Page 10 of Hockey Heart

“How much?” I whispered over my shoulder.

“What?” He replied.

“How MUCH?”

“Just keep going,” he insisted.

I flung my hand up again, the fiance immediately doing the same, “Seventy-five! Eighty!”

We were the only two playing the game now.

“Eighty-five! Ninety! Ninety-five!”

She wavered and scowled over at me, but I only looked ahead.

Then, as if in a dream, it was all over. I couldn’t understand what had happened exactly, until I heard Kensy’s voice screaming at me, “You won! You won!”

I looked down at my hands and saw they were shaking. Then I turned back to where the man had been standing. He was gone. My heart raced.

“Kensy, hold my drink!” I said frantically, and then I was running through the crowd.

6

A MERMAID & A DISASTER

Sarah

No, no, no. This can’t be happening!

I rampaged through the room, desperately looking for him. I’d just won a date. My dumb, unattainable fantasy had come true, and now it had slipped away with a sequined girl into the night, my dreams going with it.

The table with his fiance was now deserted. He wasn’t at the bar or at the stage, or any of the other tables.What did he even look like, exactly?I’d only glimpsed him for a moment over my shoulder. Kensy reached my side, panting, and between breaths, she pointed to a door leading outside.

Bursting out into the parking lot, I looked around frantically. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of mermaid heading into the darkness. Narrowing my eyes with purpose, I scurried toward those sequins uncomfortably, cursing my heels.

“I don’t see why we have to leave now. You’re embarrassing me!” The mermaid was protesting to the man who held my hopes in his wallet.

“Hey!” I yelled, when I was close enough for him to hear.

They both turned around and stared at me. He looked as uncomfortable as my feet were in that moment and my eyes blazed at him.

The mermaid looked at him and asked, “Who’s that?”

“Oh, er,” he dallied, searching for something reasonable to say, “She’s the new… Secretary.”

The mermaid looked at me unimpressed. When I didn’t say anything, she blurted out rudely, “Well, what do you want?”

Just at that moment, a shriek rang out behind me.

“Laaannaa! Where did you go?”

“Christiieeeee,” the mermaid bawled back, “Oh my god, Edward says we have to go!”

I saw my chance as the girls went to embrace each other and quickly approached him. “You’d better write that check right now, or I’m about to tell that girl everything that happened in there.”

The man - the one I’d just found out was called Edward - gulped, considered his options, and realizing he didn’t have any, pulled out his checkbook.

“How much are you short?”

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