Chapter 8: One Map

Seattle lost to Chicago at noon, two maps to none.

The Canadian watched it on his phone in the studio green room and read every round out loud.

When it ended, the room went quiet.

"So that's it," the Texan said. "One map."

"One map," I said.

At four o'clock the studio in Burbank was full of black and gold.

Crown fans had driven over from downtown to watch the last-place team get put away.

The widow sat in the front row with her knitting bag on her lap and Glenn Moberly two seats down from her.

My old teammate sat at the casting desk in Toni's chair, in a baseball cap with his stream's logo on it.

He was thirty, and he talked through every silence on his stream.

"Joel says it's a wrist," he said into his mic before the first map. "I played next to him for six years. That's a bench."

The Crown fans laughed.

On the other side of the stage, Trey sat down in the middle of the Crown row with the 7 on his back.

He didn't look over at us.

I knew things about Trey nobody in the building knew.

I'd sat behind him in practice for a whole season.

He reloaded after every kill, even when his gun was nearly full.

It was a nervous habit, a hand that needed to do something after it won.

In the first map, I gave myself Mac's ears and waited.

Trey took a fight in the hallway on A and won it.

Then, through two walls, I heard his reload, a long slide and a click.

He did it again two rounds later with only three bullets gone.

Crown led four rounds to two, and I called my first timeout.

"Mac," I said. "When Trey gets a kill, he reloads. Every time."

She looked at me over her shoulder.