The Game Can’t Love You Back

by Karole Cozzo

  Mrs. Jabrowski’s hands go to her hips. “Eve, you left my class fifteen minutes early to do nothing more important than change into your uniform and sneakers,” she starts.

  Cleats, I’m tempted to say.

  “Now, I don’t fault students for participating in extracurricular activities. But sometimes there are consequences to missing portions of class. Like the zero you’ll receive for this assignment.” She turns her back, as if the discussion is over.

  As if.

  And suddenly I’m on my feet. “But that’s not fair!”

  She slowly looks over her shoulder, voice cold as she raises one eyebrow in my direction. “Excuse me?”

  “It’s not fair,” I repeat, my voice strong and even. “I had permission to leave class early; I was hardly ‘skipping’ anything. My assignment is almost finished and definitely would’ve been with me tomorrow. And you didn’t send an e-blast.” I shake my head. “It’s not right that I get a zero for the assignment. It’s harsh, and unfair, and … just not right.”

  Marcella tugs at the bottom of my shirt. “Eve. Sit down,” she hisses.

  But I won’t. I can’t swallow the injustice.

  The classroom is mostly silent, with the exception of a few boys who are snickering in the back. Mrs. Jabrowski is practically sneering. “I’m in charge of this classroom and can make decisions as I see fit. I know you think you’re something special, but I can assure you, this classroom is not a playing field. And you’re not getting any special treatment from me.”

  “I’m not asking for special treatment. I’m just asking you to be fair.”

  “I would like to move on with class now.” She actually points at me. “One more protest and you can spend the rest of the period in the detention room instead of disrupting mine.” Mrs. Jabrowski turns her back on me for a second time.

  I glance down at Marcella, her wide eyes full of warning. I’m sure most people would give it up, sit down, understand the meaning of “pick your battles.” I mean, the assignment only counts for twenty points.

  But I’m too filled with indignation, and after riding the roller coaster of emotions I’ve been on for the past twenty-four hours, I’m not in the best place for making smart decisions. And so my mouth ends up opening one more time of its own accord.

  “Yes, it was partly my responsibility, but it was partly yours, too. You didn’t send the e-blast. It’s policy, and you know it.”

  Mrs. Jabrowski whirls around, arm extended toward the door. “You’re finished in my room for today, Miss Marshall.” She hurriedly fills out a detention slip and thrusts it in my direction. “So you can head to detention now. Or if you’d like to continue making your argument, you can stop at the office and take it up with the principal.”

  I accept the pass and grab my things. “Bullshit,” I murmur under my breath as I storm out of the room.

  But once I’m in the hallway, I come to a sudden stop. I have no idea where the detention room is. Not at this school and not at my last school.

  I glance over my shoulder. That wretched woman. I feel so stupid, standing there, needing to ask directions to the detention room.

  Wearily, I trudge toward the main office, cheeks pink as I ask the secretary for the location of the detention room. She directs me to room 116, which is located in a dark, creepy corner near the rarely used elevator and janitor’s closet. Could this be any more stereotypical? And now that its reality is upon me, I feel kind of queasy, because I’m unsure of how it all works, if my parents or coach will be notified that I ended up here.

  I nudge open the door, sort of expecting to find a prison riot in process behind it, but instead it’s just … crickets. The tiny room is oppressively hot and silent, occupied by a few derelict types with their heads on the desks, sleeping. I can’t quite tell if the monitor is reading a magazine behind a desk or sleeping, too. Only a couple of boys are awake, chins tucked, discreetly playing on their phones. Most of them are hiding out in their hoodies. None of the delinquents even bother to turn their heads in my direction.

  None of the delinquents … but one.

  And if I thought this day couldn’t get any worse, boom, there it goes, getting worse, exponentially.

  Jamie’s in detention, too. Fan-freakin’-tastic.

  I didn’t realize it was him at first, the way he fits right in with the rest of them, in a gray, zip-up Pirates hoodie, the hood pulled up over his head, earbuds shoved into his ears. And although his face offers no sign of recognition, I catch the way he fake-casually removes his earbuds so he can find out what’s going on.

  The monitor finally glances up at me, bored. “Whose room are you coming from?”

  I clear my throat, the noise loud and kind of embarrassing in this quiet coffin of a room. “Mrs. Jabrowski’s.”

  I hear it at once from across the room. An obnoxious snort. A murmur. “Told you so.”

  And until that moment, I’d forgotten about his little warning, his assertion regarding Jabrowski’s mistreatment of student athletes. I remember how dismissive she was of my reason for leaving class, how her comments felt unnecessarily personal. But to hell if I’ll acknowledge that he’s possibly right about her.

  I walk forward, giving my slip to the monitor. “You’re in here for an hour,” he informs me, before returning to his magazine.

  I glance up at the clock, confused. “But it’s two o’clock now. School ends at two forty.”

  “You take the late bus,” he informs me without looking up. He chuckles once. “Guess it’s your first time at the rodeo.”

  “I have practice at three.”

  “Well, I guess you’ll be late.”

  The satisfaction oozing out of Jamie is so palpable, it nearly slithers across the floor and covers my feet.

  My stomach drops and suddenly I want to cry. It wasn’t worth it. Twenty points wasn’t worth it. She wasn’t worth it. Not for this. Slinking across the room, I drop into the only empty seat in the minuscule space, diagonal from Jamie. Seriously. If she wanted to punish me, consider it done. I’m definitely being punished.

  I hear him making a tsk-tsk noise behind me. “Would never have expected to see you down here. Talk about disappointing your coach.”

  I flick a braid over my shoulder and don’t bother to turn around. “And look at you, making him so proud.”

  He laughs quietly. “Coach knows what to expect from me. But you … this … they’ll be appalled.”

  That’s it. My head whirls around so fast I’m momentarily worried I strained a nerve in my neck. “Shut up, Jamie,” I snap.

  Those blue eyes light up, like he’s getting a kick out of this. He lifts his chin in my direction. “You get mouthy like that with Jabrowski? Is that how you ended up down here?”

  I grip the corners of the scarred wooden desk. I can admit to the tendency to get mouthy, or I can admit that he was right, that it seemed like she was being unnecessarily hard on me simply because of my devotion to sports.

  Or I can just sit here and try to ignore him.

  From the corner of my eye, I see him settle back against his chair, crossing his hands behind his head languidly. “You can just say it. I was right.”

  The monitor looks up, irritated. “Guys. Enough.”

  We both ignore him.

  “You weren’t right,” I mutter.

  Jamie laughs again, all smooth and arrogant. “Too stubborn for your own good. Seriously. Whatever.”

  A moment later, I glance back at him once. Then again.

  God, he is infuriating, probably the most infuriating person I’ve ever met. I mean, why does he have his hood up in the middle of detention, anyway? This lack of concern, this bad-boy persona … it’s not like any other girls are in here to appreciate it. He thinks he’s such hot shit, those full lips smiling arrogantly, those blue eyes alight at my misfortune.

  I huff. I don’t know why I keep staring anyway.

  I shake my head, refocusing, finally turning all the way toward him. “I
don’t know what you’re smiling about. You weren’t right.” A new wave of anger … and hurt … and embarrassment crests within me. “You weren’t right about anything.”

  “You two.” The monitor raises his voice, clearly annoyed that he’s being bothered to discipline us. “This is supposed to be a silent room.”

  But I ignore him, again, because hell, I’m already in detention and going to be late for practice. And because it’s time Jamie Abrams hears these things from me, once and for all.

  “I’m not out to get attention like some people, and I didn’t ‘steal the spotlight’ because I enjoy being there,” I inform him, arms folded over my chest. “For your information, I’d do just about anything to avoid being there if I could just play the game and leave it at that.”

  “You seemed pretty damn smiley in that magazine feature. Didn’t seem to mind the spotlight then.”

  “That feature was a huge letdown.” Suddenly I’m admitting something to him I haven’t admitted to anyone else. “I thought they were actually going to include the interview, which they used all of two sentences from. They used me for an angle, used the pictures of me in a pink jersey with a baseball glove as a selling point. They didn’t really care about what I do on the field anyway.”

  This shuts him up for a second and I look him right in the eye, because I’m tired of this, of all this, and I refuse to be scared of him, regardless of how his anger scared me yesterday.

  “I have one more season, maybe two, but who knows? You can go to college and play, you can play in work leagues, hell, you can coach your son’s Little League team someday if you want to.”

  My throat tightens unexpectedly and I have to swallow, hard, because I would never let Jamie Abrams catch me being weak.

  “I play, and pitch, because I love to play and pitch. I love being out there, I love every minute of it, I love every part of it, probably the exact same way you do when you’re actually caught up in the moment and not worried about being ‘Ace’ or worried about what I may or may not be stealing from you.” I have to pause, and swallow, one more time. “And knowing what I do, accepting my physical limitations and biomechanics, accepting that no, I won’t be able to keep up with the boys forever, knowing what it feels like to see a limit to my time on the field approaching…” My eyes suddenly feel watery, but I’m too wrapped up in my speech to even care anymore. “To hell if I would ever actively try to take that feeling away from someone else for the sake of being in a freakin’ spotlight.”

  My voice rises as I make one final point. “And maybe if you’d pull your head out of your ass and stop feeling so personally offended by everything I do, you’d see that. You’d see that I love the game every bit as much as you do and deserve to be out there, too.”

  The monitor slams his magazine down on his desk. “All right. It’s just ridiculous now.”

  I whirl around and throw my hands in the air. “Oh, what you are going to do, send me to detention?”

  The monitor looks a bit shocked. I’m kind of shocked at myself. And in that moment I wish I had my own hoodie—Bulldogs, Pirates, or otherwise—because more than anything I wish I had something to burrow inside, strings to pull tight, something dark and comforting to block out this remarkably awful afternoon.

  Chapter 10

  March 17

  Jamie

  I hate working Friday nights.

  I hate working Friday nights, especially when they come right off an away win. It means I have to hustle to get to work on time, and the celebratory mood I leave behind, a mood that only increased in intensity on the long ride home, is something I desperately want to keep going. I know what my teammates do once they get off the bus—they linger in the parking lot, make plans to meet up later, check in to see who has beer or where the girls are going to be hanging out. They always try to include me as I dash off, because none of them really get it. I don’t let them get it.

  “Abrams, what the hell, man?” Matt asks. “George was a Pirate back in the day, and you’ve worked there forever. How come he always puts you on the schedule on Friday nights?”

  Because the tips are best on Friday nights. Because George pays me time and a half because no one else wants to be there on Fridays and because George is decent.

  “I like to have Saturdays off better,” I lie. I cover it with a grin. “No practice, no games … more time to focus on other things…”

  They get my drift and snort in response to this, and Matt says, “All right, Ace, well, text me when you get off. We might still be out.”

  “Yeah. I will.”

  I quickly duck inside my Jeep and close the door. God, I hate working Friday nights, and I’d give anything to stay with my friends, to celebrate, to chill. But there are things in life I hate even more than working Fridays.

  I stare at the center of the steering wheel.

  I’d walked in on her crying over a pile of envelopes the other afternoon. I’d asked her what was wrong, which was a dumb question. What’s wrong now? What bills can’t we pay now? Which collection agency is threatening now?

  My mom had trouble meeting my eye when she answered. “The calculations just never work out the way they’re supposed to. There’s always something. Every time I find a way to save some money, something comes up that sucks it right back out of the bank. If I work more hours to bring in more income, we lose SNAP benefits like that, and the difference in my paychecks after taxes wouldn’t make up for the loss.”

  My hands tighten around the outside of the steering wheel as I remember what she said next.

  “Maybe I should’ve just dealt with him,” she muttered. “What was the point of making him leave if things were still going to be so hard? It was hard before, but at least we could pay the bills.”

  My disbelief must’ve been obvious, because she was quick to add, “Not for me, but so I could take care of you guys. Things you need.”

  “That’s not right,” I said.

  “It’s something they don’t tell you beforehand,” she whispered, “the sad, messed-up thing about becoming a mom. Your happiness means more to me than my own.”

  Screw that. Screw even considering Doug again.

  My foot slams the brake to the floor as I shift gears, and the Jeep bucks out of my parking spot. There are plenty of things I hate more than working Friday nights, so I’ll be behind the counter at the Burger Barn as quickly as humanly possible.

  I fly across town, running a few stop signs, and park in the rear of the already crowded lot. Daryl asks me if we won, nods in approval when I tell him we did, and then fires me up a burger on the house. I wolf it down, tie on my apron, and manage one deep breath before heading out behind the counter.

  There are plenty of kids from East hanging out in the restaurant and at the counter. Kids I’ve known my whole life and kids I recognize now as South transplants. It doesn’t bother me, constantly having my classmates where I work—plenty of my friends work—but some nights it’s tougher to keep up the image than others. Tonight, I’m beat and I don’t feel like it. Don’t feel like playing to the girls. The freshman girls, whispering and giggling, deciding who has the nerve to approach me at the counter and pay their bill. The girls from the local Catholic school, one of whom I’m pretty sure I hooked up with last summer, talking behind their hands while blatantly staring with their eyes.

  It’s a relief when Naomi comes sauntering in and sidles up to the counter. Naomi’s an easy game to play. We’ve been friends with benefits for a while. And friends even longer than that—since the summer after eighth grade, the night of the Fourth of July fireworks at the park. I’d stumbled upon her sitting in a bed of pine needles away from the crowd, drinking stolen peach schnapps years before most of us were drinking. She’d opened up to me about her shitty home life, which sounded a lot like mine. It was the first time we kissed, and some sort of bond formed that night that had lasted over the years.

  Elbows on the counter, I lean down in front of her, catching a breath abo
ut an hour into the shift. “Hey, baby.”

  “Hey, Jamie.”

  She shrugs out of her jacket, showing off a tank top too skimpy for March. The weather doesn’t stop Naomi. Never has.

  “You eating?”

  “Nah. Can you grab me a Diet Coke with lemon, though?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks,” she says when I set the tall vintage Coke glass down in front of her. “How’d the game go?”

  “We won.”

  “You start?”

  “Nah, Coach let Marshall have the start.”

  Naomi rolls her eyes. “How’d that work out?”

  “Pretty much like watching a train wreck.”

  “Well, good,” she says. “Maybe it won’t take your coach too many games to come to terms with how stupid he’s being.” She takes a long pull on her straw, looking up at me, waiting for me to agree.

  “Yeah…,” I start.

  Then I stop, sort of surprising myself, wipe down the counter with a clean rag, and change the subject.

  I lift my chin in her direction. “Where’s everybody else tonight?”

  Naomi groans. “Ugh, we were all hanging out at Becky’s, trying to figure out what we wanted to do. But Meg is going to get back with Hayden; I know it. You can feel her crumbling, and it’s the most pathetic thing ever to watch. So I told her, I don’t feel like hanging out here tonight if you’re just going to sit here, texting him back, being a moron.”

  I chuckle. “Fair enough. No point in being subtle.”

  “Right?” Then she stares off into the distance. “Dipshit Dan is having his poker game at the house tonight. His friends are pigs.”

  Dipshit Dan is Naomi’s stepdad. From the stories she’s told me, he’s on a par with some of the winners my mom has dated.

  “So I just drove here instead of going home; saw your car in the parking lot.”

  Then she gives me the look, that look, the smallest corner of her mouth upturned, her eyes narrowed like a cat’s. “You just going home after?” she asks.