“Jump his bones!” the crowd screamed.

The room got rowdy and stayed rowdy. I cringed when they cheered the footage showing me taking down Ginger.

“Stomp him! Kick him!” they screamed, even though the film showed me bringing down Bulldog #17 in a textbook clean tackle.

“Way to go, Petey!” they shouted, and someone added, “Nail that fucker!”

I glanced at Jake, and he was holding out a hand, palm up for me to give him some skin. I turned away and saw Lee Frick frantically stabbing at the controls on the projector. For a second or two, the film ran backward, showing me falling on Ginger, then forward again like a sequence from Fractured Flickers.

“Jump his bones!” the crowd screamed. “Fuck him over!”

The film jammed, and the images stopped moving. Lee pulled the plug, stopping the projector before it burned the celluloid. Coach was standing and calling for everyone to calm down.

My expression must have finally penetrated Jake’s thick skull because his changed to puzzlement.

“Show it again!” someone yelled. “Yeah, Lee! Let’s see Pete slam that bitch to the ground!”

“Petey! Pete! Pete! Petey! Pete! Pete!” They screamed, drowning out Coach’s attempt to quiet them down.

Lee was staring at me, his mouth open in horror, probably mirroring my own.

I found myself in the hallway outside the bathrooms, not knowing how I got there. I guess I ran in one of those blind panics you read about. I paused with my hand on the handle of the men’s room door. Someone was inside, someone from the other part of the restaurant—a couple of adults, from the voices.

“What?” one of them yelled. “I can’t hear you! Those kids in the back room are too loud!”

“I think they’re still charged up over their win last night. They’re going to AIS again this year, looks like.”

“Yeah!”

“What?”

“Yeah, I said, yeah! Maybe they’ll take it all the way this time!”

“Could be! If something don’t happen to the Peterson kid!”

They laughed, and I turned away, making my way through the other door.

#

The women’s room was empty, and I turned out the lights, then claimed one of the back stalls in the dark. I sat on the toilet seat and pulled my feet up so no one could see my shoes under the door, even if the lights came back on.

The riot in the back room continued. I could hear Coach bellowing for quiet. After a bit, I heard people calling for me. “Pete?” It sounded like Lee, but then later, I heard Jake checking the men’s room, calling my name.

I stayed quiet and didn’t move, and the only sound I might have made was a stifled sob. I wasn’t just upset—I was terrified. What would a gang of crazy jocks do to me if they found out my secret? I could guess, but I didn’t want to find out.

Maybe it would be safest to just give up playing football, rather than be torn to pieces. I’d heard football called a blood sport and compared to Roman gladiatorial combat, but that had been by people who didn’t really like sports. Now I could kind of see the point of their argument.

I sniffled quietly, trying not to feel sorry for myself, sitting there in the dark, hiding in the women’s room. My teammates were all crazy, wanting to see me hurt Ginger, who played the same position I played on a different team. Were there guys in the Bulldog’s hometown crying out for my blood?

I hadn’t eaten much, but my stomach cramped, and I felt like if I got down off the stool, I would have to throw up.

I don’t know how long I stayed there, listening as other people called out for me. I didn’t answer. My toes started to go numb from how I was crouched on the seat. I felt sick, my stomach tasted sour in the back of my throat, and even my skin felt tender when I wrapped my arms around me to stop my hands from trembling.

The noise in the other rooms faded away. Maybe I’d been there for hours, I didn’t know. Maybe the restaurant would close, and I could sneak out and go home.

Someone came into the room, complaining, “Why are the lights off?” The lights came back on with a click, and I blinked.

“Is there anyone in here?” a girl’s voice called out, echoing a bit like voices always do in bathrooms.

I put extra effort into staying quiet, even holding my breath.

“Huh?” she said, and someone behind her seemed to have said something in reply.

“Yeah,” the first girl answered. “My dad warned me about the same thing, never go into a dark bathroom.” Their voices had that echoey quality from all the tile, porcelain and metal. It made them hard to understand, but I concentrated on listening while keeping quiet.

“Someone could be hiding in the dark, or in one of the stalls,” the second voice said.

“The door of the back stall is closed,” the first voice pointed out.

“Yeah.”

They both went quiet for a bit. “Is anyone in here?” one of them called out again.

I heard footsteps on the tile as someone approached my hiding place. She tried the door. Why did it have to be a brave girl and not someone who would chicken out?

“It’s latched from the inside,” she said. “Someone’s in there!”

Then Joanna Linklatter’s face appeared in the space below the door, looking up at me.

She grinned, her face mostly upside-down, so it looked bizarre and almost comical. “You were right, Megan,” she said. “It’s Pete!”

Pete -36- Endzone