Page 17 of Finding Her

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“Who were those girls watching you?” Mako asked as soon as I got into the locker room.

“They weren’t watching me,” I said as I sat down on the bench and started pulling off my gear.

Crossy snorted. “Please, they totally were.”

“It’s not fair,” Mako said, sighing and shaking his head. “All the girls want you and you don’t want any of them.”

“They want me because I’m the best on the team,” I muttered as I took my skates off. “Can’t think of why anyone would want your ugly face.”

He threw a towel at me, but I lobbed it right back at him.

“Seriously, though,” Tino said. “No girls ever come to watch practice.”

I shrugged. “They say they have a deep appreciation for hockey.”

“Saylor hates hockey,” Crossy said.

I frowned, both at the fact that he knew that so easily off the top of his head, when our meeting on the beach made it clear Saylor wasn’t interested in him, and that he was obsessed with a girl who hated his beloved sport.

“Seriously?”

He shrugged. “Don’t ask me why, but I know for a fact that she hates it. When she first found out that I was a hockey player, she was not impressed.”

I was tempted to ask him what was going on between him and Saylor, but he was already dressed and set up. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see if I can go catch up to them.” And then he ran out of the room.

Mako snorted. “He’s obsessed.”

All the other boys left before me, since I was trying to wait long enough that I wouldn’t run into the girls when I went out.

From experience, I knew girls sometimes waited outside the locker room for us and I didn’t want to risk it.

But when I finally did walk out, I immediately regretted not going with the other boys, because although the girls were not waiting for me, somebody worse was.

“Claire,” I said stiffly, trying to walk past her. She just fell into step with me.

“How’s it going?” she asked in a high-pitched voice. I think she thought it was flirty. I just found it grating.

“Fine,” I said, keeping my eyes on the exit.

She tucked some hair behind her ears, and then said, “I was wondering if I could get you to take me out to dinner tonight.”

It was an odd way of phrasing it. Like she knew that I wasn’t going to ask her, but she also didn’t want to be the one asking. She just wanted me to know that she expected it.

“Can’t,” I said. I pushed open the doors to outside and squinted in the bright sunlight. After being inside the arena for hours, the sun felt blinding.

“You have plans?”

“Something like that.” Actually, I didn’t have any plans at all. I just couldn’t stand to be around her one-on-one like that. I was worried that if I took her out for dinner, she would consider that as a date and take it the wrong way.

“But—”

“I said I can’t, Claire.”

I was sure she was about to pout and complain, when, like an angel in white, Wells appeared before us.

He was one of the juniors on the team, and exactly Claire’s type.

The fact that I knew her type was a boy who looked nothing like me signalled a pretty large issue in our supposed relationship but I wasn’t going to point that one out to her.

“Hey, Claire,” Wells said, as we passed each other on the path. I wasn’t sure if Claire was planning to stop to talk to him, since she was busy trying to force me to do her bidding, so I stopped, forcing her to as well.

“Do you know Wells?” I asked. And just like that, her attention was completely on him. I clapped a hand on his shoulder. “She wants to go out for dinner tonight. Why don’t you take her?” Claire gaped at me, and I winked and smiled at her. “I hear he’s a good kisser.”

Although neither of us spoke about what she got up to with my team, I was very aware of which guys she’d been out with and I knew for a fact, she and Wells had hooked up at a party last month and he was eager to repeat the experience.

I’d heard him speak about it at length in the locker room, and though I felt bad for throwing an innocent and good guy to a vulture like Claire, I also knew that in love, it was sometimes every man for himself.

I walked off before Claire could protest. I walked almost to the end of the path before I looked back, but when I did, she was clearly flirting with him, twirling her hair around her finger and everything. I rolled my eyes. This was too easy.

As I walked further up towards the dorms, I found Crossy standing with Saylor, Lilah, and Poppy outside the girls’ dorms. So, I guess he had managed to catch up with them after all. If Saylor’s expression was anything to go off, I didn’t think she was particularly happy about it.

I didn’t even stop to say hello to any of them. I grabbed him by the back of his shirt and tugged him away, much to the girls’ delight as they called after us.

“Hey,” Crossy said as I yanked him away. “I was doing good there.”

“No, you weren’t,” I said flatly. Saylor obviously had no interest in him, and I didn’t want him to keep harassing her, because I was worried that at some point, Poppy would ask me to deal with it. I’d rather prevent anything from happening than have to have that conversation.

“One of these days, she’ll realize she loves me,” Crossy said. “You just don’t know the full story.”

“And I don’t want to know it,” I said, before he could start in on it. “And have you ever heard of ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’? Maybe try that.”

“You want me to stay away from her? What, like you’re staying away from Poppy?”

I smacked him in the back of the head. “That’s a different situation, and you know it,” I said.

“Oh, yeah? Why?”

“Maybe because I’m not in love with Poppy?” I said drily. “You’re comparing apples to oranges.”

I looked back one more time, just as we entered the boys’ dorms. Two of the girls were gone, but Poppy was still standing there and watching us, like she wanted to make sure that I got inside okay.

As the wind whipped around her, blowing her hair all over the place, she raised her hand in a wave. Strangely, I found myself waving back.

“It can’t be that bad,” Mako said. He threw another basketball through the hoop, getting it in with ease. Along with being one of our defensemen on the hockey team, he was also on the basketball team, which was why I knew I’d find him in the gym right now.

“It’s terrible,” I said. I paced along the centre line of the gym, staying far enough back from Mako that he wouldn’t trip over me as he dribbled the ball, and read over the white sheet in my hand again.

I hadn’t thought anything of it when my dorm head had handed it to me earlier, figuring it was just some notice about maintenance in the building.

Instead, the top of the sheet read FRESHMEN GYM CAMPING TRIP in bold letters.

I read aloud from the sheet. “As part of the gym class curriculum, all students are required to attend a two-day, overnight camping trip with their class. Students will stay in tents, learn basic outdoor skills, and participate in a variety of activities during their stay. It will count for thirty percent of their grade.”

Mako grimaced. “Okay, so that doesn’t sound great.”

The gym doors swung open, and Tino and Crossy walked in, laughing about something.

I glowered at them, hating anyone who was happy while my life was falling apart.

Mako missed his next throw and the basketball bounced off the rim, then came flying toward them.

They both ducked but the ball still smacked Tino in the side of the head. I smirked. Served him right.

Mako mumbled an apology and ran after the ball, but Tino just looked at me as he rubbed the side of his head and said, “What’s up?”

Instead of explaining a second time, I just shoved the paper into his chest. He looked confused as he started to read, but then he laughed. “Oh, that is too good!”

Yeah, I figured he would find this funny.

What I didn’t anticipate was him laughing so hard that when Crossy asked what it was, he couldn’t answer.

Instead, he just handed him the paper and let him read it for himself.

Crossy smiled too, but he had the good nature not to outright laugh at me the way Tino was.

I grabbed a spare basketball and chucked it at his head.

Unfortunately, unlike Mako, I wasn’t good at any sport aside from hockey, and the basketball went about three feet away higher than him. He didn’t even notice it.

“Okay,” Crossy said. He had his problem-solving expression on.

“Well, we can…” Yeah, I didn’t have much faith in his problem-solving skills right now.

He continued to stare at the paper and scratched the back of his head.

“Well maybe we can…” He pressed his lips together and eventually just sighed. “I don’t know, dude. I have no idea.”

“Hey, Mako, pass!” Tino yelled. Mako threw the basketball to him and Tino dribbled, terribly, to the net then threw.

The ball hit the edge of the backboard and went flying across the room, but from the way Tino was grinning, you’d think he nailed it.

Then he turned to me and said, “Why don’t you just not go? ”

“What do you mean?” I asked, continuing to pace.

There wasn’t an option to just not go. That wasn’t how it worked.

Everyone had to go on this stupid camping trip and they made sure of it, with making it worth so much of our grades.

The only way out of it was by being so injured that I couldn’t possibly participate, but that would mean getting benched from hockey too.

“If you pass with flying colours in the rest of the class…” He trailed off as he threw the basketball again. This time, it smacked the rim with a loud clang and went flying the other way. He seemed undeterred. “Then you don’t need the thirty percent.”

I snorted. There was no way I was going to get near hundred percent on everything else in the class. And even if I could, I didn’t think Mrs. Dixon would appreciate me backing out of it. The woman already seemed to hate me and I wasn’t going to give her ammunition to fail me.

“Or maybe Coach can get you excused,” Mako suggested. He had possession of the ball again, though Tino was trying to get it from him. “It will interfere with hockey practices, won’t it? He can’t be happy about that.”

“Only one,” I mumbled miserably. I pressed my fingertips to my temples. All of this was giving me a migraine. “And I don’t think he’d get me excused. You’ve seen how helpful he’s been so far.”

As in, he’s done absolutely nothing to help me. It was obvious he was angry that I’d somehow managed to be the one student in history to fail gym. But how was I supposed to know any of the gym teachers gave a crap about participation?

“I guess there’s only one solution,” Crossy said.

He stole the basketball from Mako, who let out a strangled yell, then threw it, easily landing it in the hoop.

Mako had tried to recruit him to the basketball team multiple times but Crossy always said no, claiming being on one sports team was enough for him.

“Oh yeah, and what’s that?” I asked. I was getting a little annoyed that this game of basketball was getting in the way of us coming up with a solution for me to not have to go on this stupid camping trip with a bunch of girls.

“We have to get you out of the class,” he said, like it was obvious.

“Great,” I muttered. “That’s all I’ve been trying to do for the past week and a half.”

He smiled devilishly. “Yeah, but you didn’t have my plan then.”

I frowned. “And what plan is that?”

“Simple,” he said. “You make Poppy hate you.”