Page 9 of Bad Teammate
I loathed myself for thinking it—but I thought it nonetheless:
Yeah, until you got that, too.
I hung up and went back to my work.
But the keys had stopped clicking. My work flow was interrupted, my mood soured. I found myself staring at a blinking mouse cursor.
I couldn’t work.
I couldn’t work, because I remembered the promiseI’dmade with Papa, too.
Ugh,I thought as I frantically typed up an apologetic email to the client. I couldn’t complete the job. It killed me to do so—not only was I burning my reputation with them, I was throwing away the hours I’d put into that project.
But it had to be done.
With that out of the way, I pulled up a list of flights to America and whipped out my credit card.
Here we go,I thought as I hopped into action and started packing a suitcase.
4
Derek
Hours before puck drop, a group of the boys gathered in a circle in the middle of the locker room, keeping a soccer ball airborne by whatever means necessary—a kick, a knee, a headbutt; whatever it took to keep the ball from touching the ground.
Those who didn’t partake in the game did their own thing, whether they inspected their equipment, or shut their eyes and listened to music, or dicked around on their phones.
Me? I’m normally one of the guys in the soccer circle. But today I sat at my locker stall, sipping from a mug of black coffee. My knee bounced nervously, and I kept an eye trained on the clock. The minute hand was getting closer and closer to the crucial cutoff.
I didn’t think much of it when I woke this morning and I realized Niko wasn’t in his bed. It wasn’t exactlyrarefor the rookie to not make it home after a night out, especially because of my one real household rule: he wasn’t allowed to have overnight guests.
“I’m getting nervous here, Vaughnsy,” I said to our goalie, Tanner Vaughn. “Tell meeverythingthat happened after I left last night.”
The quiet, long-legged goalie was engaged in one of his regular pregame warm up activities—sprawled out on the floor in front of his locker stall, performing the side splits while he skillfully juggled a set of balls.
“I already did,” Vaughnsy replied without a hitch in his voice, as if what he was doing was a breeze. “We stayed for another half-hour or so. Niko was still dancing with a group of girls when we left.”
“Fuck,” I snarled. “I told you guys to make sure he went home.”
“We tried,” he said plainly.
Mikey Vedros piped up. “He didn’t understand what we were telling him. Or heactedlike he didn’t, anyway. Then we tried to haul him out of there, but he fought us off. He just wouldn’t leave. After a while, we gave up.”
“Coach Q is gonna murder me when he finds out,” I said.
Earlier that morning, Niko was a no-call, no-show to our pregame skate. Calls, texts, and voicemail messages to his phone went unanswered. When Coach Quinn realized that Niko wasn’t showing up to our morning skate, he naturally came to me,Niko’s roommate,for answers.
And I did what hockey players do for each other; I covered for him.
“He woke up really sick,” I’d told Coach Q. “He probably won’t make it to the morning skate.”
Coach Q scowled at me. His nostrils flared; he smelled bullshit. He muttered some curse words under his breath and stormed off.
I was sure that Niko wouldeventuallymake it to the morning skate, because he’d never missed one before. Worst-case scenario? He’d miss the morning skate, but there wasno wayhe’d miss the game tonight—right?
“Wait, are we even sure he knows there’s a game tonight?” our captain, Dane “Big D” DeHardt, wondered as he kept the soccer ball alive with a sweeping leg kick.
“It wouldn’t shock me if he didn’t,” Jack Hathaway said, shaking his head as he meticulously taped the blade of his stick. “That translation app we’ve been using is garbage. Half the time it spits out complete nonsense.”
