hand, pointing at something on the page. Lily is sounding out a word very slowly, the way she does when she refuses to be wrong, deliberate, careful, not giving up.
"Mischievous," Lily says.
"Almost," Penny says.
"Mis-CHEEV-ee-us?"
"Close. Try again."
Jake drops his bag by the door. Neither of them looks up.
He sits down across from them. Not because he was invited. Not because there was a plan. Just because it's where he lands.
Lily looks up immediately. "Jake, help."
He pulls the book toward him and looks at the page. "Where are you?"
"There." Lily points to the word she's been fighting.
He reads the sentence around it. Then he reads the whole next page out loud, slowly, the way his mom used to do not performing it, just making it real. He can feel Penny not looking at him while he does this. The particular quality of someone paying attention without wanting to show it.
He finishes the page. He slides the book toward Penny without comment.
She reads the next page.
Her voice is different from his, quieter, more expressive in it; she does slight different voices for different characters without making it a big thing. Lily leans forward with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands.
Jake watches Penny read.
He does not intend to watch Penny read. It just happens.
She gets to the end of the page and slides the book back to him.
They go like that for twenty minutes. Back and forth. No discussion. No asking. Just the book passing between them and Lily getting more and more horizontal in her chair until she is barely upright, and her eyes are fighting a battle they are clearly losing.
At the end of the chapter, Lily announces, "I need water and then more story."
"You need water and then bed," Jake says.
"Story first."
"Bed first."
"One more chapter."
"Half."
Lily considers this like a labor negotiation. "Fine." She slides off her chair and shuffles to the kitchen, and Jake looks across the table at Penny.
She is already looking at him.
Neither of them says anything.
Then Penny glances down at his jacket pocket, the one where Coleman's card is, and says quietly, "How'd it go?"
He pulls the card out and puts it on the table between them.
She reads the logo. Her eyes come back up.
"Ohio State," she says.
"Yeah."
A pause. Something in her face he can't quite name, not surprise, something softer than that.
"Jake "
His phone buzzes on the table.
They both look down at the same time.
It's a screenshot from an unknown number.
The image loads slowly, line by line, the way bad news always does.
It's an email. An anonymous tip was sent to the school's academic board.
The subject line reads: Plagiarism Report Jake Mercer, Period 4 English, Essay Submission.
The body of the email contains one attachment.
The attachment is his essay.
With Penny's handwriting in the margins.