by Zoey Shores
The ball snaps into my hands and my receivers race down the field. Defenders are hot on their heels. A Michigan player lunges toward me with a tackle, but I duck and spin to the side, avoiding him; as soon as my eyes are able to steady again, another Michigander is trying to take me down, but I hop to the side, narrowly avoiding him.
Feeling defenders swarming all around me, I know that I won’t be able to stay on my feet for much longer. Suddenly, I see Sage make a great move and get open downfield. I fling my arm forward and the ball flies towards him.
He catches it.
The stadium erupts as he runs into the endzone, scoring the first touchdown of his college career – the game winning touchdown, securing our victory against one of the top teams in college sports.
On the field, the rest of the Wolves are leaping for joy. Some of the guys hoist Sage up on their shoulders. He’s got the widest, happiest smile plastered on his face. And he deserves it. As good of a pass as I threw, his catch was just as impressive.
But truly, it was neither his throw nor my pass that really won the game.
It was the woman who I now look at on the sidelines, with her beautiful lips turned up in a wide smile. She might not know it, not even suspect it – but it was Heidi Locke who made this victory happen.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: HEIDI
My story on the first game of the year won out over Greg’s. I got the assignment as the full-time Winthrop Wolves reporter. A guaranteed spot on the front page of the paper, my name under the flagship column, for the rest of the season.
Even ESPN and other big-name sports stations, even the sports columns of big-name newspapers, referred to my reporting of the game for background information about Luke and about the drama that went down on the sidelines and behind the scenes. Scoops that weren’t available anywhere else.
This is what I fought for. I’m on my way to becoming the most recognized student journalist in the country. I’ll be able to write my ticket to the internship of my choice this summer, and open up opportunities for myself that hardly anyone other than the privileged few with inside connections – like Greg – have access to.
I just have to make sure that I’m able to maintain the quality of my reporting and writing. It wasn’t my expertise in football or my fluency with the rules and terminology that made my column a success, but my ability to evoke the feelings on the field and the sidelines, my ability to flesh out the characters of the athletes and their relationships.
As part of this assignment, I’ll be traveling with the team to every away game. And this week, we’re traveling all the way to New Orleans to take on Louisiana State.
I arrive at the practice facilities after classes on Friday. I’ll be traveling by bus with the rest of the team: a twelve-hour drive that will have us arriving in New Orleans around three o'clock in the morning. The game is on Saturday night. It’s one of the roughest commutes of the year and gives Louisiana a major home-field advantage.
I take my seat toward the back of my bus, and before long the team begins to file on. Their spirits are high coming off the big win last week. They’re throwing jokes back and forth and trash talking. I’m starting to feel like I’m back on a high school school bus.
Being on the sidelines with the team during the game last week was one thing, but now I’m the sole woman in the small, enclosed interior of a bus while its seats are steadily filling up with pumped-up, male college athletes. If I take a deep breath, the dank scent of testosterone is almost overwhelming.
I jot down some notes in my notebook about the atmosphere that prevails during the beginning of the trip. I note who’s more rambunctious, who’s more pensive, I note that the Alpha Kappa players and the transfer players are sitting in different sections of the bus and barely communicating with each other, if at all. Luckily, it’s the transfer players who have taken up their positions in the back of the bus, near me.
I’m glad that I didn’t happen to be sitting amongst the Alpha Kappa players, as more than a few of them shoot me a dirty look as they walk up the stairs of the bus and take their seats: they’re bitter, no doubt, at my replacing their buddy Greg.
Well, tough luck for them and him. I earned this assignment, and I’m not going to apologize or feel guilty about competing for it and winning it on my own merits.
Luke Tanner boards the bus, talking with two other players. One I recognize as Archer Brighton, the team’s top Running Back, and the other, as Sage Tatum, the promising freshman Wide Receiver who caught the game-winning touchdown last Saturday against Michigan.
For a second, Luke’s rich, green eyes lock with mine, his gaze firm and unwavering. When I feel my cheeks flush, I quickly cast my glance back down to my notebook, noting that the freshman Sage Tatum – a player few know much about yet, but whom many are interested in after his eye-catching performance at the end of last week’s game – seems to be hanging out with the transfer students rather than the Alpha Kappa crowd.
Luke leads the two of them toward the back of the bus, slapping hands with other players along the way. Luke and Archer take their seat one row in front of me, on the opposite side of the aisle. Luke sits on the side closest to the aisle. Despite my best efforts, I find it difficult to keep my eyes from flickering toward him every minute or so, even though his head is turned in conversation with Archer to his left, and the only view of him I catch is that of his thick, lush, brown hair luxuriously covering the back of his head, and his wide, statue-esque back and shoulders turned away from me.
The last collection of players boards the bus, Carson and Bryce flanked by three other Alpha Kappa guys. They’re laughing obnoxiously about something, and flamboyantly greet the rest of their crew sitting towards the front of the bus before taking their seats. Shortly after, Coach Riker and the rest of the coaching staff board. He stands at the front of the aisle and takes a brief roll call, making sure all the players are accounted for, and then the bus begins its long journey down to New Orleans.
Having been sitting on the aisle-side of my row in order to best observe the goings-on before departure, I scoot over to the widow seat to gaze outside as the bus rolls down Winthrop Town.
The college came first, set up about two hundred years ago as the premiere institute of higher education in the region, and the town quickly sprung up around it. It’s a lively but calm small college town, abundant in trees and various foliage, with fine, classy old buildings lining the well-appointed streets, flanked with finely sculpted nineteenth century lamp posts – like just about all buildings and structures in this town, they’re paragons of exemplary craftsmanship.
It only takes about fifteen minutes for densely populated town to give way to thick Midwestern woods, which will be our traveling scenery for the next hour or more before we hit the freeway. Winthrop Town and Winthrop University are nestled in the middle of a sleepy forest, a lively, bustling settlement relatively small in area, surrounded by sparsely populated and thickly wooded nature.
The heavily laden tree branches flanking the old road the bus rolls down rustle in its wake and show barely the first signs of the approaching autumn. Today is the end of only the second week of the Fall semester, but it feels like so much more time has passed than that.
In these last two weeks I’ve become reacquainted with Luke Tanner – something I hardly thought would ever happen –, won the biggest journalistic assignment available to just about any student journalist, and am now on my way to see New Orleans for the first time in my life. Not to mention living in my own off-campus apartment and contending with a jam-packed course load designed to produce as strong a transcript as possible.
Next thing I know, I hear a voice next to me, “Long week?”
I open my eyes and notice my eyelids are heavy -- the first thing that registers in my sight are the cars zooming past us on the highway, and the distinctly lower angle of the sun that hangs over the horizon out my window. I then notice a feeling on the side of my head that tells me it’s been resting against th
e window, and I realize I must have dozed off, lulled by the bucolic sights of the tree-lined roads which led us away from Winthrop, and by the accumulated exhaustion of the past week.
I turn toward the source of the voice that awoke me and see Archer Brighton standing in the aisle, leaned against the headrest of the empty seat to my left.
“Let her rest man,” I hear Luke’s voice from across the aisle. I look towards him and for a moment his face strikes my newly awake consciousness almost hypnotically. His features are all solid lines and sharp angles, rough and masculine, but polished and beautiful at once. For the first time I’m truly struck by how he’s aged in the six years since we knew each other in high school – how he’s matured. His face is still full of virile, youthful vigor, but holds more confidence, commands more immediate respect.
His eyes stare back at me, and the curious grin on his face tells me that I’m staring at him too intensely and for too long, and that he’s well aware that my thoughts must be, too.
“It’s alright, if I sleep the whole ride down, I’ll be up all night,” I answer, craning my neck back and letting out a yawn. Besides, I should use the time on the bus to study; I can’t allow the pressures and time commitment of my newspaper assignment to get in the way of maintaining my GPA, so I’m going to need to utilize all the precious downtime I have available to me to hit the books.
“Up all night, huh? Wouldn’t want that.” Luke’s eyes glimmer with the juvenile glee of being able to drop a double-entendre on something I said – a favorite pass-time of his back when we were young, something that used to make the younger me blush, which I know he relished in.
“You still can’t help yourself, can you?” I shoot back to his grinning face.
“We really need the full story of the history between you two sometime,” Archer says.
I let out a sigh. “Maybe another time,” I say, still groggy, as I rest my head back against the window, fixing my gaze on the decidedly less picturesque view of the busy Friday afternoon freeway.
“After all,” Luke follows up on my statement in a sly voice. “We’ve got all season.”
Those words, and the way he says them, sound to me both ominous and tempting.
Saturday’s game ends in another victory for the Wolves. It was a close, back-and-forth game – the very definition of a nail-biter. Both teams brought their best. LSU was under no false impressions about how Winthrop had improved, not after last week’s stunning victory over Michigan. And the Wolves were no more willing to rest on last week’s laurels; as big of a statement as last week’s win was, to beat a team like LSU immediately after would shake the very foundation of the college football world.
The Wolves played their hearts out to make it happen, and they pulled it off.
I’m back in my room at the hotel that hosts the team for the weekend, working on the first draft of the column that will run in Monday’s paper. I need to get it to Dr. Gasten by tomorrow evening, Sunday.
I’m several paragraphs into it. The game was exciting, but simply recounting the back and forths and twists and turns that happened on the field isn’t enough. I can already tell that this draft is missing the personal hook that earned me this column in the first place. I need more than what happened on the field.
We’re leaving back to Winthrop on Sunday morning, and I know that the team is going to be out celebrating their victory in downtown New Orleans. I was intending to stay in tonight to work on my article, but I know that if I want my second article to generate the interest that last week’s received, I need to be out there with them, documenting the life of the team off the field.
I quickly change out of the pajamas I had donned upon repairing back to my hotel room after the game and put on a pair of dark jeans and a Winthrop shirt. I want to remain inconspicuous: blend in, not stand out.
I want to be able to catch how the team acts on the night of a big victory without any of them knowing that they’re being observed. That’s how you catch the real story, and I know that’s what my writing is going to have to lean on for my article to remain successful, and to continue justifying my role as the full-time Winthrop Wolves reporter: the real story – the personal.
I snatch my small notebook and a pencil and stick them in my back pocket. The hotel that’s hosting us is conveniently located just a couple blocks from the heart of downtown New Orleans. It only takes a couple feet from the front door of the hotel for the infamous spirit of the New Orleans nightlife to reveal itself. It’s only 9:00, and already people are stumbling around, hollering, laughing, swaggering around drunk with their necks laden with beads of all colors and designs – I guess that’s not only a Mardi Gras thing.
“You want some beads, darling?” a thick Louisiana accent slurs at me. It belongs to a college-aged guy flanked by his friends. Judging from his age range, his accent, and his LSU shirt, he seems like an LSU fan drinking off the defeat that we just handed his team. I balk at him and step to the side, hurrying my pace and allowing them to pass me by, obnoxious laughter erupting from the group that I leave behind me.
And I’m not even at Canal Street yet. If this is what downtown looks like after a losing LSU game, I shudder to think what it’s like after a victory.
The streets get fuller and the smell of alcohol gets stronger as I approach Canal Street, the beating heart of downtown New Orleans. There are so many rowdy college kids with LSU shirts proudly displayed that I’m worried I’m going to have to cover a brawl if the wrong group of them runs into the Wolves’ players in or outside of one of the jam-packed bars that line the sides of the busy sidewalks as far as the eye can see in any direction.
Speaking of the Wolves’ players, how the hell am I supposed to find them on a night like this? There must be hundreds of bars in a couple-block radius, all filled to the brim with rowdy drinkers and partiers. Wolves players will usually stand out from any crowd owing to their eye-catching size, but among a mass of humanity like this, finding even them is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack.
Shit, I should have stayed close to the team after the game and tailed them.
I spend several minutes walking around the bustling streets, my eyes wide and alert, looking for any sign of them. Luckily, after about twenty minutes, my ears perk up at a clue.
“Let’s get out of here,” I hear a rough voice somewhere behind me. “This place is full of those Winthrop assholes.”
Booo!
Fuck Winthrop!
Go back to Indiana!
Luke Tanner sucks!
A string of invective from all quarters follows the declaration.
Alright, this is what I came down here for. The bitterness of the local LSU fans after we handed them defeat is going to make a great addition to my weekly column. The students on campus and local fans of the team will eat this up big time.
Not only that, but Luke Tanner is now infamous enough among our opponents to be singled out for abuse from the drunk fans of our vanquished foes. Another delicious fact to add some color to my article.
The drunk frat-looking guys who stumble by me muttering cursing at the Wolves may consider me an enemy if they knew I were here to cover the team for the Winthrop student paper, but I silently thank them for keeping me from having to do a lot of detective work in the innumerable bars that are only getting more crowded and rowdier as we slip further into Saturday night.
I walk into the bar they just emerged from. It’s packed. If the Wolves’ presence was enough to drive those couple guys away, clearly the rest of New Orleans is a lot less temperamental, as I can barely squeeze through the packed, gyrating crowd that moves with the heavy, pulsing bass that pounds through the speakers.
I’m able to slither my way to about the middle of the dance floor before I get a decent view of the bar area on the other side of the room.
Sure enough, I spot a couple Wolves players. Carson and Bryce are chatting with a couple girls on their arms. There are a few more players I recognize. I also notice Ar
cher and Lincoln laughing together and taking shots at a table set up against the wall next to the bar.
I strain my eyes to see if I can spot Luke, but he’s nowhere to be found.
I crane my head upward and notice there’s a second-story area, somewhat less packed, with a balcony that affords a full view of the first floor. I decide to stake out up there with my notebook and watch the players as they hang out on the first floor.
I can already feel drops of sweat gliding down my back, the kinetic heat from the dancefloor turning the place into a sauna. I note how obviously over-dressed I am as I look around at the women dancing around me, all clad in tight, short, low-cut dresses. My hair is already feeling frizzy from the humidity.
I just hope that I’m able to observe something to write about that makes this trip out worth it.
I slowly make my way toward the stairs that lead up to the second floor, when suddenly I feel a firm hand grip my shoulder.
My subconscious immediately suspects it to have been Luke, noticing me – but I’m quickly let down as I turn around and come face to face with a total stranger, whose face is flush with alcohol-induced blushing and who looks like he can hardly steady himself on his own two feet.
“How about a dance, sugar?”
I roll my eyes. “No thanks. I’m here on business,” I tell the truth, hoping to quickly brush him off and be on my way.
No such luck, however; his arm grips tighter around my shoulder, keeping me from turning back around and continuing to the stairway to the second floor.
“Come on, babe,” he mumbles. “Don’t you wanna have a good time?”
“Not really,” I reply, tersely. I’ve never really been to a club like this by myself. Whenever I went to an off-campus bar or house party back in Winthrop, I’d always go with Rory or one of our other friends, and we’d make sure to always stick by each other's sides, just to make sure none of us get accosted by creeps like this.