Playing Him

☾ Maya

Dylan’s scream cuts off so fast I almost convince myself I imagined it.

Then the ball rolls out of the practice game without him, and every guy on the field stops moving.

I’m already over the sideline before Coach Denny can tell me to stay put. My cleats tear at the dry grass, purple ponytail slapping between my shoulder blades as I run. Dylan is on his back near the corner of the penalty box with both hands locked around his right ankle. His face has gone the gray-white color he gets right before he throws up.

That scares me more than the scream.

“Don’t touch it,” he gasps when I drop beside him.

“I wasn’t going to.” I absolutely was. My hands hover uselessly over his shin. “Can you move your toes?”

Dylan glances toward Coach Denny. “Why does everybody ask that?”

“Because toes are important,” I say, as if that explains anything.

His mouth twitches. “Great medical insight, Maya.”

His voice shakes on my name. Dylan can joke through almost anything, but sweat beads along his upper lip even though the evening has cooled. His right foot sits at a normal angle. That’s the only good thing I can find.

Coach Denny kneels on Dylan’s other side and tells the rest of the summer team to give us room. Somebody runs for the first-aid kit. Somebody else offers to call an ambulance. Dylan refuses that before the sentence is finished.

“I landed on Carter’s foot,” he says through his teeth. “It rolled. I heard something pop.”

My stomach drops.

Dylan sees it happen and grabs my wrist. “Could be nothing.”

“People’s ankles don’t usually make sound effects when nothing happens,” I mutter.

Dylan tightens his grip around my wrist. “You don’t know. Yours crack every time you stand up.”

I pull my hand free. “Those are my knees, and this isn’t about me.”

It was supposed to be our last stupid hometown pickup game before college. One more night with the players we’ve known since we were eight, then Dylan would leave for Ravenswood’s preseason camp in the morning. I’d drive up four days later for commuter orientation and pretend I didn’t mind that my twin got the athlete dorm, the Wolves kit, and the varsity field while I got a parking pass and the club tryout calendar.

I did mind. I wasn’t proud of it, but I did.

None of that matters while three of us help him off the field and every hop sends pain across his face.

At urgent care, a nurse wraps Dylan’s ankle, hands him an ice pack, and tells us the wait could be two hours. The room smells like disinfectant and old coffee. A toddler with small antlers sleeps across three plastic chairs while his mother scrolls on her phone. On the muted television, a witch in a navy suit discusses new enchanting limits for high-school track equipment.

Dylan keeps refreshing his messages.

“If you stare hard enough, Coach Lennox still won’t answer faster,” I tell him.

He lowers the phone. “The final tryout starts Tuesday.”

“I know,” I say.

Dylan taps his thumb against the phone. “Roster confirmation is Friday.”

“I know that too.” I lower my voice because a toddler is still asleep three chairs away.

He shifts, then sucks in a breath when the movement bumps his boot against the chair. The temporary wrap looks too white against his grass-stained sock. “If I’m not cleared to participate, the grant doesn’t activate.”

I look toward the vending machines because I can’t look at him. We’ve talked about the roster grant so many times I know every part of it. Six thousand toward fall tuition, plus his room and meal plan. His admission is safe. So is the academic scholarship we both earned. Losing the soccer money wouldn’t throw him out of Ravenswood.

It would leave a hole big enough that Mom would try to fill it with a loan she can’t afford.

“You don’t know that this is serious,” I say.

Dylan looks down at the boot. “It popped.”

“So does my shoulder,” I shoot back.

He lets out a dry laugh. “Your whole body is badly assembled.”

I kick the rubber tip of his crutch. Not hard. “You’re welcome for driving you.”

The X-ray doesn’t show an obvious break. That should feel like good news, but the doctor presses along the outside of Dylan’s ankle, then higher up his leg. Dylan nearly comes off the exam table.

The doctor leans back. “The ligaments above your ankle took the hit. That’s what people mean by a high ankle sprain. I don’t want to guess how badly they’re torn without an MRI.”

Dylan grips the paper beneath him. “How long?”

The doctor pulls off the gloves. “If it’s mild, a few weeks. If there’s a bad tear, longer. No soccer until the orthopedic doctor clears you.”

Dylan cuts in. “My tryout is Tuesday.”

The doctor’s expression softens. “Then you need to call your coach.”

The words are gentle. They still land like a door slamming.

Dylan doesn’t speak during the drive home. He sits in the passenger seat with the boot they gave him propped awkwardly against the dash and his crutches wedged between us. Every few minutes, his phone lights up with messages from teammates asking if he’s okay. He answers none of them.

Our mother’s car isn’t in the driveway when we pull in. Her shift at the hospital started at seven, and she won’t be home until after sunrise. The dark kitchen gives us a few more hours before we have to tell her that one bad landing may have added almost ten thousand dollars to our fall bill.

Dylan drops into a chair while I set his crutches against the table. “Coach called.”

“You talked to him?”

“While you were getting the car.” He rubs both hands over his face. “He said my admission and academic money are safe. If I can’t do the tryout, I can appeal the roster grant or sit out until spring and try again. He gave me financial aid’s number.”

They’re real options, and we both know it. Neither one makes the knot in my stomach loosen.

Dylan looks about as relieved as I feel.

“An appeal could work,” I say as I open the freezer.

Dylan watches me dig through the freezer. “Could.”

I pull out another ice pack. “You could take the semester off from the team and commute with me.”

“And give up the room and meal plan.” His mouth twists.

“We’ll figure it out,” I tell him, even though I have no idea how.

“That’s what people say when they have no idea how to figure it out,” he snaps.

I slap a fresh ice pack onto the table harder than I mean to. “What do you want me to say, Dylan? That you should play on it and turn one injury into three?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You’re thinking it so loudly even the neighbors can hear.”

He glares at me, eyes the same dark hazel as mine. Without the purple hair, heavier jaw, and four inches of height, we look enough alike that strangers always know we belong together. We’ve spent eighteen years arguing over whether that means I look like a boy or he looks pretty.

Right now, he only looks scared.

His phone buzzes on the table. An automated message from Ravenswood Athletics fills the screen.

FINAL PRESEASON TRYOUT CHECK-IN: TUESDAY, 7:00 A.M.

Dylan turns the phone facedown.

“I did everything right,” he says. “I sent the film. I went to every camp. I got recruited. I passed their medical clearance yesterday. One pickup game, and suddenly none of it counts.”

I sink into the chair across from him. “It still counts.”

“Not if someone takes my place on Friday.”

I don’t tell him places aren’t possessions. I’d hate anybody who said that to me right now.

Instead, I pull up the women’s club schedule on my phone. Open tryouts are in three weeks. No scholarship. No athlete housing. No guarantee of regular matches. I’d told everybody that was fine because Ravenswood’s women’s varsity roster was already closed when I committed to the school for academics. Club would keep me playing. I could try for varsity in spring.

It had sounded fine until Dylan got everything I wanted.

Now he might lose it before he ever steps onto the field.

“Coach knows you’re injured,” I say. “There’s no way around that.”

Dylan stares at the black screen of his phone. “He knows I hurt my ankle. He doesn’t know how bad it is yet.”

“Neither do we,” I remind him.

“Exactly.” His eyes flick toward the basement door.

I study him. “Whatever thought is happening behind your face, stop having it.”

He shifts in his chair. “I’m not having a thought.”

“You do this weird squint when you’re about to suggest something that’ll ruin my life.”

He points at me. “That is not true.”

“You gave me bangs in sixth grade,” I remind him.

Dylan has the nerve to shrug. “You agreed to the bangs.”

“I was twelve and vulnerable.” I fold my arms.

His mouth twitches, but it doesn’t become a smile. His gaze drifts past me to the narrow doorway beside the pantry. Beyond it, the basement stairs disappear into darkness.

I know what’s down there. Old holiday decorations. Mom’s college boxes. Our grandmother’s cedar chest, which we were told not to touch so often that touching it became the most interesting thing about it.

Dylan looks back at me.

“No,” I say immediately, before he can open his mouth.

Dylan raises both eyebrows. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You looked at Grandma’s box,” I accuse.

His gaze slides toward the basement again. “It’s a family artifact.”

I lean across the table. “It’s a ring that lets one relative look like another relative, and the last story we heard about it ended with Great-Uncle Milo hiding from a blood feud in a goat shed.”

“But it worked,” Dylan says.

I shove away from the table so quickly the chair legs scrape the tile. “Absolutely not.”

Dylan reaches for his crutches.

I follow him with my eyes. “Where are you going?”

Dylan plants one crutch beneath his arm. “To get the ring.”

I point at his boot. “You can’t even get down the basement stairs.”

He settles the crutches under his arms and gives me the first real smile I’ve seen since the field.

“Good thing I have a twin.”