Playing Defense (Corrigan Falls Raiders)

by Cate Cameron

  Was that me?

  I looked down at the large, flat envelope on my desk. In a minute or two I’d open it, and I’d do my best, but would I be prepared? Maybe my mom had been right. I’d lost sight of my goals; I’d gone out with Chris when I should have been studying. I’d spent valuable time going over the basics with him when I should have been working on the more difficult equations myself.

  Chris didn’t need to do well on this test. Chris didn’t even want to go to university, not really. For him it was just a backup plan, something he might do someday when there was nothing else on his schedule.

  “Okay,” the supervising teacher said. “It’s now nine o’clock. You can open the envelopes and begin.”

  I took a deep breath, trying to center myself, and then ripped the top of the envelope off. I refused to look over at Chris. I didn’t want to see him enjoying himself.

  …

  If anyone ever tells you math contests are fun, tell them they’re crazy. I mean, it would have been easy if I’d treated it as a joke. I could have just sat there and drawn pictures of talking dogs on the answer sheets if I’d wanted to. But I’d actually tried to study for this, and I was going to try to do well, too.

  So for two straight hours, I mathed. I guessed at some of the answers, sure, but not until I’d really worked to solve the problems. And some of them I actually knew. I kept looking over at Claudia, wanting to let her know that I was doing okay, but she was in the zone, totally focused on her own stuff. When the teacher in charge said the time was up and we had to put our work back in the envelopes and hand it in, I thought maybe she was going to argue with him. She seriously looked like she was going to grab the envelope and run. But she didn’t.

  The teacher dismissed us and then asked me to help him move a few tables back where they belonged. By the time that was done, Claudia was long gone.

  It seemed weird that she’d left without saying anything, but maybe there were some weird math contest traditions that I didn’t know anything about. Maybe she had to go sacrifice a chicken or something. Or a can of chickpeas, to avoid any vegetarian-related issues.

  Anyway, I texted her to say I thought I did okay and that it had been kinda fun. Then I texted her again to say that didn’t mean I ever wanted to do another math contest in my life. And then I went to the cafeteria and waited for the lunch crowd to arrive.

  When they did, though, Claudia wasn’t with them. I texted her again, just asking her where she was, and then I tried to call her. No answer.

  I asked around, but no one had seen her.

  I finally went to the library, and she wasn’t at our table, but her book-loving friend was. “Hi,” I said, wishing I could remember the girl’s name. “You haven’t seen Claudia, have you?”

  She shrugged like she didn’t want to tell me but also didn’t want to lie. I straightened up and looked around the room and caught her looking kind of sneakily toward one of those study boxes. Carrels, maybe they’re called? Anyway, I followed her gaze and saw a familiar set of shoes on the legs tucked under one of the desks. I nodded a sort-of thanks to reading girl and tried to think of what to say as I walked over.

  “Hey,” I whispered, crouching down by Claudia’s side. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. But she barely glanced at me before looking back at her book. Her math book.

  “Did the contest go okay?”

  “I need to study.”

  “Oh. Okay. Have you got a test?”

  “Eventually.” She sounded miserable, and maybe a little pissed off.

  “Was the contest really bad? You’re probably being hard on yourself—how long before we get the results?”

  “We?” she demanded, turning to stare at me. “How long before we get the results? As if you actually care how you did?”

  “Okay, you. How long before you get the results?”

  There was a moment when I thought maybe she was going to keep fighting, or else stand up and storm out. But then she sighed, like she was exhaling the anger out of her body, and said, “Four to six weeks.”

  “Shit. That’s a long time to be going crazy.”

  She looked away from me, then looked back. “I’m being completely unawesome, aren’t I?”

  “This isn’t your peak of awesomeness, no. But you’re still good. You’re fine. You’re allowed to be upset about stuff.”

  “You never are.”

  I thought about disagreeing with her, but shrugged instead. “I’m not you. You’re allowed to be.”

  “And you just have to put up with me?”

  “I don’t have to. If you get to be too much, I can walk away.” I reached out and wrapped my hand around her ankle, which was maybe kind of a weird body part to focus on, but it was handy. “But you being upset about something you take really seriously not going well? Trust me, it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than that before you’re too much. A lot more.”

  She covered her face with her hand, like she was trying to keep herself from seeing me. “I need to spend more time studying,” she said. “If I don’t score well on the contest, I need to have better grades.”

  “You’ve already got, like, a ninety-eight percent, right? There’s only so much higher you can go.”

  “Well, I need to go there.”

  I thought about arguing. I knew exactly what I’d say, and I was pretty sure it made sense. But I didn’t think it was what Claudia wanted to hear, and it didn’t seem like a good time to push her in a direction she didn’t like. “Okay,” I said. “Whatever you need to do. You can stop wasting time tutoring me, okay? I’m caught up now, and you’ve done it long enough to put it on your application. So you can save some time there.”

  She nodded, looking miserable. “I think I have to.”

  I was surprised by how much that bothered me. Partly because I’d actually started to like the math and chemistry, and definitely liked having some idea of what was going on during classes. But more because it felt like Claudia was giving up on me.

  It didn’t really make sense. I mean, math to her was like hockey to me, and she’d never questioned that I had to put hockey first. She’d never complained about the road trips or the curfew or anything. So I was just being a suck because she’d been supergood to me for a while, and I was going to miss it. And I guess because I had been trying, and it was kind of disorienting to think I could just stop caring now. But that was my problem, not hers, so I smiled and took a waddling step backward without rising from my crouch. “Okay. You study. I bet you did fine on the contest, but if you need better marks, I get it.” Maybe I should have left it at that, but I didn’t want to. So I added, “But let me know, okay? When you do have time? If you want to take a break, or whatever?” I pulled my phone out and held it out like a rare artifact. “Communication device. I’ll keep it with me. Activate it at will.”

  She nodded a bit shakily, but managed a smile. “Okay,” she said, and she looked back down at her books.

  So that was it. I was dismissed.

  I took another step away, then straightened, turned, and headed for the door. Claudia’s friend was watching me with a satisfied expression, like she was happy things were going back to the way she wanted them. I tried to forget about her and just kept moving.

  I had the library door pushed open when I sensed movement behind me, and I turned around as Claudia reached me, practically tackling me. I staggered a little, more from surprise than from the impact, and she reached up and grabbed my head, pulling our mouths together almost violently.

  She was a whirlwind. An explosion inside a sealed drum. Controlled frenzy. Her hands slid down to my shirt, grabbed hold of the fabric, and held on tight, and her mouth demanded everything I had.

  There was whooping, some from the hallway and some from inside the library, and I knew people were staring, and knew that Claudia would hate that. But she didn’t even seem to notice.

  She didn’t let go of me, but she let me move us out of the doorway and int
o the hall, where at least we were less likely to get yelled at by a librarian. And that was about the end of my common sense and self-control. I spun us around, pinned her to the wall, and pressed up against her. I braced my forearms on either side of her head, trying to block out the curious stares, or maybe trying to cage her in and keep her from running.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “Nothing to be sorry for,” I told her. Then I kissed her, slow and deep. And right there in the hallway outside her study cave, she kissed me back, and everything was okay again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I don’t know how I did on the contest,” I told my mom for what felt like the fiftieth time. My dad was there at the dinner table, too, and he seemed just as ready for a topic change as I was. My mom, on the other hand? I think she must have smelled blood in the water, because she was not letting me swim away. Our dinner table had become a feeding frenzy, and I was the meal.

  “You have some sense of how you did. The first questions are always easy, right? So you did fine on those. What about the others? Did you complete all the problems, or did you run out of time? Are you worried that you didn’t offer clear enough explanations, or that you didn’t get the right answer at all?”

  “I don’t know,” I repeated stubbornly. I honestly didn’t. I was jumping back and forth from thinking I’d done okay, or maybe even well, to knowing I’d totally bombed it. I’d never felt like this after a contest before, and I didn’t like it. And my mom was not helping.

  “Did you feel prepared?” she asked.

  And that was what this was really all about. “It’s a test of all the math I’ve learned in the last seventeen years,” I said. “Spending a few hours more prepping for it really wouldn’t have made a difference.” Or maybe it would have. But I’d torture myself enough with that thought; no need to invite Mom to join in.

  “Chris did fine, though?” my dad asked. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to help me, trying to help my mom, or just blundering around cluelessly.

  “It doesn’t matter how he did,” my mom said. “Academics aren’t important to him. His future isn’t important to him.” She shook her head and laid her fork down on the edge of her still-full plate. “People like him, living in the moment, not caring about anything…they’re never going to accomplish anything real, Claudia. Someone with no goals of his own can’t help you reach yours, but he can get in the way of them.”

  My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I knew it was probably Chris, texting me that practice was over. I ignored it, focusing so hard on my plate that I wondered if the food was being reheated by the power of my gaze.

  My mom wasn’t done. “We need to move forward,” she said. We. Her and me, I guess. Like it was our life we were planning. “If the contest results aren’t what we hoped for, we’ll have to make sure that everything else is absolutely top-notch. You need to take this as a challenge. A call to arms, perhaps.”

  A call to arms. I thought of Karen, of our stupid idea about backing each other up and marching into battle together. I’d forgotten that this math contest wasn’t team-based, and that universities admitted individual students, not groups.

  My phone vibrated again, and I pushed away from the table. “Excuse me,” I said, already halfway to the sink with my dishes. “I’ll go study.”

  “Study,” my mom said. “Not talk on the phone.”

  I didn’t answer her. And I didn’t answer Chris’s texts, either. I just went upstairs and tried to lose myself in calculus and chemistry. The equations on the page were balanced and made sense. I could control them, and I needed a bit of that right then.

  …

  “She’s not texting back?” Karen asked carefully. She’d seen enough of Claudia and me in the days since the math contest; she knew that “careful” was the only way to be.

  “Maybe you should try.” I said it without looking at Karen or Tyler. What would it mean if Claudia texted Karen back when she was ignoring me? Nothing good, that was for sure.

  And Karen clearly realized the same thing, because she didn’t pull out her phone. Letting me live in denial for a little longer. “She’s probably hurrying to get here. The roads aren’t good, so she needs to concentrate on driving.”

  That was all totally possible. Claudia had wanted to meet us at the arena instead of me picking her up at home, clearly as one more attempt to keep me away from her mom. And the roads really weren’t good: not a full-on blizzard or anything, but unexpectedly icy for that time of year. Which, of course, just made me start worrying that Claudia was in a ditch somewhere. But the town wasn’t that big; if anything serious had happened between her house and the arena, we’d have heard the sirens.

  “I’ll wait for her,” I said. “You guys go ahead.” We’d just finished a Sunday afternoon game and only had a few hours of freedom before curfew. Claudia had said she could either come watch the game or come hang out afterward, and I’d chosen the hanging out. I’d had another really good game, and there’d been scouts in the stands and agents, too, and a couple of them had talked to me after the game, which was pretty huge. I’d played hard, just like I’d been practicing lately, and it was clearly all paying off. Everything was coming together, and I’d wanted to tell Claudia about it. But standing there, waiting, I was wondering if I was going to get the chance. But none of that was Tyler’s or Karen’s problem, and if I had to deal with whatever was going on with Claudia, I’d rather do it without an audience.

  Which Tyler seemed to understand. He tugged Karen toward his truck, and she frowned like it was against her better judgment but went with him anyway.

  Claudia showed up about ten minutes later, and my irritation dissolved as soon as I saw her face behind the steering wheel. She didn’t look good.

  She pushed her door open as I was walking toward it, jumped out and slipped on the icy pavement, recovered, and then tumbled into me. My jacket was open and she sort of burrowed inside, wrapping her arms around my waist and burying her face in my chest.

  “Bad drive?” I asked.

  She squeezed me a little tighter, and I hugged her back, trying to make her feel a warmth that was more than physical, and we stood there like that for quite a while. Finally she pulled away enough so her mouth wasn’t pressed against my sweatshirt and said, “She just won’t stop. None of it’s all that bad, but it never ends.” She straightened a little and finally looked up at me. “I’m sorry I was late. She wouldn’t let me get out the door.”

  I nodded. I didn’t really understand, I guess because it had been too long since I’d lived with my parents, and because even when I was living with them it had all been fairly relaxed. I couldn’t think of a single time I’d had trouble getting out of the house because my mom was busy yelling at me, and really couldn’t imagine how I’d have felt in that situation. But I guessed I didn’t have to worry how I’d have felt, because it was pretty damn clear how Claudia was feeling.

  I kissed the top of her head. “You want to get in the truck, or your car? You’re going to get cold out here.”

  She nodded slowly, then hit the button to lock her car and shoved the keys in her pocket. “You drive. Where are we going?”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “No,” she said, pushing away from me. “That’s all we ever do. You take care of me, you worry that I’m cold even after I’ve left you standing in a frozen parking lot for almost half an hour, you’re fine with whatever I want to do… It’s not fair, Chris. I want to be more awesome with you.”

  “I’m not complaining.”

  “No, you never would.” She shook her head. “But that doesn’t mean it’s right. So you tell me. What do you feel like doing tonight?”

  Well, that was too much of an invitation. I didn’t say the words, but I grinned at her, waggled my eyebrows, and expected her to laugh at the suggestion. But she didn’t.

  “Sex,” she said like she was talking to herself.

  “Just kidding,” I said quickly. “I mea
n, not kidding, but, you know, I’m fine. We can just hang out.”

  “It’s not like it’s a big thing for me, either, though,” she said, clearly thinking as she spoke. “I’m not religious. I don’t think it’s a sin or anything. I know about birth control and how to protect against disease. I’m not afraid of having sex with you, and I know you’d like to. So why haven’t we done it?”

  “Because you don’t feel ready.”

  “Because I’m too selfish to compromise even a little, even when it’s something that’s important to you and not important to me.”

  I shook my head and opened the door on her side of the truck. She climbed in, and then I said, “As sexy as it is to think about you compromising and doing this thing that you don’t really care about, as a favor to me? No. Don’t do me any favors.” I shut the door and took a deep breath as I headed over to the driver’s side.

  I climbed in and started the engine so we’d get some heat. “You want to get something to eat? Karen and Tyler went to play pool at the Domino, I think. You want to do that?”

  “What, you’re going to make me beg?” She was trying to sound like she was joking, but there was something wrong in her voice, something shaky.

  “No. No begging. I just don’t want to have sex with you. Not like that.”

  That was when she started crying. Shit.

  We just sat there for a bit, me staring out the windshield wondering what the hell to do, her staring out at the same view, with tears running down her cheeks.

  “I have no idea what’s going on,” I finally said. “I know you’re… I don’t know, mad at me? For distracting you before the math contest. I get that, and I’m sorry. But I don’t know what I can do about it now. I know I don’t want to be involved with you doing something else that you regret afterward. I don’t want to take the blame for the contest and sex. No thanks.”

  “That’s what you think I’m doing?”

  I was too tired for this, and I had no idea what to say anyway, so I just shrugged.