Redemption Prep - Samuel Miller Page 0,62
don’t think so, why?”
“No, just—I know we had a bunch of offers. I wasn’t sure if there was maybe something that looked cool.”
He could hear his dad whispering to his mom, over the receiver. “No, buddy. It doesn’t really work like that.”
“Could we try to find something?”
“Am I missing something here? You’ve still got five months left in the season, you can’t just leave now.”
“I know, it’s just . . .” Aiden watched as partying students, still revved up by Dirk’s amazing finish, spilled into the lounge, singing and drinking. “I just feel like this isn’t the right place for me anymore.”
“The right place for you? Are you saying you wanna quit?”
“I don’t know—”
“The world doesn’t work like that, Aiden. You committed to playing there. Our family committed to you playing there. You don’t get to upend your life when you ‘just feel’ like it’s not working out.”
“Do you think maybe I could just come home, then? Until we find something?”
“Aiden, we invested in this. The trainers, the coaches—that wasn’t a gift, that was an investment. This is supposed to be your season. I don’t understand, what happened?”
Aiden fought to keep his face in place, turning to stare at the wall. “It’s . . . fine. It’s nothing. Nothing happened. I’m good.”
He heard his father rustling off the phone, consulting his mom. He was pretty sure they were in the kitchen, but he could barely picture what their kitchen looked like anymore. When he moved out, they were in the process of remodeling everything, upgrading the whole bottom level. It was probably a different place now.
“I’m sorry, bud,” his dad said. “There’s nothing we can do. You gotta tough it out.”
Aiden put his hand in front of the receiver to block any sound from his mouth.
“Can I send you something? Maybe you’re just missing home-cooked food. We could have a driver bring you something from Chili’s?”
“No, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t even be able to find us out here anyway.”
“Okay. Well, we’re looking forward to reading about the game. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
He slammed the phone onto the cradle.
Back in his dorm, he dumped his bag out on the bed and snatched the bag of Apex as it fell. It was entirely his now. He poured a few pills out onto the desk, too many probably, but why would it matter?
His eyes shot around the room in search of a card but got stuck on the photos behind his desk. This was the record of his entire life—a dozen photos from a dozen teams, all of them placing him directly in the center. He was a winner. That was what his dad always said.
On the bed, among the pages from his backpack, was his horse painting he’d drawn one night in her room, their last good night together. She’d doodled at the top, a revelation from a true artist, dotting the i’s with hearts.
That was how Emma saw him. Not a basketball player, but a shitty painter.
He dropped the painting on the desk and looked at the kid in the photos, smiling comfortably, exactly where he belonged. It looked nothing like the face that reflected back in the glass of the frame.
Maybe Peter was right. Maybe he had been handed all of this. How could he call himself a winner if there was never a chance he was going to lose?
He noticed another page on his bed: his theories from the first few days of looking for Emma. He smoothed it out. The hoods, he now knew, were Peter and the debate team; the runaway theory was impossible; the plebe kid wasn’t working for anybody other than himself.
He hovered over theory four: the school took her. They got us all here, Peter had said once; Aiden had written it word-for-word in the margins. For what?
Aiden stood up, sucking in a deep breath of air with his nose, suddenly feeling frantic. His eyes bounced around the room for a moment, then in one swooping arm motion, he cleared the trophies, along with the bag of Apex, off his desk and onto the floor.
From his drawer, he grabbed a pen and a fresh sheet of paper.
Neesha.
THE HALLWAYS OF the dorm outside her room were silent while the entire school partied in the gym. Neesha lay alone on Emma’s mattress, watching the small hand on the clock wind backward, counting down to the end of her life. In sixty hours, three thousand six hundred rotations of the small hand, she was