Free The Hard Count by Ginger Scott

basically in my lap. He laughs, then flips the screen closed before looking at me. “One of us is in the AV Club.”
    I do my best to narrow my gaze on him and hold my eyes squinted, my mouth hard, as if I’m really pissed, but I break character, and my mouth betrays me, bending at the corners first until my own laughter escapes.
    “You’re right. I am the bigger nerd,” I say, jerking when I feel a tickle at my arm. I sigh in relief when I notice it’s just the wave of my hair from my ponytail.
    I tug the band loose and let my hair fall down before sweeping it back up and into a knot again. When I look back to Nico, his expression is softer, and I like that he watched me do that. Maybe that’s why I let my hair down—to see if he’d notice.
    “So what do I look like on film?” he asks, his attention back to the now-closed screen in my lap. I’m relieved at the change in subject.
    I flip the screen open and prop the camera at an angle he can see, then press PLAY.
    “You won’t get any sound, not that you really need it, but this is that great play you did,” I say, twisting my lips because I’m not sure if I should be feeding his ego. Nico was great. But he was also undisciplined and difficult.
    I look up to watch his eyes as he watches himself. He doesn’t look proud. Instead, his expression looks critical, and when the play runs out, he taps the icon on the screen to pause it.
    “Can you rewind so I can see that again?”
    I nod and play it again for him.
    I watch with him this time, and I wonder what detail he is fixated on. I pay close attention to his feet, to the way he moves, and every step is as if it’s choreographed—it’s the same thing I saw the night I taped him and his friends. It’s raw, but it’s brimming with potential. Maybe it’s even more, maybe it doesn’t need to be touched. Maybe, Nico’s style of play is just the thing my father needs.
    “I’m too slow. Look,” he says, pausing and dragging the player backward. He lifts his finger and looks to me to show him how to start it again. I press the button and he nods. “There, look. I know that guy—Garrett. I’m so much faster than he is. He shouldn’t be that close to me, let alone close enough to get his hand on my jersey. I’m too slow. How do I fix that?”
    I watch it again, and even though Nico makes the same remarks, this time in whispers, I ignore him and try only to see what he sees. I think we are looking at it differently, though. He’s seeing his flaws, which are all things my dad can help him with. I’m seeing the things he does right. He does so much right.
    “He has a head start on you. The line always will. But, look…here.” When I stop the video this time, I drag it in so we can view the touch better, the way Nico instinctively bends and twists out of the defender’s grasp. “You knew what to do.”
    “I don’t know anything,” Nico says quickly, lifting from the table and picking his helmet up from the ground. My leg is suddenly cold from his absence. He turns to face me, his eyes on the screen at first, then on my face. Even the air stops, the breeze taking a pause to fill the quiet between us with a little more urgency, until Nico’s gaze breaks away.
    “Tell your dad I’ll see him tomorrow.”
    The video remains paused in my lap, and the boy on the screen walks away from me in real life, never once looking back. I watch it again when he’s out of sight. I watch it through his eyes, and after the fifth time, I finally see it.
    Nico doesn’t want to get caught.

5
    L ast night I dreamt about Nico. It was one of those odd sort of dreams, only partially making sense. He and I were partners in a game where we had to find a secret room in a house that somehow always had a hallway that led to more rooms and more secret doors and hallways. I slept for six hours last night, but my dream felt as if it lasted for twenty. The search went on forever, and the secret room that held some prize we needed