My Team Cut Me on Stage for a Younger Star, So I Took Last Place to the Final novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Number Seven
Crown's owner cuts Joel on stage and makes him hand his jersey to a nineteen-year-old, and that afternoon a widow offers him the last-place Owls, who will be sold to that same owner if they miss the top ten.
Glenn Moberly called my name into the microphone, and nine thousand people stood up for me for the last time.
I walked out onto the stage of the Moberly Motors Arena in my black and gold jersey with the 7 on the back.
It was Pacific Crown's midseason fan day, and I thought he was going to tell them I was coming back.
I had captained Crown for eight years and won them three titles.
For the last eight months I'd worn a black brace on my right wrist.
Moberly put his arm around my shoulders and smiled at the cameras with his very white teeth.
"Twelve years ago I walked a nineteen-year-old out on this stage, and you booed him," he said.
The crowd laughed, because they knew the story.
"You were wrong then. I'm asking you to trust me again."
He squeezed my shoulder.
"Joel's wrist has made the decision for him. Today he retires as the greatest player this team has ever had."
Nobody had told me.
The cheering came a beat late, and it sounded confused.
Then the music changed, and Trey Pruden jogged up the stairs on the other side.
Trey was nineteen, with bleached hair and a gold chain, and last season he'd been my sub.
I had taught him how to stand in a doorway in this game.
"Joel," Moberly said into the mic, "would you do the honors?"
He meant the jersey.
He wanted me to take off the 7 and hand it to the kid, with nine thousand phones held up to film it.
Behind him my old coach chewed his nicotine gum and looked at the floor.
At the bottom of the stage stairs, the league's weekday caster stood with her microphone and didn't come up.
I pulled the jersey over my head.
The brace caught in the sleeve, and the whole arena watched me work it free with my left hand.
Trey took the jersey without looking at me.
"Sorry, man," he said, off the mic.
His hands were shaking.
Twelve years ago I'd been the kid on this stage, taking the spot of a player called Sparrow.
They'd told me she quit to go to college, and I never met her.
Backstage, my old coach handed me a folder and called me kid, the way he called everyone under forty.
"Crown pays the rest of your contract and the surgery," he said. "Forty thousand for the wrist."
"What's the catch?"
"You sign by midnight, and you don't work for another team in the Circuit this season."
The Circuit was our league, twelve pro teams that played a five-on-five shooter called Holdline.
"So I sit at home."
"You sit at home and get your hand fixed, and nobody has to watch you play badly."
At four o'clock I was still sitting in my car in the parking garage with the folder on the passenger seat.
Somebody knocked on my window.
She was a small old woman in a brown cardigan with an owl brooch pinned over her heart.
I rolled the window down.
"Mr. Strickler, I own the Valley Owls," she said. "We are oh and eight, and our coach quit two weeks ago."
The Owls were the last-place team in the Circuit.
"Ma'am, I can't hold a mouse for more than two minutes."
"I don't need you to hold a mouse, young man. I need someone to tell them what to do."
The Owls lived in a rented ranch house in Reseda, forty minutes up the freeway.
The pool in the backyard was empty, with a lawn chair standing in the deep end.
Inside, five gaming desks were jammed into the living room under a ceiling fan.
Five players were in the middle of a practice match against some amateur team.
A tall woman with a black braid and a backward Dodgers cap took one look at my brace and turned back to her screen.
The smallest player was a freckled kid in a hoodie three sizes too big.
His headset was broken, so his game came out of a laptop speaker taped to his monitor.
"That's Bodie," the old woman whispered. "He's eighteen. He sleeps on the couch."
"Why the couch?"
"His stepfather threw his computer on the lawn last year. He doesn't go home."
I stood in the doorway and listened to Bodie's speaker.
In Holdline you can hear everything through a wall: boots, reloads, a shield going down.
For eight months I couldn't play, so I'd listened to the game with my eyes shut.
The other team's anchor, the player with the big shield, fired twice and reloaded.
He did it again the next round, two shots and a reload.
Bodie lost both rounds to him.
The round ended, and the screen gave them thirty seconds before the next one.
"Their anchor reloads after his second shot," I said. "Every time. Count two, then go."
Bodie looked over his shoulder at me.
The woman with the braid said, "Who asked you?"
"Copy," Bodie said anyway.
The next round he waited behind a door with his lips moving.
Two shots hit the wall beside him, and the reload clicked through the little speaker.
Bodie went through the door and put the anchor down before the magazine was in.
That made it five rounds to four.
Bodie turned around in his chair with his mouth open.
The woman with the braid stopped talking.
My phone buzzed with a text from my old coach.
"Midnight, kid. Don't be stupid."
The old woman was holding out a pen.
"I don't have a contract written up," she said. "I wasn't sure you'd come."
I took the parking stub out of my pocket and wrote the terms on the back.
I made myself head coach for the rest of the season at three thousand dollars a month.
I signed it on the kitchen counter, and forty thousand dollars of surgery went away with my name.
She signed under me in careful cursive and tucked the stub inside her cardigan.
"There's something you should know before you unpack," she said.
"Go ahead."
"There are three matches left in the season. If we aren't in the top ten when it ends, I sell the slot the Monday after."
Behind me, Bodie had gone quiet.
"You have a buyer?" I asked.
"He came to my house on Tuesday with a very generous offer."
She touched the owl brooch.
"His name is Glenn Moberly."
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