Playing Defense (Corrigan Falls Raiders) Page 6

  Claudia sighed. “Okay. It was just an idea. We’ll have to be awesome some other way.”

  “So, wait,” I said. “Am I in? Like, if I say something now, is it…am I speaking as a sister?”

  Karen squinted at me. “That doesn’t bother you at all? The gender issues?”

  “No,” I said honestly. And then just to stir her up I added, “I kind of like it. It makes me feel pretty.”

  “I say he’s in,” Claudia said, smiling in my direction.

  Karen nodded her head. “Yeah, okay.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “So, then, as a sister, and in the most supportive way possible…I like Dia’s plan. And you, Ren, are being a big chicken.”

  Karen stared at me, then turned back to Claudia, who was watching her closely. Then Karen turned back to me. “A chicken?”

  “Yeah. Like Dia said, it’d be scary to try something new. So you’re trying to avoid it. You can be more awesome than that.”

  “Who are you?” Karen said. “You’re a small-town hockey player, Chris! You’re supposed to just grunt and talk about ‘scoring’ with as many different subtexts as you can find. You should go get in a fight with someone, not sit here talking like you’re auditioning to replace Oprah.”

  “When we’re speaking as sisters, I’d prefer it if you called me Topher.” I tried to channel my inner princess to give the words a little more kick. This whole thing was a lot of fun.

  “Let’s talk about your challenge,” Karen said. “What are you going to do to be awesome?”

  “I have to think of it myself? That’s not fair. Dia gave you the niceness challenge.”

  “Maybe that’s how it should work,” Claudia said thoughtfully. “It could be an extended version of truth or dare, without the truth. We could come up with challenges for each other, but they’d be based on, like, really trying to help the other person see their own awesomeness, not trying to embarrass them. And you can turn down a challenge, but you have to sleep on it or something. You have to give it real thought.”

  “I love it,” I said.

  “That’s just because we haven’t come up with a good challenge for you yet,” Karen growled. “See how much you like it once you have to actually do something.”

  “What do you have to do for your niceness challenge?” I asked her. Then we both turned to Claudia, who was clearly the brains of this operation.

  Claudia shrugged. “I don’t know. She could…volunteer somewhere? Do random acts of kindness? But, no, because she could do those sneakily, and that would defeat the purpose.” She turned to Karen. “We’re not challenging you to be nice, because you already are nice. We’re just challenging you to let people see that.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Karen said. Then she smiled gleefully. “What’s Topher’s challenge?”

  They both looked at me thoughtfully. I felt like something growing in a petri dish.

  “He’s smart,” Claudia finally said. “Lazy, but smart. But he either thinks he isn’t, or he thinks it doesn’t matter. Or he’s afraid he isn’t, so he won’t try in case he fails.”

  “Tyler says the same thing about hockey.” She saw my expression and made a quasi apologetic face that didn’t seem to stop her from continuing with the same train of thought. “He says Chris is big enough and has enough natural talent to be able to coast, and so he just does.” For the last part she at least looked at me and changed the pronouns around. “He says you’re a good player now, but you could be really great if you tried harder.”

  This wasn’t quite as much fun anymore. “I’m not good at school.” I said it as firmly as I could. The hockey stuff was a conversation for another time, or maybe just a reason for me to not try too hard to defend MacDonald from the opposing team’s goons the next time we had a game.

  “Yeah, okay, you’re not good at school now,” Claudia said, and the firmness in her voice made mine sound like jelly. “But you could be. Considering the classes you’re taking and the lack of effort on your part, the fact that you’re still close to passing shows you’ve got potential. You just need to try.”

  “Oh my God,” Karen said, clearly delighted. “You’re totally a future guidance counselor. You’ve got it all down. Is that your hidden strength that we need to uncover?”

  “It’s not hidden,” I said. “Being responsible and mature is Claudia’s surface. But what’s Dia up to?”

  Karen leaned back and squinted at both of us. After a moment, she snapped her fingers and made a sort of dzzzzt sound while waving her hands back and forth between us. “Personality transfer! That’s what your challenges should be. Topher, you need to do something responsible and academic, and work harder. Dia, something impulsive and youthful, something that isn’t hard work.” She leaned back in her chair, clearly satisfied with herself. “You may each choose the task for the other,” she said regally, as if giving us a gift.

  Claudia looked at me doubtfully, and I felt like I could actually see her thoughts. Should she give me something easy, hoping I’d be similarly merciful with her? Or hit me with the full blast of whatever she thought I should be doing differently? “Let’s start small,” I suggested. “Just one thing, something we can do in the next couple days and see how it feels. See if it makes us feel more awesome or not.”

  She nodded, and squinted at me thoughtfully. But I already knew what I was going to challenge her to do. “Have you ever been to a Raiders game?” I asked her, sure I knew the answer.

  Her eyes widened a little. “No. I don’t… It’s not really my thing. Hockey. Crowds. Violence.”

  “It’s not that violent,” I said, hoping I was telling her the truth. The games weren’t usually too rough. I mean, it’s a physical game and there are lots of hard checks, but we weren’t a big fighting team. We didn’t have a designated goon like a lot of teams did, a player whose only skill was fighting. We were all expected to stand up for ourselves and for our teammates, sure, but if we could do it without getting penalties, everyone was happy. “And honestly, the fights aren’t as bad as they look. We’re wearing so much padding, and it’s hard to get your weight behind a hit when you’re on skates. You can’t really plant your feet, you know?”

  One look at Claudia’s face showed me I’d made things worse. I turned to Karen for help.

  “You can sit with me,” Karen told Claudia. “I don’t like the fights, either. We can ignore them together.” She looked at me. “You could get Dia a ticket next to me, right?”

  Karen usually sat in the area reserved for players’ families and girlfriends, so having Claudia sit there would be a sort of proclamation. I didn’t mind the idea of having people think Claudia and I were dating. I didn’t mind it at all. But there was no way Claudia would know what sitting in that section meant, and it wasn’t fair to let her wander into that without warning. “I could get you both tickets somewhere else,” I said.

  “Somewhere near the snack bar,” Karen said. “I love their hot dogs.”

  Claudia looked a little dazed, but she finally gave a jerky nod. “Okay,” she said. “I can go to a hockey game. I’m vegetarian, though, so no hot dogs.”

  “They’re not required,” I said. “But you can’t just hide in the bathroom, okay? You have to try to enjoy yourself. You have to actually watch the game and maybe even cheer. Right? You need to go into this with the spirit of awesomeness.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I am going to be so tired of ‘awesome’ by the time this is over…”

  “Over?” Karen said. “Oh, no, I don’t think this is ever over. This is the first day of the rest of our awesome lives. So, you’ll come to the next Raiders’ game with me. Tomorrow night!” Her smile shifted from innocently happy to something much more wicked as she asked Claudia, “What’s Winslow’s challenge?”

  “Going to a hockey game is not that hard!” I said quickly. “Most people pay to be there. It’s a treat! I’ve essentially given you a gift. Wasn’t that nice of me?”

  Claudia smiled serenely. �
�Why, yes, it was very kind. And I would like to give you a gift in return. The gift of mathematical understanding.”

  I could see Karen smirking from the corner of my eye. She was definitely going to have to work on bringing her nice self to the surface. “What’s that gift going to look like?” I asked cautiously.

  “Oh, it won’t be visible. But the process you go through to receive the gift? It’s going to look a lot like studying. Assisted studying, sometimes, but sometimes just on your own.”

  “I’m already doing that!”

  “You need to do it more.” Claudia frowned. “How long will this hockey thing take? Like, not just the game, but the whole experience. Leaving my house, driving to the arena, watching people eat tubular meat by-products, the game itself, going home…the whole thing. How long?”

  “You may want to go out after the game,” I suggested. “We don’t have a game Saturday, so no curfew tomorrow. I think if you’re approaching this with a true spirit of awesomeness, you need to be open to the possibility of doing something postgame. It’s part of the tradition.”

  Claudia raised an eyebrow. “Okay. How long for the core activity, and then how long for the optional time?”

  “Four hours for the game, three for the party,” I guessed.

  “So I want four hours of hard studying from you.” She shrugged. “And then if I go out to the party or whatever, you owe me that amount of extra studying time. Deal?”

  “You want me to study math for seven hours? How long do I have to get it done?”

  “They’re not traveling this weekend,” Karen told Claudia. “He’ll have more time this weekend than he will for the next two weeks.”

  “Okay, then. Four hours this weekend. The extra three hours sometime next week, if you can’t fit it in over the weekend. And our lunch sessions don’t count. We can spend those just on chemistry, now that you’ve got all this extra functions time.”

  “You want me to study math?” I grumbled.

  “You want me to watch a hockey game?” Claudia replied with the same intonation, and with a little wrinkle of her nose that I should have found annoying instead of cute.

  “Neither one of you is going into this with the proper attitude,” Karen scolded.

  She was right. I made myself nod and smile. “Okay. Math. Functions. That’ll be great. Math is a good way to—to help us understand the world. I’m looking forward to learning more about it. And it’ll be good to get my grades up, too. Awesome.”

  Karen shrugged, clearly not impressed but not ready to make a fuss over my effort. Instead, she turned to Claudia, who dutifully said, “Hockey. Lots of people like it. Maybe I will, too. It’s…our national sport. Part of our identity. Sports are a good way to bond with people from all different social groups. I’m broadening my horizons.” She looked at me with a sort of calm acceptance, like we were marching off to war together. “Awesome.”

  Chapter Five

  “Are you sure you don’t want to be part of it?” I asked Annalise. I’d gotten permission from Karen and Chris to invite Annalise and Oliver into the group, in exchange for Karen being allowed to invite all three of her half siblings. Chris had said he’d hold his invitations in reserve. “It’s a bit silly, I know, but it’s kind of fun, too.”

  “Fun? Claudia, you’re going to a hockey game. How is that fun?”

  “Lots of people think watching hockey is fun.”

  “And since when are you ‘lots of people’? Since when are you a sheep?”

  “Trying new things isn’t the same as being a sheep. And honestly, I don’t think my challenges are up for debate. That’s between me and the sisters. I’m just asking if you want to be part of the program as a whole. We’d have different challenges for you.”

  “No,” she said, and stuck her nose back into her book. It was only a couple minutes before class started so I guess she felt like she needed to get as many words into her head as possible before she had to deprive herself for seventy-five minutes.

  “I’m going to ask Oliver. And if he wants to join, you’re going to be all alone on the outside.”

  She didn’t even look up. Damn. If Annalise were a sister, I’d be challenging her to do something that didn’t involve reading. And she’d probably hate me for it.

  I felt kind of weird as I walked away from her, heading down the hall toward Oliver’s locker. Annalise and I had been friends since about third grade. Back then I’d been thrilled to find someone else who didn’t feel comfortable in big crowds, someone who’d rather read or study than jump around and do whatever the hell it was the other kids were doing on the playground at recess. We’d wander off to our little corner of the yard, Annalise reading as she walked, and we’d sit quietly and wait for the bell to ring. But even then, I realized, I’d been staring at the other kids, watching them as they played. I hadn’t been comfortable with them, but they’d intrigued me. Annalise? She’d been living in her books, always.

  I’d gone through school with the same kids year after year, and they’d eventually stopped asking me to play their games. I’d never really been picked on, not more than an occasional eye roll or something. We’d all just sort of peacefully coexisted, without any real interaction. I’d made friends with Oliver before he came out but when he was clearly working through it all, and he’d just wanted somewhere quiet to think and watch the world from. We’d been a good pair, together in our solitude. Just like me and Annalise. That had been my life, and it had been okay.

  But now, it was like some sort of chain reaction had started. Tutoring Chris had led to making friends with Karen, which had led to forming the Sisterhood and letting Chris join, and somehow, only a few days after the first event of the cycle, I was making plans to go to a hockey game. A hockey game.

  “Life is strange,” I told Oliver as I leaned against the locker next to his.

  “There’s no possible chance that Jesus loves me despite all my sins, is there?” Oliver asked. I was used to his drama and his non sequiturs, so I just waited him out. “Chris Winslow,” he finally explained. “The most charming, most gorgeous creature in the world. There’s no chance he’s gay and was sent to me as a gift from the Baby Jesus? Is there?”

  “Uh…that’d be a weird gift from a baby,” I managed.

  “Okay, leave Jesus out of it, then. Is there any chance Chris Winslow is gay?”

  “I guess there’s a chance,” I admitted reluctantly. The idea was kind of startling, but I tried to approach it from a cool, scientific angle. “I mean…ten percent? Is that still the statistic?”

  Oliver rolled his eyes. “I’m looking for some more inside information here, not general statistical probabilities!”

  “Well, I don’t know. He’s never said anything one way or another. I’ve seen him with girls…”

  “You’ve seen me with girls, too. I’m with a girl right now.”

  I thought back, then shook my head. “No, I’ve seen him with girls. Like, not full-on naked or anything, but—” Oliver’s eyes bugged out a little when I mentioned Chris being naked, and I admit I was a bit thrown by remembering him with other girls, so I gave us both a chance to recover before saying, “It definitely looked more intimate than me and you right now.”

  “But it could have been one-sided. Girls hang off those hockey players all the time. Doesn’t mean the players want them to.”

  “Okay, fine,” I said grumpily. This was not what I’d come down here to talk about. “I don’t know if Chris Winslow is gay. I have no evidence one way or another, but statistics suggest he’s straight. How’s that?”

  “He seems very comfortable with himself. Very relaxed and happy.”

  “Relaxed? That doesn’t begin to cover it. He’s a lazy slug.” Which was a little strong, probably, but I was inexplicably annoyed by the thought of Chris being gay. He was my distant crush-toy, not Oliver’s! “And what’s he got to be unhappy about?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe his teammates wouldn’t accept him if he came out.”r />
  “Why do you think he’s gay?”

  “I don’t know. I just…wouldn’t it be perfect if he was?”

  “No!” I almost yelled.

  And Oliver, that manipulative bastard, smirked at me. “Oh. It wouldn’t be? Why not? You’re not homophobic, are you? No, I don’t think so. I think you want him to be straight because you want him for yourself, you greedy girl.”

  “Oh my God, was this whole thing a setup? You just wanted me to admit to— Do you even like him?”

  “Well, I barely know him. But, damn, I have eyes. If he were gay, I would be more than ready to get to know him, you know?”

  “But do you have any reason to think he is gay?”

  Oliver shrugged. “Sometimes there’s just a feeling.”

  “And do you have that ‘feeling’ about Chris?”

  “I don’t know. It was a bit hard to really open my gaydar receptors up without getting blasted away by the waves of lust rolling off your virginal shores.”

  “Waves roll onto shores, not off them.”

  “Don’t quibble with me. You want him; you want him bad.”

  I tried to brush it off. “Well, damn, I have eyes.”

  “You had eyes all last year, too, but I don’t remember you even noticing the guy, let alone choking on your own desire in the middle of chemistry class.”

  “I was not choking on—” I stopped. “No. I’m not going to have this conversation with you. I came down here to invite you to join a group I think you’d have really enjoyed. I think you’d have fit in well, and it would have been a chance for you to make your last year of high school just that much more awesome. But you have yipped your way right out of an invitation, my friend. Sorry about that.”

  I turned to go, but I didn’t move too fast. And sure enough, before I was two steps down the hall, Oliver jumped in front of me. “What group?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “There’s no point torturing you with a description when I’m not going to be inviting you to join anyway.”

  “No, you’re going to invite me,” he said, trying to sound confident as I sidestepped him and continued to class. “I was just teasing. That’s what we do, you and me. We tease. We’re teasers. That’s the kind of friends we are.”