Page 25 of Save the Game

“Luke! You’re not even listening to me,” Margot says, and I look up just quickly enough to catch the shoe she throws at me.

“Tsk tsk, violence is never the answer,” I admonish her, tossing the shoe onto the carpet of her bedroom.

“You’re supposed to be helping me.”

“Yes, well, I’ve already given you my opinion; what more do you want?”

“You’ve said every single outfit looks good. That’s not helpful,” she throws her hands up in exasperation and goes back to digging through her closet. “Why are you so distracted, anyway? Are you nervous about your game?”

“No.” Leaning my head back against the wall, I stretch my legs out across her bed. “I just had a…weird week is all.”

“Oh? Wait a second, didn’t you have a date with Diner Guy?” She snaps her fingers and ceases rifling through her endless supply of clothing.

“Yeah.”

“It was bad?”

“No, actually. It was really good. I like him,” I tell her, shrugging. She narrows her eyes at me and I look away, staring up at the ceiling. “We went back to my place and everything was going fine, but then he had a panic attack.”

She gasps and I look at her. “Oh no,” she breathes, “was he okay?”

“Well, no, not really. I thought he was dying, Margot. His heart was fucking pounding and he was making these noises like somebody was choking him and he couldn’t breathe. And he threw up.”

She moves over to sit down in her desk chair, outfit crisis forgotten. Her blue eyes are wide with concern; this is the best thing about Margot—she may appear vapid and shallow on the outside, but she’s got a heart of gold.

“Oh my gosh, that’s terrible. How scary.” She shakes her head. “What triggered it, do you think?”

“Oh, well, I asked him that. He…he said he doesn’t like it when his arms are held down.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “Luke Kelly, were you holding him down? What is the matter with you?”

Stung, I sit up and swing my legs over the bed until I’m sitting and facing her. “No, god, of course I wasn’t. I was…I was on top of him, yeah, and then I like, held his hand against the bed and I guess it probably felt like I was holding him down.”

“Oh my gosh,” she repeats, shaking her head. “Poor Diner Guy. I hope you were fucking nice to him.”

“I was nice!” I hold my arms out to the side in exasperation. “You know I’m nice. I wouldn’t have done it if I knew it bothered him! Jesus, what sort of fucking asshole do you think I am?”

“I don’t,” she waves her hands and shakes her head. “I don’t. Sorry. Who is Diner Guy, anyway? Are you going to see him again? I feel like you haven’t given me any details.”

“Yeah, I’m going to see him again. And it’s Max Kuemper.” She stares at me, her mouth open in a small o. “The hockey guy?”

“Yeah,” she says slowly, “I know who he is.”

I squint at her, trying and failing to place her expression. She looks wary, and it’s not a look she’s ever aimed my direction before. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Luke, I don’t…maybe you shouldn’t see him again.”

I gape at her. “What?”

“No, never mind.” She goes to stand up and I reach out to grab her hand. She bites her lip and looks at me; the hairs on the back of my neck stand up at the expression on her face.

“Talk to me, Go.” She softens at my use of her nickname, and sits back down. I let go of her hand and she runs it through her hair, stalling for time.

“Okay, listen to me. I’m going to tell you something that I’m not supposed to know, therefore you’re not supposed to know, okay? I need you to sit there and shut up, so I can get through this.”

I nod, miming a locking motion next to my mouth and pretending to toss the key. She smiles, weakly.

“You know my brother is a cop, right?” I nod. “He’s always trying to convince me how dangerous college parties are, so he told me something he really shouldn’t have. Last school year, in October, he got called out to the hospital with his partner about an SCU student that showed up in the ER. He’d been roofied, so the hospital staff had to call it in as mandatory reporters, you know? My brother…he said the guy who’d been roofied was in a really bad way; that they couldn’t wake him up right away and that he was shaking so badly it looked like he was having seizures. He told me that there was just this huge block of time missing from his memory, and that he couldn’t remember where he was. They had to remind him multiple times he was in the hospital, he kept forgetting.”

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