Page 41 of Gave Proof Through the Night

“Not interested.”

“You’re going to love it. Or hate it. Honestly, coin flip.” She’s already backing toward the sleeping bags, grinning the exact grin that guarantees I am, one hundred percent, not going to love it. “Get some sleep, Armitage. We’ve got lots of work to do.”

Big guns. A plan. I already hate it.

Out in the common area, somebody shrieks “PILLOW FIGHT!”

Zoe and I look at each other for a half second.

Then we’re running to join in.

10

JEREMIAH

Chapter playlist:

Saturday in the Park — Chicago

4th of July — Shooter Jennings

Somewhere between the post office and the Air and Space Museum, I stopped believing in coincidence. That’s six times now. Six times I have run into the same woman in a city of seven hundred thousand people, and if I pulled off those odds on the ice, they’d bench me for cheating.

I don’t believe in signs, in fate, in the universe rearranging itself around my jogging route. I believe in odds. And these odds are impossible.

“You look terrible, by the way,” Colt says, cheerful as ever. “Like you didn’t sleep.”

“I slept.”

“You should really carb up, dude.”

“I’m eating a croissant.” I hold it up as evidence.

We’re crammed at a folding table under a staging tent that smells like coffee and cut grass. Those of us Olympians have our medals already looped around our necks, and jerseys still on hangers because it’s too dang hot already and I will wait until the last possible second to put mine on.

Across the tent, Jake is doing his best disciplined Olympian face for a reporter, nodding at something like it’s the most fascinating question he’s heard all week. I catch his eye over her shoulder. He gives me a look that says rescue me with the subtlety of a house fire.

I don’t rescue him. That’s what friends are for.

“Here, have another croissant.” Colt lifts a croissant from his plate and throws it on mine.

“Gee, thanks.”

“Is it a girl? It’s always a girl.”

I take another bite to keep from answering, chew it into submission, and look out past the tent flap at the staging lot, where a hundred kids in matching red or blue band uniforms are being herded into position by women with clipboards.

Jake slides into the seat across from me, eyeing all five of my special edition, engraved hockey sticks leaning against the table. “Gave mine out already. All but one, anyway. I’m saving that for an emergency, you know what I mean?”

“I guess.”

“Cool little superfan dude in a wheelchair got my first one. Cried. It was great.“

“Ummm, congratulations?”

“There’s no medal for that,” Colt says.

“There should be.”