Varsity Quotes

Most Bolton students were scions of the city's wealthiest families. My crewe stuck out like hooker at church. We werent part of their pampered, priveliged world, and many of our classmates were quick to remind us of that fact. Taunting the "boat kids" was practically a varsity sport.

He's gawking at me when I open the door. "Damn girl," he says, looking me over, "what the hell are you trying to do to me?" I look down at myself, still trying to wake up the rest of the way and realize I'm in those tiny cotton white shorts and varsity tee with no bra on underneath. Oh my God, my nipples are like beacons shining through my shirt! I cross my arms over my chest and try not to look at him i the eyes when he helps himself the rest of the way inside. "I was going to tell you to get dressed," he goes on, grinning as he walks into the room carrying his bags and the guitar, "but really, you can go just like that if you want." I shake my head, hiding the smile creeping up on my face.

A game at which the liberals have become masters is that of deliberate evasiveness. The question often comes up `what can you do?`. If you ask him to do something like stopping to use segregated facilities or dropping out of varsity to work at menial jobs like all blacks or defying and denouncing all provisions that make him privileged, you always get the answer - `but that's unrealistic!' While this may be true, it only serves to illustrate the fact that no matter what a white man does, the colour of his skin - his passport to privilege- will always put him miles ahead of the black men. Thus in the ultimate analysis, no white person can escape being part of the oppressor camp.

Puberty flicked a switch inside of them and dreams were replaced by hormones and college prep courses and varsity sports while I continued to look for faeries in the woods behind my house.

Let me tell you girls a story, short and sweet. In high school, I was a junior varsity cheerleader dating a senior who was up for football scholarships. I'd slept with him several times willingly. One night I wasn't in the mood, but he was. So he held me down and forced me. The few people I told about it - including my best friend - pointed out what would happen to him if I told. They stressed the fact that I hadn't been a virgin, that we were dating, that we'd had sex before. So I kept quiet. I never even told my mother. That boy put bruises on my body. I was crying and begging him to stop and he didn't. That's called rape, ladies.

You count the years until you get a varsity jersey, then you're a hero, an idol, a cocky bastard because in this town you can do no wrong. You win and win and you're the king of your own little world, then poof, it's gone. You play your last game and everybody cries. You can't believe it's over. Then another team comes right behind you and you're forgotten.

This isn't 'I do something for you, you do something for me'. This is hard-core friendship. Varsity level. This is me asking you to do something for me without getting anything in return. This is friendship, Howie.

Lainey is hot in a prom queen kind of way and we used to be friends back in grade school, but that was two lifetimes ago. Now she’s a varsity soccer player and card-carrying popular girl who hangs out with the kind of mean girls and douchebags who get killed first in horror movies.

He slipped his hands around my waist and pulled me against him, tossing the ice cream cone over his shoulder. It landed with a splat on the sidewalk. "So does that mean I have a varsity girlfriend?" I giggled like a total girl and linked my hands behind his neck. "Yeah I guess it does." "Sweet." Then he bent his head, and I stood up on my tiptoes and we met in the middle. And it was perfect.

You think you can just throw me away for some junior varsity mall rat?

I wasn't worried about myself. I didn't consider the possibility that either of the men could catch me. I was all-star varsity soccer. I was Braveheart in Urban Outfitters. I was Supergirl. I was seriously delusional.

Two boys, both in varsity football, kissing under the bleachers, muscular silhouettes merging against the deep purple sky. I wasn’t the only one with a secret. In the grand scheme of things, my secret wasn’t even as dangerous as some of theirs.

Every three hundred years or so, our kind gets loosed upon an unsuspecting world. And this time around, the history books would know us as the 1989 Danvers High School Women’s Varsity Field Hockey team. Be. Aggressive. B-E aggressive.

Once again, airborne forces appeared to be coins burning a hole in the pockets of Allied commanders, coins that simply had to be spent. Soldiers soon mocked the operation as VARSITY BLUNDER, and burial squads with pruning saws and ladders took two days to cut down all the dead.

The main one I could understand was that money-earning ones pay taxes. Whereas you can’t collect shit on what people grow and eat on the spot, or the work they swap with their neighbors. That’s like a percent of blood from a turnip. So, the ones in charge started cooking it into everybody’s brains to look down on the land people, saying we are an earlier stage of human, like junior varsity or cavemen. Weird-shaped heads.

Jen- I have to tell you - I haven't said this before but I've wanted to + now I want to say it all the time: I LOVE YOU. I love you on the page + I love you in the library + in the coffee shop + in the last row of the Varsity. I love you here. I love you in negitive space - ok, i don't know exactly what that means but i'm pretty sure its true - + I love who you have been + who you will be. I should say this to you in person, and i'm going to - over & over - but I think I needed to say it here first. Jennifer Heyward, I love you.

varsity

You're playing hookey for her? You met her, what, five minutes ago? And now she's what? Your girlfriend? Did you give her your varsity jacket?

During my last year of high school, I tried out for the varsity golf team. For about a year, I’d taken golf lessons from an old golf pro.

When Jordan was cut from the varsity team, he was devastated. His mother says, “I told him to go back and discipline himself.

This kid, he has to remember, this freaking junior varsity water boy, cut the heads off five men and rolled them across a disco floor like he was duckpin bowling. Guilty feet ain't got no rhythm, Eddie thinks.

The myth that if you don't start early, you might as well not start, tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The music-making world that young people confront reminds me a lot of the world of school sports. After a lot of weeding out, in the end you've got a varsity with a few performers and an awful lot of people on the sidelines thinking, "Gee, it's too bad I wasn't good enough." We need to be careful about that. There seems to be an unspoken idea, in instruction of the young, that the people who start the fastest will go the farthest. But that's not only an unproven theory; it's not even a tested theory. The assumption that the steeper the learning curve, the higher it will go, is also unfounded. If we did things a little differently, we might find out that people whose learning curves were much slower might later on go up just as high or higher.

Coach McConaughy grabbed the whistle swinging from a chain around his neck and blew it. “Seats, team!” Coach considered teaching tenthgrade biology a side assignment to his job as varsity basketball coach, and we all knew it. “It may not have occurred to you kids that sex is more than a fifteenminute trip to the backseat of a car. It’s science. And what is science?” “Boring,” some kid in the back of the room called out. “The only class I’m failing,” said another.

It would be useless to try to segregate outstanding members of Washington's varsity shell, just as it would be impossible to try to pick a certain note in a beautifully composed song. All were merged into one smoothly working machine; they were, in fact, a poem of motion, a symphony of swinging blades.

And more to the point, I have no idea what I want to do. It shouldn't be a surprise. I've had years to think about it. That and just the other day I was pestering Wolf about what he wanted to do--talk about the pot calling the kettle black. But that's just it, I guess. I've never had to think about it. I have very diligently kept all of my options open. The AP classes, the killer GPA, the SAT scores in the 99th percentile, the varsity letters from swim team, the debate club, the fundraising... I've taken on everything and succeeded at it. There is not one weak spot that can be pointed to in my resume, not a single thing that would make an administrator say, "Yes, but what about her..." Except maybe this. Except the part where it's suddenly clear to me why I've been struggling so much with my college essays, with articulating who I am in so few words. How can a person even know who they are if they don't know what they want?

The snow was still drifting from the sky when we stepped out into the parking lot. The Hellcat was covered with a fine layer of the white stuff because it’d been parked there for so long. Beside me, Rimmel shivered, and I felt like an ass because she’d been out in this cold half the day and then stood in the drafty tunnel and had to wait on me. The engine was already purring; I’d hit the electronic start as soon as it came into sight. I pulled off my varsity jacket as we walked around to the passenger side, and I draped it around her shoulders. “Pretty soon I’m gonna have your entire wardrobe.” She smiled and pulled my coat farther around her. “You can have whatever you want, baby.

I have always noticed in high school yearbooks the similarity of all the graduate write-ups—how, after only a few pages, the identities of all the unsullied young faces blur, how one person melts into another and another: Susan likes to eat at Wendy’s; Donald was on the basketball team; Norman is vain about his varsity sweater; Gillian broke her arm on Spring Retreat; Brian is a car nut; Sue wants to live in Hawaii; Don wants to make a million and be a ski bum; Noreen wants to live in Europe; Gordon wants to be a radio deejay in Australia. At what point in our lives do we stop blurring? When do we become crisp individuals? What must we do in order to end these fuzzy identities—to clarify just who it is we really are?

Again and again the demons closed upon Tom, and again and again he took his imaginary basketball and dribbled it into a clear space. He zigzagged fast, dancing feet barely touching the ground, changing direction sharply and unpredictably. “What is he doing?” Stella gasped, her hand over the bleeding wound on her stomach. “He made varsity,” Twist said. “He made what?

Look, no one wants to hear that maybe she’s the reason her mother flew the coop. But my advice to you is to put this behind you. File it away in the drawer that’s saved for all the other crap that isn’t fair, like how the Kardashians are famous and how good-looking people get served faster at restaurants and how a kid who can’t skate to save his life winds up on the varsity hockey team because his dad is the coach.

Pete Berman sized up his competition like a predator lining up its prey. Gerry Williams dribbled once with his left hand, stopped on a dime, and nailed an open 15-footer. He had played on the Fellingwood Varsity Basketball Team since his freshman year, and was now a 16 year-old boy in a man's body. Pete sat on a board of the old splinter-ridden, wooden stands fixed on Gerry, but he was unable to defend his turf. His team was losing badly again, and the waiting was pure agony.

And this isn’t high school. Now that you’re not worried that (a) your skirt is too short or too long and the other kids will laugh at you, (b) you’re not going to make the varsity swimming team, (c) you’re still going to be a pimple-studded virgin when you graduate (probably when you die, for that matter), (d) the physics teacher won’t grade the final on a curve, or (e) nobody really likes you anyway AND THEY NEVER DID… now that all that extraneous shit is out of the way, you can study certain academic matters with a degree of concentration you could never manage while attending the local textbook loonybin.

For the rest of Kat’s childhood, she moved from one relative’s house to another’s, up and down the East Coast, living in four homes before entering high school. Finally, in high school, she lived for a few years with her grandmother, her mom’s mom, whom she called “G-Ma.” No one ever talked about her mom’s murder. “In my family, my past was ‘The Big Unmentionable’—including my role in putting my own father in jail,” she says. In high school, Kat appeared to be doing well. She was an honor student who played four varsity sports. Beneath the surface, however, “I was secretly self-medicating with alcohol because otherwise, by the time everything stopped and it got quiet at night, I could not sleep, I would just lie there and a terrible panic would overtake me.” She went to college, failed out, went back, and graduated. She went to work in advertising, and one day, dissatisfied, quit. She went back to grad school, piling up debt. She became a teacher. Kat quit that job too, when a relationship she had formed with another teacher imploded. At the age of thirty-four, Kat went to stay with her brother and his family in Hawaii. She got a job as a valet, parking cars. “I’d come home from parking cars all day and curl up on my bed in the back bedroom of my brother’s house, and lie there feeling desperate and alone, my heart beating with anxiety.

William worked on his passing too, so he could feed the ball to the best players in the park. He wanted to keep his place on the court, and he knew that if he made the other boys better, he had value. He learned where to run to provide space for the shooters to cut in to. He set screens so they could take their favorite shots. The boys slapped William on the back after a successful play, and they always wanted him on their side. This acceptance calmed some of the fear William carried inside him; on the basketball court, he knew what to do. By the time William entered high school, he was a good-enough player to start for the varsity team. He was five foot eight and played point guard. His hours of practice with the glasses had paid off; he was by far the best dribbler on the team, and he had a nice midrange jumper. He’d

Talking about your crazy spots not only saves your daughter the work of trying to change your fully formed personality, it also builds her emotional intelligence. In its more basic form, your daughter’s emotional intelligence will help her to consider competing mental states. But when you teach her about your crazy spots, you are taking her emotional intelligence up several notches: you are inviting her to think about your motivations in a broad perspective that includes past experiences and relationships. By encouraging her to expand her insight beyond what’s happening in the moment, you’ll advance your daughter from varsity level emotional intelligence (“Why does Mom act psychotic when I track mud through the house?”) to the pros (“Mom acts psychotic because she didn’t have to share her space when she was growing up, so she doesn’t always handle it well now”).

At Notre Dame, we have a squad of about three hundred lads—both varsity veterans and newcomers. They keep practicing fundamentals, and keep it up, and keep it up, and keep it up, until these various fundamentals become as natural and subconscious as breathing. Then in the game, they don’t have to stop and wonder what to do next when the time comes for quick action. The same principles apply to selling, just as well as football. If you want to be a star in the selling game, you’ve got to have your fundamentals— the A B C’s of your job, so firmly in your mind, that they are part of you. Know them so well that no matter at what point a prospect breaks away from the path to closing, you can get him back on the track again without either of you consciously realizing what has taken place. You can’t develop that perfection by looking in the mirror and congratulating your company for taking you on. You’ve got to drill and drill and drill!

[...]a man and a boy, side by side on a yellow Swedish sofa from the 1950s that the man had bought because it somehow reminded him of a zoot suit, watching the A’s play Baltimore, Rich Harden on the mound working that devious ghost pitch, two pairs of stocking feet, size 11 and size 15, rising from the deck of the coffee table at either end like towers of the Bay Bridge, between the feet the remains in an open pizza box of a bad, cheap, and formerly enormous XL meat lover’s special, sausage, pepperoni, bacon, ground beef, and ham, all of it gone but crumbs and parentheses of crusts left by the boy, brackets for the blankness of his conversation and, for all the man knew, of his thoughts, Titus having said nothing to Archy since Gwen’s departure apart from monosyllables doled out in response to direct yes-or-nos, Do you like baseball? you like pizza? eat meat? pork?, the boy limiting himself whenever possible to a tight little nod, guarding himself at his end of the sofa as if riding on a crowded train with something breakable on his lap, nobody saying anything in the room, the city, or the world except Bill King and Ken Korach calling the plays, the game eventless and yet blessedly slow, player substitutions and deep pitch counts eating up swaths of time during which no one was required to say or to decide anything, to feel what might conceivably be felt, to dread what might be dreaded, the game standing tied at 1 and in theory capable of going on that way forever, or at least until there was not a live arm left in the bullpen, the third-string catcher sent in to pitch the thirty-second inning, batters catnapping slumped against one another on the bench, dead on their feet in the on-deck circle, the stands emptied and echoing, hot dog wrappers rolling like tumbleweeds past the diehards asleep in their seats, inning giving way to inning as the dawn sky glowed blue as the burner on a stove, and busloads of farmhands were brought in under emergency rules to fill out the weary roster, from Sacramento and Stockton and Norfolk, Virginia, entire villages in the Dominican ransacked for the flower of their youth who were loaded into the bellies of C-130s and flown to Oakland to feed the unassuageable appetite of this one game for batsmen and fielders and set-up men, threat after threat giving way to the third out, weak pop flies, called third strikes, inning after inning, week after week, beards growing long, Christmas coming, summer looping back around on itself, wars ending, babies graduating from college, and there’s ball four to load the bases for the 3,211th time, followed by a routine can of corn to left, the commissioner calling in varsity teams and the stars of girls’ softball squads and Little Leaguers, Archy and Titus sustained all that time in their equally infinite silence, nothing between them at all but three feet of sofa;

No matter how remarkable his behavior was, you always felt that he was detached from it. More than anything else, it was this quality that sometimes scared me away from him. I would get so close to Fanshawe, would admire him so intensely, would want so desperately to measure up to him—and then, suddenly, a moment would come when I realized that he was alien to me, that the way he lived inside himself could never correspond to the way I needed to live. I wanted too much of things, I had too many desires, I lived too fully in the grip of the immediate ever to attain such indifference. It mattered to me that I do well, that I impress people with the empty signs of my ambition: good grades, varsity letters, awards for whatever it was they were judging us on that week. Fanshawe remained aloof from all that, quietly standing in his corner, paying no attention. If he did well, it was always in spite of himself, with no struggle, no effort, no stake in the thing he had done. This posture could be unnerving, and it took me a long time to learn that what was good for Fanshawe was not necessarily good for me.

When I burst into the terminal, my eyes swept around, bouncing from person to person in the crowded, bustling space. My stomach fell a little when I didn’t see him, but I knew he probably couldn’t come this far. He was probably at baggage claim. I looked around for a sign to point me in the right direction and finally saw one labeled Baggage Claim with an arrow pointing off to the left. But I didn’t follow the arrow. My eyes fixed on someone standing beneath the sign. His hands were jammed into the pockets of his well-worn slouchy jeans. The relaxed action pulled the waistband low, highlighting his flat, narrow waist his Henley tee molded to. As usual, he was wearing his varsity jacket and his blond hair was a mess. My gaze locked on his sapphire-blue eyes and didn’t let go. His eyes, ohmigod, his eyes. The blue was so intense it served as an emergency brake on everything in my life. The second I looked at him, everything else came to a screeching halt. I no longer noticed the huge crowd rushing around. The anxiety-causing flight was just a distant memory, and the two weeks I spent longing for his touch became something I would live through ten times over just to be in this moment with him again. His lips pulled into a smile and the charm that oozed from every pore in his body made me almost lightheaded. Romeo pulled his hands out of his pockets and straightened, motioning for me. I rushed across the space separating us, my bag slapping against my side as I, for once, gracefully maneuvered around the people in my path. His chuckle brushed over me when I was just steps away, and I threw myself at him with a little sigh of relief. My legs wrapped around his waist and his arms locked around my back. I burrowed my head into his shoulder and inhaled deep, taking in his distinctive scent. “Rim,” he murmured, his voice low. I pulled back and his lips were on mine instantly. The moment our lips touched, he stilled, his body and mouth pausing against mine. Before I could wonder why, he muttered a garbled curse against my mouth and then his lips began to move. He kissed me softly but fiercely. There was so much possession in the way he kissed me, in the way his arms locked around me that my heart stuttered. I parted my lips so his tongue could sweep inside, and when my tongue met his, desire, hot and heavy, unfurled within me. Someone chuckled as they walked by, and Romeo retreated slightly, still letting his mouth linger on mine before completely pulling away. He rested his forehead against mine and he smiled. “I really fucking missed you.” “Me too,” I whispered. -Romeo & Rimmel

the cotton fields and strawberry patches of a much harsher world whose tragedies and daily burdens had blunted her temperament and quelled her emotions. But its most immediate impact on this teenage girl was not the lack of a demure coquettishness that otherwise might have defined her had she grown up in better circumstances; it was the visible evidence of the hardship of her journey. This was not a pom-pom-waving homecoming queen or a varsity athlete who had toned her body in a local gym. My mother never complained, but it was her struggles that had visibly shaped her shoulders, grown her biceps, and crusted her palms—while in a less visible way narrowing her view of her own long-term horizons. Decades later, when I was in my forties, I suppressed a defensive anger as I watched my mother sit quietly in an expansive waterfront Florida living room while a well-bred woman her age described the supposedly difficult impact of the Great Depression on her family. As the woman told it, the crash on Wall Street and the failed economy had made it necessary for them to ship their car by rail from New York to Florida when they headed south for the winter. Who could predict, she reasoned, whether there would be food or gasoline if their driver had to refuel and dine in the remote and hostile environs of small-town Georgia? My mother merely smiled and nodded, as

How do you build peaks? You create a positive moment with elements of elevation, insight, pride, and/ or connection. We’ll explore those final three elements later, but for now, let’s focus on elevation. To elevate a moment, do three things: First, boost sensory appeal. Second, raise the stakes. Third, break the script. (Breaking the script means to violate expectations about an experience—the next chapter is devoted to the concept.) Moments of elevation need not have all three elements but most have at least two. Boosting sensory appeal is about “turning up the volume” on reality. Things look better or taste better or sound better or feel better than they usually do. Weddings have flowers and food and music and dancing. (And they need not be superexpensive—see the footnote for more.IV) The Popsicle Hotline offers sweet treats delivered on silver trays by white-gloved waiters. The Trial of Human Nature is conducted in a real courtroom. It’s amazing how many times people actually wear different clothes to peak events: graduation robes and wedding dresses and home-team colors. At Hillsdale High, the lawyers wore suits and the witnesses came in costume. A peak means something special is happening; it should look different. To raise the stakes is to add an element of productive pressure: a competition, a game, a performance, a deadline, a public commitment. Consider the pregame jitters at a basketball game, or the sweaty-hands thrill of taking the stage at Signing Day, or the pressure of the oral defense at Hillsdale High’s Senior Exhibition. Remember how the teacher Susan Bedford said that, in designing the Trial, she and Greg Jouriles were deliberately trying to “up the ante” for their students. They made their students conduct the Trial in front of a jury that included the principal and varsity quarterback. That’s pressure. One simple diagnostic to gauge whether you’ve transcended the ordinary is if people feel the need to pull out their cameras. If they take pictures, it must be a special occasion. (Not counting the selfie addict, who thinks his face is a special occasion.) Our instinct to capture a moment says: I want to remember this. That’s a moment of elevation.

What would be the natural thing? A man goes to college. He works as he wants to work, he plays as he wants to play, he exercises for the fun of the game, he makes friends where he wants to make them, he is held in by no fear of criticism above, for the class ahead of him has nothing to do with his standing in his own class. Everything he does has the one vital quality: it is spontaneous. That is the flame of youth itself. Now, what really exists?" "...I say our colleges to-day are business colleges—Yale more so, perhaps, because it is more sensitively American. Let's take up any side of our life here. Begin with athletics. What has become of the natural, spontaneous joy of contest? Instead you have one of the most perfectly organized business systems for achieving a required result—success. Football is driving, slavish work; there isn't one man in twenty who gets any real pleasure out of it. Professional baseball is not more rigorously disciplined and driven than our 'amateur' teams. Add the crew and the track. Play, the fun of the thing itself, doesn't exist; and why? Because we have made a business out of it all, and the college is scoured for material, just as drummers are sent out to bring in business. "Take another case. A man has a knack at the banjo or guitar, or has a good voice. What is the spontaneous thing? To meet with other kindred spirits in informal gatherings in one another's rooms or at the fence, according to the whim of the moment. Instead what happens? You have our university musical clubs, thoroughly professional organizations. If you are material, you must get out and begin to work for them—coach with a professional coach, make the Apollo clubs, and, working on, some day in junior year reach the varsity organization and go out on a professional tour. Again an organization conceived on business lines. "The same is true with the competition for our papers: the struggle for existence outside in a business world is not one whit more intense than the struggle to win out in the News or Lit competition. We are like a beef trust, with every by-product organized, down to the last possibility. You come to Yale—what is said to you? 'Be natural, be spontaneous, revel in a certain freedom, enjoy a leisure you'll never get again, browse around, give your imagination a chance, see every one, rub wits with every one, get to know yourself.' "Is that what's said? No. What are you told, instead? 'Here are twenty great machines that need new bolts and wheels. Get out and work. Work harder than the next man, who is going to try to outwork you. And, in order to succeed, work at only one thing. You don't count—everything for the college.' Regan says the colleges don't represent the nation; I say they don't even represent the individual.

It’s my turn next, and I realize then that I never turned in the name of my escort--because I hadn’t planned on being here. I glance around wildly for Ryder, but he’s nowhere to be seen, swallowed up by the sea of people in cocktail dresses and suits. Crap. I thought he realized that escorting me on court was part of the deal, once I’d agreed to go. I guess he’d figured it’d be easier on me, what with the whole Patrick thing, if I was alone onstage. But I don’t want to be alone. I want Ryder with me. By my side, supporting me. Always. I finally spot him in the crowd--it’s not too hard, since he’s a head taller than pretty much everyone else--and our eyes meet. My stomach drops to my feet--you know, that feeling you get on a roller coaster right after you crest that first hill and start plummeting toward the ground. Oh my God, this can’t be happening. I’ve fallen in love with Ryder Marsden, the boy I’m supposed to hate. And it has nothing to do with his confession, his declaration that he loves me. Sure, it might have forced me to examine my feelings faster than I would have on my own, but it was there all along, taking root, growing, blossoming. Heck, it’s a full-blown garden at this point. “Our senior maid is Miss Jemma Cafferty!” comes the principal’s voice. “Jemma is a varsity cheerleader, a member of the Wheelettes social sorority, the French Honor Club, the National Honor Society, and the Peer Mentors. She’s escorted tonight by…ahem, sorry. I’m afraid there’s no escort, so we’ll just--” “Ryder Marsden,” I call out as I make my way across the stage. “I’m escorted by Ryder Marsden.” The collective gasp that follows my announcement is like something out of the movies. I swear, it’s just like that scene in Gone with the Wind where Rhett offers one hundred and fifty dollars in gold to dance with Scarlett, and she walks through the scandalized bystanders to take her place beside Rhett for the Virginia reel. Only it’s the reverse. I’m standing here doing the scandalizing, and Ryder’s doing the walking. “Apparently, Jemma’s escort is Ryder Marsden,” the principal ad-libs into the microphone, looking a little frazzled. “Ryder is…um…the starting quarterback for the varsity football team, and, um…in the National Honor Society and…” She trails off helplessly. “A Peer Mentor,” he adds helpfully as he steps up beside me and takes my hand. The smile he flashes in my direction as Mrs. Crawford places the tiara on my head is dazzling--way more so than the tiara itself. My knees go a little weak, and I clutch him tightly as I wobble on my four-inch heels. But here’s the thing: If the crowd is whispering about me, I don’t hear it. I’m aware only of Ryder beside me, my hand resting in the crook of his arm as he leads me to our spot on the stage beside the junior maid and her escort, where we wait for Morgan to be crowned queen. Oh, there’ll be hell to pay tomorrow. I have no idea what we’re going to tell our parents. Right now I don’t even care. Just like Scarlett O’Hara, I’m going to enjoy myself tonight and worry about the rest later. After all, tomorrow is another…Well, you know how the saying goes.

Learning how to win even these seemingly insignificant contests prepares you to protect yourself from the varsity challenges. The strange thing about being taught to be a victim is that our status is somehow communicated to the persecutors. Someone who’s looking to harm someone can pick the victim out of a crowd.

Justin Taylor, editor of Crossway, cites the example of one writer who wanted to thank “my parents, Jesus and Ayn Rand.” See what happens when you leave out the serial comma? But Andy Le Peau, at InterVarsity, points to a different kind of example. Suppose someone were to dedicate his book to “my mother, Ayn Rand, and God”? Now the serial comma creates the idea that Ayn Rand is in apposition to mother, which it presumably wasn’t.

*———. The Mystery of Israel’s Origins: An Introduction and Proposals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. *Stager, Lawrence E. “Forging and Identity: The Emergence of Ancient Israel,” in The Oxford History of the Biblical World, ed. Michael D. Coogan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Stark, Thomas. The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (and Why Inerrancy Tries to Hide It). Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010. *Thomas, Heath A., Jeremy Evans, and Paul Copan, eds. Holy War in the Bible: Christian Morality and an Old Testament Problem. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013. Williamson, H. G. M. 1 and 2 Chronicles. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982. Wright, N. T. How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2012. *———. Jesus and the Victory of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997. ———. Paul in Fresh Perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005. ———. Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why It Matters. San Francisco: HarperOne,

requirements. In Russia today, everything happened to maintain the nadzirateli, the overseers, to protect their power, to continue looting the country’s patrimony. Nate wanted to devastate the opposition, to avenge MARBLE, to take away their power. Nate was dark—black hair and straight eyebrows—of medium height, and slim from varsity swimming in college. What colleagues and friends noticed however, were darting brown eyes that read faces, weighed gestures, and narrowed with quick comprehension. On the street, those brown eyes scanned ahead, watched the wings, picked up the peripheral anomalies before there was movement. During surveillance exercises as a CIA

! I’m majorly frustrated! I don’t know if I should quit the team, confront my teammates, or just keep quiet so I don’t make things worse. I really don’t want to give up my dream of making varsity! What would you do?? —Cheerless Cheerleader * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Dear Cheerless Cheerleader, Hon . . . I think you’re kidding yourself if you think you made the cheerleading team based on your awesome moves. My reliable source on the team told me your tryout routine was HOR-REN-DOUS. She said she couldn’t tell if you were trying to dance or going into convulsions! Your backflips were BACKFLOPS, your cartwheels were FLAT TIRES, and your dismount was totally DISGUSTING! Get the picture? You were chosen for one reason, and one reason alone—you look like a sturdy ogre who can carry a lot of weight! It’s been a long tradition for cheerleading captains to hand-pick strong, ugly girls for the bottom of the pyramid. Didn’t you know that?? Quit taking everything so personally! Just accept that the bottom is where you belong, sweetie! You should hold your green, Shrek-looking head high that someone actually wants you for something. Bet that doesn’t happen often! Yay you! Sincerely, Miss Know-It-All P.S. My source wants you to stop dancing. She says you’re giving the squad NIGHT TERRORS! * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It was decaffeinated jazz he sent to WJZ via Western Union lines from the Hotel Pennsylvania. A distant echo of New Orleans, yet it spoke to listeners.” The ’20s style was lively, rich with saxophone and violin and well-sprinkled with novelty tunes. Lopez was instantly identified by his theme, Nola, given a dexterous workout on the Lopez keyboard. Whiteman had Gershwin: his Rhapsody in Blue concert at Aeolian Hall on Feb. 12, 1924, established his reputation. And though Whiteman was slow to find his way into radio, he was a major force in band music of the ’20s. George Olsen was a master of popular music: his 1925 recording Who was a bestseller, followed by such period hits as The Varsity Drag, Because My Baby Don’t Mean Maybe Now, and Doin’ the Raccoon, a testament to the national passion for fur coats.

Okay, so what do we got so far? In Boston we got trees, we got water, we got the Red Sox, we got the aquarium, and we got the…We got the…” Megan looked at Darnell Wilcox. He had ticked off his list on his fingers and was now staring down at his pinky as if it were going to give him the answer. In the other hand he clutched the neck of a half-empty bottle of Budweiser--from what Megan could tell, his fifth or sixth. Darnell was a handsome guy who, according to his varsity jacket, was captain of the football team. At the beginning of the night, he had shown himself to be a smart, friendly, funny guy. Now that he was officially drunk, he was still friendly and funny, but the smart thing was out the window.

WWSoccerGirl: I’m Selena, by the way :) I’m on the varsity soccer team. I’ve played since I could walk. I have three older brothers and an older sister. They all play too. I guess my whole family’s obsessed with futbol. Lol. And I suck at math :) and most school subjects. I’d rather be out on the soccer field! Wow. So Reyna, Harper, and Selena had replied. This was great.

Michael Jordan initially failed to make his varsity high school basketball team but became one of the greatest athletes to ever play the sport.

You got a name?” the ring announcer asked me. I’m sure I had thought of a million ideas, but I was drawing a blank. This was all happening fast, and I had nothing. I totally froze. A wrestler who went by the name Tack turned to Cody, “He’s like the F’n guy from the movie, Varsity Blues, Jonathan Moxley!” In the movie the guy’s name is Jonathan Moxon. So thankfully, he had actually messed it up. Cody gave the OK sign to the ring announcer. I was busy pissing my pants, so I didn’t offer anything. Just like that, I had a name, a name I like to think I’ve defined as my own. The fact that women wearing whipped-cream bikinis are often lurking around every corner ready to accost me is purely a coincidence.

MISTAKES AND CURVEBALLS YOU MUST LET YOUR KID EXPERIENCE19 • Not being invited to a birthday party • Experiencing the death of a pet • Breaking a valuable vase • Working hard on a paper and still getting a poor grade • Having a car break down away from home • Seeing the tree he planted die • Being told that a class or camp is full • Getting detention • Missing a show because she was helping Grandma • Having a fender bender • Being blamed for something he didn’t do • Having an event canceled because someone else misbehaved • Being fired from a job • Not making the varsity team • Coming in last at something • Being hit by another kid • Rejecting something he had been taught • Deeply regretting saying something she can’t take back • Not being invited when friends are going out • Being picked last for neighborhood kickball

junior varsity or cavemen. Weird-shaped heads. Tommy was watching TV these days, and seeing finally how this shit is everywhere you look. Dissing the country bumpkins, trying to bring us up to par, the long-termed war of trying to shame the land people into joining America. Meaning their version, city. TV being the slam book of all times, maybe everybody in the city was just going along with it, not really noticing the rudeness factors. Possibly to the extent of not getting why we are so fucking mad out here.

She said okay. Probably she thought I was growing up to be one more prick in her life, a junior-varsity Stoner. It’s not that I wanted to be mean. But any time I started feeling sorry for her, something in my brain said Don’t go there, it’s a trap.

Good Lord!" he said, almost aloud, "in one whole year what have I done? I haven't made one single friend, known what one real man was doing or thinking, done anything I wanted to do, talked out what I wanted to talk, read what I wanted to read, or had time to make the friends I wanted to make. I've been nothing but material— varsity material— society material; I've lost all the imagination I had, and know less than when I came; and I'm the popular man—' the big man'— in the class! Great! Is it my fault or the fault of things up here?

He claimed he was on the right track as far as the two kinds of economy people, land versus money. But not city people against us personally. It’s the ones in charge, like government or what have you. They were always on the side of the money-earning people, and down on the land people, due to various factors Tommy mentioned, monetize this, international banking that. The main one I could understand was that money-earning ones pay taxes. Whereas you can’t collect shit on what people grow and eat on the spot, or the work they swap with their neighbors. That’s like a percent of blood from a turnip. So, the ones in charge started cooking it into everybody’s brains to look down on the land people, saying we are an earlier stage of human, like junior varsity or cavemen. Weird-shaped heads. Tommy was watching TV these days, and seeing finally how this shit is everywhere you look. Dissing the country bumpkins, trying to bring us up to par, the long-termed war of trying to shame the land people into joining America. Meaning their version, city. TV being the slam book of all times, maybe everybody in the city was just going along with it, not really noticing the rudeness factors. Possibly to the extent of not getting why we are so fucking mad out here. It took a lot of emails of Tommy telling me how far back it went, this offensive to wedge people off their own holy ground and turn them into wage labor. Before the redneck miner wars, the coal land grabs, the timber land grabs. Whiskey Rebellion: an actual war. George Washington marched the US Army on our people for refusing to pay tax on corn liquor. Which they weren’t even selling for money, mainly just making for neighborly entertainment. How do you get tax money out of moonshine? Answer: You and what army. It goes a ways

Patryck Durham, hailing from Aurora, CO, is more than just an International Baccalaureate graduate; he's a dynamic individual. Achieving a 4.0 Honor Graduate Cord and excelling in activities like Varsity Lacrosse and DECA, Patryck is a team player with a good memory. His leadership in volunteer projects for Boy Scouts reflects his loyalty and sets the stage for success in the business world.

conversation that included the news that the Bruins had just lost the freshman coach. Wooden offered Cunningham the job before the end of the meal. A high school junior varsity coach in Ohio tried to land what had suddenly become an unusually attractive role, in the program coming off back-to-back national championships, on the team

center would dominate varsity opponents when the time came. Not stopping at pronouncing himself “amazed” by the physical presence and “extraordinary demeanor,” Wooden offered the highest praise possible, that Alcindor reminded him of his beloved father in poise and self-control. Comparing anyone in a positive way to the quiet

Wooden the preparation freak tracked drills timed almost to the second on the logged file cards. While the varsity worked behind a partition on one end of the gym, rarely seeing the seven-foot phenom or his teammates, the freshmen learned the crisp routine. Two minutes of layups, two minutes of reverse layups from both sides,

Anyway, I wanted to tell you this story, since it just rolled into my gourd while I was into that 1950 Lighthouse shot. I never told you about the Legend of the Gigantic Fart, did I?” “Put the beer in a paper bag. Let’s get it on the road.” “No, man, this story became a legend and is still told in the high schools around the county. You see, it was at the junior prom, a very big deal with hoop dresses and everybody drinking sloe gin and R.C. Cola outside in the cars. Now, this is strictly a class occasion if you live in a shitkicker town. Anyway, we’d been slopping down the beer all afternoon and eating pinto-bean salad and these greasy fried fish before we got to the dance. So it was the third number, and I took Betty Hoggenback out on the floor and was doing wonderful, tilting her back like Fred Astaire doing Ginger Rogers. Then I felt this wet fart start to grow inside me. It was like a brown rat trying to get outside. I tried to leak it off one shot at a time and keep dancing away from it, but I must have left a cloud behind that would take the varnish off the gym floor. Then one guy says, ‘Man, I don’t believe it!’ People were walking off the floor, holding their noses and saying, ‘Pew, who cut it?’ Then the saxophone player on the bandstand threw up into the piano. Later, guys were shaking my hand and buying me drinks, and a guy on the varsity came up and said that was the greatest fart he’d ever seen. It destroyed the whole prom. The saxophone player had urp all over his summer tux, and they must have had to burn the smell out of that piano with a blowtorch.” Buddy was laughing so hard at his own story that tears ran down his cheeks. He caught his breath, drank out of the beer glass, then started laughing again. The woman behind the bar was looking at him as though a lunatic had just walked into the normalcy of her life.

always loved school. I played varsity lacrosse and field hockey. I could be friends with the cool kids and the smart kids and the sporty kids and even the stoner kids although I didn’t like to get stoned. I could cross social lines seamlessly and be whoever people needed me to be. I’d like to say it was a gift born of my curiosity about people, but in truth it was more of a response to trauma. I wanted to be loved. I wanted to feel safe. So I needed every single person I met to like me, and if I could make them love and need me, even better.

I touch the fuzzy letter I. The pins he’s earned for varsity and captain. This is what we care about. How many pins we have. We want to be MVPs. The most valuable of all. What’s so wrong with that? It’s stupid, Beth would say. That’s what’s wrong with it.

A man can dream, can’t he? And hell, she’s been hosing half the varsity and at least a couple of the JV, I mean, she’s been riding the meatpole like she invented it.

At its worst, privilege is blindness: Amid the vast literature on race and privilege, one especially useful book from a Christian perspective for those from the dominant culture is Paula Harris and Doug Schaupp, Being White: Finding Our Place in a Multiethnic World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004).

I’ve often felt like the illegitimate pastor who was good enough to be a starter on the junior varsity team, but never good enough to do anything but sit at the end of the bench in my warm-ups on the varsity squad.

Among book publishers, the largest number of evangelical feminist books are being published by InterVarsity Press4 and Baker Books. Among popular journals, both Charisma magazine under the editorship of J. Lee Grady and Christianity Today under the leadership of David Neff clearly favor an evangelical feminist position (though Christianity Today has made some attempts to represent both sides fairly). Among parachurch ministries, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is strongly committed to an evangelical feminist position, as is Youth With A Mission.

If I were to ask you about let’s say coaching a high school football team for your local high school and told you the only time you were needed to be there as coach, was on game day. That is right no practice during the week, just take the team and win is all we ask. How do I prepare them if I cannot practice you ask? Well sir they have been trained and practiced in their freshman, sophomore and junior years. You will be the varsity coach and the team knows the game and how it’s played, all you need to do is set up the game plan on game day and organize your team so they win! Ludicrous! How can I be expected to develop the cohesion necessary to put a winning team on the field, without practice, despite their prior training and the three-plus years’ experience? Yes it is ludicrous. Yet this is exactly what we expect of law enforcement, security personnel and other first responders tasked with responding to and winning in crisis situations.

They were kids. But the ones who could play would often mix with an older crowd. There was no distinction between varsity and junior varsity—strict divisions that applied elsewhere often didn’t in the world of local bands.

Joe Gordon, the team’s longtime public relations director, said he would be right over. The Rooneys had hired Gordon in 1969, the same year they had hired Chuck Noll, in an effort to upgrade the previously dismal franchise. Gordon was a Pittsburgh native who had played varsity baseball at Pitt and whose hard-knuckle attitude fit perfectly with the brawling team. In the days preceding the 1976 AFC Championship Game against the hated Raiders, Gordon decked an Oakland TV reporter. Asked the next day if his team was ready, Noll said, “I don’t know, but Joe Gordon is.

What we have here is a bunch of junior-varsity players trying to get on the varsity team.

in Edward Glaeser, The Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier (New York: Penguin, 2011).   2. The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (ed. Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman III [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1998], 150) speaks of the city as “humanity en masse” and therefore “humanity ‘writ large.’”   3. The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (p. 150) defines city as a “fortified habitation.”   4. See Frank Frick, The City

Ebright yawned that his varsity was nothing to write home about—“a good average outfit,

The three-mile course record was then 16:33.4, set by the Washington varsity that Joe had watched from the ferry in 1934. Now Joe and his crewmates came in at 16:20, and they did it sitting upright at the end of the race, breathing easy, feeling good.

Those Panthers ... those itsy, bitsy football players ... those hearty, gutsy guys from the oilfields ... what about 'em? Yep, its incredible, amazin' and unbelievable, but the li'lfellers do occasionally catch the best end of the stick. All the reasons for the phenomenal support of Permian had been embodied by this 1980 varsity team. They were a classic bunch of overachievers who had become living proof of all the perceived values of white working-class and middle-class America-desire, self-sacrifice, pushing oneself beyond the expected limit. They were the kinds of values that the Permian fans harbored about themselves. What made those boys great on the football field had made the fans great as well. Just as the boys had produced against all odds, so they had produced in the oil field against all odds, not with brains and fancy talk but with brawn and muscle and endurance and self-sacrifice.

Ghar wapsi, conversion tools of politicians for political purposes’ Lalmani Verma | 318 words Eminent educationists on Saturday concluded that issues like “ghar wapsi” and “religious conversion or reconversion” are “tools beings used by politicians to gain political mileage”. At a seminar organised by Centre for Advanced Studies of Allahabad University, Department of Philosophy, professors from several state varsities unanimously spoke against such programmes, saying that religious conversion was a rare practice that could not be performed by inducing fear or allurement. Among the attendees were Professors Lalji Bajwa, Shabnam Hameed, Aziz-ur-rehman Siddiqui, M Massey, S P Pandey and Kripa Shankar. Prof Massey is the principal of Christian College in Allahabad while Prof Pandey and Prof Kripa Shankar are with Banaras Hindu University.

He’d played sports in high school, and then proved that a young man with the build of St. Francis of Assisi could play wide receiver for the Harvard varsity football team.

Honestly? I think when you find someone you really want to be with, you don’t need to have ‘the talk.’ If you find the right woman, it would kill you to hook up with anyone else.” She shrugs. “Maybe I want someone who is certain about me and doesn’t need to wait for that kind of conversation to commit to me. Because in his heart, he knows what he wants and goes for it.” God, she’s beautiful. I love this woman’s spirit. Suddenly, he spies me in the background. “What the fuck? Are you dating Kingston now?” He glances at me. “No offense, man. Great game yesterday, by the way. Killer second half.” Christ. This guy. Gabby shakes her head. “Who I’m dating is really none of your business, but he and I are neighbors.” He must see something in my eyes because his narrow. “How can you be with him and not me? He probably fucked a different girl every night last week.” Excuse me, dickhead. I fucked my hand every night last week, thank you very much.

He’s wearing an old, dark gray t-shirt that stretches across his broad chest and strains at his biceps, tapering at his slender waist. His faded jeans mold to his muscular thighs. He’s sex on a stick. And I’m ready for a serving. Am I hungry? I cock an eyebrow at him. “Depends. What’s on the menu?” His gray eyes smolder as he stares at me. He takes my hand, pulls me against him, bites my ear gently and whispers, “Then let’s get an appetizer,” before he leads me back to the living room where music washes over us as we melt into the crowd. At first I’m confused. Did I not just blatantly hit on the man? Admittedly, I’ve never done that before, but I thought my message was pretty straightforward. But then he stops in the middle of the room and wraps me in his arms. Oh. He wants to dance. Speaking of missing clues… Like I’m a middle schooler at her first dance, my heart melts. Rider wants to dance. With me. Don’t catch all the feelings, Gabriela. Just enjoy tonight. My pulse ratchets up as I hold up a finger, chug the rest of my beer, and toss the empty cup into the large bin in the corner. I step up to him. His hands grip my waist. I stare at the wall of man in front of me. He laughs, his voice deep and sultry. “Are you going to touch me or are you waiting for an invitation?” For some reason, that makes me respond like a smartass. “Do I need an invitation?” He shakes his head. “Not at all. You can touch me anytime you want.

I find myself by the tunnel as the guys head for the locker room. I’ve just tucked away my cameras so I can grab some water when Jake and I make eye contact as he trots by. I’m so caught up in the excitement of the game, I run up to him and leap up into his arms to kiss him. “Great game! You’re killing it.” “Thanks, cupcake.” He laughs, kisses me again, before he pats my ass and rejoins the team. I touch my lips, which pull up in a huge smile. Life has never felt so good. Coming to Lone Star was the best decision I ever made. I’m busy thanking my lucky stars for Jake and our new school and all of the blessings we’ve had when I pause. Did someone just call my name? There it is again. It came from the stands. I grab my camera bag and look up, still smiling. Splash. That’s when I’m doused with a huge container of soda. I flinch as the cold liquid and ice hits my face and shoulders, but the debris keeps coming. More soda and some food. A hot dog with mustard and relish smacks my shirt and slowly slides to the ground. I gasp, afraid more crap will rain down on me. Someone must have tripped and accidentally dumped their food over the railing. When I look up, though, there are two girls in the stands, glaring down at me. I have a hard time making out their faces because they’re covered in face paint, but one yells, “Hey, skank! How does it feel to get Dakota’s sloppy seconds?” Horrified, I’m frozen stiff. I don’t see the soda can until it’s too late. 36 JAKE When we make it back onto the field, there’s a weird energy on the sidelines.

She motions down the hall. “I saw the positive pregnancy tests in the trash.” It takes me a second to figure out what she’s talking about. The pregnancy tests! “It’s not like that,” I say immediately. She smirks. “Are there or are there not pregnancy tests in the bathroom?” “Yes, but—” “Aren’t there two that are positive?” “Yes, but that’s not exactly…” I turn to Jake, about to explain what happened with Roxy this afternoon, but he’s ghostly white. I’ve never seen him so pale. He staggers to the couch, sits at the edge, and drops his head into his hands. “Charlotte, Charlotte,” Kota coos. “Is this not the reaction you were looking for? You know, when I told Jake I was pregnant in high school, he was so sweet. He wrapped his arms around me and told me he’d be there every step of the way. Cradled my face and kissed me. Said that if I wanted the baby, he’d be there for me. Guess he’s not so excited to have knocked you up.

Some of my teammates and their girlfriends were hoping to take a group photo. Would you mind shooting that?” “Not at all.” I slide my arms through his jacket as Jake steps away to talk to one of the guys. A minute later, several huge football players hoist their girlfriends onto their shoulders. “Aww, this is so cute.” I direct them to move closer, and then I have to step back and squat to get everyone in one shot. After I take a few, Jake tells the guys to hold up and then turns to me. “Can you ask Roxy to take a pic? Basically the same shot you just took, just with one more couple?” I tilt my head, confused, but he’s already called her over. He makes me hand over the camera to Roxy before he drags me over to the group. “Hang tight.” That’s the only warning he gives me before he lifts me onto his shoulder. Like, I’m literally sitting on his left shoulder. “Jake!” I laugh as I wobble, but then he reaches up a hand, and I cling to him for dear life. He yells, “’Kay, Roxy. Go for it.” He looks up at me and grins. “Smile for the camera, cupcake.” She takes several shots. I’m smiling so hard, my cheeks hurt, and I forget to worry about whether or not I’m blinking. When we’re done and he slides me down to the ground, I’m out of breath. I almost feel like Jake is claiming me somehow, but that’s crazy, right? He wanted to be in the photo, and I’m his good friend, so he had me join him. Roxy returns the camera and leans into me to whisper, “What was that about? Are you two doing the deed?” “No. We’re just friends.” God, I feel like a broken record. Her eyebrow lifts. “Because the looks he’s giving you tonight…” Jake’s giving me looks? I turn to find him talking to Cam, but his eyes are glued on me. Every molecule in my body heats. “Holy hot sexual tension, Batman.” Roxy bumps me with her hip. “I want all the deets tomorrow!” “There won’t be any deets.” Will there be deets?

And this thing between us… Is this more than just one night?” I try to keep my voice steady because I’m terrified of what he might say, but I’ve been around football players long enough to know not to assume anything. His head jerks back. “Of course it’s more than one night. In fact, the next time Billy hits on you in that playful way he thinks is so funny, tell him to fuck off. Tell him you’re mine.” You’re mine. A huge smile lifts my lips. “Yours, huh?” “You’re wearing my jacket. That’s my name on your back. Pretty sure everyone should know what that means.” I’m speechless. Jake’s never been a possessive guy, but the way he growls out these words makes me shiver. “I like being yours.” “Best thing I’ve heard all night, Charlie,” he whispers before he grazes his lips against mine.

My mom must be loving this stupid show. If I had to guess, she thinks I deserve whatever public humiliation Dakota levels at me. Because without me, one of them had to step up and actually take care of Asher. Which, according to Jake, they blew off once he broke up with my sister. What’s that saying? Birds of a feather? My mom and Kota are both spoiled brats. It’s probably no surprise they’re super tight. They were always whispering, always keeping things from me. Always hoarding secrets I wasn’t privy to. Always making me feel like a third wheel in my own freaking family.

He watches me undress with hooded eyes. “Don’t distract me with those looks, mister.” “I can’t help that you’re hot as fuck.” He reaches down again and does something that makes him groan. “Even with this bump?” I turn sideways and show off my slight belly. “Definitely. Come here.” He reaches for me and leans up to kiss my stomach as I tangle my fingers through his hair. “Baby Bean, you need to sleep for the next two hours. And don’t listen to a thing I say to your mama. That’s not for your innocent little ears.” Oh my God, he’s adorable.

Magnolia. Her hair is down, and she’s wearing a little sundress. She’s so beautiful, she takes my breath away. But her cheeks look hollow, like she’s lost weight recently. Is she having money trouble again? Is she not getting the groceries she needs? Why the hell haven’t I grilled Sienna more? She’s been strangely silent on the topic of her bestie. She and Sienna hug, but the two of them look somber for some reason. Next week, Ben and Sienna will be moving to Houston. The girls are probably sad to be separated. I feel like a thirsty man dying in the desert, steps away from a drink of water. But Ben and Sienna’s party doesn’t seem like the appropriate place to break the ice with Maggie. For all I know, she’ll toss her drink in my face. After a bit, I see her head toward the bathrooms. This is my chance. I follow her and wait in the hall. She’s in there for a while. Then I hear it. The puking. Is that Maggie? I pace outside the bathrooms, wondering if I should go in there, when I spot Ben’s aunt Teresa. “Tía,” I say, because we all call her Tía. “Can you check on Maggie for me? She’s in there, and it sounds like she’s getting sick.” Teresa and Maggie have spent a lot of time together at Ben’s taking care of his daughter, so she isn’t a stranger. After a moment, Teresa sticks her head back out. “Come help me.” I follow her in and find Maggie sprawled on the floor next to the toilet, dry-heaving. “Jesus, Maggie. What’s wrong?” I scoop her hair back and get a good look at her face. She’s pale. Really pale. And covered in sweat. This close, I can see dark circles under her eyes. “I’m fine,” she says, but when she wipes her mouth, her hands tremble hard. She starts retching again. “Did you get food poisoning or something?” Her eyes fill with tears. “I don’t know. I’ve had this bug I can’t seem to kick.” Teresa scoots in behind me and hands me a wad of damp paper towels. “Wipe her face.

When someone walks by with a plate of fried fish, I gag. “Gross.” I cover my mouth and nose for a minute. “Kinda felt nauseated there for a sec,” I explain to Roxy when she asks what’s wrong. She folds her lips, like she has to physically restrain herself from speaking. “What?” I don’t want her to hold back with me. “Could you be pregnant?” she whispers. I laugh because no. Except… Everything around me slows down and goes a little sideways as a dizzy spell hits me. I suppose that’s what I get for checking out of the hospital against doctor’s orders. I can’t be pregnant. I don’t think. “Oh my God. What if I am?” “When did you get your last period?” she asks as I break out the calendar app on my phone.

When we’re done, he motions toward my plate. “Are you doing better with your hypoglycemia?” I pause. We’ve never discussed the details of what happened last May, but he must have overheard me talking to the paramedics that day. “Is that why you always try to feed me? First the pizza and now waffles.” He gives me a sheepish smile. “I don’t know. Maybe. Is that wrong?” “No, it’s sweet. But I’m doing better. I haven’t had any episodes since the night we found Poppy. That was the last time I felt dizzy. I went too long without eating. It was an accident, really.” “What happened?” “A bad date.” “That dick Jason didn’t feed you?” I laugh at Rider’s intensity. “Jason’s idea of dinner was nachos from that gas station, which I passed on. That’s how I ended up light-headed later. But unless you’re planning on taking me on a bad date, we should be good.” Rider gives me a wolfish grin. “I plan on doing a lot of things with you. Bad dates aren’t one of them.

Kota, I can’t see—” “Hold on.” She mutes herself. I can see her profile. She’s saying something, but I can’t hear the words. That’s when it happens. The bathroom door behind her swings open, and Jake steps out through a billowing cloud of steam. Freshly washed and completely naked. I blink, a strangled whimper lodging in my throat. Holy crap. He’s perfect. I knew he was beautiful, but my fantasies fall short of the reality. His wet hair falls in his face as he towels off. First his damp locks. Then his wide, muscular chest. Down his washboard abs. And finally his groin where an enormous erection bounces against his stomach. I’m frozen until the sound mysteriously pops back on again, and his deep voice fills my room. “Let’s make this quick, Dakota. I gotta jet.” They’re definitely going to fuck. “Oh God.” I slam my laptop shut. My hands are shaking as I fling it away from me. Nausea sweeps over me so hard, I barely make it to the trash can before I lose my breakfast. Five minutes later, my phone buzzes from my nightstand, but I ignore it. The calls and texts keep coming. I don’t bother to check them because nothing my sister or Jake say will change my pathetic situation. Later that afternoon, Jake knocks on my door, calls my name, apologizes for not knowing I was on a video conference with my sister. My suitemate thinks I’m home, but since I don’t answer, they decide I must be out. I don’t budge from where I sit on the floor with a box of tissues. The sun sets and rises again. My suitemate comes and goes as the dorm comes alive, and by the time I finally dust myself off and stand, I’ve made my decision. I’m going to transfer schools. As quickly as possible.

It should be on leading my new team to a victory. Instead, I see my ex, Dakota, bare ass up, face down on our bed as my best friend Troy railed her from behind. While our baby sat in a dirty diaper and cried in the other room. Mentirosos. Liars. Both of them. I’ll admit I wasn’t excited to have a kid. Not at first. But despite my party reputation in high school, I would never let my responsibilities slide. Unlike my father, who eventually left us, I promised myself I’d be there for Dakota. She and I were a hookup after I’d seen my parents get into another screaming match on my mom’s front porch, one that almost made me come to blows with my father. I was pissed off at the world, drank too much, and banged the bombshell blonde at the party who straddled my lap and told me it was my lucky night. There was nothing lucky about that night. I rub the ache in my chest. No, it feels wrong to think that. I got Asher, and he’ll always be the highlight of my life even though his mother has made my life hell. I changed everything for her.

We step out of my bedroom just as Jake comes home. Duke hops up and down excitedly, and Jake reaches down to pet him. When he stands upright, I give him a wide smile, but he freezes when he sees me. Then his jaw goes tight. Self-consciously, I pat down the dress. “What? You don’t like my outfit?” His eyes travel down my body and back up again before he turns away. “You look great. Have fun on your date. Is Asher asleep?

Charlotte tugs on my jersey. “Do you mind if I take some pics tonight?” she yells over the stereo system, which is blasting our classic rock warmup playlist. “’Course not. Do your thing.” She gives me one of those lingering smiles that makes me wonder if my mom is right. If Charlotte has had feelings for me since high school. I watch her walk away. She’s wearing some cutoffs that make her ass look amazing and her slender legs long. “Just friends, huh?” Billy elbows me hard. “Best rethink that.” “Why are you always pestering me?” He holds a hand over his heart. “You wound me, bro. I’m trying to be a good person. Which means I’m not making a move on your girl like I want to.” I don’t even bother arguing that she’s not my girl. Because Charlotte feels like she’s mine. Fuck it. I’m done debating this. I’m going after what I really want.

It takes all of my strength to stay standing. I’ve won a lot of football games. Thrown the winning touchdown in my high school state championship. Just won a national college championship. But I’m not sure anything has felt as good as when Roxy, who’s still impaled on me, opens her sleepy eyes, takes my face in her small hands, and kisses me long and slow under the hot water. It’s in this moment I realize how much I’ve been lying to myself. About everything. Because this thing with Roxy? It’s anything but fake. Now I just need to prove to her I’m the kind of man she can count on.

As I walk Sienna to her car, she squeals. “Holy crap, is that Rider Kingston?” Without my permission, my gaze slides across the street to the oversized man-child, who has the gall to be moving furniture shirtless while flexing his stupid abs. Judging by the other sweaty minions pouring out of the two-story, Rider’s getting new roommates too. My eye twitches again, and my focus snaps back to Sienna. “I thought you said you weren’t a fan of football.” “Oh, I’m not. I can’t sit through an entire game. But I am a fan of football players.” Her gaze turns ravenous as she scans my neighbor’s front lawn. Or, likely, the glistening eight-pack Rider’s put on display. “All that testosterone. Those bulging muscles. That deep, masculine grunting. Oh, yeah. Get me one of those!” She cackles, and Rider hears it. Of course he does. Shockingly, he deigns to speak to me. “Hey, Gabby,” he shouts. “How was your summer?” I’m not sure when he decided to stop ignoring me, but that’s better than pretending we’re friends, which we’ll never be. I close my eyes because I don’t need any reminders of his masculine beauty. And I definitely don’t need to see that sexy smirk, the one more powerful than his cannon that took the team to the playoffs last year. No, I’m not interested in the star quarterback. Not anymore.

Her eyes meet mine. “What exactly do you want, Rider?” My throat feels tight. I take a breath. For some crazy reason, I feel like I’m trying to throw for a touchdown. “Just… I need us to be friends again. I miss you, Gabby, and I regret how I treated you. And with everything with Poppy, I’m being reminded of how amazing you are.” I shrug. “I miss our friendship. Don’t you?” My heart feels like it’s gonna beat out of my chest with that confession. “And that’s all you want?” she asks warily. “Friendship?” Yes. No. Fuck, I don’t know. “That’s all I have time for right now.” Do I miss our friendship? Absolutely. Do I want to fuck her until I can’t walk anymore? Definitely. Can I handle anything beyond sex right now while I juggle all the other shit in my life? Probably not. So yeah, I guess I’d better keep my damn hands to myself. “And you’re not going to ghost me again?” she asks. The vulnerability in her voice kills me, and I reach for her hand again. “Because it sucked to open up to you about being in foster care only for you to disappear on me.” I close my eyes. Christ. No wonder she thinks I’m a douchebag. “I promise I won’t disappear again. You’re officially stuck with me now.

I’m already feeling vulnerable around him. Especially after our talk last night. Seeing him like this, first thing in the morning with that sleepy look in his eyes, makes me want to crawl into his lap and do naughty things. Poppy giggles and claps. I’m holding his baby. Right. “Wanna see your daddy? Hmm?” I kiss her on the forehead and lean over Rider, who sits up to take his daughter. “Hey, cutie pie.” He peppers her with kisses and she laughs. “I have to tell you guys that having a kid is so fu—freaking surreal.” As he snuggles her to his chest, his face turns up to me. “How’d she sleep?” “Great. She only woke up twice. I gave her a bottle and patted her butt, and she knocked out again.” “Sorry. You could’ve woken me to do that.

From the passenger seat of Michael’s car, I eye the pharmacy like it’s a viper waiting to strike. “Look, I know you’re a ‘rip the Band-Aid off’ kind of person, so let’s go in there and get a pregnancy test,” Michael says. “At least we’ll know what we’re dealing with.” I turn to him, surprised. “How do you know this about me and Band-Aids?” “Because once, a long time ago, you and I used to be friends. You always told your mom you wanted the bad news first.” “And you remember this?” His eyes travel over my face, and I hate that it’s probably red and swollen from puking, but he gives me a tender smile. “I remember a lot of things about you.

I pull out the pregnancy test. Michael moves over to sit next to me and wraps his arm around my shoulder. My head fits perfectly under his chin. It’s such a random thing to notice, but I’m trying not to freak out, and there’s something so steadying about this man. Closing my eyes, I rest my forehead against his chest. His low voice rumbles in my ear. “Whatever it says, you’re going to be okay. Like I said, I’m here for you no matter what. Together, we can handle this.” I hand him the test. “You look.” He’s quiet for a long moment, but then he lifts my chin and gives me the sweetest smile before he kisses my forehead. “How do you feel about being my baby mama?” A

It’s after midnight before I manage to kick out Dakota and get Asher to bed. I immediately reach for the phone and try calling Charlotte, but it goes directly to voicemail. I’m sick about what happened tonight. I can only pray that Charlotte hears me out. “Babe, it’s me. I’m so sorry for how shit went down. I had no idea Dakota was stopping by. I didn’t even realize she was in Texas. And I know I didn’t handle your… your news… very well, and I apologize. I was caught off guard. We’ll make this work. Whatever it takes.” I wonder if she’ll even listen to my message. “I love you. Please call me back.” I obviously