Page 13 of Don't Hate the Player
ElementalP: DO TELL
JHoops: KOD smiled at me
MUDD: so are we thinking a spring wedding or do you wanna wait for June
JHoops: i mean she kind of smiled? i was watching her play field hockey and she looked over at me like she kind of knew who i was and I was like ‘omg she’s looking at me’ and then she fell down in a bunch of mud and I ran away
MUDD: lmaoooooo
ElementalP: she’s human after all
BobTheeQ: Well, that’s certainly something to talk to her about. After tomorrow.
JHoops: idk it kind of made my week
shineedancer: you’re so cute I could murder you
JHoops: so cute you’ll swing by Hillford and give me a ride?
shineedancer: lol no you are so out of our way
ElementalP: but we love you
shineedancer: and we think you’re smart, right muddy?
MUDD: so smart
BobTheeQ: Keep your head up, man. You’ve been on fire, everyone’s been on fire this week. Don’t be late tomorrow. I’ll meet you at the gate and I will be wearing the hat.
BobTheeQ: Wear the jerseys.
BobTheeQ: Bring the lint brush.
MUDD: very important ^^^
BobTheeQ: Get some sleep fam. We got winning to do in the morning.
CHAPTER FIVE
Emilia, Round 1, Saturday
A FEW THINGSI’m learning at my firstGLOtournament:
1.There are a lot more people interested in watching this than I thought there would be. The Wizzard-Claricom Arena is huge and so new it still smells like paint, but there have to be thousands of people here for the opening day of the competition. I know because I pushed through most of them to get to the front door before Byunki texted and told me teams were going through the back likereal-ass athletes.
2.Should have expected this one, but a lot of people are surprised that I’m a girl? I tried not to get caught up in how Byunki was marketing my debut because that’s a recipe for me getting crushed under pressure, but he didn’t tell anyone that Fury’s new DPS was a woman, and that’s going to be a weird reveal when it happens. I also learned Byunki lives for drama. I’m going to make that point 2.a.
3.People are loud as hell at these things. Everyone plays with noise-cancelling headphones so we should only be able to hear each other, but I can hear the crowd even backstage, and the sound is incredible. I think that if my parents could see what a huge deal this tournament is, they might actually be impressed. I mean, they won’t, there’s no reason they’ll ever see me play, but it’s still cool as hell.
To be blunt, my parents would hit the roof if they found out how much time I spend playingGLOor doing literally anything that isn’t going to help get me into college. They didn’t have money growing up and sacrificed to give me every advantage—my mom missed her own mother’s funeral for a job interview at the Monteronni school I attended when I was a kid, because teaching there would mean free tuition at the state’s best Head Start program. My dad worked full time for decades, taking a 5 a.m. train every morning to New York while building his VPN company on the side before he could quit and support his own business. Squandering an inch of the headway they earned is like crapping on my abuela’s grave while telling the two hardest-working Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania that they’ve wasted their entire lives.
Of course the risk of my parents finding out that I’m here is fairly low. I told my mom I was heading out early to meet Penny at Starbucks for a campaign meeting and told Penny I needed her to cover for me for something “personal,” which she assumed was Connor adjacent and didn’t interrogate further. I hate lying to both of them and won’t sleep tonight to make up the campaign work for tomorrow, but so far so good. I can totally keep this going as long as nothing unexpected happens. Right now all I have to worry about is waiting in the green room the arena assigned Fury for the tournament.
I feel like I knew empirically that green rooms aren’t actually green, but it was still kind of a bummer to walk in and see that we’re basically quartered in a windowless basement room. The walls are white concrete, there’s some grayish bargain carpet on the floor, and the only furniture they gave teams to start is an L-shaped couch, a coffee table, a mounted TV screen to watch the live feed from the stage, and a whiteboard with a new box of markers.
I didn’t expect them to roll out the red carpet for a bunch of amateur teams, but I’m sure it will be different once they start using the arena for professional matches. Maybe we get an upgrade every time we progress in the tournament like inAnimal Crossing. Banners and little trophies and stuff. At least our jerseys look official. Wizzard sent all the teams a link on where to get them so we’d all look professional onstage, but we had to pay for them ourselves. Byunki covered ours, because he’s the best.
I really wish Byunki would hurry up and get to the green room. I’m getting antsy sitting here by myself. I can hear other players and staff walking around in the hallway, and I don’t want anyone else to accidentally walk in and see me. Even if they assumed I belonged here, every interaction backstage seems like another way someone can get my real name out of me or ask me questions I really don’t want to answer. I’d feel better if the rest of Fury were here. They’re a lot more interesting than me. If any one of them showed up, I could parry any attention right back toward them, just like Byunki promised he’d do when I told him I was worried about showing up today.
