Dead To You

48. touchdown

By halftime, the Panthers were in the lead with over thirty-five points while the opposing team still had yet to score a point, the star athletes like Blane Harding and Jun's boyfriend Steve soon replaced with alternates—which, according to Ethan, was to avoid injury for the upcoming playoffs—and, despite my supportive black sweatshirt emblazoned with the school's mascot of a pouncing panther, I almost wished the other team would score a touchdown just to make things a little more interesting. 

Because it was homecoming and the marching band was performing on the field after announcing the homecoming court, halftime was twenty minutes instead of just ten so decided to brave the concession line curving around the snack shack on the other side of the field with a handful of five-dollar bills from the others and their snack orders committed to memory, and the notes app on my phone. 

Bronwyn had offered to come with me to help me carry all the pizza slices back to the bleachers, but she and Jun had just struck up a conversation about her sister, Andi, who was also apparently a YouTuber, and I didn't really know how to contribute to their discussion without tainting it with my thoughts about Mrs. Rosenbloom-Preston and the channel she had, the filming she did at the vigil and what Noel told me in the diner after the funeral, which I was pretty sure was supposed to be private—unlike his life—but it was always running through my mind whenever anyone brought her up, or YouTube, evidently. 

So, I excused myself to walk across the football field to retrieve our alarming number of pizza slices and sour candies, and watched the marching band's performance in line through the chain link fence while I waited. After I was certain I had thoroughly annoyed the freshman working behind the counter with my lengthy order, and my squeaked request for a bag to carry it all in, I decided that, instead of walking back around to the bleachers the same way I had come, I would just cut across the adjacent baseball field and head back by going around the rest of the football field to the road less traveled by hungry high school students and rowdy young children. 

Behind the fence, there were a couple of people lingering on the sidewalk to watch the game for free, slumped in their lawn chairs. Aside from them, however, I was alone as I trekked around the baseball field and cautiously glanced inside the bag to make sure the pizza slices weren't sliding off their paper plates. But then, as I passed the dugout, I thought I heard some sort of noise, kind of like a squelch, and I slowed my footsteps until it happened again, another suctioning like sound quietly echoing from inside.

Don't go in there, I heard Bronwyn and Ethan telling me from the bleachers, but there was something about the sound that made my nerves sharp like an edge and I needed to know what was concealed by the shadows. Maybe it was an animal that had been hurt, or someone who was crying, or—

Blane Harding, still clad in his football uniform, pressing Thea Foster up against the wall.

My eyes widened as she clenched her hands around his hair, her breathless voice engulfing his name in a gasp when their lips broke apart and I heard that same squelching noise from before.

I knew it.

I freaking knew it.

I watched as her hands roamed beneath his shoulder pads, fingernails clawing at his jersey number, smudges of her lipstick smeared on the side of his neck while he kissed his way along her jaw to her earlobe, smirking against her diamond stud after she buried a hushed giggle into his collar. 

There was a part of me that felt like I should've looked away, hurried back to the bleachers with the probably now lukewarm pizzas because it seemed like Blane Harding might actually have sex with Thea Foster in the dugout on the baseball field, but I couldn't bring myself to look away as I remembered that conversation I overheard that night underneath the willow tree, the mistake Thea said she made that had Bridgette turning all of her friends against her, her words that Bridgette took it too far echoing back to me all from that night almost a month ago.