“Okay,” I grumbled to myself as I leaned back in.
I scrolled all the way to the top of the screen and scanned all the fields one by one. The first several boxes were okay, but the further down the page I got, the more grammatical and numerical errors I came across. It wasn’t a shock that I lost my mind a little bit as it got later in the night, but toward the end, things really stopped making sense. It took much longer than I wanted it to for me to sort through my thoughts, figure out what I was trying to say, and get the words down in a way that was easy to understand. I felt like only a blip in time had passed, but suddenly, the doors to MontRec’s employee entrance creaked.
One of the morning instructors, Tabby, walked past my office and then backed up when she noticed me sitting there. “Quinn?” She checked her watch. “I assumed you weren’t here. Everything is still locked up.”
I checked the time again, and it was eight o’clock. “Holy crap.” I blinked a couple of times to try and push the tiredness away, but I was unsuccessful.
“Wait,” Tabby started, stepping into my office. “Are you still here from yesterday?”
“No.” I downed what was left of my coffee in one gulp. “I left to go watch the Vipers play.”
“But you haven’t been home to sleep?” She looked around my office. “Or eat?”
“That stuff’s for the dead,” I responded and went back to looking over my application.
“Which you will be if you keep on like this.” She pulled out her phone. “I’m calling Christine and telling her you’re gonna be off today.”
I shook my head. “I’m fine. Just let me finish this, and I’ll get things opened up.”
“Christine? Hey, it’s Tabby. Yeah. I just got to MontRec, and Quinn isn’t doing so well. Yeah, I know, she’s being stubborn and won’t go home. Uh-huh. Okay, thanks. Bye.”
Tabby pulled her phone from her head, and half a minute later, my phone rang.
“You’re welcome,” Tabby said, before walking away.
It was Christine, the owner’s daughter. I answered. “Hey.”
“Hi. I just talked to Tabby. She says you’re sick?”
“No, I’m—”
“Go home, Quinn. Now.”
“Really, I’m—”
“It wasn’t a suggestion. I think I spend, like, one day a month in the rec center. I’ll come in and keep an eye on things today. Wrap up what you’re doing and go home. I’ll be there in thirty minutes, and you had better be gone.”
I took a deep breath and let it out. “Fine.”
“Bye.”
The phone went dead, and I shoved it into my purse in irritation. I didn’t like skipping work, but as my head lulled forward and my eyes drifted shut against my will, I conceded it was probably a good thing. I finished looking over the application for errors, and when I was confident it was good enough not to get us disqualified from consideration, I submitted it. My stomach did a little lurch as I watched the page refresh to tell me that my application had been sent and was being reviewed. I had no idea how long it would take for someone to get back to me about the requirements, but I officially didn’t have any brain capacity left for figuring it out. I powered down my computer, grabbed my backpack and purse, and started the painful walk back to my apartment.
I didn’t live far from MontRec, but on twenty-seven straight hours with no sleep, the walk could have been a military-grade obstacle course. I tripped on everything there was to trip on and nearly put my face in the concrete as I climbed the few stairs to my apartment building. I was grateful for the elevator when I finally climbed onto it, but if it hadn’t dinged when it got to my floor, I wouldn’t have woken up from my doze on the short ride to the third floor.
I trudged off down toward my apartment and then remembered that my keys were buried at the bottom of my purse. I threw my whole body against the door instead of knocking and stepped a few feet back. A couple of seconds later, the door opened, and Alec, still wearing his bed hair, looked at me in confusion.
“Oh my god, are you just getting home?” He grabbed me and pulled me inside, and I didn’t stop on my way to faceplant on the couch. “Where have you been?”
I could already feel sleep trying to take me, but I didn’t want to fall asleep on the couch. It was probably a bad idea to lay down with that in mind, but I couldn’t have stayed on my feet for another second. “MontRec.”
“You stayed there all night? When you said you had something to do, I thought you might have forgotten to put something away. What were you doing?” Alec grabbed a blanket and started to pull it over me, but I flailed. “What?”
“I want to sleep in my bed.”
“You’re not gonna make it there,” Alec retorted.
I groaned as I pulled myself to sit up, even though it did very little to keep my body from trying to pull me into sleep. “I applied for semi-pro status.”
Alec’s eyes and mouth turned into saucers. “What?”
“You said we could.”
Alec shook his head. “I said it’s too bad. I didn’t mean to go do it.” He sat down on the couch. “Do the Widows know?”
I shook my head dramatically. “Nope!”
“Jesus, Quinn. What are they gonna think that you made a huge decision like this without them? You’d have to up practices. It’s a full-time job, so they’d all have to quit their day jobs.” He crossed his arms. “I wouldn’t be able to help as much as I do now.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I grumbled back. “They’re going to be just as excited as I am, trust me.”
Alec sighed. “I hope you’re right. That’s a big thing to throw on people.”
I was barely listening. My eyes closed over, and I started to fall forward.
Alec stood up and grabbed my hand. “Okay. Sleep first, then we’ll discuss it further.”
I nodded. “Yes to sleep.”
Alec pulled me up off the couch and let me lean on him as he led to my bedroom. He spilled me onto my bed and clawed my blanket over me. “I knew you were impulsive, but this is crazy, even for you.”
I put my finger to my mouth. “Shh, sleep.”
Alec rolled his eyes with a shake of his head. “Fine, but we will talk about this later.”
I barely heard him. The second I hit the pillow, my mind started to power down, and the sound of Alec closing my bedroom door as he left was the final thing I heard before I passed out.
4
Zeke
It had been two days since our loss to Minnesota, but it was still clinging to me like a life-sucking leech. My alarm went off to tell me to get up, but I stopped its screaming and continued to lay in place. I knew my team was half-baked, but it was painful to have it thrown in my face the way that it was. Knowing that it was televised and later regarded as one of the worst losses in the history of the Montpelier Vipers were small specks compared to the fact that I let it get to me toward the end and fell off my game. No one was ever going to pick me up if I acted like an amateur on the field. My next few games were going to have to be flawless. It was the only choice.