Chapter 7 The Practice Field

Avery's POV

My phone died in the middle of fourth period, right when I needed to check the timer for my coding project submission. I'd been working on the final branch of the game all morning, trying to figure out what the player found when they turned around, and I'd promised myself I would have an answer by the end of the day. The battery indicator flashed red and then black, and I sat there staring at a dead screen and trying to remember the last time I'd charged it.

I cut through the east corridor after class, heading toward the tech lab where I kept my charger in my backpack. The corridor was empty this time of day, the classrooms quiet and the students already gone to lunch or practice or wherever they went when they didn't have to be anywhere important. I walked past the gym entrance and noticed a door propped open at the end of the hall, one I hadn't seen before. It looked like it led outside, and I pushed it open without thinking.

The door opened onto a private practice field behind the gym, tucked between the main building and the east wing of the house. I'd never known this field existed, but there it was with its painted lines and goal posts and a single figure standing at the forty-yard line. Jaxon. He was alone, filming himself on a tripod, running the same route over and over. He'd drop back, plant his feet, and throw, and the ball would fall short on the fifth throw every single time.

I stood in the doorway longer than I should have, watching him reset and try again. The fifth throw always dropped, and he always stood there for a second after it happened with his hand flexing at his side. I knew I should leave, that this wasn't something I was supposed to see, but I couldn't make myself walk away. There was something about watching him fail in private that felt more honest than anything he'd ever said to me.

"Are you going to stand there or are you going to say something?" he called without turning around. I stepped out onto the field and he finally turned to face me, his expression carefully blank. "You don't know football," he said. "I know physics," I said. "And I know the ball is falling short on the fifth throw because you're compensating for something." He stared at me for a long moment, and I could see him deciding whether to lie or tell the truth.

"It's my shoulder," he said. "I injured it sophomore year and it never fully healed. The elbow has been compensating since, and it's starting to give." I asked him if his physio knew, and he said no. "That's a terrible plan," I said. "I know," he said, and he threw the ball again. It fell short on the fifth throw, just like every other time.

He followed me inside ten minutes later, catching up to me in the corridor with his equipment bag slung over his shoulder. "How bad did it look?" he asked, and I told him the truth. "It's consistent," I said. "That means it's a pattern, which means someone who knows what they're looking at will notice." He asked if I meant his coaches or the scouts, and I said I meant both. "My physio doesn't know," he said again, and I told him I'd already heard that the first time. "He should," I said. "If you don't tell him, the pattern is going to get worse and then people are going to figure it out anyway." He didn't say anything, but he also didn't argue.

We walked the rest of the way in silence, and I noticed he kept his right arm close to his side like he was protecting it. I thought about the game he had coming up, the championship, the scouts who would be watching. I thought about what it would cost him to play through an injury he was hiding. I thought about the way he'd told me the video would blow over, and I wondered if he was always this careful about other people's problems and never his own.

He disappeared into the gym to change, and I went to the tech lab and plugged my phone into the charger. It came back to life, and I opened it to find a new text from the anonymous number. You think you're the only one he's protecting? I stared at it for a long time and then I took a screenshot and added it to the folder. I didn't know what it meant, but I knew it wasn't random. Whoever was doing this knew things they shouldn't know. They knew about the cottage and the kitchen and now they knew about the practice field. They knew Jaxon's shoulder was hurt and they knew I'd seen something I wasn't supposed to see. I sat there in the empty tech lab with my phone in my hand and tried to remember the last time I'd felt this close to figuring something out.