Page 98 of Better Than Revenge

The sun was burning through the fog as Coach began dividing the group into two different teams.

“Special teams,” Coach O called out. “Follow me.”

I propelled myself into motion, falling into step beside Jensen.

“Really?” Jensen asked.

“Really.”

“I get what you’re doing. This is payback. But you’re taking the joke too far. You’re going to embarrass yourself. And Coach isn’t going to be happy.”

“It’s not a joke,” I said. “I’m trying out.”

He pointed to the uprights in the end zone. “For kicker?”

“It appears so.”

“This isn’t as easy as trying out for a podcast.”

“Maybe it is,” I said, because I wanted him to think I hadn’t worked at all for this when I stole it from him.

“The only person this is going to hurt is you,” he said. “When everyone is talking about you on Monday.”

I shrugged. “I’m used to it by now. Ever since your lovely schoolwide announcement about how much I suck as a podcast host, I’ve been the subject of a lot of gossip.”

“That’s not what I said,” Jensen said, with a scoff.

“That’s exactly what you said, Jensen, except you were more specific. You spelled out the exact ways I sucked.”

“You’re remembering things how you want to remember them.”

“Maybe you’ve altered your memory to help yourself feel better,but I know what I heard,” I said. He didn’t get to change history because the roles were reversed now.

“Did Theo put you up to this?”

“No, this was my idea. It has nothing to do with Theo.” Regardless of the fact that I now realized Theo had a bigger interest in seeing Jensen go down than I originally thought, this was always my plan.

“I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” he said.

I shrugged. “Neither am I.” Except that was a lie. That’s all I was trying to do. I wanted this to hurt. Bad. I wanted him to feel it in his bones when I took this from him. I wanted him to be scared. But so far, he only seemed mildly annoyed and distracted.

“Well then,” he said, as if coming to some sort of acceptance. “Good luck.” He stuck out his fist like he wanted me to bump it. We had never fist-bumped before in our lives. He was pretending he was a bigger person than me because he wasn’t threatened yet. I did not fist-bump him. I was obviously not even close to the bigger person.

“We’ll start at the ten-yard line and work our way back from there,” Coach O said. “I want to see three kicks at each stop. One center, one on both sides of center. Then we’ll practice with some defenders trying to block you. Who wants to go first?”

A guy in front of me raised his hand. I assumed he was a freshman or sophomore because I didn’t recognize him or the other guy. There were four of us hoping to score the spot. I didn’t care what order we went in as long as I was before Jensen. I wanted to get in his head.

“Okay, great,” Coach O said. He gestured to someone behind me, and Theo came running up. His left eye was now a purplishblack. My heart stuttered for a moment. “Theo is going to help me out today with equipment and ball placement and such.”

I clenched my teeth. I hadn’t realized that was the case, but that was most likely his role as outgoing kicker.

“Let’s see what you have,” Coach said.

Theo, who’d been holding a mesh bag, began pulling out footballs.

“Doeshereally have to be here?” Jensen asked. “That’s a lot of pressure, Coach, to have the starting kicker here.”

“You don’t think there is going to be pressure in a game?” Coach said.