Northbridge threw a parade. It felt absurd even as it was happening — a small-town Main Street lined three-deep with people bundled against the last gasp of Minnesota winter, a flatbed trailer serving as their float, the trophy passed hand to hand down the length of the team like something too precious and too heavy to hold for long. Reese sat next to Cole on the trailer's edge, waving at strangers who somehow already knew her name, and thought, not for the first time since the final horn, that eight months ago she'd been eating lunch alone in a corner of the student union specifically chosen for its lack of foot traffic.
"Feels like a different life," she said, watching a group of kids — maybe eight, nine years old, two of them girls, wearing miniature Northbridge jerseys with KELLAN sti
