Sprout

Resident Evil movies (or the Dawn of the Dead movies, or Shaun of the Dead , or 28 Days Later , or any other film franchise where hordes of bumbling zombies chase the fleet-footed good guy). For about four and a half seconds there was nothing but my breath and my legs and the sound of forty rubber-soled shoes squeaking over freshly waxed wood, and then Ian’s voice cut through it all like a siren:
    “Touchdown!”
    I know you’re supposed to feel some kind of rush when you score in football, but the truth is I always feel let down. For me, it’s all about running—the chase, the dodge, the feint, the leap—and I would’ve kept going if there’d been room. But we were inside the gym, and there was the wall, its white-painted cinderblocks covered by a big paper banner that said
    We’re ALL Crew-saders!
    The words stretched over a We Are the World/Hands Across America—type sea of smiling faces, each crowned by red or yellow or black or good old mouse-brown hair. There was a bald one, and a pink one (I’m pretty sure that was supposed to be Ruthie, since she was taller than everyone else in the poster) and even a black one, by which I mean a black person, despite the fact that there were no black students at Buhler, but not a green one in sight.
    “ Dude . Good one.”
    Ian was jogging up to me. For some reason it was hard for me to look at his face, and I looked down at the ball instead, saw a drop of green-tinged sweat already beginning to disappear into the panoply of grass stains dotting the nubbly Naugahyde. I looked up again. Saw Ian’s cap. Saw an identical smudge of green under the brim.
    I jerked my thumb at Troy. “Hey, uh, thanks for the save back there.”
    Ian looked over at Troy, who was assembling his team in an all-butts-out huddle. Shrugged, then turned back to me.
    “Go wide,” was all he said. “I’ll hit you again.”
    I tried to play it down, but during the usual round of hut-ones and hut-twos I was practically bouncing on my toes. I nearly jumped the line of scrimmage before Fred Lynch finally snapped the ball and the gym erupted in squeaks as Troy’s team launched themselves forwards. I ducked right, leapfrogged (leapedfrog? leaptfrog?) over a sweaty back, headed for the sideline. Go wide, Ian’d said, I’ll hit you again. So okay. I was going wide. I was going to get hit—
    Something smacked me in the side of the head, almost knocked me over, which task was accomplished by a half dozen defenders jumping on me like a horde of toddlers fighting over one lone lollipop. They pulled at my shirt, belt, pants, hair, crushed me to the wooden floor. And then, when everyone cleared, there was Ian, his glowering eyes shadowed by the stained rim of his cap.
    “You might as well take a seat, Vomithead, cuz there ain’t no way you’re seeing this ball again.”
    For the last ten minutes of the game I could have been running drills for all the action I saw. In fact, I zoned out and did start running drills, and I would’ve gone at it till the bell rang if Beanpole Overholser hadn’t run past me at one point on his crazy giraffe legs, the breath whistling in and out of his freakishly elongated body like an out-of-tune saxophone.
    “Hey, Mouse,” he panted. “Nice shoes .”
    “My name’s—” I started, but then the new kid ran past me—the kid with the farmer’s tan and the zit in the middle of his chin, not to mention the ridiculous shoes, which is when I realized Beanpole Overholser must’ve been talking to him.
    Mouse? I thought. He’s here four hours and he already has a nickname? It took me a full week to get mine.
    “Hey, Beanpole,” the new kid shot back. “You know what’s worse than these shoes?”
    I wondered how he knew Paul’s nickname, even as Beanpole did his best to hunker down and make himself, I dunno, thicker.
    “Huh?”
    “Having the kid who’s wearing ’em steal—your— ball .” And, diving in front of Beanpole, he intercepted Ian’s pass and ran it all the way to the other end of the court, his funny, fat-soled shoes squeaking like a worn fan belt with each and every footfall. He reached the endzone and spiked the ball, which bounced up just in time to catch Beanpole Overholser in the face. The spokes of Beanpole’s arms and legs jangled around like wonky TV antennas, and the gym echoed with the sound of laughter. When he finally got a hold of the ball he heaved it at the new kid. The shot went wide, but before I knew it a rain of footballs