4. CHAPTER FOUR #2
I finish unlacing my skates while the room dissolves back into everybody talking at once.
My stick chipped in the second, so I take it and my skates down the hall. The equipment-room door is open, and Gianna is behind the counter with a clipboard.
She looks up. “Did your skate survive?”
I lift it. “Yeah.”
Her bottom lip sticks out. “Damn.”
I stop. “What?”
“Cole’s going to be devastated.”
“Why?”
She takes the chipped stick out of my hand and turns it until she finds my number. “He decided you fixed the eyelet yourself and blamed Donovan.”
I stare at her. “Why would I do that?”
“Exactly.” She writes my number down. “So I asked Donovan in front of him.”
I look at her.
“You should’ve seen his face.”
She says it like proving Cole wrong about my skate was a completely reasonable use of her afternoon, then goes straight back to the clipboard.
I keep looking at her.
“Second or third?” she asks.
“What?”
“The chip.”
“Oh. Second.”
She writes it down. “Okay.”
I’m still standing there.
She glances up. “What?”
“Nothing.”
Her eyes narrow. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Now I’m really looking at her. “I’m not.”
“You are.”
“Okay.”
I pick up my skate. “See you.”
“Wait.”
I stop.
Her entire expression changes. “Party at Hawthorne?”
“No.”
She closes her eyes like I’ve personally disappointed her. “Unbelievable.”
I laugh and head back to the room.
Saturday is tighter and uglier, because Penn State has already seen everything we did to them the night before.
We win three-one. Benson scores twice, Percy stops thirty-one, and I spend most of the night finding out that seeing the second option doesn’t automatically mean choosing the right one. I’m tired of talking about retrievals.
Hawthorne is full when we get back.
Still not a party.
That distinction seems to matter mainly to Gianna and Mara.
Stanley has music going, pizza boxes have taken over the coffee table, and every seat in the living room is occupied by somebody I know. Nobody random has walked through the front door all night.
A year ago, that would have been weird. Now it just feels like Saturday.
I take the couch and stretch my legs out. Two games in two nights leaves everything about half a second behind where I want it. My quad is tight, there’s a bruise on my hip, and my right shoulder hurts enough that I’m going to regret sleeping on it.
I get through two slices of pizza before Gianna appears beside me. She sits on the arm of the chair next to the couch and looks down at me.
“Rowan.”
I glance up. “What’s up, G?”
“Do you still have your SPM 240 stuff?”
I think about it. “Probably.”
Her eyes narrow. “Probably yes or probably no?”
“Probably yes.”
“You hesitated.”
I grin, looking up again. “Because it’s been two years.”
“So go look.”
I laugh. “You’re making me search for it right now?”
She takes the pizza box off my lap and steals a slice. “Yes.”
“Bossy.”
“I need the forms.”
“What forms?”
“All of them.”
I look at her.
She takes a bite. “Laptop, Laurens.”
I get up. “Yes, ma’am.”
She points toward the stairs with the crust.
I shake my head and go.
Finding the project takes longer than getting my laptop. I have one folder called school and another called school old, which apparently made sense to me at some point. SPM 240 is eventually inside another folder marked sophomore.
When I get back downstairs, Gianna is waiting at the kitchen table with a notebook open and her phone in one hand.
I sit across from her.
“Found it.”
Her phone goes face down immediately.
I open the folder. “Original pitch. Budget. Facility request. Waivers. Athletics approval. Final report.”
She leans closer. “What did your budget look like?”
“Bad.”
“How bad?”
“Nine lines.”
Her head comes up. “Nine?”
“I didn’t spend much. It was a free clinic.”
“That is still an event.”
“It got an A.”
“You need to stop saying that like it makes your choices good.”
I grin. “There’s also Ives’s feedback.”
Her expression changes immediately. “How long?”
I scroll. “Two paragraphs.”
“That’s it?”
“One of them was negative.”
“Good.”
I look at her. “Good?”
“I want to know what she hated.”
I turn the laptop toward her.
Gianna goes quiet while she reads, her finger moving slowly over the trackpad.
“Send me everything.”
I laugh. “You’re not copying my project.”
She looks offended. “I don’t want your boring-ass youth clinic.”
My eyebrows lift. “Damn.”
“I want the forms.” She turns her phone toward me.
A document is already open with eleven bullet points.
Three are crossed out. “Ives wants the approval chain figured out early. Everybody in that class is going to email her asking who they need to talk to, and she’s going to tell us to figure it out ourselves. You already did that for me.”
“So you’re using mine as a map?”
“Yes.”
I nod. “Okay.”
I share the folder. She immediately goes back to her notes.
“Okay. Idea one. There were eleven. I killed six.”
“Good.”
She ignores that. “Skills competition. Hardest shot. Fastest skater. Accuracy. Camden players. Ticketed. Home weekend.”
“No.”
She looks up, offended again. “What do you mean, no?”
“Facilities won’t give you the main sheet.”
Her brows meet. “Why?”
“Because you’re asking for it on a game weekend. They already need the building for a game,” I say, looking at her. Her brain’s turning.
“So second sheet,” she suggests like I should’ve considered it.
I say, “No seating.”
She looks down and draws a line through something. “Fine.”
I look at the line. “That was easy.”
“I don’t get emotionally attached to bad ideas.”
“So I’m learning.”
She moves on. “Second.” She shifts in the chair. “Outdoor event. The pond behind—”
“Risk Management.”
She groans, her shoulders dropping. “Rowan.”
I laugh, watching her whine. “What?”
“You didn’t even let me finish,” she complains.
“Save your breath.”
She stares at me, annoyed.