Page 6 of On His Team

Nobody moves.

Even Mara goes still against my shoulder, and Mara has not been still since eight o’clock.

She lets it sit for a second.

Then she says, “You’re also predictable enough to lose before you ever get there.”

Stanley drops his hand and looks at each of the guys. “There it is.”

Chapter 2

ROWAN

My alarm goes off at five-forty, and I shut it off before the second buzz. For a few seconds, I sit on the edge of my bed in the dark and listen. Nothing. No cabinet shutting downstairs. No TV. No Stanley walking down the hallway talking to himself at a volume that would be considered unreasonable at noon, let alone before six in the morning.

Hawthorne is dead silent.

Which is strange.

I pull on jeans and a hoodie, grab my bag, and open my bedroom door carefully. It sticks at the top like it always does, so I turn the handle and pull until I feel it give instead of letting the thing crack against the frame.

Benson’s door opens across the hall at almost the same time. He has his bag over one shoulder. He pulls his door shut with the handle still turned, lets it settle into the frame, then releases it. Lucy is sleeping in there.

We nod at each other.

Then Blue comes out a second later and shuts his door the exact same way. Melly.

Nobody ever made a rule about closing doors quietly.

It just started happening.

Stanley comes out last, which is impressive considering he complained for ten straight minutes after midnight about practice being “an institutional failure of compassion.” He tries to angle his bag through the hallway without making noise and catches the strap on one of the frames hanging on the wall. The bottom of it knocks hard against the drywall.

Every head turns toward him.

Stanley freezes.

He catches the frame before it swings again and closes his eyes.

“Sorry,” he whispers.

Benson points down the stairs.

Stanley follows him.

A year ago, nobody in this house would have cared who we woke up. Stanley would have fallen down the stairs and blamed the stairs.

Now five of us make it through the kitchen without turning on a light.

We don’t start talking until the front door shuts behind us.

The cold goes straight through my hoodie.

Michigan in January makes me regret existing. My breath hangs in front of my face, and Benson’s truck is coated in frost thick enough that somebody has already drawn a dick into the passenger-side window.

Stanley sees it. “That wasn’t me.”

“Yeah, right,” I say.