Chapter 11: Round One

"And what do you tell him?" I said.

"That I haven't."

"Every Sunday?"

"Every Sunday since July." He shrugged. "He says I'm a coward. He's right. He says it nicer than that."

"What does he say now?"

"I'll find out tomorrow."

I stood at the counter for one more second.

"Tell him you did," I said. "Tell him she showed up at the help desk at two in the morning and yelled at you."

"You didn't yell."

"Tell him I yelled. It's a better story."

He was still smiling when I left.

Two weeks later, at 6:40 on a Saturday night, I was eating a slice of pepperoni in the library basement.

The open bracket rounds were played online.

Each team logged in from wherever it wanted, and the campus esports channel streamed the feature matches.

Ours wasn't a feature match.

We'd booked the basement club lab, five old PCs in a row under a buzzing light, a whiteboard with someone's calculus still on it.

Betsy came down the stairs with two pizza boxes stacked on her head.

"Team mom," she announced. "Fueling station."

She opened the top box and held it out to me first.

I took a slice.

Everyone was watching me.

Betsy had told them.

I knew because the senior had started bringing extra granola bars to practice and leaving them on my keyboard without saying anything.

I ate the whole slice.

Crust too.

Then I licked my thumb, and Betsy pretended to sneeze so she wouldn't cry, and I pretended not to notice.

Our opponent was a club team from the engineering college called Load Bearing.

They were ranked higher than us on paper.

On paper, we were four rejects and a senior with a job in Dayton.

The freshman was already in his chair, headphones on, staring at the screen.

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