Page 5 of The Switched-Up Playbook
By the time freshman year was over, I was done with the dorms. Thankfully, I wasn’t the only student with a shitty experience. Hence, theNook—as we call our tiny home with its sloped roof—was created.
Up until a few weeks ago there were five of us: my best friend Linden, Oliver, Sasha, Marisol, and me. But with prices climbing through the roof, we decided to rent out the attic as well, so Micah moved in.
The smell of something healthy but also delicious greets me as soon as I unlock the front door. It causes my stomach to rumble happily. However, the sound drowns in the singing that fills the whole ground level, a rich voice asking the well-known country roads totake us home, to a place where we belong, a place that is younger than the mountains but older than the trees...or something like that.
“Aren’t you from South Carolina?” I ask loudly as I toe out of my sneakers, scrunching my nose at the sight of the yellow leaves sticking to their soles.
Temperatures still climb into the seventies during the day, but the evenings have started to turn awfully cool. Fall is catching up to us, much to the joy of my roommates, who long ago started to decorate our creaky porch and dried front lawn with pumpkins and fake spider webs. It also means that hockey season is about to start. And I’ll stand in fourth line for it—like a fucking rookie.
Micah hasn’t answered my question but I’m sure he heard it—he seamlessly switched to another tune a few beats ago. I massage my temple as I step into our living room, which opens up to the big kitchen.
As usual, it’s a mess. Clean laundry is piled on the couch with a bunch of different colored socks waiting to be sorted. Sports gear is hanging over the backs of the chairs, and our dining table is overflowing with a pile of books. The beat-up copy of one of Oliver’s trashy romance novels sits on top of the stack. The titlereadsKeeping Noah, and the cover is decorated with a shirtless guy rocking an impressive set of abs.
For a moment I’m tempted to lift my shirt and compare them to my own, then think better of it, rolling my eyes as I reach to flip the book over.
“Hey Nicko, are you eating with us?” Linden asks as I make another stop on my way to the kitchen. Inspecting the hockey stick that leans against the wall, I finally conclude that it’s one of Sasha’s and not mine. She’s a forward for the B-Tech’s women’s team. All of us are involved in some sort of college sports, which means the washing machine is always working overtime and the fridge is habitually empty.
“If there’s enough,” I mutter, my stomach protesting at my hesitancy. I could probably clean out a whole all-you-can-eat buffet by myself, but I also feel like I can’t stomach social interaction at the moment. “But I also need to finish an essay first…”
“Oh, there’s enough,” Micah assures me from behind the stove. He is wearing Marisol’s pink apron over his BTU football hoodie, wiping his fingers on the front.
“Hot outfit,” I tell him in passing as I head for our freezer, digging around until I find a bag of peas to put on my knee.
“I know!” Micah grins, then starts to pile a generous amount of rice and veggies onto a plate, topping it off with a piece of salmon. “There you go. Just take it upstairs with you.”
I blink when he holds out the plate to me, the lie sitting heavy in my stomach. I don’t have any essays due until next week, but I can’t spend the evening with them and pretend everything is fine. Not when I want to bury my face in my pillow and scream.
Fourth. Fucking. Line.
“Thank you,” I say.
I wish I could at least manage a smile.
The food tastes amazing, but I only pick at it. Now that I’ve replayed the conversation with Coach several times over in my head, my hunger has disappeared. I feel like a sulky teenager while listening to the front door open and close. My other roommates are returning from their respective training sessions and classes, flooding the house with their loud chatter.
I’m sitting at my window, pea bag on my bare knee, watching Olli and Marisol unload a bunch of groceries from Olli’s old Chevy, when my phone rings with the obnoxious Dutch rap song Nate assigned to himself.
I changed it back about a billion times before I finally gave up and let him have his way. He gets a ridiculous amount of joy out of small pranks like that.
“Hi, little brother,” he greets me with a broad grin as I accept his video call.
“By seven minutes,” I point out as I cross my room and flop onto my bed, taking in his still wet hair. Nate plays right wing for St. Bernard’s, which is the older—and arguably more prestigious—of the two colleges in Bonham. Located directly at the lakeshore, the campus is a couple of miles away from the city’s center. We don’t see each other every day, but we usually make time for a short conversation, and most often Nate is the one to initiate.
“How was training?”
I groan at the question. It’s all Nate has been asking me over the past few months: How was rehab? How was physio? How was training? Is your knee still giving you trouble? Are you in pain?
“It was fine,mom. How about yours?” I ask in return, only realizing my mistake when Nate narrows his green eyes at me. I generally prefer listening rather than talking, but hockey draws me in every time. I should have indulged him and kept mymouth shut. Nate doesn’t need more than two short sentences to figure out something is wrong.
“What happened?”
“Ugh. Nothing!” I counter, knowing very well that he won’t let this go now, clinging to it like a dog with a bone. I also know that in the end I will cave and tell him anyway. It’s how this always goes: Nate hounding me, because he thinks he’s entitled to every detail of my life and a part of my brain. And me spilling the beans to him, then maybe feeling a tiny bit better—but probably not today. I’ve never been on fourth line, not even as a freshman.
Ironically, I benefited from a teammate’s injury myself, quickly claiming the left wing starting position despite the additional experience other players had on me. I dug my claws into it and never gave it back. Which is probably what De Andre is trying to do tomyspot right now.
Fucking fourth line. The thought alone makes my cheeks burn in shame and belated anger, just like when they carried me off the ice over half a year ago. In my brain the Rebels’ management is already preparing to let me know I won’t be signed. Can’t be signed. Not when I don’t get the ice time to prove that I've healed.
“But as he said—it’s only until you’re fully up to speed again,” Nate tries to cheer me up once I’ve finished. The peas have thawed on my knee, and I watch as little droplets run down the side of my leg, seeping into my duvet.
