Page 45 of Foul Line

“And I can’t promise I won’t support your mother if she wants to enroll you in Springs. Your mom makes a good point. If moving to RHS was supposed to be about basketball, how can you still want to go there? You didn’t have the playing time, Tess.”

“But I deserve the playing time.”

“You and I know that. Hell, Coach Bradley knows that, but he can’t let the rest of his team go to shit for one player. I don’t know how you’re going to do it, but you’ve got to get those guys on your side.”

My face heats. Sloan was certainly on my side last night.

Hayes is on my side, too, though something was up with him last night. Alec, I think, is just confused. Ryan, too. Ryan will be the hard one. He likes me, that much is obvious, but one of the reasons why he shouldn’t is sitting in this car with me. How awkward will that be? Ryan’s the cornerstone of the team, too. I can’t let Lake influence him the way he did this past year.

“I’ll figure something out.”

He swings his gaze toward me. “I hope you do. I was proud to see you in my high school colors.”

This time, a warm feeling expands in my chest. It’s the first real emotion I’ve felt other than anger during this whole conversation. Dad puts the car in reverse. “Let me get you back to camp. Hopefully I’ll have you back in time for the run. I wouldn’t want the others saying you got any special treatment. Though, Jacquin tells me you’ve been leaving them in the dust. I think he might actually have a crush on you.”

My dad smiles away as he maneuvers out of the parking lot. He’s oblivious to the fact that my stomach has just plummeted like an anchor through still water. The last thing I need is for one more guy to like me. Camp is already confusing. It should be about basketball, and that’s it. Instead, I’m in some sort of weird reality, needing to gather players on my team to overthrow the evil king or else I can kiss my basketball career goodbye.

If I were less stubborn, I’d just go to Springs like my mom wants me to. I can see that play out and end well, but I also know that the kind of colleges that will recruit me from RHS will be better than the ones that will recruit me from Springs. At RHS, I’m a novelty. I stand out. At Springs, I’ll be just another good female basketball player. A girl who wins against other girls is just good for her sex. A girl who can hang with the guys is great.

There’s also the fact that the Ballers go to RHS, not Springs.

In my head, I only see two options. Either I have to make nice with Lake or take him down. The former will be hard to do since I’m seriously addicted to his best friends for life. They’ve already shown that they’ll stick up for him. They care. Maybe they won’t do it at the expense of me anymore, maybe they will.

The difficult part will be figuring out how to maneuver through it all.

23

My dad didn’t get me back in time for the run. Instead of using the short period of time in between the run and the start of the camp day to wash up, I do some sprints. By the time I run to the indoor courts where everything will take place today, the first raindrop falls from the sky. The dark clouds had been hovering ever since this morning. The doughnut is sitting in my stomach like a lead weight as I suck in air and make my way toward the short section of bleachers where everyone else is sitting.

Dad is standing in front of everyone. He hasn’t officially started yet, so he just nods at me when I walk in. I eye the seating possibilities before me, frowning when I see that Hayes has sat himself in the middle of Sloan and Alec. Maybe it was just my imagination before, but I thought he was purposefully sitting on the outside of the group to give me some place safe to sit. I try to catch his gaze, but he’s avoiding it, choosing to stare at my father instead.

Sloan, though, has the biggest smile for me. When I sit, he bumps me with his shoulder. “Where were you this morning?”

“My dad,” I tell him, nodding toward the front.

He nods knowingly. He keeps his shoulder brushed up against mine. Ryan turns, glancing over at us, and I can’t help the fact that my face turns red. I feel like what Sloan and I did last night is written all over us. Sloan shouldn’t be smiling that widely at me, and I shouldn’t be blushing this much. I only hope my dad’s not paying enough attention to me at the moment to figure it out.

“As you can see,” my dad’s voice booms through the sparse room. “We’re taking things inside today. We’re supposed to get some storms. I wanted to use this opportunity to remind previous attendees, and inform the new ones, that we do have an MVP award at the end of camp. We give awards out for each position, and then an overall award. Position MVP’s get one thousand-dollar scholarships from the Timothy Dale Scholarship Fund to their college of choice. The overall MVP award winner gets twenty-five hundred dollars from the TD Scholarship Fund.”

My skin buzzes. Other than the bragging rights for getting the MVP awards, there’s also another reason why it’s so coveted, why I came into camp wanting to kick some ass. I’ve only won once, and that was the year the Ballers humiliated me. Instead of tearing me down like they expected, it fueled me. I’ve never received the overall MVP award, but Ryan’s won it the past two years.

There’s always been whispers about how I shouldn’t win. My dad already has enough money to send me to college wherever I want to go, but if I’m good enough, I should win. In fact, last time I did win, Dad and I decided to donate the money back to his fund to spend on another female player. I did keep the trophy though. I’m not giving that up for anything. I’d love an overall award, but even I know that will be hard to win. Not just because everyone else here is as good or better than me, but, as my dad explained to me the first year I got invited here, I’d have to blow them all out of the water. It’s a sad truth, but it is what it is. I knew it was going to be harder for me going in because my dad is who he is.

“In order to win the MVP award, it’s based on a lot of factors. Leadership, skills, effort, swag…”

We all laugh. I look down at Ryan. His hands are clasped in his lap, but his leg is jumping up and down. I can feel the excitement pouring off him as my dad talks about this. That year at camp, he confessed to me that getting those scholarships was a big deal to him. Winning that money helps take some of the financial strain off him and his mom.

I just hope he’s prepared to lose to me this year.

My gaze rises, and I find Jacquin smiling at me. I hope what my dad said in the car isn’t true. And I really hope that my dad isn’t as happy about the prospect of Jacquin liking me as he seemed. Don’t get me wrong, Jacquin is truly gifted. I think he’s hot, and I admire him for what he’s been able to accomplish at such a young age, but…there’s nothing there. It’s like staring at Chase.

Whatever is wrong with my body likes the guys who torment me, apparently.

When Dad breaks, asking us all to line up so we can start our exercises for the day, I feel Jacquin’s gaze on me. He follows me around the room, but I shake it off. In fact, I make a pact with myself not to worry about anything else besides basketball before we break for lunch. I can’t get off track again. No more remembering what Sloan’s hands felt like on me last night…or even more, his tongue.

The drills start: footwork, ball handling, and passing. All the coaches are in the room today, so it’s no surprise that they’re definitely looking at all of us for the MVP awards today. I once overheard my dad talking to one of the coaches telling him that they like for us to settle in before they start evaluating. Especially for the new players who have never been here, it’s a bit overwhelming.

We just started a shootaround when the lights in the big gymnasium flicker. A crash sounds overhead. The only windows in this place are long horizontal ones toward the ceiling. I look up to find that we can’t even see outside. Rain spatter on the windows completely transfigures our view. Lightning lights up the sky, and it suddenly grows very dark outside. A second later, a thunderous boom sounds. I admit that it even makes me jump. The sound rattles the walls and half a second later, the lights go out completely.

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