THE QUARTERBACKS UNTOUCHABLE GIRL

LOCKER ROOM

Dax's POV

I heard the moo before I actually understood what it meant.

It was between third and fourth period in the hallway. Some guy I half-recognized did it under his breath as Astrid walked past. Quiet. Almost nothing. I almost missed it completely.

Then I heard it again two hallways later. Different guy, but same sound.

I didn't get it right away. That's the honest truth, even if it doesn't make me look good. My head was somewhere else. I was thinking about the new blocking scheme Coach had us running, about whether Tyler was ever going to fix his timing before Friday's game, about twenty other things that had nothing to do with what was happening around me. It took me until lunch, standing near the vending machines with Marcus, to finally hear someone explain the joke out loud.

"She's basically a cow now," Marcus said, laughing like it was the best thing he'd heard all week. "Milk, formula. The whole bit. Brynn's idea, I think."

I went completely still.

Marcus didn't even notice. He was already moving on, talking about something else, and I just stood there with a dollar bill half-fed into the machine feeling something heavy drop through my chest like a stone through water.

Formula.

Baby stuff.

They didn't know why that joke worked so well. They thought it was just random. Some dumb thing Brynn came up with because Astrid smelled a certain way sometimes or because she was an easy target. Cruelty always needs a theme and this was this week's theme.

They had no idea they were one inch away from the actual truth.

I finally fed the dollar all the way in and got a water I didn't even want. I walked to class and didn't hear a single word the teacher said for the next forty minutes. My notebook stayed closed. My pen didn't move. I just sat there replaying that word in my head.

By the time practice started I'd heard it four more times. Twice from guys on the team, joking around in the locker room before we even got dressed. They weren't even thinking about it, the way you don't think about breathing.

"Yo, did you hear the cow thing with Thorne?"

"Brynn's savage, man."

I laced up my cleats and said nothing. I'd gotten really good at saying nothing. Almost two months of this now and I could sit in a room while people tore someone apart and keep my face exactly how I wanted it. Blank, bored and above it all.

I told myself that was the smart move.

I told myself a lot of things that week.

Practice ran long, coach wanted the new formation drilled until it stopped looking like four guys guessing at what to do, and by the time he blew the final whistle my legs felt like they belonged to somebody else. Most of the team cleared out fast. Friday plans, girlfriends waiting, all the normal stuff guys our age rush off to.

I was slow getting my pads off. I sat on the bench longer than I needed to.

Crew was still there too. He wasn't even on the team, but he hung around sometimes with his camera, taking shots for the yearbook or whatever. Coach let him in the locker room because nobody really told Crew no about much of anything. He had his bag over one shoulder and he was watching me in that way he had. The way that made you feel like you were being read instead of just looked at.

"The baby jokes," he said.

I didn't look up. I kept messing with a shoelace that wasn't actually stuck.

"You know what they're actually about," he said. "And you're still saying nothing."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yeah, you do."

I yanked the shoelace loose and stood up. I started shoving my pads into my bag harder than they needed to go in.

"It's a stupid joke," I said. "It'll be something else next week."

"It's not stupid if it's true."

I stopped moving.

He wasn't loud about it. That was the thing with Crew. He never raised his voice or made it a big scene. He just said the true thing in this flat, even tone and let it sit there doing all the work on its own.

"Drop it," I said.

"Dax..."

"Drop it, Crew."

I slammed my locker, harder than I meant to. The metal clang bounced off the tile walls and came back at us twice, loud in a room that was already mostly empty. For a second neither of us said anything because the sound was still finishing its echo.

Crew didn't flinch. He just stood there with his bag on his shoulder, looking at me with that same level expression, like the locker slamming hadn't moved him even an inch.

"She's my concern now," he said.

Like he was telling me the score of a game I hadn't been watching.

Something in my chest went tight and hot at the same time. Some ugly thing I didn't have a clean name for. Not exactly jealousy, or not only jealousy. Something closer to shame wearing jealousy's jacket.

"What's that supposed to mean," I said.

"It means what it means." He shifted his bag higher on his shoulder. "You won't say anything. Fine. I will."

"You don't know what you'd be saying anything to."

"I know enough." He looked at me for a long second. "I know there's a baby somewhere in this. I know you'd rather die than say her name out loud at this school. I know Astrid's been carrying that for you every single day since whenever this started. And I know you let people call her a cow in the hallway rather than risk one inch of what you've built here."

I didn't answer.

I couldn't, really. Not without saying more than I wanted to say in a half-empty locker room that still smelled like sweat and turf and old cleats.

"She's my concern now," he said again, slower this time. Like he wanted it to land somewhere specific. "If you're not going to take care of it, somebody has to."

The room went quiet.

Really quiet. The kind where you could hear the pipes somewhere behind the wall and the drip of a shower head that nobody had turned off all the way. My own pulse was doing something stupid and fast in my ears.

I looked at him.

He looked right back. Not angry exactly, worse than angry. Disappointed in a way that didn't ask for anything from me. It had already decided what it expected and had already accepted I wasn't going to give it.

"Get out of my way," I said. Quiet. Tired.

He stepped aside and let me pass.

I walked out of that locker room with my bag over my shoulder and my jaw clenched so tight it ached. The whole drive home I kept thinking about that word "cow" bouncing around hallways full of people who had no idea what they were actually laughing at. I thought about Crew saying she's my concern now like he had every right to claim it.

The worst part was I couldn't even tell him he didn't.

I pulled into the driveway and sat there for a minute with the engine off. The porch light was already on. I always left it on for her now without thinking about it. The house looked normal from the outside. Just a regular house on a regular street. Nobody would guess what was happening inside it. Nobody would guess about the baby or the deal or any of it.

I grabbed my bag and went inside.

The living room was quiet. Willa must have been down already. I could hear soft sounds from the kitchen and I knew Astrid was in there. I stood in the hallway for a second longer than I needed to, just listening. Then I walked in.

She was at the counter cleaning up from Willa's dinner. She looked up when I came in. Her eyes were tired but she gave me this small nod like everything was normal.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey."

I set my bag down and got a glass of water. We moved around each other in the kitchen the way we always did now. Careful and familiar. Like we'd been doing this dance for years instead of weeks.

She didn't mention the jokes. I didn't either.

I wanted to. The words were right there, stuck somewhere between my throat and my chest. I wanted to tell her I heard them. I wanted to tell her I hated it. I wanted to tell her that every time I heard that stupid moo sound it felt like someone was kicking me in the ribs.

But I didn't say any of it.

Instead I asked, "Willa go down okay?"

"Yeah," she said. "She was out fast tonight."

"Good."

We kept moving, she wiped the counter. I put my glass in the sink. The silence wasn't bad exactly, but it wasn't comfortable either. It was the kind of silence that had too many things hiding inside it.

I thought about Crew's words again. She's my concern now.

I thought about how easy it would be to say something right here. To tell her I knew. To tell her I was sorry. To tell her that the version of me at school wasn't the real one even if it felt like it sometimes.

But I didn't.

I just said, "I'm gonna go watch some film," and headed upstairs.

She nodded like she expected that answer.

I closed my door and sat on my bed with my laptop open to game tape I wasn't really watching. Through the wall I could hear her moving around, doing the things she did every night. Checking on Willa probably, making sure everything was okay.

I rubbed my face with both hands and tried to push the locker room conversation out of my head.

It didn't work.

Crew's voice kept playing on repeat, the way he said it so calm. The way he looked at me like he was disappointed but not surprised.

She's my concern now.

I hated how much that bothered me. I hated that some part of me wanted to tell him to stay away from her. I hated that I couldn't, because he was right. I wasn't doing anything. I was letting it happen. I was choosing the easy thing every single day and pretending it was the only choice I had.

I closed the laptop and lay back on my bed.

The house was quiet except for the normal night sounds. The heater kicking on, a car passing outside. My own breathing that felt too loud in my ears.

I thought about Astrid downstairs. About the way she held everything together even when people at school were turning her into a joke. About how she still showed up for Willa every single day like none of it touched her.

I thought about the text I sent her after the game. Did you see it. Good.

Small things, stupid things. But they felt bigger than they should have.

I rolled over and stared at the wall that separated my room from hers.

I didn't know how much longer I could keep doing this. How much longer I could pretend the two versions of my life weren't crashing into each other. How much longer I could let her carry all of it alone.

But I also didn't know how to stop.

So I just lay there in the dark, listening to the quiet house, wondering how long it would take before something finally broke.