4. jude
jude
Auction night is easier with a clipboard.
The headset helps too, mostly because people assume anyone wearing one has authority, even when that person is a disgraced Omega in an oversized hoodie trying to keep three Alpha swimmers from missing their cues.
I stand backstage with the run sheet clipped to the board, a pen tucked between my fingers, and the kind of expression that makes volunteers hand me things without asking if I’m in charge.
I’m not technically in charge. I am, however, the only person back here who knows where the cue cards are, which means the distinction is decorative.
“Carter,” I say, tapping the run sheet. “You’re after the baseball raffle plug. Be at the mark before they finish thanking the alumni table.”
Carter looks toward the strip of tape near the curtain, then back at me. His shirt is already open two buttons too far for an event pretending to have institutional oversight. “This mark?”
“The only mark with your name on it.”
“I thought we were using stage left.”
“You thought wrong.”
He gives the tape a wounded look but moves, and the Beta at the sound table snorts into his sleeve. Good. If Carter can survive taper week, he can survive being told where to stand.
Backstage is packed with gift baskets, folding chairs, garment bags, and athletes pretending they aren’t checking how they look in the blacked-out window by the side door.
The auditorium beyond the curtain is already loud, filled with alumni, students, faculty, and anyone who showed up because the words athlete auction appeared on a campus flyer.
I can’t scent designations, but I can read the room well enough.
The Alpha volunteers keep drifting toward the curtain when the crowd cheers.
The Omegas at the donation table are nervous, smoothing their shirts and checking the bid paddles twice.
The Beta stage manager has been clenching his jaw since the microphone squealed during setup.
I keep the swim team moving because that’s my job tonight. Carter to the mark. Reece after him. Dinner package ready. Signed gear basket beside the wings. Totals to Marsh every fifteen minutes. Nobody touches the donor sheet unless they want me to remove a finger.
For a while, it works. A student activities volunteer hurries over with three cue cards pressed to her chest. “The announcer needs the dinner package details.”
I take the top card, flip it over, and hand it back. “Tell him if he says men’s freestyle relay like he’s introducing a boy band again, I’m cutting his mic.”
Her mouth twitches. “Can you do that?”
“No.”
She smiles.
“I know someone who can.”
She leaves laughing, and I go back to the run sheet. Easy. Normal. Useful. Those are all things I know how to be when nobody is looking too closely.
Swimming is up after baseball, and the numbers matter tonight.
Everyone knows it, even the ones acting like the auction is just another excuse to get cheered at.
Marsh needs ten grand to keep the program breathing through the spring audit, and every package on the list has been picked apart until there’s nothing left to add.
Dinners. A night out to a club. A free use evening at the local hotel.
I check the order again, counting the three Alphas from our team that should bring ten thousand by the end of the night. Easy enough, I mutter to myself.
“Jude.”
Reece appears at my elbow with Tate on one side and Aaron on the other.
Aaron looks bored, Tate looks uncomfortable, and Reece looks like he owns the hallway, the stage, and everyone who made the mistake of standing near him.
His arm lands over my shoulders before I move.
“Change of plans,” Reece says, easy enough for anyone passing by to think this is friendly. “You’re going on.”
I laugh because the alternative is worse. “Take your hand off me.”
Reece’s fingers tighten on my shoulder. The sound in the auditorium swells beyond the curtain, applause rolling over us as baseball finishes another package. Backstage, people keep moving. Nobody looks long enough to understand what they’re seeing.
“The team needs a big number tonight,” Reece says. “You know what this campus wants to see. Give them the comeback story.”
“No.”
I try to step back, but Tate shifts into the doorway behind me, eyes down and shoulders tense. He blocks the exit without looking at me, which is exactly the kind of bravery I expect from him.
“I’m not on the roster,” I say. “I’m not a swimmer anymore. I’m the fucking manager.”
Reece leans closer, smile still set for the room.
Up close, I can see the calculation behind it.
He isn’t angry. He’s prepared. “You cost us our seed ranking last year. You cost us two sponsors. The least you can do is stand on a stage for ten minutes and let someone throw money at you, unless you want to be the reason the whole program folds.”
I have arguments. Good ones. Accurate ones.
I didn’t cost the team anything. I didn’t make sponsors pull out.
I didn’t choose what happened near lane three.
I didn’t open the side pocket of my bag and find my spare blockers missing.
Only the team knew where I kept them. And only a smaller subset of them knew why I took them.
It was never because of what I couldn’t smell. It was because of what I couldn’t control. Sure, the blockers helped further mute the world around me, but it also helped mute my own pheromones because I couldn’t control them, smell them, or even understand what they were doing without my permission.
I’ve never found out who did it but at that point, no one cared. All they saw was the Omega who couldn’t keep up with their meds.
Reece’s hand stays on my shoulder, while my pulse starts beating hard enough to make my fingertips feel wrong. Behind him, the announcer calls for another round of applause, and the crowd gives it to him.
“Let go,” I mumble, trying to pull away and failing.
He does, patting my shoulder once before his hand drops away. The pat is worse than the grip. “Don’t fuck this up for us,” he says.
Then he walks away. Tate lingers for half a second, his mouth parting like he might finally say something useful. Aaron bumps his shoulder, and Tate follows Reece without looking back.
I stand where they left me, headset pressed to one ear, clipboard locked against my chest. Slightly confused, I look down at the run sheet.
My name isn’t there. It isn’t on the donor list, the stage cards, or the copy Marsh approved this morning.
I’m logistics. I’m the person who tells other people where to go.
A stage volunteer hurries past me with a stack of bid paddles. “Swim team starts in two. Reece is after Carter, right?”
I nod because my body knows how to keep working even when the rest of me goes quiet.
“Great. Thanks.”
She disappears toward the curtain. The curtain shifts, and light spills across the floor in a white strip.
For a second, it’s too close to pool lights on wet tile.
Too close to everyone watching. Too close to the night my body stopped being mine and the room got loud with other people’s version of what happened.
I grip the clipboard harder.
Carter goes onstage, and the crowd cheers. He laughs into the microphone, easy with it, turning once when the announcer makes a joke about private lessons. The bid climbs fast. People shout numbers. Someone whistles. The side screen updates with each new amount.
Four hundred. Six. Eight.
A thousand.
Good. That’s good. Money for the team. Money for Marsh. Money for the program everyone keeps telling me I owe.
Reece waits near the wings, loose and pleased in his open-collar shirt. Tate stands a few feet behind him, staring at the floor. When Reece glances over, his smile is small enough that only I see it.
The announcer’s voice rolls into the next introduction, warming the crowd up for the swim team, calling us dedicated, disciplined, resilient.
The words pile together until they stop sounding like anything.
My pulse keeps getting louder, beating in my fingertips, my throat, the hollow place beneath my ribs.
The stage is only a few steps away.
It might as well be the far end of the pool with my lungs already burning.
Reece glances over at me one last time before walking onto the stage and mouths, “You’re next.”
I really hope that doesn’t mean what I think it means.