Superfan (Brooklyn #3)(46)

She snorts. “Fine. I’ve been warned.”

My smile dies, though, as I realize she’s still waiting for me to tell her about my life’s greatest disaster. “Brett won trophies because he was good. It didn’t hurt that he had the best coaches and the most expensive equipment I’d ever seen. But before I showed up at the school, nobody could beat him.”

“And then you did?”

“Sometimes. Freshman year I was still learning fast. But sophomore year I began to dominate. Especially once I learned about the Darlington Beach scholarship. It was sponsored by the country club—there was one winner each year. It went to whichever Darlington student was the highest ranked tennis player. Male or female.”

“Fancy.”

“Yeah. Usually that prize went to a senior. But as juniors, Brett and I were already setting records in our division. Our school was cleaning up all the meets. My mom and I moved to Darlington Beach to make me eligible for the scholarship. You had to be a resident. If I won, it would be like getting a blank check. I could use the money at any private college that would have me.”

Delilah’s hand skims my arm. “And Brett wanted it, too?”

“Yup.” I shake my head. “Richest kid in town, but he hated the idea of losing to me. And tennis is weird. There are no teammates in tennis. It’s a pretty brutal setup, where every man is ultimately out for himself.”

“Sounds perfect for Brett. That man is not a team player.”

She’s right. I prefer hockey for exactly this reason. Tennis is the loneliest sport in the world. You’re not even allowed to speak to your coach during a game.

“So he started to cheat,” I tell her. “Do you know anything about tennis?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “Not a lot of tennis happens in foster care.”

“I took up tennis just so I could see how the other half lived,” I admit. “And because Darlington Beach was crazier about tennis than about hockey.”

“How does a California boy take up hockey, anyway?”

“That’s a different story. Hockey is all about the refereeing, right? If they don’t call it, it didn’t happen.”

“Okay.”

“In tennis—unless you’re on the pro circuit—there’s like one official for every eight games in progress. When a ball lands on the line, the player has to call it in or out.”

Her eyebrows draw up into arches. “And nobody argues the calls?”

“Not usually. So Brett started cheating during his games.”

“Against you?”

“Me and anyone else who’d threatened his standing. Eventually he was sort of famous for calling his opponent’s balls out when they were on the line and should have been good.”

“And nobody noticed?”

I shrug. “People noticed. But he was careful not to do it in front of the officials or his opponent’s coach. Once I watched a parent get up in his face, and he just lied his ass off.”

I remember these days like they were yesterday—the heat of the clay courts and the sound of the balls thwacking off racquets all around me. I’m competitive, too. I lived for that shit.

“So that’s how he got an edge on you?”

“Yes and no. We had to play each other in a tournament at the end of the season. I felt intense pressure to win. The recruiters were circling. My SAT scores had come back better than my counselor had expected. ‘You could do this,’ he said. ‘You could win the Darlington Beach Club scholarship. Or maybe even a tennis scholarship to Stanford.’”

At that point I probably didn’t even need the damned town scholarship. But that doesn’t mean I’d give up.

And there’s a reason I never talk about this. A tightness grips my chest as I remember how this felt. Teenage me would have done anything to avoid failure. It took me years to get past this stupid incident. And there are days when I still feel the lingering damage to my psyche.

“So…” I can almost smell my own nervous sweat as Brett and I waited on the sidelines for the officials to tell us we could start that last game. It was the stupidest week of my life. And I really don’t want to tell Delilah all the ways I failed myself. “We both cheated. I sank right to his level.”

“And?”

I can’t do it. I’m not going to tell her the whole story. “He cheated better,” is all I say.

“He won the scholarship?”

“He did.” And so much more. Only one of us walked away with our pride intact, and it wasn’t me. “At least I had senior year to switch gears. I ended up taking a gap year and playing juniors hockey while applying to colleges. And that went well, so a hockey scholarship paid for everything.” I didn’t get to go to a private school like I’d planned, though. I had to settle.

Some days I blame Brett. Most days I blame myself.

“He took a bite out of both of us,” she whispers. “But no more.”

“No more,” I agree. I want to be done with this conversation and with him. “Should we get up and shower?”

“Soon.” She puts her head on my shoulder.

I smile at the ceiling. “Okay. Soon.”

The ceiling fan makes another lazy rotation, and I try to relax. But now I’m all keyed up inside. The specter of Brett Ferris has me thinking about my failures.