Chapter 32
“If that bounces, I will sue you.” Joel stares at the check as I hold it out to him.
“Okay.”
He eyes me suspiciously. “Where did you get the money?”
I lean against the workbench casually and shrug. “Where did you get your money?”
“Hard work and good investments.”
Bold of him to leave out the generational wealth. “That’s how I got mine too.” I smile, sickly sweet. “We have so much in common.”
He snatches the check out of my hand and scribbles his name on a bill of sale before shoving it at me, glaring. “You haven’t won a single fight, Mary Anne.”
I shrug again just to watch his forehead vein pulse with anger. “‘Mari Williams’ will be engraved on the championship trophy, regardless of what you think, Jamie.”
Joel opens his mouth to yell. Jacob slides up to our workspace. “This area is for contestants and staff only.” Jacob waves pleasantly to a security guard standing beyond the camera crew filming an interview. He waves back. “That no longer includes you, Joel.”
Joel’s jaw shuts so hard that his too-white veneers click together. He turns on the heel of his knockoff loafers and stalks away.
“So.” Jacob turns to me. “Zeta is all yours.”
I look at the bot on the table. Laughter bubbles through me. Silently at first, deep within me like an earthquake. When it makes it to the surface, it’s manic, joyous, and loud. “Yes, she is.”
The rest of my team appears as my manic laughter dies down, Jacob watching with confused amusement. I hold up the paperwork to them, and their eyes go wide.
“Mari, holy shit!” Fatimah yells after a second. She hugs me. “You did it!”
Chris and Sonny stare at the bill of sale like it’s an oddity. Travis glares at it like it’s a parking ticket. “Does this mean you’re staying for the Trot?” Chris asks.
“Yeah, I still have to talk to the producers, but there’s one spot left,” I say. Suddenly, it’s all so real. My hands shake as they hand back the paper. “I don’t expect you all to stay on,” I tell them. “I can’t pay.”
“I’ll stay to help you get ready,” Fatimah says. “You’re right; I can’t stay without pay. I wish I could. I can stay a couple more days, though.” She looks at Sonny with a question in her eyes. They already have an unspoken language. My heart swells for them.
“So can I,” he says, still looking at her. “We’ll stay to help you get ready for the first fight.”
“I can, too!” Chris pipes up.
In unison, we turn to Travis. “Absolutely not. One losing team is enough for me. Joel will expect me back on Monday now that the qualifiers are over.” He turns his nose up at us before collecting whatever he had floating around the workspace and stomping off.
A haughty, shoddy mimic of his unfortunate idol.
I shrug. “Can I ask you guys for one more favor?” They nod eagerly. “Help me talk to the leaving teams, get some spare parts from them.” Many people rebuild between seasons. Maybe they’ll have things they don’t plan to use anymore.
“Hot to Bot is leaving,” Chris says. “My best friend is on that team. I can talk to Mach 37, too. I know their driver.”
“Tell us who, and we’ll do some sweet talking, too.” Fatimah winks. I give them a list of the other teams heading home and what parts they might have, and they leave the workspace like birds leaving the nest.
“Congratulations,” Jacob says behind me. He’s leaning against a table. All of last night’s frustration seems to have left him, as he looks at me with something I could mistake for pride.
The sight makes my clothes too tight. I want to move closer. I want to run away. I settle on saying, “Thank you.”
“Motors, armor, batteries, components,” he repeats back to me as he watches Chris talk to his friend. “I have motors. Drive and weapon. The double fights ate up most of my extra supply, but I have a few sheets of metal and high-impact plastic to spare, too.”
A bark of laughter escapes me unbidden. “Don’t you build your motors from scratch?
” You couldn’t waterboard it out of me, but I still watch his robot build videos on YouTube sometimes.
He’s good at what he does, and I’m forever curious and learning.
It’s what makes me an excellent engineer.
His proprietary motor design has been the talk of the community for ages, and I’ve been dying to get a closer look.
“Yeah,” he says, like that isn’t incredibly cool and ridiculously hot. “I make a lot of extras between seasons.”
I shake my head, incredulous. “And you’re just going to give them to me?”
“I’ll help you install them, too,” he says, drumming his fingers on the table. “If you’ll let me.”
Put me on your team.
I want to say no, but his motors would change everything for me. Distrust still weighs heavily on me, but it’s getting lighter. It’s being whittled away bit by bit.
I must look nervous. “I’ll take the motors out of Kilowatt directly,” he offers.
He takes a step closer and looks me in the eye once more.
While I’m constantly confused by what I see in them, I don’t see a lie.
“I meant it, Mari. I’ll do anything for you.
I told you, you don’t have to do this alone. ”
There’s a creeping dread within me, like I’m walking through a haunted house. “Who were you with last night?” falls out of my mouth before I can rein it in. I have no right to ask. I don’t even know why I care. “When I ran into you, whose room were you leaving?”
He looks at me like I’m a puzzle that’s impossible to solve. I feel similarly about him. “Ramona,” he says. It takes a moment to register who that is. A tall, lean, sparkling personality, as well as looks. “From team Glitterbomb.”
“Oh.” Maybe I should glue my mouth shut so I stop saying confusing things.
“We went to grad school together. She was getting my advice on their chances in the Trot, and then we were playing video games,” he clarifies.
“Oh.” I used to know so many words, but I lose them all around him.
He moves closer, and my vocabulary is truly shot now. “Does that bother you?”
“No.” I cross my arms and look away. “Why would it?”
A small smirk graces his features, dimple dipping into his cheek. It’s devastatingly handsome. “Do you want to know what I told her?” His voice is low, secret, only for us. I swallow instead of answering. “She had a pretty good chance unless you entered.”
“What?” I whisper.
“Now?” His shoulders rise and fall. “I don’t think she has a chance in hell.” He’s fucking with me. He must be fucking with me. This whole thing has been a ruse to throw me off. It must be. “Even if you don’t want my help,” he says softly, and I’m eating my words already. “Take the motors.”
I should say no. But nothing I do around Jacob seems like what I should be doing.
Maybe this is what he means when he says he can’t say the right thing around me.
I can’t take these emotions apart like a machine and figure out why they’re doing this.
There is no error report on a screen. There are no melting wires.
I cannot reverse engineer the outcome I want because I don’t understand why I’m doing this.
I’m a novice looking at something I couldn’t even dream of.
Put me on your team.
“Okay,” I rasp. “I’ll take the motors.” I force my voice a little louder, more confident. “And your help for the Trot.” With only three and a half days until the competition, I need all the help I can get. Even if the thought of working with Jacob sets me on edge as much as it thrills me.