Game On (2 page)

“Tour?” Nails asked. “I don't give tours. This was just on the way to a meeting. Ms. Hart, this campus is six hundred acres. It's up to you to figure it out.”

“Oh,” she said. Her VIP tour suddenly felt a lot less VIP.
“Um, before you go, I just wanted to say … being here is … being here is an absolute dream come true. People say that, but … for me, it is. And I won't take a second of it—not a single second—for granted. And I am persistent. I want to be the number-one player in the world, and I'm going to get there.” She wasn't usually so direct, but she was being genuine. It felt right. And she felt powerful saying it.

Nails was as unmoved by her statement as he was by the movie star they'd passed earlier. “Everyone wants to be number one here,” he said. “Everyone's a phenom. That's why our scholarships are provisional. You have six months to prove you not only want to be a star, but also that you have the goods to pull it off. Six months, or you're out. Have a nice day.” With that, he was gone.

As Maya stood there alone, the fear that overwhelmed her outside the gates returned. It pounded her like a wave. But this time, she understood it. After fighting like a dog to get in, after busing down the entire eastern seaboard to get here, that urge to run was really the intense and all-too-familiar feeling that she didn't belong. That Maya might quite possibly be in way over her head.

At the first sign of trouble, Maya always turned to her mother. When girls kept chanting “Bigfoot” at her in fifth grade (Maya grew five inches that year) and when her tennis skirt split up the back during the finals of the Spring Invitational (showing everyone in the stands London, France, and half of Barcelona), her mother had been her rock. She might not have always been able to solve the problem, but just being there to listen made Maya feel better. After Maya's antipep talk by Nails filled her with molten dread, her mother was the one person she
couldn't
talk to. Her mother had already been so worried about sending Maya out on her own, so Maya didn't want to put the woman in the hospital with one phone call. As Maya walked up the stairs to her dorm room, she felt not only incredibly anxious, but also incredibly alone.

She reached the door to her room. Even if it wasn't
Shangri-la, she thought, imagining what could be on the other side, it was hers. At least for the next six months, she'd have someplace calm and relaxing to retreat to. What she found when she opened the door, however, was what could only be described as a crime scene.

The two beds were stripped bare. There were ransacked closets, opened drawers—and towels covered in fresh red handprints. What on earth had happened in here?

Maya started to poke through the debris on a desk when the door closed hard behind her. She turned, startled, and found an Asian girl with a towel wrapped around her head. Her hands were covered in red.

“Are you the new roommate?” The way the girl asked, so monotonic, was almost as unsettling as every other ounce of this moment.

“Uh, I'm not sure,” Maya responded hesitatingly. “What happened to the last one?”

“I caught her looking through my things and had to kill her,” she said bluntly. Maya just stared, her hand still wrist-deep in this girl's stuff. “Oh, relax.” The girl laughed. “I was just dying my hair.” She undid the towel. Sure enough, half of her hair was red; the other half was shaved completely. “Last week was blue, the week before, purple.”

Maya touched her own plain blond hair and eased up only slightly. “What about the closets, the drawers …?”

“That's just how I live,” she said matter-of-factly. “Are you okay with that?” She tossed her towel onto the floor.

“Do I have a choice?” Maya asked.

The girl's reply came back swift and flat. “No.”

“Then, sure, I'm totally okay with that.” Maya smiled as if to say,
See, I can banter. We're bantering. Please like me.

“I'm Li Sun,” she said, still in monotone. “My friends call me Cleo.” Maya wasn't sure which category she was being put into.

“You're a golfer,” Maya said. The only thing not thrown about the room was a set of golf clubs. They were spotless, with spotless white golf club covers, and were propped up in a spotless white golf bag.

“I am,” Cleo said. “You know anything about golf?”

Maya thought hard. Lie or tell the truth, lie or tell the truth? “Not a thing,” she finally confessed.

“Good. I don't know a thing about tennis,” Cleo said, motioning to Maya's rackets. “So we won't have to bore each other with all that crap.” Cleo was nothing if not blunt. Maya got the sense that it was meant to be off-putting, but she sort of liked it.

“Is everyone in Watson a scholarship kid?” Maya asked.

“Welcome to the projects, baby,” Cleo said, loading her ear with earrings. “Watson is for all the poor saps born in the real world. What we lack in trust funds and celebrity parents, we more than make up for in pluck and the ability to digest ramen noodles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

Maya laughed. Cleo eyed her, but her look said,
Okay, she's got some kind of brain.
Maya thought this would've bought her some slack, but instead Cleo focused even harder on her.

“How did you get into tennis?” Cleo asked—well, not so much
asked
as
demanded
.

“Well,” Maya responded, “when I was seven, I found a tennis racket in my next-door neighbor's stuff.”

“In their stuff?” Cleo asked. “You a thief?”

“No,” Maya said, hesitating. Finally, she confessed. “In their trash.”

“Hm,” Cleo said. For some reason, that seemed to please her. “Go on.”

“Um, it was the middle of winter, so all I did with it was hit icy snowballs. Pretty soon, I was able to knock out all eight windows in the garage door, on purpose. Since it was cheaper to pay for tennis lessons than to keep replacing the windows, my parents used their savings to enroll me in classes. I've basically been on a tennis court ever since.”

Cleo began circling her. “Twenty-four-seven, huh?”

Maya eyed her. “Yeah.”

“Must've sucked when all the other kids were hanging out at the mall. Or hooking up at parties …”

This was clearly a test. Maya didn't know the rules or what it took to pass it. So she stuck to being honest.

“I used to complain about it,” Maya said. “But deep down, I sort of knew: The court wasn't a prison. It was a hideout.”

Cleo leaned back. She seemed … satisfied.

“How long have you been at the Academy?” Maya asked, eager to shift the focus.

“Eight months,” Cleo replied. “The US, five years. Took me a while to get settled in the States before I tried out for this place.”

Maya nodded. “Took me four years of trying to get in.”

Cleo looked at Maya. “It took me four years, too,” she said
finally. “Maybe don't tell other people that, though. It could be interpreted as a sign of weakness, and that doesn't go over too well here. That and Crocs, even if you wear them ironically.”

Maya smiled. Cleo was now trusting her with private details. “You passed the six-month probationary period,” Maya said. “You must be doing something right.”

Cleo laughed. “There is no six-month probationary period.”

Maya was confused. “I just talked to Nails Reed; he told me—”

“Oh, honey,” Cleo said. “Here's a little secret from me to you. It never ends. The minute you're not up to par, you're out on your behind.”

“Are you serious?” Maya didn't come all this way to have to turn right back around.

“You know how long my last roommate was here?” Cleo asked. “Three months. The one before that? Three weeks. They either jump back on a bus or jump in front of one.”

“You're lying.”

“You're right,” Cleo said. “Some are pushed.”

Maya chewed on her lip. She decided that the first step to her survival was to knock this whole subject out of her head.

“You're tough,” Maya said. “You're hanging on.”

“I don't have a choice,” Cleo said blandly. “I've got an entire family back home in China with nothing. Less than nothing. I either make this happen or …” Cleo didn't seem eager to see that thought through.

“Must be a lot of pressure,” Maya said. Cleo didn't
respond. Maya didn't want to press it. “I can't believe you've only been in the States five years. Your English is better than mine.”

“Don't get me wrong,” Cleo said, kicking her things away from Maya's bed. “When I'm in China, you'd think you plucked me straight from the rice fields. But if you want to be an international brand, you need to talk like you were born in the Mall of America.”

“Hard to see you blending in on the rice fields with that hair,” Maya joked. “Or the Mall of America. Or a golf course, for that matter. I don't think I've ever seen a punked-out golfer before.”

“That's because there are none,” Cleo said, a hint of wistfulness weighing down her words. Maya had inadvertently touched something off in her. “I'm going to have to think about that if I'm lucky enough to turn pro.”

“Why?” Maya asked. She was genuinely interested.

“Because the conservative world of China plus the conservative world of golf equals a Cleo I don't think I would even recognize.”

Cleo walked over to the window and looked down at the ground. “See now, life would be so much easier if I could just be her.”

Maya looked out the window, to a girl passing below. She was a blond Glamazon, and she was swarmed by a pack of guys all jockeying for her attention.

Maya took the girl in. “Yeah, she's beautiful,” she concluded. “But between the makeup, the hair, and the clothes, it doesn't look all that easy. It actually looks like a full-time job.”
Maya turned back to Cleo. “I like what you've got going on. Maybe, you know, if you made it big, some little girls would like it, too?”

Cleo looked at Maya. And beamed. “I'll tell you what …”

“Maya,” she told her.

“I'll tell you what, Maya,” Cleo continued, making her first actual effort to give Maya her side of the room. “If you get bounced out of the Academy, I'm going to come hunt you down and hurt you. Because after eight months, I think I've finally found someone not ridiculous here.”

Maya smiled wide, because the truth was, she'd finally found a friend, too. And, for the moment, anyway, Maya was happy to feel a little less alone.

Maya was never so grateful to take a shower in her life. She didn't think to pack toiletries (it would be the first of many things she would realize she didn't bring), so thank God Cleo was a sharer. Maya never knew so many bath products could be made from hemp. As she lathered up with bodywash and rinsed out the shampoo, she hoped she wouldn't spend the rest of her day battling the munchies.

In her hemp towel (thanks again, Cleo!), Maya made the walk from the showers at one end of the floor to her room. She turned the knob only to find the door was locked. Maya knocked. When Cleo didn't answer, she knocked again. “Cleo?” Still nothing.

Then Maya read the memo board on the door. BE BACK.
Be back? Be back from where, be back when?
Maya didn't have her key—wouldn't Cleo have double-checked that? As the reality
of the situation was sinking in, Maya started to panic.
Maybe that memo was old
, she thought. Maybe it had been there when she arrived; maybe Cleo was just sitting inside polishing her golf clubs while rocking out on her iPod. Maya pounded on the door. “Cleo!” She pounded some more as denial gave way to even more panic.

“Some people are trying to sleep.” The voice came from behind her. And it belonged to a guy.

Maya turned to face him as he came out of the room across the hall. From the hair to the clothes, everything about him looked like he'd just rolled out of bed. A sexy bed, but a bed nonetheless.

Maya clutched her towel closed in a death grip. “I thought this was a girls' floor?!”

“It is.” He shut the door behind him. “I was just … visiting.” And lingering. It only made Maya's face redder than it already was.

“I locked myself out,” she said through her embarrassment. Stating the obvious was preferable to a silence that was getting more agonizing by the second.

“That sucks,” he replied. And with that, he walked off.
That's it? No “let me call someone,” no nothing?

“Gee,” she said as she stood there dripping wet and alone. “Thanks for the sympathy.”

Maya began sizing up her options. It didn't take long before she realized she had none. As she looked around, waiting for any of the other girls on her floor to arrive back from class or practice, all she could think of was that famous nightmare of showing up naked the first day of school.

Suddenly, Maya heard the sound of glass breaking. It was coming from inside her room.

The door opened. To the sexy bed-head guy. “How did you …?” Maya asked. She quickly made her way inside to find her window in a million pieces on the floor.

“I climbed the tree outside your window and broke in.” He was awfully pleased. Actually, so was Maya.

“Thank you …,” Maya said, waiting for his name.

“Jake,” he said. He flipped around the dog tag on a chain around his neck. His name was engraved on one side.

“Thank you, Jake,” she said, still holding her towel closed. “I appreciate you doing that for me.”

“I didn't do it for you,” he said. “I did it because I hate this place. Any chance to break something around here, I'm taking it.”

Maya couldn't have heard that right.
Because he hates this place …?

As if to prove it, Jake swiped a flowerpot off the windowsill, sending it plummeting to the ground, where it exploded like a dirt bomb.