Scramble
Copyright© 2025 by Lumpy
Chapter 9
I trudged toward the gym, annoyed and generally fed up with the day. If I hadn’t made plans with Li already, I would have just gone home. But we were supposed to study, and I did have one of my first quizzes coming up that I wanted to do well on. So, instead, I headed toward the gym to meet her after her practice finished.
The entire day had been one dramatic scene after another. Melanie had turned our breakup into a full-blown soap opera, complete with tears, dramatic exits, and plenty of side-eye from her friends. Every time she spotted me in the hallway, the waterworks started, and she’d rush away sobbing, but in a loud way I knew wasn’t how she really cried. This was loud enough for everyone within fifty feet to hear.
What bothered me most wasn’t the crying, though. It was how calculated it all felt. I’d seen hints of this behavior before during our brief relationship. She liked for people to know when she was distressed, I guess so she could get sympathy for it. The tears, the public displays, they weren’t real. They were tools, weaponized distress, designed to manipulate the situation in her favor. I wasn’t sure whether they were meant to pressure me into coming back or to paint herself as the victim in everyone else’s eyes, but there was intent behind it.
Lunch had been the breaking point. I think everyone had been expecting something because the volume of conversation noticeably dropped when she showed up, sitting down at the other end of the table with some of the other cheerleaders and not next to me as she had since school had started back up.
“I just don’t understand,” she’d said after about ten minutes, just loud enough for pretty much everyone at our table to hear. “Why would someone ask one person out when they’re clearly interested in spending time with someone else? It’s cruel.”
While there was no doubt what she was referring to, she made sure to put a button on her point by looking over pointedly at Li as she said it.
That had been it, the moment my patience snapped. I’d stood up and walked over to stand directly across from her.
“You want to know why I broke up with Melanie?” I’d said to everyone seated around her, at the same volume she’d spoken in. “Because she made me a promise and then did the exact opposite. And then, when I called her on it, she tried to make it seem like I’d been the one who’d done something wrong, completely gaslighting me. It’s the same shit she’s doing right now.”
No one really knew what to do with that. To be fair, it wasn’t cool to bring everyone into our spat, but I wasn’t the one who did it; I’d only stood up for myself. Melanie’s face had instantly crumpled before she’d gotten up and run from the cafeteria in tears. The table was divided in the aftermath; about two-thirds just rolled their eyes, familiar with Melanie’s theatrical tendencies. But the remaining third looked at me like I’d just kicked a puppy.
All of her antics, and the questions and glances from our friends, had really worn me down. It had messed up my performance at track practice, for sure. My times were slow, I didn’t hear instructions and had to have them repeated, and I was generally a hindrance to my teammates the entire time. So much so that at one point, Coach Greer had pulled me aside to ask if something was wrong. I’d brushed it off as fatigue, but I think he knew that was BS. And that was perhaps the most annoying part. Even knowing she was playing me, it was still working on some level.
I was pulled out of my thoughts when the locker room door swung open, and several girls from the basketball team emerged, laughing about something. Li followed a few paces behind them, looking as pissed as I’d ever seen her. She didn’t even glance at me as she marched down the hall and out the door to the parking lot.
“Li?” I pushed off the wall, surprised by her ignoring me and just storming off.
She continued walking, her long legs carrying her quickly toward the exit, forcing me to jog to catch up.
“Hey, Li, wait up!” I called after her.
She didn’t slow down, pushing through the double doors and out toward the parking lot heading roughly in the direction of her mom’s store.
“Li! What happened?” I called after her, quickening my pace.
She didn’t respond or turn around.
Her shoulders were tight, her arms swinging stiffly at her sides. Whatever had happened, it had made her angrier than I’d ever seen her. My first thought was she was mad about what Melanie did, but she’d seemed fine after class and when I’d seen her briefly in the afternoon before practice.
I would have thought if that had pissed her off this much, she would have been pissed off all day.
I caught up to her at the edge of the school property, falling into step with her. Her breathing was quick and shallow, and I could practically feel the rage radiating off her.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I tried again.
Nothing. I decided to stop pushing. If there was one thing I’d learned about Li, it was that trying to force her to talk before she was ready was like trying to open a locked door with your face. All you’d get was a headache.
So we walked in tense silence the entire six blocks to her mother’s store. I stayed a few steps behind her, close enough that she knew I was there but far enough to give her space. The sky was overcast, the January air carrying a bite that hinted of rain later. Perfect weather to match our moods.
As we approached the antique store, I could see, through the window, several customers browsing inside, and Mrs. Sun attending to an older couple. Li pushed open the door with enough force that the bell above it jangled violently. She stormed through the store, past the startled customers, and headed straight for the stairs that led to their apartment above.
I hesitated at the staircase, uncertain whether to follow or give her space. Mrs. Sun looked up from her customers, her eyes following her daughter’s abrupt entrance and then fixing on me with a questioning expression. She excused herself and walked over.
“What happened?” she asked, her accent more pronounced with worry.
“I’m trying to figure that out,” I admitted. “She came out of basketball practice like this. Hasn’t said a word to me. I was going to try to get her to talk.”
Mrs. Sun frowned, glancing toward the stairs where Li had disappeared. I could see her internal struggle for a second.
“You go,” she said with a firm nod. “I have customers. You find out what’s wrong with Li.”
Li’s mom was fiercely protective of her, and I’d half-expected to be sent home. I could tell from her expression this was bad. Enough to worry her. The fact that she was trusting me with this felt significant.
“I’ll try.”
As I moved toward the stairs, Mrs. Sun turned back to the sales floor, but not before stopping to firmly scold a young man who was leaning carelessly against a mahogany table while he waited on his, I would guess, grandparents.
“No leaning!” she snapped. “Hundred-year-old table. You break, you buy!”
The kid looked like he wanted to sass talk for a second before getting the slightest amount of sense after looking into her face and standing up, taking his weight off of it. She gave him one more hard glare to make sure he didn’t do it again, and then headed back to the couple.
I gave a little head shake at the antics and climbed the familiar stairs to the apartment above, listening for any sound from Li, but hearing nothing.
I took a deep breath and walked into the kitchen at the top of the stairs, where we normally did our homework, but no one was there. I honestly had only been past this point to go to the bathroom, so the rest of the apartment felt kind of alien to me.
I did know there was a living room to the right, and I turned and walked in there, hoping she hadn’t gone into her room. I’m not sure her mom would let me survive if she found me in her daughter’s room.
Thankfully, Li was sitting on the couch, still in her practice clothes, staring at the wall. Her hands were clenched in her lap, knuckles white with tension. She didn’t look up when I entered.
I sat down beside her, not too close, and waited. Sometimes, the best thing to say was nothing at all.
The silence stretched between us, broken only by the muffled sounds from the store below and the tick of the ornate clock on the wall. It looked old. Everything in Li’s household seemed to be either very old or very practical, with little in between.
“Maria blew me off,” Li finally said.
I turned to look at her, but she was still staring straight ahead.
“What happened?” I asked.
Li took a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling with the effort of containing her anger.
“I did what you said. I approached Maria after practice, when everyone else was changing. Told her what’s been happening with Taylor.”
“And?”
“And do you know what she said?” Li asked and then put on a mocking tone, “‘I’m not getting involved in team drama. Just focus on improving your own game.’ Like I’m the problem.”
She turned to me then, hurt plain in her dark eyes.
“You know what Taylor did today? She called me ‘sloppy’ in front of everyone when I took a shot, a shot that went in, by the way. Then, five minutes later, she missed three shots in a row, and when I was open under the basket, she ignored me completely. And Coach Weyland? She just told me to ‘work on my positioning.’ Like I was the one who messed up!”
Li stood abruptly and began pacing the small living room.
“Nobody stands up for me. Not Maria, not the other girls. It’s like they’re all afraid of Taylor or something. Or maybe they just don’t care.”
“I know how that feels.”
Li stopped pacing and looked at me skeptically. “Do you? Because from what I’ve seen, everyone at school likes you.”
“Do you remember the fight I got into, like, just last week? Remember what happened with Elijah and the rest of his guys on the freshman team? They did everything they could to make me fail, messed up plays, missed blocks, tried to turn the other guys against me. And it took me forever to get the coach to care, and he’d only known Elijah for a few months, so there wasn’t the history there that there is with the coach and Taylor.”
“Yeah,” she said, as a kind of admission.
“But I just kept playing my game. Proved myself on the field until it was obvious to everyone that they were the problem, not me. Look, I know it’s not exactly the same, but team politics are team politics, whether it’s football or basketball. And I promise you, when games get more important, when winning really starts to matter, Maria will change her tune.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. She’s the captain, right? And she’s a senior. I’m not sure anyone from our team is scouted for the NCAA, but she’ll want to go out strong. She’ll be concerned about the legacy of the team she led. And the team’s been winning with you playing well. The moment Taylor’s attitude starts affecting the scoreboard, Maria will step in. She can’t afford not to.”
“That’s assuming Coach Weyland even lets me play,” Li muttered.
“She will. She has to. Your stats don’t lie, and neither does the scoreboard.”
Li nodded slowly, but she still looked doubtful.
“Is it worth it, though? All this ... drama? Just for a line on a college application?”
The question caught me off guard. In my previous life, I’d have answered without hesitation: ‘Of course it was worth it.’ Sports were everything. But now, as much single focus as I had, there was also perspective. Life was bigger than high school.
“It depends. Do you still love basketball? Because if you do, then yeah, it’s worth fighting through this. But if you’re only doing it for college, then maybe not.”
Li was quiet for a moment, considering.
“I do love it,” she finally admitted. “At least, I did before Taylor started making it miserable. And I’ve gotten better since I joined the team.”
“You have,” I agreed. “A lot better. And that’s probably what’s bothering Taylor the most. She sees you improving, threatening her position.”
Li just shrugged, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. But I could see it. She was going to tough it out. Which probably meant more moments like this.
But if she wanted it, it was worth it.
I leaned against the counter, trying to inhale an entire bottle of Gatorade. I had run a solid five miles, which was less than I did some days, but today, I was doing some speed training the coach had talked about earlier that week in practice, varying run speed rather than just pushing flat out the whole time. It supposedly blended high-intensity interval training with endurance training and allowed for the high-intensity parts to reach greater highs.
What it did do was kick my ass. But then, that was kind of the point of training. It was going to be worse when I turned my ten-mile run on Sundays into this. At least it gave me time to think, which is what I really needed. Nothing helped me focus on a problem like thinking about it on a run.
Of my two big problems, at least the Melanie front had calmed down a lot. She’d dialed back on her drama after that first day, and we hadn’t had any more scenes. She’d even managed to pass me in the hall and sit at the lunch table without putting on a show. Maybe she’d seen it wasn’t working and that it was making her more enemies than friends.
Who knows? What mattered was that it had stopped.
Unfortunately, that left more time to think about my bigger problem, which was the one for which I still had no answer. Rafe was still out there, still grooming Eduardo’s cousin, and still on a direct line to causing the death of my father.
And I still had no idea what to do about it.
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