by Travis McBee
“Haynes, Mcorley, Strickland! Get over here!”
Will turned and saw Coach Bower and the rest of the team standing off to the side. Coach was waving his hand at them and motioned for them to join the group when they all looked over at him.
“Why didn’t you three sit with the team?” He asked them as they made their way into the group
“Sorry Coach, sat with some friends,” Jon replied.
“It’s okay, not a rule after all,” Coach replied smiling at his team, he was clearly in a good mood, a mood he was always in on game day.
“Follow me to the locker rooms,” He told them before turning and walking through the doors.
Mugoy Central was nothing like Bridgeworld. The halls were wide and the floors and ceilings were a dull brown instead of the drab gray Will was used to. There were far more doors and as he passed them Will noticed that all of them were classrooms. Mugoy Central was not a boarding school like Bridgeworld and as such did not require dormitories or student lounges or even teacher’s quarters. Instead they needed mostly classrooms for the over four thousand students to learn in.
Coach led them up several flights of stairs and through a door. They emerged in a massive locker room that was easily four times the size of their own.
“Get dressed quickly now, we only have a few minutes until the game starts,” Coach instructed them.
Will shrugged into his zegma suit which he took out of a large bag carried in by one of his teammates. He began loosening up and in his stomach he felt the return of pre-game jitters. Last time I had these it was for a football game. He mused to himself and frowned as he felt the time and events that had passed since the Central Valley game. Feels like a lifetime ago.
Once everyone had changed Coach huddled the team together near a long bench. The team all held their helmets under their arms and stared at their coach as they anticipated a speech. He didn’t disappoint them.
“Okay guys,” He used his standard beginning, “We’re up against the defending champs today as you all know, but what you don’t know is that there’s only one player on the team we’re about to face that played for them last year. So who you’re really playing is a bunch of people under pressure to do what the people before them did. That pressure is big guys, make them crack.”
With that said, Coach turned and walked nimbly down a corridor and directed his team out the door that waited at the end of it. Will felt his heart began to hammer in trepidation.
“Good luck Haynes,” Coach muttered to him as he walked past.
“Thanks Coach,” Will replied and Coach patted him on the back with a large hand.
The room Will emerged in was perfectly familiar to him. Its massive whiteness was only obscured by a wall of glass opposite of the door he had just entered and behind that glass stood rows of stands. Those stands were full for the first time however and Will found himself actually break into a sweat as he felt the eyes of the spectators bore into him.
Will walked with the other nine starters out to the middle of the gym where the other team waited. Bridgeworld’s zegma suits were a sleek sliver while Central Mugoy sported a suit of belligerent brown.
If zegma had been played on Earth the opposing teams would have shaken hands, but since handshakes were as common place as amputating ones foot for fun the two teams merely nodded and exchanged salutations with each other from a distance.
After the short greeting the teams slid their helmets over their heads and a loud beep echoed around the gym and Will felt gravity abandon him as his feet began to drift away from the floor. Above him satellites began to unfold and place themselves at random throughout the room. Another beep and Will felt his suit stiffen as it was drawn towards the wall behind him. A gentle thud later Will was stuck to the wall waiting for the game to begin.
BEEP!
Two more
BEEP!
One more
BEEP!
Will scrunched his feet under him and launched himself into the game. He had learned to aim for a satellite and did just that. He hit the floating object and propelled himself from it towards the ball which he saw floating undisturbed in the center of a group of satellites which were quickly filling with players.
He managed to reach the ball first. A club reached him less than a second later and the ball fell into the hands of a Central player as he was tugged towards the wall he had only recently left.
He hit the wall hard and felt himself go woozy for a second as his head bounced around inside his helmet. Russell was a great freer and within seconds he had freed Will who then launched himself back into the game.
That was the last time Will touched the ball that game. He felt like he alone was being targeted by the opposing team. Every time he bothered to move he would get launched back at his wall with a solid club. Perhaps he managed to be a distraction, at least that was his hope.
His hope might have been founded because Jon was having a whale of a game. The only player on the team with a unique marking were the freers who were adorned with a white stripe on their helmets so no one could tell that all the sticks were being scored by one person. But being scored by one person they were and that one person was Jon. He ricocheted off of satellites without bothering to slow down to redirect himself and managed to snatch, club, and intercept the ball from the opponent at every turn. He would arc through the air and slam the ball onto the opponents wall as if no one was trying to stop him. Clubs buzzing with electricity missed him by inches numerous times and Russell only had to release him from the wall once the entire game.
Zegma might have been the ultimate team game since the only stat kept was the score but Jon was dominating it by himself. None the less Central managed to hang in the game and came close to winning it at the end, they probably would have to if it hadn’t been for Will.
The game was tied with only a few seconds remaining. The clock was displayed in every helmet and Will’s was flashing down towards zero at a frighteningly slow pace for there to only be a few digits remaining. He was near the middle of the gym with most of his teammates, who were trying to get the final, and winning, stick when a club struck out and hit Jon who was once again handling the ball.
Jon’s arms flew apart as his suit became magnetized and the ball floated away and straight into the path of a Central player who had pushed himself off of his own wall moments before. When the central player caught the ball he was already moving at full speed and nothing stood in the way of him and the Bridgeworld wall except empty air.
Will placed his feet on the satellite and launched himself after the brown suited bandit with every ounce of energy he could muster. Will was the fastest on the team in a straight line and he had never moved so fast in a zegma suit in his life. None the less he knew he wasn’t going to overtake the player who held their defeat in his arms.
We’re going to lose! said a sad voice in his head
No we’re not! A stronger voice replied
Will slipped the loop of his club off his wrist and did what any quarterback would do. He threw the club end over end at the figure he was vainly chasing. When he did it he wasn’t sure it was going to hit and even if it did he wasn’t sure it was going to work.
It did, and it did.
The club struck the foot of Central player and Will saw his arms spread eagle and the ball flew out into the air. He reached for the ball but couldn’t grab it and moaned helplessly as he continued past it. I couldn’t do it all I guess he thought gloomily expecting a tie as the clock on his visor blinked a bleary three seconds.
He almost didn’t see the streak that flew past him he was so hung up on tying while simultaneously elated he had prevented a defeat. But he did see the streak that was Jon, although he didn’t know who it was at the time.
Jon had crashed into the wall after being clubbed and watched helplessly as a central player darted towards him with the ball seemingly without an obstacle to scoring the winning stick. He saw a Bridgeworld player chasing him but knew h
is anonymous teammate would not be able to overtake the rocketing Central player.
He resigned himself to defeat as he saw Russell bouncing his way off of a satellite to free him. He wouldn’t get there in time to free Jon so Jon could make the tag either. He glanced back at the approaching defeat and saw something he had never even heard of. His teammate had taken his club and thrown it at the retreating figure.
The club spun through the air and struck the Central player in the foot. The player stretched his arms out and released the ball into the air as Russell appeared and released Jon from the wall. Jon saw the ball floating and saw the clock blinking towards three seconds on his visor. He knew what he had to do without thinking. He scrunched his legs under him and catapulted himself off of the wall so hard Will himself would have been proud.
He streaked through the air like a bolt of lightning and plucked the ball out of the air as he zoomed past it. In front of him the Central Mugoy wall loomed closer and closer while the time in his helmet had weaseled itself down to one. I’m not going to make it!
He slammed the ball into the wall nearly simultaneously as the clock changed from a one to a zero. The wall he was touching flashed a brilliant silver once, then twice as the scoreboard changed. Cheers erupted through the glass divider from the stands as clearly as if the divider didn’t even exist. We won!
Will saw Jon slam the ball home and watched as the score switch from Central eighty-five Bridgeworld eighty-five to Central eighty-five Bridgeworld ninety. He ripped his helmet off of his head and held it over his head like it was a trophy and launched himself outwards towards Jon who had thrown his helmet aside.
Will glanced into the stands and saw Abby dancing up and down clapping her hands wildly. He met her eyes and her faced brightened as she recognized him and he hoped she knew that it had been him that had prevented the loss. Jon was being embraced by the entire team and Will floated down to his friend that had won the game almost singlehandedly. Will was content with his role in the win and as he looked back at the beaming face of Abby, he felt like he could have lifted a mountain.
Chapter Twelve
Fight and Make up
Sometimes in sports an amazing win catapults a team to a Cinderella season. The win over Central Mugoy was not one of those moments, however, and the Bridgeworld Zegma Team found themselves on the losing end of six of their next ten games. The team remained positive through it all and Will still found himself happiest when he donned the helmet of anonymity and bounced around in zero gravity with some of his best friends.
The scratch that had been made in Abby and Corey’s relationship with their argument over attending the Central Mugoy game had not healed during the two months that followed. The scratch instead expanded and soon their relationship dissolved into a festering wound of arguments and shed tears. Abby’s green eyes were so often tear stained that many thought that it was becoming a permanent feature while the brooding mood of Corey caused many who didn’t know him to think he was a genuine jerk. The two were not always upset with each other however and many people commented on what an adorable couple they made when they were spotted holding hands in the corridors between classes.. The ups and downs were written off by many as just a phase of a young, and most likely, long relationship. Yes Abby and Corey had their good days, but that Friday that Will found himself eating breakfast with the two was not one of those days.
“Corey, for the last time I’m not going!” Abby shrieked at her boyfriend as tears began to leak out of her eyes as they so often did.
“Why not?” Corey retorted angrily, “You make me go to every stupid Zegma game when I don’t want to go! Why can’t you do something I want to do?” He slammed his fist onto the metal table so hard some of the water in Will’s glass jumped onto the table.
“I make you go because your friends are on the team! You need to support them!” She screamed, tears now flowing freely down paths they had been taking with increasing frequency as of late.
“Well I’m your boyfriend! Support me! I want your company!”
“A surface party is different Corey!” She roared at him, “Nothing good is going to happen there and you know it! You shouldn’t even be going!”
“Oh I’m going don’t you try and stop me!” his face began to twist into an ugly mask of outrage, “You’re such a hypocrite Abby! If I don’t want to go somewhere I’m a terrible guy but if you don’t want to go somewhere you’re justified!”
Abby sipped air angrily then to Will’s horror turned her attention on him and Jon, who were working busily to act like they didn’t know the feuding couple.
“Guys back me up!” she plead to Will and Jon with large tear soaked green eyes.
Jon didn’t even look up from his tray of eggs and gimlish, a bowl of what appeared to be yellow powder but was actually quite moist (Will actually thought it was delicious), and kept eating away while staring fixated on the layout of the silver tray. So she turned her eyes solely on Will who could feel the focus of other eyes on the back of his head as the entire cafeteria seemed to watch what was fast becoming a soap opera.
“I…uh…I,” Will stuttered not wanting to take either side since both were his friends.
The bell for first period sounded from the overhead speakers and Will jumped up from his seat.
“Well time for class!” He chimed in a cheery voice as real as a wooden leg.
He scurried out of the room as hurriedly as dignity would allow with Jon right behind him. When they were ascending the central stair case and well out of hearing range Jon turned to Will with a half amused, half exasperated look on his face.
“Those two have got to get their relationship sorted out,” He moaned
“No kidding, they bicker like a bunch of old ladies,” Will replied shrugging past a loafing sophomore
“Well maybe they’ll figure something out,” Jon said hopefully but added a laugh of disbelief
“Ha-ha, yeah I’m sure they will,” Will replied with enough sarcasm to make an elephant faint
They had come to the third floor and it was already congested despite the fact they were one of the first ones out of the cafeteria.
“Well see ya later man,” Jon said clapping Will on the shoulder.
“Yeah, I’ll see you in history,” Will returned the shoulder slap and walked one way while Jon turned and walked another.
Will walked into his first period class, Math, and plopped down into his usual desk at the back of the room. He slipped his Micro out and began to play a Zegma video game he had discovered a few days ago. He was extremely close to the high score and he found himself agonizing over achieving it.
“Don’t let ole Green see you playing that Will,” A voice called out next to him.
Will glanced up and saw Corey taking his usual seat right next to him. Corey looked exhausted from the fight he had just went through and his face seemed to be losing its grip on his skull as it sagged.
“You alright?” Will asked his friend.
“Yeah yeah, I’m fine,” Corey replied then added, “I’m just sick of arguing. It seems like we argue over everything.”
“I know how you feel,” Will replied thinking back to his past relationships most of which were tumultuous at best.
Their conversation was forestalled by the appearance of Mrs. Green who promptly dove into long and complicated formula’s and calculations. She was a nice lady but extremely strict all the same so Will and Corey made no effort to continue their conversation during her lesson. Amazingly with fifteen minutes remaining in class Mrs. Green excused herself from the remainder of the period.
“I need to go run some errands so you can all just talk softly amongst yourselves until the bell rings ,” She informed them before leaving the room hastily
“Will,” Corey said turning to him as soon as their teacher had disappeared through the door, “What do you think I should do about Abby? I like her a lot but this just isn’t cutting it.”
Will thought quickly and p
rivately. If they work it out they might stay together forever. But if they break up…I might have a chance with her…
“So what do you think?” Corey asked again, “What can I do?”
Will took a deep breath and said, “Maybe you two just aren’t for each other. Maybe it’s time to call it quits.”
Corey stared at him, smiled, laughed, and smiled again.
“Ha-ha you just want her for yourself that’s the only reason you said that!”
Will blushed, attempted to stammer out an argument, failed and lapsed into silence. Corey kept smiling at his but it wasn’t a smile of complete amiability. Behind it his eyes darted thoughtfully as his mind mulled over thoughts that Will didn’t care to ask about. The two didn’t speak again during the class and when the bell rang Will hurried out and away from the still smiling Corey.
Will walked into his history class and dropped into the seat next to Jon like a sack of sand. He let out a huge sigh and leaned his head against the cool metal of his desk. Things are going to get weird between me and Corey now he lamented to himself.
“What’s wrong with you?” Jon asked softly so no one else would hear
“Corey, He was in my last class and I had to listen to him complain the whole time,” Will told him half-truthfully not wanting to mention the fact that his crush had been brought up.
“Oh man do I know where you’re coming from,” Jon replied letting out a huge fake sigh of misery, “Abby was in mine and she just kept yapping the whole time.”
Will looked up at Jon and shook his head. Jon smiled back at the frustrated look on Will’s face.