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)
An empty but terrifying threat, except it wasn’t. The next week the coaches had new furniture brought in for the locker rooms, and Riko snagged a box to shove Jean into. He’d spent three days curled up in it as it crumpled under the weight of everything Riko piled on top of it, face pressed to the sagging wall where Riko had left him the smallest of holes for air. The fear that Riko would never let him out was only slightly overshadowed by the fear of what Riko would do if he cried out for help, so he’d fought his escalating panic with everything he’d had.
Later, while Riko and the master were distracted discussing Moriyama madness, Kevin leaned into him and said, “Promise me you won’t try again. Promise me, Jean. I don’t want to lose you.”
Promise me, except he’d walked away years later without a second thought.
“Jean?” Abby asked.
Jean forced his memories and fear away and tilted the box toward Abby in silent demand. She didn’t hesitate but sliced clean lines through the tape along its edges and center flap. Jean sent her a baleful look until she took a step back, and then he pried the box open to see what the Ravens saw fit to send him.
The sight of folded cloth almost fooled him into complacency: the Ravens had emptied out his dresser drawer and sent the least worn of the clothes he’d left behind. Since Ravens spent most of their sixteen-hour days geared up at Evermore, they tended to keep only four to five outfits for attending class. Kevin and Riko had quite a bit more, since they were required to put in significantly more face time with the press and the other teams, but Jean had settled for three. The Ravens sent him a pair of jeans and two shirts, all black of course, and he assumed a freshman would inherit the rest. At least all his boxers and socks were accounted for.
Beneath the clothes were his few personal possessions: namely, postcards and magnets Kevin had bought him while on the road with Riko for press events. Jean turned one postcard over in his hand, and his stomach knotted when he saw the back. Whatever message Kevin had written him or memory he’d shared was gone forever beneath layers of ink; someone had taken a thick sharpie to the entire thing. He checked another, then another, before grabbing the whole stack and flipping them. Quick hands scattered them, looking for anything he could salvage and coming back empty.
The magnets were in only marginally better shape, their surfaces and backings scratched through in several places. Jean’s favorite, a small wooden bear with a red beret, had been roughly cut in half. He tried holding the pieces together, but it was missing a chunk from the middle and wouldn’t line up. Maybe the last bit had fallen to the bottom of the box? He tipped it over to look inside, but the only other contents he saw were his class notebooks.
When he realized he finally had access to the notes he’d taken all year long, he quickly dumped them onto the bed in front of him. It was late to finally have these back, seeing how finals were only a week and a half away, but Jean was eager to make use of them. They were all black, as was required, but he’d written his class names on the fronts in white-out. He spread them out until he found the one for his economics class. He flipped it open, half-afraid to find the Ravens had ripped out pages while packing them, and realized the reality was far worse.
COWARD was written diagonally across the front page in sharpie, with a scribbled border surrounding it. Jean flinched away from the accusation so hard he almost tore the page out. The backside had jagged lines only, but the next sheet yelled WASHOUT at him.
“Jean,” Abby said, but Jean kept flipping.
Page after page had been defaced, most with repeating, angry insults, some with just angry swipes and swirls. Ten pages in, Jean found a loose piece of stationery, and he picked it up to stare down at the unfamiliar handwriting. It took two sentences to realize it was a letter from one of his teammates, and Jean’s stomach churned as he slowly read through the whole thing. The amount of vitriol Phil packed into it left Jean feeling cold and clammy. He slowly returned the letter to its spot. Five pages later there was another letter, this time in a cursive he instantly recognized as Jasmine’s.
Don’t, he thought, but he picked it up anyway.
Jean was distantly aware that Abby was returning his clothes and gifts to the box. She was quick to pile the loose notebooks in on top of them. He should stop her, but he couldn’t look away from Jasmine’s note. That Jasmine hated him had never been a secret; she had been competing with him for Riko’s attention for years and found it unforgivable that he was the one wearing Riko’s number. Phil’s letter had lashed out with reactive rage over Jean thinking he could walk away from all of them, but Jasmine’s letter was unmitigated venom.