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team’s winning ticket and after this season, Delarose would be on everyone’s short list.
    Jarrett couldn’t quite hold back his envy, or  fear. When he looked at Carl, he got a glimpse of his future, the feel of younger, more talented players at his heels, racing after him, racing past him.
    Maybe...maybe Liddy had been right. He really didn’t want to end up washed out of football because he wasn’t the fittest to survive. He should e-mail her. Apologize. Fuck it. He missed her and he missed their talks about grand things like ice ages and supercontinents. He missed her physically, too, her body so warm and compact in his arms.
    “Jet?” Bobby nudged him.
    “Huh?”
    “I said the town is ours, buddy.” He waved to a car of girls hanging out the windows, blowing kisses at them.
    “I dunno if I’m up to celebrating tonight,” Jarrett demurred.
    “Why? ’Cause your geek girl didn’t show?” Bobby scoffed. “Just as well. Come on, man, there are plenty of hot ladies ready to give you a night to remember.”
    Jarrett paused under a streetlamp. That wasn’t anything he’d considered before. Liddy was probably with her Prehistory Anthropology Club arguing over teeth and skull ridges. Would he really rather be there than out dancing? Would she rather be out dancing than discussing bones? Thinking about it, Bobby had a point. Liddy was completely wrong for this environment, unsuited to his usual crowd and lifestyle.
    Maybe it was a good thing she hadn’t shown up tonight, as Jarrett couldn’t imagine inviting her along to celebrate with him and his friends at the steakhouse. Hell, the very idea made him uneasy.
    And why was that?
    “Jet! Bobby!” Some of the other guys were waiting under the awning of the restaurant. Bobby was already dashing through the crazy traffic to join them. Jarrett saw a break and jogged after.
    People shouted, horns honked, headlights flashed…and blinded Jarrett. He heard the screech of tires, felt a sudden jarring pain through his leg and a hard push, as if he’d been tackled. And then the asphalt was under his body. He smelled tar and blood before the pain. Then he felt it, felt it screaming up and down his leg: a shattering vibration of agony. It was as loud and blindingly noisy as the shouts of the people around him, as the howling yells of his teammates now running his way.
    Ah, shit ! he swore, feeling that excruciating pain in every bone. Extinct already.
     

     
    Drifting again. They’d originally had him on a morphine drip and that had really fucked him up. Jarrett was off that now, but the regular painkillers still had him flowing back and forth in time.
    “We used to have to wire and pin fragments together,” he remembered a snatch of conversation from when he’d been brought in. “But now we’ve a special adhesive. We fit the pieces back together like a jigsaw puzzle.”
    His mind paused. Funny. Wasn’t that exactly what Liddy wanted to do? Spend her life gluing fragments of bone back together again?
    “He’s young and healthy ,” the voice continued in his head. “He’ll heal up just fine.”
    “But will he be able to play football again?” His father’s anxious voice.
    Hesitation. “That I can’t predict.”
    Meaning, Jarrett translated, that the doctor wasn’t about to guarantee anything. He dropped even further back in time, vaguely remembering the red lights of the ambulance, the paramedics tending him, the siren as he was driven to the hospital. He recalled wanting painkillers more than anything else. He’d taken plenty of injuries on the field but none had hurt this bad.
    They’d moved fast. Modern medicine did not wait. X-rays and an MRI. Even as his father and brother arrived, pale with fear, the doctors had prepped him for surgery. Anesthetic had been local, Jarrett’s body numb from the hips down. The operation had taken nearly three hours. Next thing he knew, he was in a hospital bed, leg elevated and on the road to recovery.
    That