Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 163209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 816(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 816(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Jean was nearly to it when he heard Nabil call, “Jean!”
He had only a half-second to find Nabil, but a half-second was all he needed. Jean was turning before he even snagged the ball, needing the momentum for such a long shot. The second it hit his net he whipped around and fired it off. It hit the wall with a satisfying thud: the perfect speed, the perfect angle. It went straight toward where Nabil and Pat were squaring off, and Nabil only had to get there first.
If Nabil was a Raven, that would have been enough. He would have trusted it to reach him and already calculated the force he needed on his own shot toward the goal. Nabil caught it, but he wasn’t ready to throw it. He ran with it instead, and Jean swore viciously in French as Nabil wasted the flawless setup.
“Good lord,” Derek said, scratching the side of his helmet with his racquet. “It always startles me when you guys do that.”
“It would startle me more if you could actually follow through,” Jean said, annoyed.
“He caught it,” Derek protested, and then the flow of the game forced an abrupt end to the conversation.
It was another minute more before Nabil tried again. Derek heard the call as well, and this time he knew what was coming, but he still wasn’t fast enough. Jean looked from himself to Nabil, and Nabil to the goal, and let the ball fly with everything he had. A second time in a row Nabil squandered it, and Jean had had enough of that. He cast his racquet aside and started that way, but Derek grabbed his elbow to haul him to a stop.
“Easy now,” he tried. “Talk it through with me before you try and tear his head off. What’s he doing wrong?”
“Tell me why he is refusing to take a shot,” Jean demanded. “He calls for a pass from me, so I give him exactly what he needs to score. He shouldn’t call for it if he can’t handle it.”
“He’s being chased by Pat,” Derek pointed out.
“Irrelevant,” Jean insisted. “There shouldn’t be a chase. All he needs to do is shoot.”
Derek frowned, thinking that through. Across the court Cat hollered a warning when she realized too late the two were distracted from the scrimmage. Derek turned, but Jean was already reaching out to snatch the ball from midair. He felt the impact knife down his forearm; all of the protection on Exy gloves was along the backs of a player’s fingers and hands to guard against overeager stick checks. Jean pushed the ball into the shallow net on Derek’s racquet so he could give his hand a vicious shake.
“Trade back with him,” Jean said. “Call for it when you are ready. I will give it to you exactly how you need it. Don’t carry. Don’t think. Just throw.”
“Just shout your name?” Derek asked, skeptical.
“I don’t care what you say,” Jean said.
A grievous mistake in hindsight, because a few minutes later Derek yelled “Oui señor!” at full volume.
Across the court Cat called a scandalized, “Hello?!”
Jean would unstring his racquet later, but for now all that mattered was the game. It took three steps to get past Nabil, two more to catch up to the ball, and Jean let it fly. Pat knew by now what it meant when his marked partner called out to Jean, but knowing would only save him if he was faster. This time he was. Derek caught the ball and immediately went to throw it, but Pat got his stick up under it to ruin the shot. Not an ideal outcome, but an acceptable one: at least Derek had tried to do as he was told.
In the last minute of scrimmage Derek tried again: “Oui oui!”
From here there was no good angle, but Jean had been called on and he had to make it work. He ricocheted it off the back wall, opening up the space he needed, and was ready on the rebound. He put everything he had into the pass. It hit the side wall, cracked against the far court wall over Shane’s head, and went back to Derek. This time he was just fast enough to outrun Pat, but he hesitated for a critical second after he caught it. Fighting his instincts, perhaps, but all that mattered was that Derek snapped it at the goal before Pat reached him.
He didn’t have the right motor control to pull it off; his entire career he’d had to put too much thought into his passes and shots. He couldn’t score here, especially not against a Trojan goalkeeper, but it was enough that he tried.
Jean looked at Nabil as the coaches called an end to practice. “Do you understand?”
“No,” Nabil admitted. “I don’t think I like that. It’s impressive, sure, but it seems very... sterile,” he said after a moment’s thought. “That’s the kind of trick I can imagine falling back on in a panic, but I wouldn’t want to play my entire game like that.”