Page 74 of Jaded

“What?” Charlie asks. “The hell’s that mean?”

“Means we might actually have fans tonight.” Nat’s eyes flick towards me for the briefest instant. “They all want to know where the Ice Out comes in.”

So then we’re all staring athim, Coach included, and I’m standing in the middle of the locker room like the big buffoon I am. Also staring. And this time it’s not even because I think he’s the hottest man alive. Well, it’s partly that. Fifty-fifty.

“I guess it makes sense.” Charlie’s low voice shatters the quiet. “Has anybody looked at social media lately? It’s all people around here are talking about. Dingoes at the Ice Out.”

“Damn,” Nat murmurs, and his gaze falls to me again. “It’s working.”

My hands are shaking. The awareness comes in a jolt. My damned hands are shaking at my sides. My heart is a drum inside my skull, my breaths are too shallow, and my hands areshaking.

Coach stares at me, the muscles in his jaw working overtime as he grinds his teeth. Clearly he has no idea what to make of any of it.

So I clear my throat, drawing the eyes of every single person in the room. My throat is way too dry—why is it so dry?—so I clear it again and then that makes it worse, so I kinda cough, and then I sound like I’m sick and my God I’m spiraling so hard right now, why am I spiraling so hard—

Get it together, Olli.

“The Ice Out gets like ten times as many fans.” My voice comes out strangled at first, but nobody interrupts, so I gain speed and confidence. “It’s got the town’s support. And to be perfectly honest, I get it. We’re all out-of-towners who see this team as a stepping stone to better things. We don’t care, so whyshould they?”

They all stare, but still nobody’s talking or protesting or interrupting. So I keep going. “I’m just trying to show them that we care—that there is nothemandus.”

More staring. Has everybody here lost the capacity for speech or what? So Olli the Bigmouth keeps on yapping away. What else is new?

“The DingoesareDay River, as much as the Ice Out is. If we can show them that, people will care about our games.”

And maybe we will too, I don’t say.Maybe we’ll actually win some games and people will stick around.

Everybody’s still looking at me, and I am kind of starting to wish the ground would open wide and swallow me whole or something. Surely burning in hell is more fun than this?

“Honestly.” Nat’s deep voice pulls all the gazes away from me. “He’s right.”

So then Coach is staring at him, and the relief makes me heady, almost dizzy. Shoot, I didn’t realize how intense that was. The moment extends far past what’s comfortable, like there’s some kind of unspoken exchange that passes between Coach and Nat.

It feels like a dang standoff.

But Coach has known Nat longer than he’s known me, maybe a very long time, and I’d guess there’s some level of understanding there. Because finally, he sighs. The tension leaks out of his shoulders and the lines of his face.

“Do whatever it is you do before a game,” he says with a huff, and he turns. Brushes past Nat. Storms out the door.

Which I guess leavesmein charge. Time to once again pry my head out of my ass and focus on the here and now. The factors we can control.

I plaster on a wide grin and take up my captain’s mantle. “We ready for this game?”

“Elks suck,” says Everton, his mouth relaxing into half a smile. “Like, a lot.”

“Yeah, but so do we.” Charlie leans out of his locker to shove Everton. “Especially you.”

“Elks do actually suck.” I cross my arms, ’cause maybe that makes me look more captainly. “I played them a couple weeks ago, with the Rays. They’re chippy, and they get worse when they’re losing.”

“They are dead last in the western conference,” Devereaux notes.

Course, that’ll just make a loss that much more embarrassing, but still. I’m determined not to let that happen, Ice Out shenaniganery or not.

“They get worse when they’re away, too,” I add, keeping my voice lofty. “They’ve got good home team support. They don’t like when the crowd’s against them.”

“Which it won’t be,” Charlie mumbles, but his gaze fixes on me with a particular intensity. Was he there, last night, watching my little show?

“Maybe, maybe not.” I shrug. “But we’re still the home team, so let’s not forget it.”

---