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You and me both, buddy, I thought.
This victory, which we’d all believed would be a shoo-in, was no longer quite so assured. In fact, by halftime, our teams were tied. Tied! With a team we should’ve been able to trounce in our sleep. Well, if I’d had any sleep.
My teammates gathered around in a huddle near the benches, and I reluctantly moved to them. As I moved into the circle, each girl looked at me with a mixture of confusion, frustration and fear. I’d never played this poorly in my life, even as a little kid, I’d had the good sense to pass in the right direction.
Simon couldn’t even stand to look at me.
Tanya spoke first.
“Hey, um, Catya,” she said timidly. “Are you… is everything all right?”
“Yeah,” Nora chimed in, “are you okay? You seem, er, off.”
The rest of them looked at me, waiting for an answer, probably hoping that I would say I had food poisoning, or something else that could justify this mess I was making.
“I’m just out of it,” I murmured, holding back tears of embarrassment.
Rose asked, “You sure? ‘Cuz it seems like, I dunno, more than that.”
Next to her, Riri nodded vigorously.
“I’m tired,” I elaborated, though to call that an elaboration seems unjust.
Neidin interrupted, “But—”
“Enough,” Simon said, vehemently cutting her off. “That’s enough.”
Everyone immediately whirled to look at Simon, who was standing just a little outside of the huddle. His brows were drawn, and his cheeks hollow from no sleep. He was visibly pissed.
No, no don’t say anything, I tried to tell him through telekinesis. Stop, before anybody suspects the truth.
While nobody opened their mouths to conjecture as to why Simon would defend me like that, with such full-throated rage — especially since I really was performing like shit — it was written across each girl’s face that they knew something was off, though not exactly what was off.
Except for Grace, who was staring at the ground, her fists clenched. I wanted to talk to her, but the whistle had just sounded, signaling the start of the second half. I’d let her down, I knew. She had let me be, let me make my own stupid decisions with Simon, and now it was coming back to bite all of us in the ass. If I were her, I’d be wishing that I’d just outed the news and kept the team intact. As me, obviously, I was grateful she hadn’t, but I wouldn’t have blamed her for making the other decision.
Sorry to say it, but the second half didn’t go any better. In fact, it went arguably worse. I wasn’t sure I could deteriorate anymore from the first half, but the combination of sleeplessness, fear of being exposed, and general possibly misplaced anger concerning Simon made me distracted. Well, more than distracted — awful, really.
To my teammates’ everlasting credit, they picked up all of my slack. The girls, having evidently decided that something was extremely wrong with me, covered all my usual spots and avoided passing to me whenever possible. I wanted to hug and kiss each one of them for being so sympathetic to my state, but we had a game to play.
At the midway point of the second half, Simon benched me. He was right. Frankly, I was surprised he hadn’t benched me sooner. My deleterious presence on the field had indeed been holding the team back, and while I watched from the sidelines, they caught up to our opponents in no time, evening the score.
I looked on, attempting a weak cheer or two. Simon kept several yards between us, save for one moment when he came over and whispered, “I’m sorry,” an apology which I wasn’t quite ready to accept. We had no other contact for the rest of the game, during which the Stallions managed to overtake the other team. With one excellent shot by Grace, we took the lead seconds before the whistle sounded.
On the field, the girls hollered and whooped. I got reluctantly to my feet and clapped. Though I didn’t have the energy to show it, I was so proud of them.
They ran over to me and Simon. The younger girls looked thrilled just to be victorious, but the older ones were still staring at me with confusion and worry.
“We did it!” one of the freshmen said, rejoicing as we gathered in a circle to do a post-mort on the game.
“Yeah,” Tanya said, glum. “Just barely.”
All eyes turned to me, Tanya had triggered the obvious conversation that needed to be had. I swallowed, my neck immediately dry, as though I were being led to my execution.
Beth began quietly, “Catya, what happened out there?”
“We already covered this,” I snapped back with too much bitterness.
“But,” she continued, “last night. What were you doing in the hall?”
“I was getting tampons,” I said automatically.
“All night?” Riri asked. “You were gone for ages. I sat up a couple of times, and you still weren’t back.”
