Page 66 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
She doesn’t say anything, just opens her laptop bag. Puts the laptop inside. Zips it shut.
“It’s almost midnight. Why don’t you get some rest?” I say, snatching up one of the sleeping bags strapped to a backpack and propped decoratively against the tent. I pull it from the straps and hand it over to her. “I’ll keep watch.”
Hesitation paints the lines of her face, but it’s been a long night, and I know the hours are wearing on her.
“It’s all right. I’ll wake Cole up for a shift in a little while.”
“Cole? I’d rather have Grizzly here watching over us.”
“That’s a polar bear.”
She gives me a look. “Wake me up when you get tired.” She picks up the sleeping bag. “And that doesn’t mean tomorrow morning.”
Whatever. But I nod.
Soon, the camp is filled with the sound of sleeping breaths, even and peaceful. I stare into the dark, feeling the weight of the day settle over me. Outside, the wind terrorizes the building, creaking and scraping over the old bones of the mall.
Truthfully, I’m about to nod off when a zipper slices through the quiet and Cole crawls out. Maybe he heard us, I dunno, but the guy hunkers down beside me.
“’Sup?” I say.
“I gotta know why.”
We all do, pal, but I’m game. “Why what?”
“You could have left earlier. Why didn’t you?”
No point in lying. “I thought about it,” I say. “Seemed like a pretty easy way to solve all of my problems.”
“So why didn’t you?”
I turn my head to look at him, the lines on his face deep in the flashlight glow. “Because I know what it’s like to need help, and I know what it’s like to have regrets. And I’m not going to leave a teammate who needs me.”
He frowns, then scrubs his hands over his face—a system rebooting after a crash.
“I don’t know if you know this, but my mom has MS.” He sighs. “The treatment is expensive. It’s not fully covered, and it adds up.” He hooks his elbows around his knees and keeps going, his confession pouring out like water. “Last year, I started to get that feeling, like I was about to get cut.” He lifts a shoulder. “My game time was shrinking. Conversations started stopping when I walked in. I’m just a third-line grinder. Useful but replaceable.” He laughs, no humor in it. “So one night, I’m out at the bar, and this guy mentions how he made some cash on betting—it sounded ridiculous, shady, I know. But he let me in on the next bet. I put next to nothing on the line; I was just…curious. And then I won. And I won again. And pretty soon, it was covering medical bills and medication.”
The picture assembles before me—a desperate man just trying to provide for someone he loves. I can relate. I can see myself standing exactly where he is, desperate to alleviate my mom’s long hours and sleepless nights.
“It worked for a while. Small bets. Then it stopped working. And the hole got bigger. And the men stopped being friendly. Fifty thousand turned into a hundred, into three hundred. They wanted games thrown. And I couldn’t do that, not without?—”
“Someone to take the fall.”
He looks at me. Not the Teflon-coated Cole from press conferences. Or the cheery goof from the ice. No, I see the man underneath. Stripped of his confidence. Wrecked.
“I’m sorry. I knew your history,” he whispers. “And I knew if I tampered with a test, the organization would see a pattern instead of a setup.”
I want to be angry—I am. But I also understand.
I took steroid enhancers because I was terrified of being average. Because my mom worked double shifts at the hospital and whatever else she could find, and Coach gave me free ice time, and I couldn’t be the kid who let everyone down. So I cheated. To be enough.
Cole gambled because he was terrified of being cut. Because his mom has MS and the treatments cost more than his salary covers, and he couldn’t be the son who let her care fall apart. So he cheated. To be enough.
Different drug. Same disease.
“I get why you did it,” I say.
Cole looks at me, eyes wide with surprise.
