Chapter 4: Say It Louder

The Lions ate together at the long tables by the windows, and everyone on campus knew it.

Sunday brunch, twenty-six football players, trays stacked with eggs.

I walked in at noon with my brother's handwriting folded in my sweatshirt pocket.

I didn't plan a speech.

I planned to put it down in front of him and watch what his face did.

Colby sat at the head of the middle table in his gray team hoodie, with a plate he wasn't eating.

He saw me from forty feet away.

His shoulders came up.

"Quinn," he said, when I got there. "Hey. Can we talk outside?"

"No."

The whole table had gone quiet.

A big guy with a shaved head put down his fork. Somebody pulled out a phone, and a teammate beside him pushed it back down.

I took the card out of my pocket and laid it flat next to his eggs.

The gray scale. The tiny numbers. The loop on every seven.

"Is that your handwriting?"

My brother looked at the card.

"It's a chart," he said.

"It's the recipe for my dress. Is it your handwriting?"

"Quinn."

"Say it so they can hear it."

The big guy with the shaved head leaned over.

"Cap, what's the chart for?"

"It's nothing."

"Which one's the pink?"

Colby didn't look at the card.

He pointed with two fingers at the left side of it, quick, the way our mother taught us when we were kids and the grown-ups played color games.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Dyed My Dress for the Dance. I Left the Group of Five from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.