The Antelope, the Perfect Spiral
By Emma Hamilton
I never knew I could throw a football like that. My sister was always the athletic one. But there it was: a shrinking leather dot whistling toward the end goal, where I was also standing, waiting to catch it.
Instead of stands, two striped, shoddy tents dotted the sidelines, with faces peering out like piles of tree frogs. The tents, inexplicably, were equipped with giant truck tires, creating a spectators-packed-like-sardines-in-a-peanut-bag-on-wheels situation. The fabric flapped in the wind, and the wheels shuddered with a want to move, making the tent feel like some sort of monster. I think probably no one realized the tents were alive. It’s really a shame how it all went down.
When I caught the ball, the rest of the football team rushed the tents, screaming the “Let’s gooooo” like they do. It was hard to tell who was swallowing whom: the football players or the tents. They wrapped the fabric all around themselves, and they and the watchers turned into a giant rolling red-and-white striped blanket, or some surreal variety of a large, rickety snail, shuddering in the field with laughter. The exuberance! No one could see where they were going, of course, the tent being wrapped around them, so no one could see when one side slowly lifted off the ground. I was still in the end zone, watching as the wheels rose into the air, and then, to my horror, they all full-force tipped over—butts left seats and legs were crushed beneath metal framing and some people disappeared entirely beneath the top-heavy-now-almost-completely-upside-down structure.
Of course, the sudden evacuation of butts from seats left the bottom (now the top) part of the stands weightless, or at least less heavy. The momentum and the sudden shift in weight propelled the tent-snail right into the air, if you can believe it. Like the monster had grown wings or grace, it pirouetted terribly above the ground before colliding with the other tent full of tree frog faces. The second tent buckled, of course, beneath the weight of it all, its occupants suddenly no longer occupants and instead just regular airborne people falling from the bottom (now the top) of the tent and being crushed like the first round of spectators. I watched from the endzone as bones cracked, as screams sounded and then stopped, as hundreds of people who were moments earlier eating hot dogs and wiping their hands on their pant legs and watching me throw perfect spirals got ground up like hamburger between wood and steel and plastic and flapping fabric. Of course, I vomited. The grass was so green, my spirals so unusually perfect.
When I woke up, I didn’t know why I felt so uneasy. I’d slept for nine and a half hours, but still so tired, still so tired, like I’d only napped for 15 minutes. I could hear my sister coughing from the other room, the only sound I’d heard from her in 48 hours. Pounding footsteps in the kitchen, cabinet doors slamming. I could tell by the pace and the creak of the floors that it was Mother. My eyesight was still blurry, of course. I turned over in bed and tried to fall back asleep, but I’d woken up ravenous. My stomach ached and ached and ached, and I put my hands on it. Shhh, honey, I said.
Another cough from the next room over. I wanted to go in there and grab my sister and take her outside and watch her move from the shade into the blinding Florida sun and throw the football. Her tan, lithe limbs jumping and running like an antelope, like a real, live, beautiful animal who was just born maybe not too long ago. Like a just-dipped candle that would never melt. Like a perfect spiral, thrown by me on the other end of the field, caught by me on this end, and I would tuck her beneath my arm and we would run, making the touchdown, and all the fans in the stands would cheer and holler and blow their horns and whistles and thumb their hotdogs, their whooping fading into gentle white noise as we kept on running.
