***
Parker was stupid. Why would he keep a record of all the league’s previous games? Certainly not to remind himself of all his past wins. He didn’t have many, after all. Cal did, though. I assumed most of his wins came by force. I already knew he was bad news, and I thought Tim was as well. My brief encounter with Tara in the hallway a few weeks back suggested his violent behavior, but I had to be sure.
I cleared Hunter. Melissa seemed fine, and for a week, I tracked another girl at school who had supposedly given it up to Hunter two years ago. She appeared happy. She was heavily involved in sports at school and had a group of close friends she hung out with. She smiled a lot, and I just knew in my heart she was okay. I crossed Hunter off the list.
Parker was an asshole to me, but I had a hard time finding out if he was a monster like Cal. There was only one girl he’d slept with in all four years’ worth of records, according to the scores. And she no longer attended Charity Run. I did a Google search for Jessica Canterly, but came up empty-handed. I realized Parker would probably be my hardest target.
Mike was a non-issue at the moment. He started the league a year ago and never scored above a blow job. I tracked a few of the girls who bestowed that lovely gift on him and decided they were fine. None of them seemed depressed or broken. A few were complete bitches, however, and it was hard for me to feel sorry for them for their ignorance. Aaron was new, and Game 1 of this year was his first. I had no idea if he was simply in it for innocent fun—if there was even such a thing—or if he had other motivations. All I could do was wait to find out.
I was doing more research using Beth’s old yearbooks when I came across the picture. I gasped. It was the girl from the bathroom—the one sobbing uncontrollably. She was the one I was sure nodded when I asked her if something bad had happened to her. She had been a player in Game 4 of last year. The game right before the current one. She was on Tim’s team and was classified as a virgin, scoring the ultimate points for having sex with him.
I wasn’t really searching for her, but by divine providence, we ran into each other again. And again in a bathroom, though this one wasn’t on the senior hall. I slipped into a bathroom on the junior hall before leaving school Tuesday, and there she was, hovering over the sink, reapplying her lip gloss. She froze when she saw me.
“Oh, hey,” I said.
“Hi,” she replied, unsure.
“How’s it going?”
“Fine, I guess.” She turned on the water to wash her hands.
I assumed she’d try to escape as quickly as possible, but she hung around. It almost seemed as though she was silently inviting me to ask her questions. I took a shot.
“It’s just that after that day a few months ago . . .”
She wiped her hands and threw away her paper towel.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I nodded and smiled.
“I was just having a bad day,” she said.
“I totally understand that. It’s bad enough being in high school, right? Then on top of that you’ve gotta worry about fitting in, getting good grades.” I paused for the briefest second before adding, “Boys.”
She tensed. I saw it.
“Boys,” she snickered.
“For real,” I said, trying to encourage her. “Why are they so lame?”
“Don’t ask me. I don’t understand them at all,” she replied. She swung her book bag over her shoulder. “They’re awful.”
“The worst is when they’re mean,” I said. “I slammed my head on my desk at the beginning of the year—the first day of school, actually—and they laughed at me. Like we’re back in second grade. What the hell?”
She shrugged. “Well, at least when they were mean in elementary school, it usually meant they liked you.”
“True.”
“Now it just means they’re assholes.”
I laughed. She laughed, too.
“I’m Brooke, by the way,” I said.
“Oh, I know,” she replied. “I’m Amelia.”
“Wait, how do you know my name?”
“You’re the girl who fainted in the hallway.”
Super. People knew me as the fainter.
“And you kind of have a reputation for not being very friendly,” Amelia admitted.
“What?”
“Well, I just heard that you don’t have any friends here. Girlfriends, that is. That you don’t really like girls.”
I was pissed. I worked my ass off every day to appear friendly to the bitches who strolled the senior hallway like they owned the place. They were the ones who gave me major attitude. What the fuck?
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Amelia said. Apparently my anger was written all over my face.
“No, it’s fine. It’s true I like to keep to myself,” I said. I was getting unfocused. I wanted the conversation back on Amelia and why she thought boys were assholes.