Chapter 8: The Fifth

The bracket entry was due Friday at midnight.

That gave us two days to find a fifth player in a school where Carver Satterfield's father had his name on the building.

By Thursday afternoon, I'd messaged every player cut at tryouts.

A dozen people.

Four didn't answer.

Five said they were busy.

One said, "lol no, I want to make varsity next year."

The last one said, "my roommate is in ashfall guild and he said you're toxic. sorry."

"Toxic," Betsy said. "You. You apologize to furniture."

"I bumped the desk."

"You said sorry to the desk, Callie."

We were sitting on my bed with my laptop between us.

The grad student was on a call from his lab, in goggles, with something bubbling behind him.

"What about a random?" he said. "Somebody off ranked who goes here."

"They have to be enrolled. And not be terrible."

The sophomore was on the call too, icing her wrist.

"We could just get a body. Anyone. Put them in, have them stand in a corner."

Betsy sat up very straight.

I knew that face.

I'd known it since third grade, when it got us stuck on the roof of the elementary school.

"No," I said.

"I'm enrolled," Betsy said.

"Betsy, no."

"I'm a body. I have a body. I'm a great body."

"You've never played a video game in your life."

"I played the go-kart game at your house in sixth grade."

"You drove off the same cliff for forty minutes."

"And I learned from that."

The grad student lifted his goggles.

"Let her try," he said. "Honestly, I need this today."

So I made Betsy an account.

She named it nurseJosie.

"That's your real name."

"I have nothing to hide. I'm an open book."

I put her in a bot game on the easiest setting.

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