Chapter 26: Game Five

Sutton sat down.

She put her headset back on with both hands, very slowly.

Game three lasted twenty-two minutes.

We didn't even have to hunt her.

She walked into fights a second late and out of them a second early.

Twice she hit the wrong key and her mage blinked into a wall.

Carver stopped calling for her halfway through.

When their base fell, the screen said FREE TO A GOOD HOME LEADS 2-1.

One more game.

Behind the curtain, the senior had a granola bar in each hand.

He put one on my knee.

Beck put a second one beside it, so there were two.

I ate both.

Nobody said anything about it, and the freshman passed me his water without looking.

"They'll change something," the senior said. "Coach isn't stupid. He's just scared of Carver's dad."

He was right.

When we came out, Sutton wasn't at her station.

She was sitting in a folding chair at the side of the stage, in her varsity jacket, with her hands in her lap.

At her station sat the varsity bench sub.

The junior who'd said maybe.

The one whose dad sold Carver's dad's cars.

He looked across the stage at me and lifted one hand, a tiny apologetic wave.

"Oh, that's cold," the grad student said. "That's ice cold. They benched her on her own stream."

Game four, the junior was good.

He just played his mage like a mage, from the right place, at the right time.

For the first time all night, Carver had a real team behind him.

They won game four in twenty-seven minutes.

2-2.

The fourth floor went quiet.

The back row found its voice again and started chanting Carver's name.

He stood up at his station and put his arms out to them.

Then he looked across at me and made a little hook motion with his hand, reeling something in.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Lost 90 Pounds, Only to Find He Tried to Give Me Away from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.