She smiled victoriously. “Then you’re definitely catfishing him. People do it all the time. I saw a show about it on MTV. The reveals are always juicy.”
I didn’t want to think about the reveal or anything having to do with catfishing. All I wanted was to prove myself in the world of gaming. If that meant taking Gabriel Corrigan down a notch, then I was okay with that. He and his brother had it coming. At least this way, it would teach them a lesson.
“So, you guys approve?” They both nodded and grinned at me. “You don’t think it’s too intense?”
Charlotte rose to her knees on the hard, wooden floor. “I think it’s brilliant. And when you beat him in the final round, he’ll realize how wrong he was to tease you all these years.”
I hoped she was right. Either the Corrigan boys would finally back off, or I’d be asking for a lifetime of humiliation. At this point, it felt like things couldn’t get worse. I didn’t have anything to lose and I had everything to prove. Maybe the girls were right. Maybe this was brilliant.
“Okay, you’ve convinced me to jump over the ledge,” I said firmly.
I took my phone out of my pocket and opened up the Battlegrounds app. There was Gabriel’s last message—the one he’d sent last night asking me to be partners. A little shot of excitement went through me when I clicked on it and typed out my reply.
CurrerBFighting: If your offer is still good to be partners, I’ll take you up on it. Let’s do this.
It didn’t take long for a response message to pop up. Gabriel had lunch the same time as I did. He was probably sitting in the cafeteria now, at the jock table, typing on his phone. The added knowledge that I was officially catfishing him kind of added to the suspense. Would he see right through me? Or, did he still think I was just some guy he’d met online?
Battlescar13: Heck yes! I’m signing us up now. We’re going to win!
The breath I hadn’t known I was holding left my lungs in a whoosh. I stared up at my friends with wide eyes, feeling both exhilaration and fear wash over me.
“He said yes.” I grimaced. “Guess there’s no going back now. I’m catfishing Gabriel Corrigan.”
“Kicking butt and taking names,” Lexi said, holding aloft her carton of milk. “To girl power.”
“Girl power,” Charlotte repeated, holding her own carton up and grinning.
I shook my head. Guess people really did say that. My mom would be so proud to see us girls lifting each other up like this. I grabbed my glass of water and tapped it against their drinks.
“To girl power,” I said proudly. “And teaching those boys a lesson they’ll never forget!”
“Hear, hear!” Lexi shouted.
As we tore into the rest of our lunches, I couldn’t help the massive grin that worked its way onto my face. This morning, I’d come to school wondering if I was about to make the biggest mistake of my life. But with Lexi and Charlotte behind me, I knew I could pull this off. Battlegrounds was my game. It was my territory. No one stood a chance against me.
For the first time in history, a girl was going to win the gaming tournament.
Gabriel was never going to see it coming.
Chapter Five
The high of finally nailing down my partner for the tournament was fast dwindling as the school day went on. I hadn’t forgotten about my meeting with Gabriel Corrigan after his hockey practice. The fact that I was now project partners with the guy I was secretly catfishing made a lump the size of a mandarin orange take root in my belly. It stayed with me, even as I walked through the doors into the ice rink just a block from the school.
Immediately, a chill wrapped its icy fingers around me. I shoved my hands into my hoodie pocket and made my way through the empty concession area to the stadium. Without an audience booing and cheering, the whole place actually looked kind of shabby. Worn wooden benches sat empty, the plexiglass surrounding the arena smeared and fingerprinted. I supposed it always looked that way, it was just the seductive thrill of the games that made it seem especially exciting on the weekends.
The boy’s hockey team was still in the rink as I made my way down to the second row of bleachers and grabbed a seat on one of the hard benches. It didn’t take long to find number thirteen. Gabriel and his brother were easily the biggest players on the team. They were scrimmaging, chasing after a puck that had just flown across the ice without someone to guide it. Mr. Hart skated after them, his face hardened with concentration as he watched his players fight for the puck. Gabriel was winner. He broke free from the pack with impressive strength and directed his large, muscular body down the ice, causing me to gulp with nerves.
Maybe I hadn’t thought this through.
How was I going to face him, knowing everything that I did?
He was going to take one look at my face and know I was CurrerBFighting from the game. I just knew it. And then he and his brother were going to torture me until I had to leave school. Leave town. Heck, leave the state.
Sweat began to form on the back of my neck. I swiped at it, instantly annoyed at myself for being so weak-willed. It wasn’t like Gabriel could read minds. If I just kept it together, played my charming old self, he’d never see it coming. The Corrigan boys were known for their brawn, not for their brains. This would be easy, as long as I didn’t freak out.
“All right boys, that’s a wrap!” Coach Hart blew his whistle and waved his finger in a circular motion in the air. “Good practice. Everyone remember to take it easy for this weekend’s game. Rest up those muscles. See you tomorrow.”
As the rest of the team headed in toward the locker room, number thirteen broke off and skated toward me. My blood pressure rose as he unfastened his helmet, pulled it off, and gave his shaggy head a shake. His cheeks were flushed, possibly from the cold, or maybe from the awesome maneuvering he’d just done on the ice. As he got closer, I could tell that his hair was wet with sweat and clinging slightly to his forehead. It wasn’t a bad look for him. Not at all. It was no wonder the Corrigans had fangirls lining up at hockey games for them. They knew exactly how to milk it.
“Hey,” he said in a gruff voice, raising his chin slightly in greeting as he stepped off the ice. His gaze flicked up to meet mine for the merest second before he tucked his head and stared hard down at the ground.
“Hi.” I chewed on my bottom lip, determined not to start this meeting like our last one. All we needed to do was decide on our topic and then this meeting would be over—and the torturous churning inside of my gut would go away. Pulling my notebook from my backpack, I flipped through the first few pages. “So I’ve been thinking about what we could do for the project. It’s got to involve something with a lot of activity. Something that involves the muscle and skeletal systems and would be easy for us to document. This is just a bunch of word vomit, but I’ll spit it out there and see if you like anything. Deal?”
I looked expectantly up at him and a jolt went through me when I found him staring at me, his mouth grim and forehead wrinkled in concentration. The moment our eyes met, he shifted his weight and moved his tight grip up on his hockey stick.
“Fine.” His jaw muscles contracted and loosened. “Shoot.”
“All right.” Always the man of many words. I looked down at my scrawled notes. “I started with a dance theme. Ballet, hip hop, belly dancing, swing, two-step, ballroom dancing. Any of those sound good?”
One glance up at his horrified expression was all it took to tell me those were out of the question.
“Okay, so you’re not a dancer,” I said with a laugh. “Don’t worry, I won’t make you study ballet.”
“Thanks.” The instant relief on his face was almost enough to make me giggle.
Instead, I chuckled quietly and looked down at the notebook, mulling over the options. Maybe I should’ve stuck to ballet. It wouldn’t been a sweet kind of torture to put on the boy who’d helped make my very existence miserable since seventh grade. But I was already poising to torture him by using him for the tournament. I
may have been a bit vindictive, but I wasn’t cruel.
“Well, there’s also running, jumping, walking, speed walking, bicycling, basketball, baseball, and horse riding.”
I’d gotten that last idea from Charlotte and her new barrel riding obsession. It would’ve been awesome to study the human body as it worked together with a horse to compete.
Still, Gabriel didn’t seem all that attached to any of my ideas. When I looked up at him again, he simply shrugged noncommittally. Annoyance flared up in my gut. Surely, he wasn’t going to make me do all the thinking for this project. If he had any good ideas, he needed to speak up.
“Hey, Gabriel!” Joe Brewer came barreling onto the ice in his skates, a hockey stick in his hand. He threw his hand into the air and waved at Gabriel with an embarrassing enthusiasm. “I bought a stick!”
I watched as Joe skated toward us. Honestly, it was like watching a baby giraffe walk for the first time. Where Gabriel was natural and fluid on the ice, Joe was a mess. He nearly plastered himself against the plexiglass as he failed to break in time.
“You ready, G-man?” he called.
G-man? No one dared called one of the Corrigan boys such an infantile nickname. At least, not if they wanted to survive high school. I squinted over at Gabriel, scared for my little gamer buddy’s life, but he didn’t seem insulted. Instead, he cracked a halfway grin, went over to the gate, and leaned over it.
“In a sec, Joe,” he said, nodding in my direction. “School stuff.”
“Right, right.” Joe puffed out his chest under his hoodie, as if he thought it would make him look more muscular. “I’ll just be shooting a puck around over there.”
I put down my notebook and walked toward the plexiglass. “I didn’t know you played hockey, Joe.”
He wagged his eyebrows at me. “You bet yeah, babe. With the G-man’s help, I’ll be the best player on the team before long. You’ll see.”
I had to hold back a smile as he began to skate toward the other side of the rink. It would take a miracle to transform that mess into the best player on the Rock Valley High hockey team. Still, it was always endearing to see Joe’s enthusiasm. Whether it was challenging me to the hundredth round of Mortal Kombat, or seeing him try to hit on one of the freshmen girls hanging around the club, it was entertaining.
“So...uh...G-man?” I turned toward Gabriel, unable to help myself to his new nickname. Anything to prod him a little in the side.
He winced and dragged a hand over his damp hair. “I keep hoping he’ll stop that.”
“Oh believe me, he’ll never stop.” I glanced over at Joe wobbling on the ice and laughed. “The guy has no filter. No off button. No social skills. And apparently, no athletic talent. But he’s a good kid.”
Gabriel nodded solemnly, his eyes trained on Joe. “Yeah, true.”
“So don’t be too hard on him, okay?” I waited until his gaze darted back to mine before continuing. “If you’re planning on hazing him or something, please don’t. Joe gets enough crap at school. He doesn’t need the hockey team piling on.”
The little lines around his mouth tightened as he stared back at me with an intensity that made me want to shrink a little. Still, I kept my spine straight. As much as Joe annoyed me at times, he was still my little bud. And the only boy at Rock Valley who would still game with me. If Gabriel and his brother were planning on picking on him, I’d be in his corner.
“He just needs somebody to give him a few tips,” Gabriel said, finally breaking the intense silence. He sucked in his cheeks and then exhaled loudly. “That’s all I’m doing.”
I narrowed my eyes slightly, a look my mother often did when she thought me or my sister were lying. It seemed to have the same effective on teenage boys, because he huffed and rolled his eyes.
“I swear, that’s all it is.”
Disbelief morphed into slight shock as I watched Gabriel plop himself on the bottom bleacher, wearing a sour expression. He seemed genuine, like he really was going to help Joe.
Someone could’ve knocked me over with a feather.
I’d never heard of the Corrigan boys doing anything nice—for anyone. Not that I hung around them often. I tried to keep a wide radius between me and either one of them. Usually, it was tales of Michael’s escapades that reached my ears. Just last week, he’d given one of the sophomore kids a dip in the toilet of the locker rooms, head first. It was stuff like that that I’d come to expect. Helping Joe Brewer out on the ice? Never.
“We should get back to the project,” I said, not feeling as brave as I did a few minutes ago. The guilt was back, pressing in on my stomach. Lying and catfishing weren’t the kinds of things I usually did. But I’d thought it would be easy with Gabriel. After all, he had it coming. This little interaction had me questioning everything.
“Yeah.” He swallowed and stared hard at the ice, refusing to meet my gaze.
Picking up my notebook, I sat silently next to him on the bleachers, leaving a couple of feet between us for safety. His pads made a lot of noise every time he shifted his body weight, but I kept my attention glued to the college-ruled paper in front of me. I’d run out of ideas.
“What about...” He shifted again and looked over at me, hesitation in his eyes. “What about this?”
He swung his arms wide and nodded toward the ice.
“What?” I stared dumbly at Joe falling on his rear on the other side of the rink. I’d hate to think of what that was doing to his skeleton and muscular system. We could probably write a book on Joe’s clumsiness and how bad it was for his anatomy.
“Hockey.” Gabriel beat his fist on his chest twice with a proud smile. “We could record some video at the game this weekend. Do a report on what we see.”
“Um...”
My breath hitched in my lungs with uncertainty. I knew pretty much nothing about hockey, other than it was colder than Antartica in here. Gabriel would definitely have the advantage here. Was that fair?
I opened my mouth to speak, but shut it quickly. My first instinct was to fight him off. Go back to one of my earlier suggestions. But seeing the pride on Gabriel’s face kind of put a damper on that. Maybe I owed him this, even if he didn’t know it. I could concede this one battle. In a couple weeks, he’d still hate me, but at least this wouldn’t add to the flames.
I could be the bigger person.
“Sure, why not?” I shrugged and closed my notebook. “I can get on board with hockey. And my dad has some camera equipment in his research lab I can borrow to film the game.”
Gabriel nodded, a hint of what almost looked like a smile on his lips. “Perfect.”
Oddly enough, he didn’t look half as intimidating now.
“Sounds like we have our project.” I dared to smile back at him, the charitable feeling in my heart washing away the remaining guilt from lying to him. Being the bigger person felt nice. “This’ll be good. Maybe, at the same time, you can teach me what all the excitement is about pushing a rubber disc down the ice. Because honestly, I just don’t get it.”
“Maybe I will.” His eyes twinkled with humor as he glanced down at his hands and then back at me. “Miracles do happen.”
I found myself frozen, unable to look away from the softness in the slight upward curve of his lips. It was so unlike his brother and so foreign on that face that it was like finding a Shotgun Hammer in Call of Duty. It almost felt like we were bonding, in a weird sort of way.
Never would I have expected to have a civil conversation with a Corrigan brother. There was this weird little spark of heat, right below my belly button. It tickled a bit and gave me the sudden urge to giggle like a little girl. My cheeks heated at the effort to keep it in and I finally found the will to look down at my notebook in my lap.
“Um...I’ll see you at the game, I guess.” I shook my head, willing my brain to turn back on.
“And in class,” he offered.
“Oh yeah. Duh.” I smiled painfully up at him. “That, too.”
What
was happening? Was I blushing? This girl needed to get ahold of herself or I was fast going to become a giggling, eyelash batting version of Lexi. There was no way I could pull that off, so for all our sakes, I needed to snap out of it.
But with the blushing also came back the guilt. The heavy reminder that I was using this guy to get what I wanted. It didn’t matter what our history was, lying to someone’s face didn’t come easy to me.
“Look! Gabriel’s got himself a little girlfriend,” a mocking voice said behind me.
That was all it took to put me back together. I didn’t even have to turn around to see the mirrored image of Gabriel’s face. It was his brother coming our way, his thick Axe cologne already announcing his arrival.
“And...that’s my cue to get out of here.” I jumped up and stuffed my notebook in my bag as fast as I could. “See you, later.”
It would’ve been a gift from the heavens if I could’ve avoided a confrontation with Michael, but it didn’t seem like they were passing them out today. As I turned to leave, he stepped into my path, his lips curled in a cruel smile.
“Didn’t see your name on the sign-up list for the tournament, Frye.” He cocked his head to one side. “You chicken out already? You know that prize money is mine.”
I met his gaze with a stare of my own. It would’ve been so nice to be able to shove it in his face that in fact, I was partnering with his brother, but now wasn’t the time for the big reveal. Instead, I was going to have to eat crow.
It was all part of the master plan.
“I didn’t chicken out,” I said slowly, choosing my words carefully. “I just couldn’t find a partner.”
His eyebrows rose with glee. “What’s the matter? No one wants to play with a girl?”
Venom entered my stare. That only seemed to make it worse.
He laughed and patted the stomach of his t-shirt. “It’s just what I thought. Stay where you belong, Frye, and leave the gaming to us. Better yet, go make me a sandwich and then watch me dominate this tournament.”
Rage poured into my veins. I glanced over my shoulder to see if his brother was catching all of this. Sure enough, Gabriel stood there looking down at the floor. He wouldn’t even meet my eye. All the goodwill I’d been feeling toward him went up in steam. No doubt he was silently laugh at his brother’s sexist and boring commentary. I couldn’t stand the sight of him. Of either of them.
Dare You to Catfish the Hockey Player (Rock Valley High Book 6) Page 4
