Play On - Michelle Smith Page 0,57

over me. I lower mine.

“Y’all started off strong,” he says. “I’ll give you that. But after that first inning, your offense was weak.” Yep. “Pitching was off.” Yeah. “Defense was terrible and completely uninspired.” Nailed it.

“But more than that,” he continues, “you walked onto that field with God-awful attitudes. That was shameful. Pathetic. You don’t win games like that. You’re champions, and champions walk onto fields with their heads held high. Champions act like a team. You play like a team, even when you want to rip each other’s throats out. Don’t make me start eliminating weak links. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” we all mumble.

“What was that?” he asks.

“Yes, sir,” we shout.

He pats the driver’s shoulder and sits in his own seat. As the bus lurches out of the parking lot, I dig into my gear bag and pull out my phone. My forehead wrinkles as I scroll through my messages. Marisa said she’d text after work. It’s past seven, so she should be long gone by now.

Hey, I type. Home yet?

The time ticks by on my phone’s screen. Seven-seventeen. Seven-eighteen. Seven-nineteen. At seven-thirty, I try again. You there?

By eight, still nothing.

Eric’s got his head tossed back against the seat, with his earbuds in and his cap over his face. I glance across the aisle. Brett and Jay are in the seat beside ours, with Brett passed out against his window. Jay’s mouth is dropped open like a fish as he snores. I don’t need to wake everybody up, but—

Screw it.

I hit Marisa’s number. The phone rings half a dozen times before I finally get a quiet, “Yeah?”

I stare out the window, watching the fields fly by. “Hey,” I say, keeping my voice down. “Everything all right?”

“Fine.”

Something tugs at me inside. She doesn’t exactly sound fine. “You sure? You sound…” I almost say upset, but instead go with, “tired.”

There’s a quick sniffle. My eyebrows scrunch as I wait for her to say something, anything. She’s been crying. She’s been crying and I’m not there, and I won’t be there for another hour.

Finally, she says, “I’m okay. Promise.” There’s this weird emptiness in her voice, a dismissiveness. “I’m kind of out of it, but I’m okay. I’ll call you later, all right?”

No, it’s not. It doesn’t sound all right at all. I lean forward. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m okay now, and I’ll be okay the next time you ask,” she snaps. I wince. “I’ll call you later, Austin.”

The phone goes silent. My heart screams at me to call her back, to tell her I’m here, to beg her to talk to me. My head tells me to wait, to trust her, to have faith that everything will work out. The sad thing is, I’ve never really been good at telling which one is right.

One in the morning. Two in the morning. Three in the morning comes and goes with no call. No text. Before I plug in my nearly dead phone, I scroll through my contacts and hit Marisa’s number. It goes straight to voicemail. I don’t know what’s going on with her, but it’s safe to say that it’s freaking me the hell out.

I don’t think she’s okay. And I have no idea what to do.

chapter eighteen

On my way to school Friday morning, I call her cell again. No answer.

Before homeroom, I break down and call her house number. Her mom says she’s “fine—sick, but fine,” and that she’ll call me sometime later. And I’ve decided that I really freakin’ hate the word “fine.”

On my way to the shop that afternoon, I should be happy that I nailed another Chemistry test. I should be excited as hell that it’s officially Spring Break and I’m free from school for two weeks. But the only things coursing through me are worry and panic because I haven’t talked to my girlfriend in nearly twenty-four hours. When I was with Jamie, going a day or two without speaking to each other was nothing. She had her friends, and I had mine. But with Marisa, things are infinitely different.

Also, Jamie didn’t exactly have a history of slicing up her arm. But I’m trying really hard not to think about that right now. And I feel like an asshole for my brain even going there.

I swerve into my spot in front of the shop, my heart skipping a beat when Marisa’s space is empty. She’s supposed to be here. She’s supposed to be here and we’re supposed to talk this out, because that’s the way I’ve