“I thought you had a boyfriend named Pete,” he asked.

I tried not to stare at Travis in his musical underwear. Why violins? my mind wondered. Did he have a whole orchestra in his chest of drawers? At least it wasn’t saxophones.

But now that I had thought of saxes, I had a hard time thinking at all.

Megan stepped in front of me, and my brain started functioning again. “We’ve got company,” she scolded her brother. “And since when do you sleep in the living room?”

I could still see him from the waist up over Megan’s shoulder. He smiled directly at me, and I felt my face flush. The color of his skin was deeper and a bit darker than Megan’s coffee-with-heavy-cream, but somehow, he seemed to glow in the darkness. Could everybody else hear me breathing?

“I hadda move out here ‘cause those little hellions took up the whole bed! And who’s this?” He asked, pulling the sheet to cover more of his body. “Is this why you needed those toys?” he grinned at me.

Toys? Oh, my God! Travis was the one who had bought the dildo and vibrator for Megan!

“James and Amos slept in your room when you were gone, but they s’posed to give it up while you’re home,” she frowned at him. “They get Estrellita’s bed, and she sleeps with Mama!”

“Too complicated,” scoffed Travis. “The littl’uns ain’t no trouble most of the time. ‘Cept tonight, they got in a scuffle and kept giggling and kicking each other. So I came out heah.” His accent was a little heavier than Megan’s. It made me think of warm molasses.

Megan leaned a bit sideways, like the situation had her off balance. We couldn’t see each other’s faces, but Travis could see both of us. He was still smiling.

“I thought you had a boyfren’ named Pete,” he asked. I couldn’t read his expression, but he was looking directly at me, and his eyes had gotten bigger somehow.

Megan laughed. “This is Pete, you goofus,” she accused him. “He’s the hero of the football team!”

Travis blinked. “You funnin’ me, Little Margaret?” he demanded.

He was still looking at me, so I shrugged. He glanced at Megan and back at me. “I mean,” he mused, “it’s okay wit’ me if you play both sides of the street. But you ain’t trying to tell me this little darling is a football player!” Then he winked at me!

Megan turned around, her mouth wide open, but nothing came out. I began to move slowly back toward the door, fumbling behind me for the handle. I have no idea what my face looked like, but Travis seemed even more interested than before!

“Get out, Pete,” Megan mouthed to me. “Call you later,” she added out loud.

I seemed to have discovered teleportation, finding myself standing beside my car with no memory of having gone through the door, gone down the porch stairs, or crossed the tiny DuQuesne front yard. I fumbled with my keys, trying to unlock a car door that wasn’t locked.

My hands shook, and I was breathing in gulps, but I managed to get in behind the wheel and start the car. Still, I was out on the street before I remembered to turn on the headlights. I chose a roundabout way toward home, my nerves yammering that my secret was out--that I’d never play football again.

My eyes burned, and my nose ran. I wasn’t conscious of weeping, but I tasted salty tears.

The sun rose over the eastern hills, a lavender sky turning pink, then gold. I realized I had driven up the slopes north of town, and I couldn’t go any higher without risking my shaky suspension on an old logging road. I parked under a Douglas fir that had been overlooked by the timber crews or had grown up in the decades since logging was profitable in central Arizona.

Is this where it ends? I asked myself. No championship, no AIS tournament, no helping Jake earn a scholarship? What do I do now? Can I even have a life if everyone knows I’m a girl?

I thought of another monument to Friendly’s past. Less than two miles away, over a different ridge than the one I had climbed, lay the old Micah Sweet copper mine, a two-hundred-foot-deep pit with nearly sheer sides and a pool of toxic chemicals at the bottom of it. The road stopped a quarter mile from the edge, but there were ways around the barriers the state had put up to keep the curious away. I could even walk it from where I was.