Page 3 of Tangled in His Game

I follow the stone path until I reach the parking lot. There are so many cars. Expensive cars. It’s as if I walked into the parking lot of a fancy nightclub. I make my way around the cars and reach the main street.

At least now I know exactly where I am and how to get home. Even though I haven’t spent a lot of time in this area, I still know a shortcut. The alley I need to go through is almost completely dark, but it’s short, so I don’t have anything to worry about. If I spot anyone suspicious lurking around, I’m just going to turn around and take the longer path.

But as I get closer to the alley, something moves in the darkness. I pause, squinting to see better. It’s notsomething. It’ssomeone.

Two people.

One person is giving the other a small white packet that suspiciously looks like drugs, or at least that’s the first thing that comes to my mind. The guy taking the packet turns his gaze toward me, and I gasp.

It’s the guy from my class. The one with piercing blue eyes. What the hell is he doing here? In the dark? Acting like some drug dealer? Wait, no, he’s the one taking the packet from a guy dressed all in black and a hoodie.

First day of college and I witness what might be a drug deal? Sure, why not? I step back just as my classmate starts toward me. The guy with him notices me too, and he says something I can’t hear.

Ugh, great. I don’t want any trouble, so I spin on my heel and stride away from there. I quicken my steps, and when I glance behind me, I can’t see my classmate or the other guy anywhere. But I don’t pause or slow down until I reach my home.

As soon as I’m in the safety of my room, I let out a huge sigh of relief.

“Honey, how was your first day?” my mom yells from the hallway.

“Fine! I’ll tell you later! I just need to do something real quick.”

“Okay, honey!”

I’m curious about my potential drug-addict classmate and his circle of friends. I want to know exactly who I’m dealing with, and social media is the best way to find out. It’s impossible for popular kids not to have a profile somewhere detailing their whole lives and every single thing they do. And if they don’t have one, their friends do.

I find my college, and then I search through the followers list. Whenever I see someone familiar, I click on their profile and open it in a new tab.

Just as I accidentally exit the followers list, my gaze falls on one of the main images. It’s him. My too-gorgeous-to-be-true, blue-eyed classmate.

His name is Victor Overton, and he’s the new star of Emberwell’s hockey team. Whoa. Apparently, he started playing hockey very early, and he was a huge star in high school. Now he’s Emberwell’s perfect poster child and his team’s biggest hope for winning some titles.

I click on the video Emberwell made for his presentation. My eyebrows shoot up. I couldn’t care less about hockey, but even I can admire the way Victor glides over the ice. He moves so easily and gracefully that shouldn’t even be possible in a sport like this. Scoring impossible goals is his thing. No wonder the guy is so full of himself.

Everyone expects him to end up professionally playing hockey one day, and it’s a surprise he hasn’t already signed for some big team. But in his interview, he says that his education comes first and that he wants to grow as a person and a player first.

I furrow my brow. He’s lying so charmingly and saying all the right things so that it’s impossible not to like him. But he showed me his real face today, and I won’t forget it. Now that I know who he is, I find his profile and look through his photos and friends.

At least half of the people in our class today know him from high school, which means it’ll be hard for me to befriend them. Not that I want to do it. But this will help me feel less of an outsider. They all know one another, and they don’t know me, so it’s natural they won’t accept me into their tight-knit circle. It’s not about me being unlikable or whatever.

I go through all the profiles, but I don’t see anything interesting. The guy who was with Victor in that alley doesn’t show up anywhere, or at least I don’t recognize him. He probably isn’t a college student.

And whatever he was handing to Victor had to be something other than drugs. Sure, rich kids like to party with drugs, but I don’t think Victor would risk his stellar, promising career for a little bit of mindless fun. Unless he was getting it for someone else or to make his friends happy.

Something more sinister comes to my mind, but it would also be too much of a risk for him. Besides, he has plenty of girls lining up to drop their panties for him, and he doesn’t need to drug them first.

It’s none of my business anyway. Whatever Victor and his friends are doing has nothing to do with me. I just need them to leave me alone and ignore me. It’ll happen once they realize there’s nothing interesting about me and that I don’t care about their uncreative insults and jabs.

“Honey?” My mom knocks on the door. “Are you almost done? It’s getting late.”

“Yeah, I’m done.” I shut my laptop.

My curiosity has been satisfied for now. I know who Victor is and why he’s so popular, and I know who his real friends are. If I want to make friends, I should try with the few new students who still haven’t gotten a chance to really fit into Victor’s group.

There’s just no way Victor and his friends would accept them so easily. Even if they pretend that they’re all instant best buddies, those new students will find themselves excluded from certain things. I’m sure of it.

Now I have to come up with a story for my parents. I don’t want them to know there’s anything wrong, but I don’t want to lie and make it all sound perfect. I guess I’ll have to withhold a few things and focus on those that made me really happy today.

Actually, if I forget about Victor and his little group, everything’s perfect. Why let him spoil my first day with his nonsense?

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