Hunted (9 page)

I
bristled. "Cindi is a nice person."

Jackson
held his hands up as though surrendering. "I'm sorry, I didn't
mean to insult your sister. You're right, she's very nice. I was just
trying to point out how unusual it is for anyone to forgo something
they want because of how it might impact someone else."

I
let my eyebrow rise. "That's a pretty cynical view of humanity.
Is that the way you operate too? Do you just ride roughshod over
anyone between you and what you want?"

"I
said that most people do that, not all. You're obviously an exception
to that rule, and I can say definitively that I'm not like anyone
else you know." Jackson waved his arm out towards the field.
"What do you think is going to happen with the game?"

"I
don't know. Miss Winters seemed a little worried. I mean, it's a big
deal to lose your starting quarterback, right?"

"It
can be, but a lot of people are in for a big surprise tonight.
Tristan is really good. I've seen him practice a couple of times and
he's fast and accurate. If he wasn't a sophomore and he was twenty or
thirty pounds heavier then he'd probably be the starting quarterback
instead of Victor."

"That's
good then, I guess?"

My
response earned me another smile. I would have called it mocking, but
there didn't seem to actually be any spite to it.

"You
don't actually know anything about football, do you?"

"Not
really."

Jackson
shrugged. "I suppose that most of the other cheerleaders
probably didn't start out knowing much about football either. You
should learn though, it's actually a pretty cool sport."

There
was an element of longing there that I hadn't been expecting. That
didn't make any sense though. Jackson was plenty built, if he loved
football as much as I thought he did, he should be playing football
instead of watching from the sidelines like this.

"Why
don't you play?"

Jackson
started like I'd caught him off guard, like he hadn't been expecting
me to be quite so observant.

"I
wish I could, but my…mother doesn't approve. She thinks it
would take away from my studies and distract me from other things
that she thinks are more important than football."

"That
doesn't make any sense. I mean she let you join the cheer squad,
right? Helping us out is at least as big of a time commitment as
being on the football team."

"Yeah
you've got a pretty good point there. Partly it is because we move
around so much. I couldn't have played here because I missed the
tryouts. Mostly though, she just hates football. Even me being able
to join the spirit squad wouldn't have happened normally. Things just
kind of lined up perfectly last week for me to be able to try out and
for her to say yes when Miss Winters picked me."

There
was something there that I wasn't sure how to classify. It wasn't
quite vulnerability, but it was a close cousin. I opened my mouth to
say something harmless, but the words that came out weren't what I'd
been planning on.

"Well,
I'm glad that things worked out. I have a suspicion that you'll
probably have to save me from making an idiot out of myself at least
once or twice a game."

"Somehow
I don't think you're going to struggle anywhere nearly as bad as
that, but I'll gladly help out as often as you need me to. Let me
know if you change your mind about practicing some stunts."

He
leaned in closer so that I could hear him despite the fact that his
voice had gone soft.

"It
could just be our secret."

Jackson
winked at me and then stood and walked away as he rolled up his mat.
I felt like my head was spinning. I'd been worried that I was being
too forward when I'd told him that I was glad he'd made the team.

In
no world I'd even read about did a guy dripping as much hotness as
Jackson ever want to get to know a chubby basket case like me. I was
pretty sure I'd fallen asleep while stretching. I had to be dreaming,
there was no other way to explain it.

The
rest of the game flew by in a blur. I managed to hit all of my marks
and I didn't drop either of the girls I was supposed to spot for the
stunting routines. All in all, if that had been the final result of
the evening, I would have felt pretty good about my debut appearance
on the squad.

After
my mind-blowing conversation with Jackson I figured that the night
was probably out of any other big surprises. It turned out I was
wrong, it just took a little while for the rest of the surprises to
shake out.

Things
calmed down on the cheer front, mostly because Miss Winters was so
enthralled in the game that she stopped feeding us cheers as quickly
as what she'd done for the first part of the game. Apparently she was
a hardcore fan and the game was even more exciting than I'd expected
after Jackson's tip about Tristan.

If
anything Jackson had undersold just how good Tristan was, which was
lucky because we lost one of the offensive linemen on our first
possession. Even with the tiny amount that I knew about football, I
still could see the difference in the game after that happened.

From
what I overheard from the other girls, the first half of the game had
been all about offense with neither team's defense being able to slow
down the other side's offense very well. Victor apparently had
enjoyed tons of time in the pocket before being forced to make a
throw. Tristan was under almost constant pressure, but it hardly
seemed to faze him.

I
watched in awe as the football exploded out of his hand and arrowed
towards his receivers. Each and every snap was a race between whether
or not Tristan could get the ball out of his hands before the other
team tore through his crumbling offensive line and sacked him, and
Tristan was winning nearly every snap.

Tristan
and the rest of the offense worked their way down the field in a
series of short hops and then scored and it was the defense's turn.
Miss Winters came back to herself enough to signal for a couple of
cheers, so I missed most everything until we had possession of the
ball again, but our defense managed to stop the other team and then
it was time for Tristan to come back out.

We
didn't manage to stop them from scoring after that, but their defense
was even less effective against Tristan and our guys, so we ended the
game up by three touchdowns, which caused the crowd to go absolutely
crazy.

I
half expected everyone to pull down the goal posts or something, but
they just ran out to centerfield and jumped around and screamed for
half an hour. The players were just as crazy. Most of the
cheerleaders were dating someone from the football team and within
thirty seconds of the game ending most of the squad was riding around
on their boyfriends' shoulders.

At
first I tried to fight my way through the crowd, but it only took a
couple of seconds to realize that I was wasting my time so I gave up
and just let the press of people carry me further onto the field.

I'd
never experienced anything similar before that. Grown men were acting
like high-school kids. It felt like one of those intense TV moments.
When I was little I'd been unhappy because it never seemed like real
life was as good as TV. As I'd gotten older it had sunk in more fully
that TV was pretend, that it wasn't fair to expect reality to compete
with fantasy. This left me wondering though. This was reality, but it
had an almost unbelievable excitement to it, the kind of energy that
before I'd always thought could only be found in Hollywood
productions.

I
wanted to just throw myself into the moment along with everyone else,
but for all that I was there in the middle of all of those people, I
still didn't feel like I was a part of whatever was going on. I was
experiencing the same events, but I wasn't experiencing it the same
way that all of them were, I wasn't feeling the same things as them.

It
was a depressing realization. I'd always known that I was a bit of an
outsider, but usually it didn't bother me so much. Usually I didn't
feel like I was missing out on anything important, but there was
something there on that field that made me wonder if I'd been wrong
all of these years, if there was something important missing from my
life.

The
football team started jumping up and down and the next thing I knew I
was in the middle of a giant mosh pit. I expected for the adults to
calm things down, to back up and create enough space for those of us
who didn't want to be trampled to get out, but incredibly they just
started jumping and shoving their way in tighter and tighter.

I
tried to move with the crowd, jumping at the same time as everyone
else, but I was just too small and it was only a matter of time
before someone knocked me over. I actually made it longer than I
expected to, but then I went to jump as someone stepped on my foot
and someone else bumped into me from the side and the next thing I
knew I was headed towards the ground.

I
was going to get hurt. There wasn't any two ways about it, the mob
was packed too tightly and everyone was twice my size. I closed my
eyes, not because it was the smart thing to do, but because I
couldn't bear to see what was about to happen.

Instead
of hitting the ground and being trampled, I found my descent arrested
as someone grabbed me from behind and then set me back on my feet.

"We
need to get you out of here before something unfortunate happens."

Jackson's
voice cut through all of the noise like it didn't even exist. I
started to shake my head, started to tell him that there wasn't any
way out, but he'd already pulled me tight against his chest and
stomach with his left hand and was pushing people out of the way with
his right hand.

I
slid back around behind him, holding onto his waist for balance as he
used both hands to open a way up out of the crowd for us. I knew
Jackson was strong, but he was straight-arming guys out of our way
who were even bigger than he was. The trip out to the edges of the
crowd seemed to take forever, but sooner than I wanted to, I found
myself in the clear and having to let go of his waist.

I
looked up at Jackson and my face heated up again. "Thanks for
getting me out of there. I guess I was more right than I realized
when I said that you were going to have to save me a couple of times
tonight."

"I'm
just glad that I was close enough to lend a hand."

"Me
too. I'm sorry I pulled you away from the celebration though."

Jackson
shook his head. "I wasn't in there to celebrate."

It
was an odd comment, one that begged the question of why he'd been out
there in the middle of the mosh pit, but I couldn't bring myself to
ask it. Out there in the center of all those people I'd felt like I
was alone, but I hadn't been alone, not really. I could tell from the
way that Jackson looked back at the crowd that he hadn't been any
more at home there than I had been. Jackson was more of a kindred
spirit than I'd realized.

Before
I could open my mouth and say something stupid someone wrapped their
arms around me from the side.

"Adri!
I'm so glad you're okay. I saw you get caught up in the crowd and
worried that you'd get crushed."

"I'm
okay, Dad. It was a close thing but Jackson stopped me from falling
and then got me out of the mosh pit."

My
dad looked over at Jackson and then nodded. "Thank you, Jackson.
I've never seen this kind of response at a high-school football
game."

"You're
welcome, Mr. Paige. I'm just glad that I was close enough to help."

There
was a couple of seconds of that awkward silence that always seems to
take place whenever two people from different aspects of your world
meet and then Jackson shrugged.

"If
you guys are all okay then I'd probably better be headed home. My mom
will be wondering what the holdup is."

I
turned and watched Jackson walk away from us for a second and then
remembered that Cindi had been out on the field too when the
spectators had all rushed centerfield.

"Dad,
what about Cindi?"

"I'm
fine."

I
turned and realized that Cindi had walked up to us while I'd been
watching Jackson. She was all flushed and sweaty, but otherwise
looked no worse for wear. Cindi was even shorter and lighter than me,
so I was having a hard time believing that she'd escaped the mosh pit
without injury. My disbelief lasted only as long as it took me to
notice the football player standing just inches behind her.

"Dad,
Adri, this is Tristan. Tristan, this is my dad and my sister Adri.
Tristan kept everyone from crushing me when things got crazy out
there."

I'd
been terrified the entire time I'd been stuck in the crowd. I hadn't
really stopped shaking until Jackson had dragged me out to safety.
Cindi and Tristan on the other hand looked like they'd been having
the time of their lives.

I
looked back at my father and realized that he felt the same way that
Jackson and I felt. He was as much of an outsider as I was. He'd only
come here because of Cindi and me, which made me love him all the
more.

"It
sounds like I owe you my thanks, Tristan. I was almost sure that my
little girls weren't going to make it out of that mess."

"Yeah,
I guess we all got a little carried away. Just as everyone started
jumping around I looked down and realized that Cindi was going to get
crushed, so I got a couple of the other guys on the team to help me
get her out."

My
dad nodded. "Well, I'm indeed grateful. It looks like your
adoring public is waiting for you though. I wouldn't want us to keep
you from them."

I
followed Dad's gaze and realized he was right. Most of the spectators
were still screaming in the center of the field, but there was a
group of about ten people of various ages who were standing just out
of earshot looking like they really wanted to talk to Tristan. I was
actually surprised that they hadn't already mobbed him, but
something—maybe my dad's manner—was keeping them at a
distance.