Game On (20 page)

“Well, hello, there,” Maya said, smiling. “Isn't this a little early for you to be up?”

“Haven't gone to bed yet,” he said, pulling her in for a kiss. She'd been fighting him so long that freely kissing him—and out in the open—still felt wrong. But it also made it that much more exciting.

“I already ate breakfast,” she said. “But I can make you a shake or something if you're hungry.”

“I can't stay,” he said. “I've got some big news. I wanted you to hear it from me first.”

“You've been offered an Armani underwear campaign,” she guessed. “No, you're being drafted by the New England Patriots. No, underwear.”

“If you want to see me in my underwear, all you have to do is ask,” he smirked.

She gave him a warning look. “Jake …” When he smiled, she did, too. She was so easy to mess with.

“This news isn't about me,” he said. “It's about you.”

“About me?” Maya couldn't even make a joke guess. What kind of news would Jake have about her?

“You know how colleges and Olympic teams recruit from the Academy,” he said.

“Yeah …?”

“Well, so does Hollywood,” he said. “Anytime they need someone who can play a sport on camera, they come here. There's a director who needs someone who can play tennis in his next movie. And …” He paused for effect. “You're one of the few girls the Academy's flying out to audition.”

She just looked at him. “You're such a liar. Me, trying out
for a movie.” She wasn't going to fall for any more of his shenanigans.

“If you don't believe me, ask my dad,” he said.

She eyed him. “Your dad …?” After their big blowout, Jake certainly wouldn't bring his father up for the sake of a punch line.

“He's the one who made the decision,” he informed her.

“You're serious.” She tried to wrap her mind around it. “He must not have heard about me and Travis yet.”

“Oh no,” Jake said. “He heard. He still picked you.”

That was a different kind of unbelievable. “Where's the loyalty in that? Travis has your dad's back on everything.”

“With my dad, business comes first,” Jake said plainly. “It always has.”

Maya couldn't even imagine her dad doing anything like that. Or what it must've been like for Jake to grow up with that.

She felt bad for Travis, but she also couldn't deny the awesomeness of this opportunity.

“You should be excited,” Jake said, reading her mind. Given the permission, Maya smiled huge.

“I could be in a movie,” she said. “Oh wow!” She needed to tell people. Immediately. She took Jake by the hand and dragged him inside.

Nicole was in the living room in the middle of downward-facing dog.

“Where's Renee?” Maya asked.

“She's not here,” Nicole said. “Why are you frothing at the mouth?”

“I'm on a list to be in a movie,” Maya blurted.

“A short list,” Jake said.

“A short list!” Maya said. “For the part of a tennis player or something—they're flying me out there to audition.”

“Congratulations,” Nicole said. “When are you going?”

Maya looked at Jake. “When am I going?”

“I have no idea,” Jake said.

“I have no idea!” Maya said to Nicole, as if that in itself was wondrous news.

Suddenly, one person and one person alone popped into Maya's head. Someone she had to tell this amazing news to above all others, and right away.

“I have to go,” Maya said, racing for the door. She stopped and turned back to Jake, kissing him full on the lips. “Thank you.” Just like that, she was out the door.

Maya ran across campus, through the quad, and around the baseball field, nearly running down two groundskeepers and a kid on a bike along the way. (If the role in the movie involved apologizing to people while running, she would score it for sure.) Finally, she arrived back at her old dorm.

She reached Cleo's door and knocked, hard.

Cleo answered, woken from her slumber. Maya couldn't wait for her to readjust to consciousness—this news was spilling out of her now.

“I'd say ‘guess what?' but there is no way you would guess in a million years, so I'm just going to tell you,” Maya said. “There's a movie director looking for a tennis player. The Academy picked just a few girls to audition, and one of them is me. Me! I could be in a movie!”

“That's great,” Cleo said, yawning. Then she turned and walked back inside.

Clearly, Cleo was still asleep. Maya would have to work a little harder.

“And the director isn't coming here,” Maya continued, letting herself in. “They're flying us out. To Hollywood! I don't know who the star is. What if he's there? What if we're auditioning with him? Could you imagine?” Suddenly Maya was imagining, and it was close to triggering a seizure.

Which made Cleo's choosing that very moment to relace her Converse all the more boggling.

“This is kind of exciting, no?” Maya asked, sitting on her old bed. The slight annoyance in her voice would surely bring Cleo back from wherever she was in this moment.

Or not.

“Why are you telling me this?” Cleo asked. She didn't stop lacing her sneakers.

“Because it's good news?” Maya asked.

“Okay.” That was all Cleo said.

“I mean, you share good news with friends, don't you?” Maya asked. “I'm sorry, can you please stop lacing your shoes for one second?”

Cleo stopped. She looked Maya dead in the face.

“When was the last time you were here?” Cleo asked.

Maya tensed. “I've been here …” She couldn't think of the last time she was in the room. As she looked around for time cues, she noticed the place was a little different. Actually, a lot different. “Right before you got that,” she said, pointing at a guitar propped against the wall.

“It's not mine, it's my roommate's,” Cleo said.

“You got a new roommate?” Maya asked. “When did this happen?”

“Last week!” Cleo said. “She quote unquote ‘plays' that stupid guitar every night like she's Taylor Swift, singing about all the things boys have done to her—which she probably deserved—and I'd freak out on her, but that would just give her something else to sing about!”

“You never told me you had a new roommate …,” Maya said in her defense.

“When's the last time we even saw each other?” Cleo asked. Maya was used to playful banter with her, but this felt different. It felt real. “You abandoned me.”

Maya caught her breath. “I didn't abandon you.”

“And you did the same thing to Renee,” Cleo added.

“How can I abandon Renee when we live in the same villa?” Maya asked.

“Where is she now?” Cleo shot back.

“She's not home,” Maya said, hoping that was the only answer she needed.

“I didn't ask where she wasn't,” Cleo said, “I asked where she was.”

“I … don't know,” Maya finally said.

“No,” Cleo said. “You wouldn't. She's at the pool right now. She's been at the pool every morning and every night for a week trying to get her time down for when her parents visit.”

Maya was taken aback. “Her parents are coming here? They've never come here. This is a big deal.”

“No kidding!” Cleo said. “All Renee wants to do is impress
them, and you were supposed to help her get her time down and you blew her off. Did she or did she not ask you to help her work the stopwatch?”

“She did,” Maya said, growing more undone. “And I did! Once. For a few minutes. But there's a clock there, and …”

“Of course there's a clock there—it's a pool!” Cleo was going from angry to furious. “She needed you there. You. I needed you, too. I've been freaking out about this whole Svetlana thing, spending time with her, which need I remind you
you
told me to do. And to this day, you haven't spent a single minute with her. You've never exchanged a single word with her.”

Maya's face was getting flushed. Her on-court game was defensive by design; she was good at it, but here she had no defense. She didn't know what to do.

“Did you know Svetlana and I started dating?” Cleo asked.

“I didn't …,” Maya said.

“No,” Cleo said. “Of course you didn't. I haven't seen you here to tell you. I haven't seen you in class. When's the last time you went? Better yet, when's the last time you went to practice?”

Maya was full-on squirming.

Cleo just looked at her. “What happened to you?”

“I'm still me,” Maya managed to get out.

“Listen to you,” Cleo said. “You don't even believe what's coming out of your mouth. You're so excited people are talking about you. You think you're somebody now. Who are you? What makes you so hot? What, you're on the cover of a welcome packet? You were on some stupid website? The only
reason people know you is because of who you hang out with. And that ridiculous makeover. You slather paint on your face with a spatula, wear someone else's clothes, and walk around like you're all that. Nicole is a clown, but at least she's earned what she's got. You came here to be the best, and all you're the best at is partying and sucking face with the entire Reed family.”

Maya's eyes teared up. The truth hurt. But she was dumbstruck by how she'd hurt Cleo. That was something she never wanted to do. Or thought she could do.

“I still want to be the best,” Maya said. “I still work hard. I ran this morning. …”

“Who runs in full makeup?” Cleo snapped. She started to get dressed in a hurry. “You said you weren't one of those girls who was all surface and stupidity. But you are that girl. You're the poster child for that girl. I thought we were real friends. But you're nothing but a fraud.”

Cleo grabbed her sneakers and her bag and bolted, leaving Maya behind. Demolished.

Maya sat with Jake on his couch, her eyes red. She was more upset than she could ever remember being. Because this time it was her fault.

“You can't pop a blood vessel over this,” he said.

“Why, because Cleo can't stay mad forever?” Maya asked.

“No,” Jake said. “Because your LA tryout is in a few weeks and you can't go in there wearing an eye patch.”

Jake was obviously new to the whole soothing thing, but he was trying.

“You were right,” she said, her eyes fixed on the wall. “The day we met, I was so excited to be here. I said it was a dream come true. You said give it time. The Academy corrupts. It corrupted your family. And now it's corrupted me. Look at me. Look at what I've become. I'm everything I said I wasn't.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “But did the Academy do that, or did you?”

She looked at him. “What are you saying?”

“I'm saying, who worked your image?” Jake asked. “Who ditched your friends?”

Maya sat up. “I can't believe this. You're turning on me, too?”

“No,” he said. “I'm seeing you for who you really are, just like you saw me for who I really am. You're not this girl. That's not why I'm with you. I couldn't care less about the hair and the makeup and the Christian Louis Vuitton shoes.”

“Christian Louboutin,” she said in a small voice. The fact that she even knew that only disgusted her more.

“I'm with you because you've got a conscience,” he said. “You've just been lousy at listening to it lately.”

He was right. He was absolutely right. She couldn't come up with a defense, because there was none.

“This was all me,” she said. “All me. I'm not a victim of the Academy, I'm a victim of myself. I was so down on myself when I got here. All I was being told and being shown was that I was a reject. Less than everyone else. And I started to believe it. I … I changed to avoid it, instead of changing the way I was thinking.”

She caught a look at herself in a nearby mirror. She pulled at her over-styled hair. Suddenly, the realization of just how ridiculous she looked washed over her like a tsunami. “Oh my God, I look like a moron!”

“You don't look like a moron,” he said.

“No?” she asked. Then she yanked off one of her fake lashes. “How about now?”

Jake laughed. “Those aren't your real eyelashes?”

“Nope, neither is this,” she said, pulling off the other one. The she unhooked a few extensions from her hair. “None of this is mine—the outfit, the earrings. It's all Renee's. I can't afford this. No one can afford this!” She started wiping off her makeup like a madwoman.

“Okay, you're going to hurt yourself,” Jake said. Maya was too worked up to be reasoned with.

“I'm dumping it,” she said. “I'm dumping it all. All this Glamazon BS, it's done. This is why your dad put me in the villa. Why he picked me to go to LA. Not because of anything I can do on a court.”

“He wouldn't have picked you if he didn't think you could pull it off,” he said.

“I didn't come to the Academy to pull something off,” she huffed. “I came here to compete. I came here to be the best.”

“So you're just going to give up on LA?” Jake asked.

She thought about it.

“No,” Maya said. “I may not have earned the opportunity, but I'm going to deserve it. I'm going to do what I came here to do, and that's work my butt off. I'm going to hit those
practice courts all day and all night and all day again. I am going to sweat. I am going to bleed. I am going to hurt. I'm going to deserve this.”

“I don't think I've ever been more turned on in my life,” he said. He pulled her back onto the couch. “You know, I can help you out of the rest of these awful clothes right here and now. …”

Once again, Maya put on the brakes.

“This starts now,” she announced. She got up and headed to the door.