Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 117363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Jean had already watched Nathaniel’s interviews on Wednesday, so he knew the tiny bastard wouldn’t be on the court tonight. He still looked for him where the Fox line was doing warmup laps. The evening hosts were talking a mile a minute in the foreground, spending too much time on Nathaniel’s personal life and not enough on the game about to start in a few minutes. Jean knew they couldn’t possibly know about the deal Nathaniel made with Ichirou, but he listened to every word with his heart pounding. When the warning buzzer sounded to signal the last five minutes before first serve, Jean nearly jumped out of his skin.
He didn’t expect the match to be good by a long shot. He’d seen a few of the Foxes’ games from their previous years, when the master wanted his Ravens to study each of the teams in their new district. He’d played them last fall and seen their worthlessness up close. The Bearcats the Foxes were facing tonight were not the best, but they had their moments and a massive lineup to back them up. The Foxes would fall apart before the break.
So he thought, but the scrappy team held their ground. Again and again the Bearcats fouled them. Sometimes the referees missed it; other times the Bearcats took their cards and shrugged it off as an insignificant setback. The Foxes rolled with the punches, gave ground to the violence at every turn, and put all their focus into simply playing the game as best they could. Defense fell apart more often than they should, as much to weariness as a skill difference, but Kevin’s pet monster picked up the slack behind them.
Jean remembered when Kevin first presented Andrew Minyard’s file to Riko. How he stumbled across it, Jean still didn’t know, but Kevin had looked almost ravenous as he pled his case. “We have to have him,” he’d said, again and again until Riko agreed to take him south for a meeting. They’d come back the same evening with Kevin in a spectacularly bad mood. Riko had mocked him about his bad call for the better part of a year, but Kevin had tracked the Foxes’ scores with a black anger that was two-thirds resentment.
Jean hadn’t understood until October. Andrew had failed to keep the Ravens out of his goal, but there was something to be said for a man who pushed himself to collapse to try and hold them off. It’d be a few years yet before Andrew was truly worth Kevin’s obsession with him, but watching him tonight put Jean’s mind at ease. The perfect Court was in dire need of a goalkeeper. He’d be damned if he gave Kevin the satisfaction of his approval, though; Kevin was insufferable on a good day and beyond unbearable when he was right about something.
Jean almost turned the game off for the halftime break because there was only one way this match was going to end. They were a nine-man team that could only field eight, and Renee was forced out of her usual spot to play with the backliners. Second half would be a slow death for them with no relief in sight. In the end he opted to watch it, if only to judge Renee as a fellow defenseman.
Twenty minutes in, the Foxes were somehow holding their ground. With fifteen minutes remaining, Kevin scored and put the Foxes in the lead at six-five. Ten minutes later he scored again to create a two-point gap.
“This isn’t happening,” Jean said, but no one was around to answer him.
There was no way the Foxes could win this match, but they did, knocking Binghamton out of championships and setting themselves up to face the Big Three in two weeks. Jean watched as they dragged each other off the court to celebrate on the sidelines. The hosts were chattering away again from off-camera, commenting on plays and an unprecedented Fox success, but Jean let it go in one ear and out the other. The Foxes would get annihilated in semifinals, but they’d earned the right to face USC and Evermore.
Jean turned the TV off, then back on again. The scene unfolding before his eyes remained the same. He turned it off again, counted to twenty, and turned it on to see someone had gotten a microphone in Kevin’s face.
“—to playing USC again,” Kevin said. “I haven’t spoken to Jeremy or Coach Rhemann since I transferred but their team is always amazing. Their season was nearly flawless this year. There’s a lot we can learn from them.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Jean said, even as the sportscaster laughed.
“Still their biggest fan,” she said. “You’re up against Edgar Allan again, too, in the biggest rematch of the year. Thoughts?”
“I don’t want to talk about the Ravens anymore,” Kevin said. “Ever since my mother died it’s been Ravens this and Ravens that. I am not a Raven anymore. I never will be again. To be honest, I never should have been one in the first place. I should have gone to Coach Wymack the day I found out he was my father and asked to start my freshman year at Palmetto State.”