Page 6 of The Backup Plan

Jordan’s golden hair was a crown, where Cam’s dark curls were an adolescent mop poking out from under a backward ball cap. Jordan’s deep blue eyes set hearts fluttering, especially in his navy jersey, where Cam’s dark brown ones hid behind the glare from his glasses. They’d make him take those off for pictures, or someone would push him—again—to get contact lenses. Or laser correction. He’d be half blind, and God knew where the passes would land.

Nice ball, Cam.

Three pairs of unbreakable sports glasses sat in his sideline bag next to his epi-pen at every game. He would see the way he wanted to see, and would put his foot down on that one thing, at least. Or else… what, exactly?

He picked over his options.

The depth chart was not his call. He couldn’t say sorry coach, not feeling it and promote Archie Hawke, the freshman he always assumed would leapfrog him after Jordan graduated. If he didn’t do the job Coach Keyes gave him, there was no scholarship, and without the scholarship, there was no college.

If he stayed at UND, he would play the game he’d loved all his life at a level he always knew he could master, and he would only get better. He’d be the face of a program that had sold out a seventy-thousand person stadium for every home game in the past fifty years and had a loyal fan base around the globe. He’d be primed for a professional football career in two or three years’ time.

The pressure unnerved him—press conferences, social media, angry fans if they lost—but the reason why he had to do any of it hung over him like a shadow.

As the truth sank in, Cam crunched the numbers and looked for the bright side. Even as a freshman, he had banked Name, Image, and Likeness money from the boosters on top of the free college education. The amount would only go up with his promotion, and he would need it for what came next.

It could be worse.

He thought of Jordan and wondered how much worse.

TWO

Fresh Air

AVERY

By the day she left home for college, Avery Whitman thought that if one more person asked her why she was going to one of the most academically rigorous universities in the country to be “just” an art major, she’d sacrifice a very expensive colored pencil to stab them with. The school had an excellent fine arts department and she had a generous scholarship, but oh no, she was “just” an art major among the real students—the STEM kids, the ones who were going to run the world while Avery colored pretty pictures.

She didn’t care where she went to school. She was going because Justin was already there, and he was the only brother she had left.

He had been on campus all summer with the football team, but flew back to Connecticut to join his sister on the drive to Indiana. The third point in their triangle, their older brother, died almost three years before, and as Avery shredded a scrap of paper at the desk in her nearly empty dorm room, a rush of emotion encircled her and she fought to keep from wheezing. She leaned forward on her elbows, bleached-blonde hair brushing her cheeks, and slowed her breath as she slowed her thoughts.

Justin would be back soon to help her unpack.

He just had to help someone lift something heavy, and he’d be back soon.

Isaac was gone forever, but Justin would be back soon.

The loss and fear still hit her at the most unexpected times, and she reached for the affirmations her counselor suggested. Her new school was big and unknown, but the dorm room was cozy and half hers to make home. Some things were in her control, and she would focus on those things.

Avery scraped the tattered bits of paper from the desk into her hand, then realized she didn’t even have a wastebasket yet. She shoved them in the pocket of her shorts and looked for the box of bedding.

Day-to-day, the loss of her oldest brother didn’t sting so much anymore. The accident on the boat happened during her sophomore year in high school, and by senior year, with Justin in college and Avery’s plans to join him falling nicely into place, she was content to socialize, date, and hold a summer job like everyone else. She poured her loss and her need into her art, and kept her eyes on the horizon.

A thousand miles west of home, everything was different, even the air. One of the first things Justin told Avery after he moved into his residence hall was that it felt good to breathe without salt clogging his lungs. “Everybody wants to go to the beach, Avie. This is fresh air, out here. It smells like dirt and grass. Like a football field.”

In other words, not like the ocean.

Justin snuck into the room while she was distracted and tapped the side of her head. “Hey, lazy girl. Since you’re obviously going exactly nowhere with unpacking, let’s get outside for a bit.” He moved to embrace her, and she jumped back just in time.

“You are drenched. Gross.”

“It’s summer, and I just helped move a wardrobe that’s the size of three linemen, and just about as awkward to move from place to place.” He guided the window shut. “Tell ResLife about the hole in your screen.”

“It’s nothing.”

“You won’t say that when you meet the mosquitos. Tell them, or you’ll get charged for it when you move out.”

“Okay, boss.”