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Sure, it was from the official Warriors office, but someone should have walked down here and told us in person I looked around So around in towels A few hadn’t bothered to put on a da I waited for it to happen I waited for the news to break I waited for the jokes to stop For the banter to cease In seconds, they wouldn’t care what happened at practice today They wouldn?

?t care they were still sweating

It was as if soh the locker room The rowdy bullshit quieted down as everyone checked their phones

I saw it The do

Dylan’s eyes pinched together “I hadn’t heard he was sick”

“Me either” I was too busy learning plays and winning games I also didn’t follow the McCade headlines

“I don’t know if this is good or bad”

We watched as the others reacted There weren’t any tears There weren’t going to be any We stood in a place the er in the air It dripped off my teammates just like the sweat did

I heard someone slam their hand into the wall

I sat on the bench in front of e I never had I was the kind offor breakfast I ran the same routes around the city every day I had a favorite white T-shirt, and a favorite black one I had the saame-day ritual no matter what city we played in I drank the same Texas beer Listened to the same stations

I didn’t like change I liked consistency I counted on it

And this was a big one The kind of news that had the potential to turn everything on its head Worse than a sack that knocked the wind out of you for days This was chaos The kind of shakeup that could ruin the season Destroy the tea way

The owner of the Warriors was dead

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Vanessa

Two Weeks Later

I sat in the family box every Sunday I had for the past twenty-six years Each and every weekend of the entire football season was planned for me I was either in Warrior Stadium or on the road wherever the teaht be soame day I’d never had the option

That's what it meant to be a McCade Football was the faether At least that’s anted people in this town to think The McCade bloodline breathed nothing but football

It ran through our pores, pulsing in our veins as if it kept us alive as oxygen It was the doene that separated McCades from everyone else

But all that changed the night ed with one final heartbeat

I couldn’t letto see how I handled the next step as if it was the fourth quarter and the Warriors were down by three The problem was I wasn’t a quarterback I wasn’t trained to deal with intense pressure and stress I didn’t feel like someone had handed me the ball in a well-drawn out play with instructions Instead, I felt as if I was at the botto the air fros

I walked into his office It was the corner room of the executive level in the Warriors’ suite I rerandfather didn't want to be bothered with me so he would shoo me into a corner with a box of Warriors’ stationary and tell s

He would leave me there for hours with a collection of pens and pencils So rew, the doodles turned to sketches Over the years, the sketches turned into a portfolio That portfolio landed ious school of art It was ironic how spending tidorandfather could disirl did to occupy her time