Page 81 of Campus Heat

That word alone carried more weight than any praise I had received all season. The practice kept building from there. The offense moved faster, and the defense hit harder. Every drill felt sharper and more focused, like the entire team had silently decided to prove something. By the time the practice ended, I felt something I hadn’t felt in weeks. We had momentum. I started packing away my gloves when a voice came from behind me.

“Ethan.”

I turned slowly and saw Harris standing near the sideline with his hands resting on his hips.

“Walk with me.”

We stepped away from the field while the rest of the team wrapped up their drills. For a moment Harris just watched them finishing their reps, but then he turned back to me.

“I heard you’ve been thinking about a transfer,” he said, catching me off guard.

I stiffened slightly. “So someone ended up telling you.”

He shook his head. “They didn’t need to. It was your behavior that gave you away. Contrary to what you might think, I actually do pay attention to the guys on my team.”

Silence stretched between us for just a moment. I didn’t know what to say, and I think Harris just wanted his words to sink in.

“I know I’ve never said it to you, but I’m glad you’re not wasting away on some bench anymore.”

“What?” I blinked.

“You’ve got real talent,” Harris said, surprised by my reaction. “The kind that deserves to be seen.”

His words had caught me completely off guard, but then he nodded toward the field and the rest of the guys.

“If Havenport isn’t where you want to display your talent, then that’s your choice. But don’t pretend you don’t belong on that field because then you’ll only be lying to yourself.”

30

Elizabeth

Midterms arrived like a storm that had suddenly fallen over the campus. It was there in the blink of an eye, heavy with work and impossible to ignore. Our papers were due, the exams loomed, and the library was packed from morning until well after midnight.

The only seat I managed to get was the corner table on the third floor. It was the one no one wanted because it was tucked between two tall shelves of dusty political science journals that almost no one seemed to touch.

Even though it wasn’t perfect, it was one of the few quiet places on campus where I could still breathe. The light on my laptop dimmed as my half-finished essay mocked me from a distance. My usual calm, organized approach had flown out the window, and my highlighters and textbooks were just casually scattered across the desk. I reached for my coffee, took a thoughtless sip and instantly spat it back out again. It had been cold for hours, and I hadn’t even noticed.

Ethan sat across from me, his shoulders slouched as the thick economics book got the better of him. It looked like it was consuming him, but also like he was completely lost. I had been watching him for at least two minutes, and he still hadn’t turned a single page.

“You know,” I finally said, tapping my pen against the edge of the table. “If you stare at the same paragraph for too long, it doesn’t magically get absorbed by your brain.”

Ethan glanced up and blinked as if he had just come back from another world. “That is basically my whole strategy.”

I laughed out loud. “Really?”

“Yeah.” He leaned back slightly, stretching his arms over his head. “Step one: open the textbook. Step two: look miserable. Step three: hope the knowledge enters and stays in my mind through osmosis.”

I bit my lip, trying to stop myself from laughing even more. If his theory were correct, none of us would fail, but sadly, that wasn’t the way the world worked.

“I hate to burst your bubble,” I said, snorting just a little. “But I’m pretty sure that’s not how economics works.”

He looked at me in horror. “Are you saying my entire academic career has been a lie?”

“I’m saying you’ve been reading the same page since we got here.”

Ethan looked from me to his book and then back again. He seemed to be completely confused, like he hadn’t even realized that he wasn’t moving forward.

“Okay…” he said, flipping through the pages. “In my defense, it’s a really dense page.”