Read The Season of Shay and Dane for Free Online Page A

much longer.
    “Sure. Have at it.” She
pops the towels onto the cleaned table and starts folding them. “Looking for
anything in particular?”
    “Well,” waiting for it,
“I thought I’d see who that guy was that hit me this morning.”
    “You’re endless,” she
says, knowing most likely it had stuck in my head today, and whether or not she
would admit to it, I’m sure she was a little curious too.
    I take four or five
papers off the top of her neatly formed pile and sit crisscross on the floor
beside them across from where she’s folding and can see me.
    Flipping through the
first one, the sports section mainly boasts about the upcoming football
practice soon to be starting. I turn it upside down to keep it in date order,
placing it beside my leg, and reach for another one.
    A headline this time
mentions track. Yale Track Brings Home Wins. It’s a lengthy article. All
articles are written by student staff trying to one up each other and doing their
best to get the attention of large papers reading an unforgettable article
and having to have them on staff straight from graduation. You find out a lot
of useful-not-useful information as you get through them. Reading on. . . Continued
on pg. 5 .
    I flip to the back to
page five. It has three pictures. The largest picture’s caption reads, “Sprinter
Dane Montgomery claims personal best time in 100m, taking first place against
Big Red—Cornell.”
    I bring the page closer
to my face, peering at the small figures in black and white all clustered together
running down the track, except one, who seems to have broke free and leads them.
    “That’s him!” I
surprise myself at my reaction. I straighten my legs out of the stiffened
position and get up to bring the paper over for Jenny to see.
    She leans in to where
I’m pointing. “Are you sure it’s him? That’s a pretty small image.”
    “I’m sure—those facial
bones—his profile sitting on the bench. . . ” I stop, becoming aware of myself
and catch her eye and coy smile. “Alright, alright. I don’t know what’s gotten
into me either. . . at all.”
    “Let me see more
closely.” She takes the paper for herself and reads the caption, “Dane C. Montgomery.
He’s a hottie alright.”
    I grab it back. “It
didn’t say C. ”
    “Dane Clod Montgomery—you never know—that’s all I’m saying,” she hurriedly interjects as
I’m locating his name under the picture.
    “Jenny!” I take one
more look at the picture before folding the paper and putting them back on the
stack. “You’re relentless, really.”
    “Come on, Shay. His
only admission’s requirement may be that he needed to know how to put one foot
in front of the other—a little faster than most,” proud of her analysis.
    I slap my forehead.
Sometimes her Italian wit catches me off-guard.
    “No, really. How is it
that all of the athletes each year get this big send off after the exact four years here—no extra year or two to scramble getting their degree. When
half of the students here have to wait at least an extra semester with
pre-requisites—at minimum, just to get into the next sequence of courses? Think
about it,” she probes me.
    How do I defend that? She’s
right. “Yes, yes. I hear you.” I pull a chair out from under the table and help
her finish folding the last few towels.
    I let the busyness of
folding consume the few seconds of silence hanging in the air.
    Finally. “Montgomery?
As in Senator Reginald Montgomery of South Carolina?”
    “I don’t know Jen. I
have no idea. Could be,” I put out there, not having thought in the last few
minutes about the last name, just liking the sound of his first name. Dane .
    “Well, I hate to burst
your bubble as small as I know it is with your dart and run exercise
around any good-looking guy in our building, but unless your name is Little
Miss Sally May Yoo-hoo and your daddy’s in oil, there’s not a chance.
Those types are betrothed from infancy.”
    In the short