This was fun! Hooray!
It was Edward's hardest basketball game ever, and, in a way, it was also the most fun.
He had no
idea what the crowd, or what the people watching the game at home on TV, were
seeing, but he guessed it wasn’t anything like what was actually happening.
They’d be stampeding or screaming or…calling their congressman, maybe? Did
people still do that?
No time to
think about that; he needed to concentrate. Lena matched him in speed, somehow,
seemingly everywhere at once all the time. It took all of his hunting skill to
keep up with her, shadowing her so that she couldn’t get near the basket or
pass to her open teammates. By midway through the first half, he realized he was
playing a game within a game. Cut off from his teammates, focused entirely on
the Caster, he gave everything he had to make sure that her blatant cheating
didn’t cause a blowout.
He was used
to going up against other vampires and their weird powers, as well as the
occasional werewolf, but he always had the benefit of his telepathy. Lena was
blocking him somehow. Like Bella, she was inscrutable. Unlike Bella, she was
clearly enjoying herself. She faked him out more times than he cared to admit,
dribbled circles around him, stepped in just the right way so that he collided with
her, causing him to both fall and foul. And colliding with her hurt. His skin was supposedly diamond
hard, but smacking into Lena felt like being hit by a freight train.
And even
when she wasn’t out-thinking him or out-playing him, she used her magic to frustrate
him in other ways. There were ten Lenas on the court, each with their own ball.
There was one Lena, but she had wings and did loop-de-loops in the air before perching
deftly on the top of the backboard.
Even with
all that, it was nice not to have to hold back, whether out of fairness or for
the look of the thing. It was exhilarating, even to the point of what drunkenness
must feel like, to throw off the mask and push himself to the limit. He leaped
to the rafters, ran as fast as he could, sank a three-pointer from the opposite
court.
It was also
fun because it was a challenge, and a different sort of one than keeping his
powers reigned in all the time. This must be what his other teammates felt like
when they went up against a bigger and better team. This must be what the coach
meant when he talked about how adversity made you stronger, because you had to
reach inside yourself and find the will to continue onward.
He was
playing the best basketball of his unnaturally long life, and even though Lena
kept laughing at him and mocking him in her southern twang, Edward couldn’t
help but smile a little.
A few
minutes into the second half, he thought that he had the Caster girl figured
out. He noticed the pattern to her movements, the tiny microseconds where her attention
was divided between weaving spells and sinking shots, and he pressed the
advantage.
He was
feeling quite confident until it started torrentially down-pouring indoors. Edward
took a header on the slick court, cracked his skull on the boards, and slid
out-of-bounds, taking the ball with him.
*
There was a
long, fuzzy moment of black spots and disorientation. He came around to see the
assistant coach and the team physician kneeling beside him.
“What’s
your name, son?” said the physician.
He blinked.
“What?”
The
assistant coach and the physician looked at one another. “I’m trying to assess
you for brain injury. What’s your name?”
“E-edythe?”
“Okay,”
said the assistant coach, “take him out.”
“No, no,
wait,” said Edward, hopping to his feet. “I’m Edward Cullen. I’m from Forks,
WA. The president is…” not Woodrow Wilson…don’t
say Woodrow Wilson, “that Donald Trump guy, but I kind of wish it was
anyone else.”
While he
talked, the physician stood, took Edward by the temples, and peered into his
eyes.
“How do you
feel, Cullen?”
Edward glanced
back at the court. Lena quirked a grin at him and tossed him a wave. “Good,
good. I’d like to get back out there, if that’s okay.”
“You’re
sure?” said the assistant coach.
“Sure, I’m sure.”
“All right,”
said the physician. “I’ll let you back in there, but the second. Cullen, look
at me. The second you get dizzy or
start to feel sick, call a timeout and get out of there, you got it?”
“Yeah,” he
said. On the court, Lena was sticking her tongue out at him.
“Yeah. I
get it.”
*
Zags lost
71-65, but what a game!
At least, that’s
what Edward kept picking up from the minds around him. His fellow players were
disappointed of course, but the game had been so close right until the end
that, while everyone was down, no one felt like they had done a bad job at
playing.
Amusingly,
it wasn’t even Lena who beat them. Edward had gotten her locked down in a corner
right at the end of the game, but that didn’t stop Justin Jackson from turning
a three point lead into a five point lead with ten seconds to go. Only someone
with superhuman strength and speed could make up the difference with so little
time left on the clock, and, while Edward could have done it, he knew it would
be wrong.
So the Zags
lost 71-65. But what a game.
He commiserated
with his teammates, assured the coaching staff and the physician that he was
really all right, really, and hit the showers. Long, long after the crowds had
left the arena, Edward shouldered his gear bag and headed back to where his
teammates would be staying.
He bumped
into Lena right outside the back door. She held out her hand.
“Good game,
Eddy.”
He shook
it. Her hand felt small and fragile in his, but he knew the girl behind the
hand was anything but. “Don’t call me ‘Eddy,’” he said. “But, thanks. Good game
to you, too.”
She
released his hand and brushed a stray hair out of her face. “So, what are you
doing right now?”
“Crashing,
I guess.” He leaned in and said, in a lower voice, “or, pretending to.”
Lena
laughed. “Well, listen, if you’re just going to lie in bed and pretend to be
asleep anyway, do you want to come hang out? There’s this good coffee place
down in…”
“I don’t
drink…coffee,” he said, smiling
despite himself.
“Right, no,
I guess you wouldn’t. Well, we could just hang around. Talk, you know?” she
moved in closer—uncomfortably close, now. Edward could smell the sweet aroma of
her blood. “See what happens?”
He stepped
back. “I appreciate it. I mean, I had fun, even though we lost, but…I just got
out of this kind of messed up relationship and I…”
She laughed
again. “I’m not talking about a relationship, Mr. Cullen. I’m talking about
sex.”
“Sex?”
“Yes!” she
said. “You look so shocked. Jesus Christ, what are you, Mormon?”
“No, no,”
Edward replied, holding up his hands as if to ward off her accusation. “Of
course not. I just assumed that maybe you…I mean, you’re a literal magical girl…I
figured you had a boyfriend.”
She shook
her head. “Not in this continuity. Thanks, mom.”
“Oh. Well.
Uh. Sorry.”
“It’s fine,
it’s fine.” She took him lightly by the hand. “So. How about it? You share, I
share, we see what happens?”
Edward looked up at the moon, breathed in,
breathed out. He realized that, for the first time, he couldn’t quite remember
what Bella looked like.
“Sure,” he
said at last. “There’s just…this is embarrassing, but there’s just one more
thing.”
“What’s
that?”
“Well, I’m
super strong and nigh invulnerable, and—”
Lena
smirked again. “Floorboards in there tell a different story, buddy.”
“Ha ha.
Shut up. Anyway, you’re a Caster, whatever that is, but you’re also just a
human right? I’ve hurt way more people in my life than I’d care to admit. I don’t
want to hurt you, too.”
“Oh, emo
kid, you wish,” said Lena. “I’ve got plenty of ways to protect myself. Besides,
you’re not the biggest badass out here right now, or have you forgotten
already.”
Edward ran
a hand through his hair. “I might have. Probably the brain damage.”
“Ha! Well,
listen. I can’t kiss unprotected
mortals without causing them to experience painful shocks and, if I ever have sex with one, I might just shoot so much electricity
into them that I give them spontaneous heart failure.”
“You say
that like you’re boasting,” said Edward.
“Maybe a
little.” She looped her arm around his. “Come on, corpse boy. Let’s see if you
can ride the lightning.”
END
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