Page 31 of Don't Hate the Player
JHoops: we got u
CHAPTER TWELVE
Emilia, Sunday
THIS IS THEworst fake campaign meeting I have ever had the misfortune to host. For all my field hockey squats, I don’t think I’m going to have an ass after Penny finishes tearing me a new one.
“You know,” Penny says through her clenched jaw, “when you ask someone to lie for you, it’s nice to actually tell them why.”
“I know and I’msorry,” I reply for the millionth time today. “I totally should have told you. That’s it, though, I promise. The whole truth.”
For all the time I’ve spent building up the lie of my double life in my head, it took a surprisingly short time to explain it. At first I thought it would be smart to hold some parts back—the part about getting bullied off the game a few years ago and everything Jake-adjacent were the two things I considered keeping to myself—but the moment I brought Penny upstairs and sat down on my bed, I couldn’t stop myself from word vomiting absolutely everything I had experienced withGLO. The harassment, Fury, the tournament, the money, my mom, Jake, all of it became fair game.
No pun intended.
“This is nuts,” Matt Pearson chimes in from the desk chair across my room. “You are the last person I would ever expect to do this. Wow.”
I still can’t 100 percent compute that he’s in on this too. Penny was right to bring Matt along today, considering he’s the one who found the video of me on the Wizzard-Claricom Arena’s Instagram last night, but it’s really the cherry on top of the WTF sundae that one of Connor’s soccer teammates is in my bedroom listening to me spill everything I’ve been hiding for years.
When they both showed up this morning, Penny smoothed over my mom’s confusion by introducing Matt as our new campaign manager. It gave him just enough clout to be allowed in my room as long as we keep the door open and Matt’s butt never touches the bed.
“Thanks, Matt!” Penny snaps. “Valuable contribution, as always.”
“Don’t be mad at him,” I say. I owe more to Matt than I’ve ever owed anyone in my life. If he had sent that video to Connor or posted it anywhere else, even as a joke, everything would have gone up in flames overnight.
“Matt, is the live still up?” I ask.
He pulls his phone out of his varsity jacket pocket to check. “It’s got, like, two more hours.”
“I can’t believe this is happening.” I bury my face in my hands. “I told you my side; can you just tell me how you found it?”
“Hold on. I have screenshots.” He taps at his screen while he talks.
“Can you not have screenshots?”
“Give me a minute. I wasn’t sure it was you at first. I was just clicking through the location tag for the new arena, and they had your intro on there.” He wordlessly holds his camera roll up to show he has every screenshot he took highlighted and deletes them all in one fell swoop. “I was going to send it to Connor like ‘yo, this looks just like your girlfriend,’ but something told me to, like, stop and verify before I did anything, so I DMed Penny instead.”
“You’re lucky I was clearing out my DMs last night or I would have missed it. I don’t even follow Matt on Insta.”
Matt looks up from his phone to make a wounded face. Sorry, man, Penny’s follow/follower ratio is flawless, and very few people make the cut.
“Yeah, and then I was like,” Penny says, picking up the story, “that’s def her, but what the hell is she doing there, and I looked up the company and the team and saw what a big deal it was and like ‘whoa she’s been doing this for a while and didn’t tell anyone, so let’s chill out and find out what’s going on.’ ”
“And that’s when you called me,” I clarify.
“To find out why you were lying to me about why I was lying for you. Because that’s what friends do to each other, for sure.”
“Yeah, Penny, no offense, but . . .” Matt starts scrolling back through Instagram to show her the original video. He leans forward in the chair so Penny can grab his phone. “You don’t know gamers.Guardians League Onlineis better than most because Wizzard takes that Gamergate stuff seriously, but look at what these guys said in the live comments. They don’t even know who Lia is.”
My stomach drops. I’d been avoiding social media except for a few quick checks of my private accounts to keep up appearances all weekend. I definitely didn’t think to check what the comments on the arena’s live video looked like.
Penny glances at the screen, then grabs the phone from Matt’s hand. “Holy shit,” she mutters as she scrolls, “you didn’t show me this on Saturday. Lia, have you seen this?”
“No, and I don’t want to. Please don’t show me.”
“Are you sure?”
My curiosity gets the better of me. “Is it . . . really bad?”
