Friday, October 10, 8:04 PM, halftime at Hornet Field.
About 2,800 people in the stands, and the band still marching off.
I stood outside the concession window with my hands in my jacket.
No apron.
Inside, Jenna's crew was out of cheese sauce.
Kendra walked out to midfield with a wireless mic.
The team followed her and lined up across the 50.
Owen was fourth from the end, helmet under his arm.
His orange kicking tee was stuck in his waistband, like always.
A folding table sat on the 50 with three white boxes on it.
Gold ribbon on every lid.
Dr. Ashby sat in the front row on the home side.
Rod Haskett sat three rows behind him in his red polo.
"Hornet families!" Kendra said.
The PA bounced her voice off the press box.
"Thank you for your amazing generosity!"
She walked to the first box.
She lifted the lid right on cue and turned it toward the stands.
It was empty.
She'd known it would be.
She peered into it anyway, like a woman on a game show.
"Unfortunately, due to the previous treasurer's mess, delivery has been—"
The crowd noise covered the rest.
Heads turned.
Not to the field.
Up, to the concession window.
To me.
A man in row 20 said my name to his wife.
Let it go.
Owen's on that field.
Then Owen turned, helmet under his arm, and searched the stands for his mother, not his aunt.
He found me.
I walked down the ramp to the fence.
The booster table sat at the fence line by the 40.
Hector Salinas stood beside it in a Tri-County jacket.
He had Invoice #4471 in his hand, red stamp facing out.
Parents were already crowding him.
"Where are the uniforms?"
"She posted they'd be here."
"Eleven thousand two hundred forty raised, it said."
"I paid forty," a dad said.
Hector held up the invoice.
"Sixty sets, finished, sitting in Lima."
"Nobody paid for them."
"She says that's the old treasurer," a mother said.
She pointed at me.
I didn't look at her.
I looked at Hector.
"Hector."
"Read them what she sent you."
He took his phone out of his jacket.
He'd said he didn't read people's texts to people.
He looked at the parents, then at the invoice in his other hand.
Then he read it out loud, slow, like a man reading a receipt.
"'Invoice the club.'"
"'Drive money's in my Venmo, not the district's.'"
"'I'll move it after homecoming.'"
He turned the screen to the crowd.
"August twenty-eighth."
"Nine forty-seven."
Nobody said anything.
Out on the field, the second lid came up empty.
Dale Brenneman stood at the end of the table with a clipboard of bus rosters.
"Dale," I said.
"What's the district got from the drive?"
He didn't check anything.
He'd had Ellen Voss's email for a week.
"Zero."
A mother next to me took out her phone.
She thumbed to Venmo and scrolled.
She held it up.
Paid Kendra Wozniak · Uniforms!! 🏈 · $40
"That's her," she said.
"That's not the club."
"That's just her."
The man beside her opened his.
Then the woman behind him.
Phones lit up down the fence, one after another, like Christmas lights on a timer.
"She texted it herself!" somebody yelled.
On the field, Kendra stopped at the third box.
She saw the fence.
She set the mic on the table and came off the field fast.
Jenna came out of the stand behind me, still in her gloves.
Jason came down out of the bleachers.
Kendra reached the fence breathing hard.
"What is this?"
"Hector read your text," the mother said.
Kendra smiled at the crowd.
"It's a booster Venmo."
"I just used my phone."
"You wrote 'my Venmo,' Kendra," I said.
"Not the club's."
"Not the district's."
"Yours."
Jenna stopped dead.
"You told us it was the club's!"
Kendra spun on her.
"You told people to use it!"
"Because you said to!"
"You posted it, Jenna!"
Jason stepped between them.
He opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
He stood there with a hand up to each of them, like a crossing guard with no cars coming.
Dr. Ashby had come down from the front row.
He stood at the end of the table with his program rolled in one hand.
He didn't speak to Kendra.
He spoke to Dale, loud enough for the whole fence.
"District account."
"By the fifteenth."
"Yes, sir," Dale said.
Up in the stands, Rod Haskett had stopped clapping for the band.
He was watching Kendra.
Then he watched the phones.
Kendra turned to me.
Her face had gone a color I'd never seen on her.
"You set this up."
"I asked Hector one thing."
I kept my hands in my jacket.
"You told the whole stadium I made a mess."
"You texted him where you put it."