Playing Defense (Corrigan Falls Raiders) (2 page)

She raised an eyebrow. “I have his cell number, Chris. I speak to him fairly regularly. I’ve never found him hard to get hold of.”

“Huh. Well…he must really like you. That’s nice, isn’t it? He picks up for you, even when he won’t pick up for his players.”

“So he’ll be happy to hear from me, even if I am giving him some bad news.”

This wasn’t going well at all. The Corrigan Falls Raiders are an OHL team, semi-pro junior hockey. Technically, the team wasn’t connected to the school at all. But we had the bad luck to have a coach who thought it was really important for all his players to get an education. “Wait. Bad news? Just that I’m going to be late for practice today. That’s all. You’re not going to tell him something
else
, are you?”

“Well, I should possibly talk to him about your grades, too.”

This conversation was going in a lot of different directions and didn’t seem to be taking a straight line in any of them. “Uh, wait. You said you’d set up a tutor.” I’d asked her if I could just drop functions and chemistry, but the school’s so small there isn’t a lot of choice in any given period. She couldn’t find a way to make my schedule work without those courses, not if I still wanted to get the credits I needed to go to university. Which I still kind of did, even if I
was
pretty sure I’d end up flunking out my first year.

“That’s right. And I think I have someone in mind. But I don’t want to waste her time if you aren’t committed. So, Chris, I need to know you’re going to follow through with it.”

She knew me too well. “I plan to,” I told her honestly.

She smiled, but her eyes were sharp. “I think I’d like a little more than that, Chris. Tell you what. These cows get home safely and get washed,
and
I get good reports from your tutor that you’re making a genuine effort? And I’ll hold off on calling your coach. But any problems with the cows,
or
with the tutoring? I’ll not only call him, I’ll ask him to bench you until your attitude improves. Clear?”

“But—the cows—you don’t—that could have been anybody!”

“I am cruel and unfair. If you want to complain about it, give your parents a call; I’d be happy to discuss the situation with them. Or with your coach.” She waited just long enough to make it clear that she’d called my bluff and I had no more arguments to make. Then she smiled. “Okay. So I’ll hear good things about clean cows and tutoring. And if I don’t…”

She didn’t really need to finish the threat, and we both knew it. So she turned and walked away and I stared glumly at the cows.

“Git along, lil’ dogie,” Tyler told me.

“Dogies are cows, not cowboys.”

“Okay, then, giddy-up. Whatever. Get the cows home and start washing them. I’ll round up the guys and we’ll come help. Maybe we can get it done fast and you won’t miss practice.”

“Yeah?”

Tyler shrugged. “You’re an idiot, but you’re
our
idiot. We’ll help.”

So I started rounding up the cattle; they’d finished licking up the sugar-water we’d sprayed all over the grass so they weren’t as hard to move as they might have been a bit earlier. And there were quite a few farm kids in the crowd who were happy to show off skills that usually didn’t get a whole lot of attention at school. So we had a nice little parade heading across the lawn, over the driveway, and into the forest on the far side. The cattle didn’t seem to care about the path quite as much as people usually would, so it got a bit hard to keep track of them, but we finally made it back to the fence we’d cut and carefully rewired to make sure no extra cows escaped while these were on vacation.

I noticed that the other guys who had helped me with the prank weren’t helping with the cleanup; hopefully they were collecting the video evidence and not just goofing off. I was the only one of us who had hockey to be taken away, so I was the only one who really cared about staying out of trouble.

Besides, I didn’t want the cows to get hurt,
or
the farmer to get pissed off. It had always been the plan to return them.

It was the washing that I hadn’t counted on.

But as I looked toward the barn, I saw a group of kids waiting for us. There must have been fifty people, way more than were on the hockey team. That was the thing about Tyler: people just wanted to follow him, even if he was doing something as stupid as washing food coloring off cows.

I wasn’t going to complain about the help, that was for sure. It was October, but a pretty warm day, so it really wasn’t that bad to be out there in the sun with my friends. And the farmer was a Raiders fan, like practically everyone else in town, so he thought the whole thing was hilarious.

Overall, I was in a good mood as we finished off with the cows and trooped back through the woods toward the school, only a few minutes late for our after-lunch classes. A bit stinky, because wet cows smell about as good as wet dogs, but that was kind of a badge of honor.

Of course, Tyler couldn’t just let me enjoy the moment. “You need to do the tutoring,” he said as he walked along beside me. “The cows were easy, but Mrs. Davidson isn’t going to forget about the rest of it. And you know how Coach will react if she calls him.”

Yeah, I knew. Coach cared about hockey, sure, but it wasn’t
all
he cared about. Unfortunately. I’d seen him bench guys before, not letting them play until they got their marks up, and I was hoping that this would be my final season in the league. I needed to be on the ice if I was going to get the scouts to notice me. “I’ll do it,” I grumbled.

“Yeah, you will,” Tyler said. He sounded almost threatening. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Sometimes he took the cocaptain job a bit too seriously. But still, I guess it was nice to have him on my side. Nice that he cared enough to nag. And when he was bugging me about hockey stuff, I didn’t mind at all. But tutoring? Math and science tutoring? My life would have been a lot easier if Tyler hadn’t known about it. Then I could have forgotten about it myself, and maybe it would have all just gone away. As it was?

“Tutoring,” I said. It was going to be such a waste of time, unless the tutor offered brain transplants on the side. “Great, yeah.” I looked at Tyler and offered a smile, but one that was clearly a fake. “Super. Tutoring. I’m really looking forward to that.”

Chapter Two

“Chris Winslow? The hockey player? The…” Annalise frowned at me, her normally excellent vocabulary apparently not enough to encompass everything that Chris Winslow was. “He’s… Why’s he even
taking
functions? Isn’t there an easier math he could be in?”

That wasn’t exactly what I’d been focusing on, but she had a good point. Advanced Functions was a university-track course, and Chris Winslow seemed better suited to community college, or, really, to no further education whatsoever. Why
was
he taking functions instead of one of the easier maths? And he was in
my
chemistry class, the one that was supposed to be preparing me for a challenging academic future. It didn’t make sense.

“Maybe he’s too clueless to even know there
is
an easier math,” Annalise speculated. We were sitting in the library, and she stared at the ancient set of encyclopedias like she thought maybe they’d have the answers. “But Mrs. Davidson is usually pretty good at her job. You’d think she would have straightened him out.”

“Maybe he’s not actually clueless.” It seemed unlikely, but I supposed it was possible. It wasn’t like I’d ever had a conversation with him.

“You’re about to find out,” Annalise said. She closed her laptop and stashed it in her knapsack while I watched Chris Winslow walk into the library like he was exploring a strange new world. He even moved a bit differently, as though he were underwater or something. And he was peering around at everyone in the place, looking thoughtful.

He had no idea who I was.

Mrs. Davidson had said she’d told him to meet me here, and she must have given him my name, but clearly it hadn’t meant anything to him. We’d been in the same school for two years, the same classes fairly often, and I hadn’t even registered with him. Kind of insulting, and I was tempted to just let him stand there for a while, looking stupid.

Except, of course, he
didn’t
look stupid. Everyone in the library turned toward him like plants toward the sun. Even Annalise was watching him, although in her case I think the interest was more like a scientist observing a rat in a new maze. But the rest of the students in the library were clearly starstruck.

He was good-looking enough, I guess, if you like that sort of thing. Tall and blond and built. Nothing refined about him, nothing subtle.

The librarian noticed him and came over with a welcoming smile. I’d spent my lunch break in the library four days out of five for more than three years, and I don’t think Mr. Jablowski had ever even looked at me. Chris smiled back at the librarian, a Norse god graciously acknowledging a mortal, and said something that made Mr. Jablowski look around the room, blinking as if he were trying to access some hidden memory bank. His gaze settled on me and he led Chris over.

“Claudia Waring, right?” he asked. He seemed proud of himself for being able to remember such an unremarkable student. “Are you expecting a visitor?”

“Kind of,” I agreed. I looked up at Chris. He seemed like a giant, standing there when I was sitting down, and the light shining from behind him made a halo of his blond hair. “You’re Chris”—I looked down at my papers as if I needed a prompt—“Winslow?”

“Yeah, hi. Thanks for doing this. I’m fu—” He glanced at the librarian before changing his wording. “I’m in trouble if I can’t get my marks up. I really appreciate your help.”

Well, that was more openness and sharing than I’d expected. More than I’d wanted. But as long as he was being honest, I could be, too. “I’m only doing it because it’ll look good on my university application.” Not because I was a hockey-mad drone desperate for the chance to spend a few moments with my hero. I wanted that clear right up front.

“Great,” he said, laying his binder and textbooks on the table next to me. “We both get something out of it. I feel less guilty now.”

I frowned at him. I’m not sure what I’d expected, but this wasn’t it. Annalise shifted beside me and I turned to her. “I’ll see you after,” she said, and headed toward the fiction shelves. If I didn’t haul her out of there at the end of the lunch break she’d probably stay with her books forever.

The librarian faded away, too, leaving Chris standing there, watching me. “Where should I sit?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” I nodded to the chair beside me. “There, I guess, so we can look at the pages together.”

He sat down obediently, and I tried to focus on the book in front of me. But he was distracting that close. I could smell a faint, spicy aftershave or cologne or something, and even sitting down he kind of towered over me, and his shoulder came right into my space, although his chair had seemed to be at a totally comfortable distance when Annalise was sitting in it. When I glanced over at him he was watching me with a loose, casual sort of interest, like he was waiting to see what I’d do next but didn’t expect it to be anything all that unusual.

There was a brief interruption when a guy passing behind us fake-fell into Chris’s chair, leading to a wrestling match that Mr. Jablowski observed with a smile on his face. Apparently play-fighting is totally appropriate in the library as long as it’s a Raider doing it.

When Chris had vanquished his foe, he turned back to me and said, “We’ve had classes together, right?” Then he nodded as if answering his own question. “Are you in my chemistry class? And English last year, for sure. You sat near the front, with that gay kid? I’m terrible with names. He’s in our chemistry class this year, too, right?”

“His name is Oliver, not ‘that gay kid’!”

“Yeah, I just
said
I couldn’t remember his name.” He squinted at me, clearly trying to read my reaction. “I shouldn’t have said he was the gay kid? I could have said, like, the kid with brown hair? But half the class had brown hair. And he isn’t exactly shy about being gay—every time he said something in a class discussion, he’d start with, like, ‘From a gay perspective,’ or ‘As a gay reader.’”

That was pretty accurate, actually. Oliver had come out that year, and his sexuality had kind of taken over his identity for a few months. He was calmer about it now, but for a while there it
had
been hard to see him as anything other than gay. Still, I didn’t like this stranger pointing it out. And I didn’t really like how easily Chris was taking over the conversation, leading it off in his own directions. Dragging it away from what we were supposed to be talking about. Maybe everywhere else in school, everywhere else in the whole town, Chris Winslow was large and in charge. But this was the
library
. This was
my
ice rink, and we’d be playing my game here. I needed to establish my authority. “I had no idea you were actually conscious in English last year. I’m surprised you even noticed what he was saying.”

There was a moment when I thought maybe I’d made an impression, but then he just smiled, lazy and confident and annoying. “I guess I paid attention sometimes. But overall, school isn’t really my thing.” Another passerby, this one female, stopped behind Chris. Faith Davis, student council copresident and star volleyball player, leaned over Chris’s shoulder so her long blond hair cascaded down his chest. And
her
chest, I was pretty sure, was practically melting into his shoulder. “Hey,” Chris said, slow and easy.

“Hey,” she replied. I’ve known Faith since we went to kindergarten together, and I’ve never heard her use such a low, husky voice. I guess she saved it for special occasions. “You going to be at Sullivan’s tonight?”

“Maybe for a bit,” he said. “You going to be there?”

“Maybe for a bit,” she said, her voice even more of a purr than before.

“Okay, so you guys can catch up then,” I interjected. I guess it wasn’t my problem if Chris Winslow wanted to flirt instead of study, but he was wasting my time as well as his own, and I really didn’t like having my time wasted.

He smiled a gentle dismissal at her, and he and I both sat and watched her walk away.
She’s an athlete
, I reminded myself. That meant she had good body control, so the graceful sway of her hips was probably deliberate. Deliberate and distracting, even for me. Chris looked as if his brain had taken a permanent vacation.

“If you’re bad at school, why are you taking the hardest courses?” I demanded, trying to get us back on track. “Functions? University-track chemistry? If school isn’t your thing, why are you taking courses that are preparing you to be in school for four more years, at a much more challenging level?”

He nodded ruefully. “Yeah. That’s my mom’s idea. She’s all about ‘keeping doors open.’ Playing hockey is fine, but hardly anyone makes it to the NHL, so I need to have other options. Liking tech classes is okay, but I can do an apprenticeship if I take academic classes, and can’t go to university if I take all techs. So, I gotta take the academic courses.” He grinned at me, open and easy, and his confidence was equal parts appealing and annoying. “Moms, right? Gotta keep them happy.”

I could definitely understand
that
impulse, but there was no way I wanted to get into it, not with someone I barely knew. Besides, I was letting him control the conversation again. “Okay, then. We need to keep your mom happy. You want to start with chem or math?”

And that was when
another
guy wandered over, this one wearing a Raiders jacket. “Hey, Winslow,” he started. I dropped my pencil as loudly as I could, but honestly, even the loudest pencil drop in the world isn’t all that loud. Still, it was enough to catch Winslow’s attention. He turned to me, frowned for a moment, then surged to his feet and spread his arms wide. It was an impressive wingspan, but I didn’t have time to really observe it properly before he raised his voice to a volume I’d rarely heard anywhere in the world, and certainly never in the library.

“Hey, everybody!” he bellowed. I turned to see Mr. Jablowski’s reaction, and found him beaming in excitement. Apparently library-yelling was right up there with library-fighting on his list of favorite things, as long as a Raider was involved. “I need a study bubble,” Chris continued. He swiveled at the hips, letting his arms spread out over his claimed territory. “This is my bubble. Nobody but me and my study buddy are allowed inside. Okay?”

People were actually nodding as if the declaration of a study bubble was a well-established school tradition. But trust me, if study bubbles were a thing, I would have already discovered them and taken full advantage.

He sat down and looked over at me, and I had to really steel myself to keep from being charmed by his grin. “Okay? We’re good? You’re not going to stab me in the eye with your pencil or anything?”

“I don’t think I was going to resort to violence. But—yes, it’s good to eliminate distractions. So, where should we start?”

He made a disgusted noise, closed his eyes, and stabbed the eraser end of his pencil at the page in front of me like he was throwing a dart. He opened one eye to see what he’d hit. “Shit, no, not that. I honestly didn’t get that at
all
in class.”

“The whole point of this is to work on the stuff you didn’t get. So if you didn’t get”—I peered around his hand—“endothermic reactions? Really? You didn’t get that? We did the whole experiment, with the baking soda and the citric acid?”

“I missed that day, I think. Road trip.”

Raiders players
did
miss a lot of school. I think they were supposed to do work on the bus to make up for it, but he probably hadn’t had a whole chemistry lab set up. “Okay,” I said. “Good. This is a good place to start.” I tucked my hair out of the way and said, “Do you have your notes? We can go through the chemical formulas.”

So we did, and it wasn’t terrible. At the end of our session he gave me a big grin and thanked me, and maybe it was a bit condescending, as if he was used to having people help him with all the annoying parts of his life so he’d have more energy to spend being great at hockey. But it also felt genuine, and when he asked if I could meet with him again the next day, he didn’t give the impression he was assuming I’d be free and eager.

So when I said yes, we could meet again, it wasn’t like I was agreeing to torture or something. Technically I guess I was wasting my time, because I could have been studying new stuff instead of reviewing what I already knew, but I could justify that because I was improving my résumé.

And, okay, I admit it. After I hauled Annalise out of the fiction stacks, Chris and I walked out of the library together, and people turned to stare at us. I’d never gotten that kind of attention before. People have never been curious about me or wanted to see what I was doing. Chris and I were going to the same chemistry class, and he stopped at my locker on the way and just stood there totally naturally, as if he chatted with random nerds all the time, and I could practically
feel
myself rocketing up through the social rankings of the school. It would be a temporary elevation, I knew, but still, it was fun.

So I smiled as Chris and I walked the rest of the way to chemistry together. But as soon as we got inside, he headed for his stool at the back of the lab with the other popular kids, and I sat up front with Oliver. And as soon as I was out of Chris’s immediate sphere of influence I actually felt like
more
of a loser than I had before.

I had all the justifications lined up. I didn’t have a lot of friends because I didn’t have
time
for a lot of friends. It was good that I only ever talked to Oliver in this class, good that he was as studious as I was, because that way I wasn’t distracted from the teacher. I needed to do well in this course
and
I needed to actually understand and retain the important things I was learning. I was doing something with my life. I had a direction, and my eyes were on the prize.

All that was true. But when I heard a burst of laughter from the back of the room, heard Chris’s voice rise above it all and say something about how the cow had
loved
it
, I didn’t roll my eyes and feel irritated like I normally would have. Instead, I felt kind of sad. And I wondered, I think for the first time, just how much I was missing by keeping my eyes fixed so intently on the future, rather than taking the time to look around where I was right then.