Ulwich Preparatory Academy: Fall by Lauren Edwards

Author:Lauren Edwards [Edwards, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781956128253
Google: lrZWzwEACAAJ
Publisher: Chaotic Neutral Press LLC
Published: 2022-09-14T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Mitch

Every muscle burned as I made a break for the goal. Dalton, our primary goalie, took a defensive stance in the crease, prepared to stop the play Brian and I were running. Brian skid short of the crease, but when the ball left his net, it didn't hurtle into the goal.

I swiveled on my heel, sweat streaming down my bare back, to catch the rubber ball flying toward me. As I turned, a flash of copper on the hillside snagged my attention. Andy. I did a double take. And Calvin. For a split second, I forgot about the ball racing toward me and fully capable of giving me a concussion. Was Andy here for me? Or was he here because Calvin was here? Calvin almost always watched our practices. The entire team knew; it wasn't like he was sly about it. But it was also an unspoken agreement, similar to the one I'd made about Andy, that Calvin was Benny's problem. If Benny wasn't doing anything about it, then none of us were going to bother either.

"Hudson!" Santinelli shouted from the sideline.

I shook off the distraction and held up my stick in time to get body-checked. Blue sky filled my vision as I hit the ground hard enough to crack my back and knock all the air from my lungs. I blinked in a daze as clouds lazily drifted across the sky far above and transported me back to a different time.

Andy and I were laying in the grass on a hot summer day. He'd come to visit me for a couple weeks and I'd just told him about how my father had died before I'd come to UPA. Unsurprisingly, he'd been supportive and empathetic, asking me questions about my dad, but never pushing. He even understood that I was still kind of angry at him.

At one point, while we were calling out shapes in the clouds, we'd gone into a companionable silence. Then he'd said that while he wasn't really religious, he believed my dad was still out there. Stating that energy could neither be created nor destroyed and at their core, wasn't that what souls were anyway? Pure energy. So, really, how cool was it that my dad was out there? He could be anything. A star, part of a new planet, maybe even a comet or black hole. But wherever he was, he was part of the fabric of the universe—just like I was.

He'd looked at me with those bright green eyes of his, a soft smile curling his lips. I knew then what I'd known the first time I'd met him, I—

"Mitch? Mitch. Can you hear me?"

I blinked a few times, but instead of Andy's warm eyes, Nate's dark blue ones greeted me. The happy memory continued to slip away like mist dissipating with the dawn. I groaned and rolled to my side.

"Shit, man. That was brutal. You alright?" Nate took a step back as I sat up and braced my stick across my knees, my breathing still pretty labored.

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