“What’s mine is yours,” Lila told me the day I moved into the 1050 square foot apartment; the one I shared with the girl who would soon prove to me that these first words were a life-altering lie.

My arms ached from carrying all my belongings up to the fourth floor earlier that afternoon. The sun had only been absent for maybe an hour, but my first class of the semester started early the next morning, and I just wanted to shower and crawl in bed. It was a relief to see the roommate I’d been assigned seemed nice, but her talkative nature was exhausting. Hoping she’d eventually take the hint, I stayed silent and nodded as she pointed out and asked my opinion on the decor she had accumulated in the week since she’d moved in.

“It’s not much, I know,” she chatted on with a wide white smile. Flipping her strawberry-blonde hair over a bony shoulder, she seemed completely comfortable sitting in her swimsuit in front of a stranger. She had come in from a welcome party at the campus pool when I was unpacking my last box; there was little doubt in my mind she had walked all the way back with nothing to cover up but her beach towel. I found this fascinating and slightly annoying. “I figured we could spice the place up together, right?”

It’s your eighth day of football and your tenth day of grade nine.

You’re in the locker room. Everyone’s getting ready for practice. Your mouthguard is no longer attached to your helmet.  No mouthguard means you’re running laps. You don’t want to run laps.

You slink your way to the coach’s room. The coaches are meeting, speaking nonsensically.

“Let’s install Gooo principles today. We need to get our counter play in before next week. On ‘D’ we’ll put in Hawk formation, get the ‘Deebees’ learning their zone principles, linebackers flow and scrape — stress pursuit. We’ll script Chicago vs. Eagle, work trips into the package, see if the receivers know their waggle and motion.”

They notice you.