Page 28 of Faking the Goal

She clicks to the next slide, which is just a list of section headers. "Features. For the winter issue, I want us shifting some of our focus away from weekly news and putting more time into deeper stories. Profiles. Investigations. Human-interest pieces. The kind of articles people actually remember after they've finished reading them."

A hand goes up from somewhere near the snack table. "Are we doing the 'Professors and Their Pets' series again? Because Professor Abernathy's corgi wearing that little sweater last time got more clicks than our coverage of the board of trustees meeting."

"That's exactly the problem," Poly says. "We need substance. The pet series is cute, but it's fluff. I want pieces with legs. Pieces that matter."

I resist the urge to point out that the corgi piece also mattered, at least to everyone with a functioning heart. But Poly has that look—the one where her eyebrows do this thing that's halfway between I'm listening and I'm calculating how quickly I can replace you—so I keep my mouth shut and my pen moving across my notebook, where I'm actually sketching a particularly grumpy-looking squirrel I spotted outside the journalism building this morning.

Poly starts assigning columns. Marcus gets the op-ed on campus parking, which is basically volunteering for hate mail. Jade, who has the permanent expression of someone who's just remembered they left the stove on, gets the arts calendar. A freshman whose name I keep mixing up with three other freshmen gets the thankless task of covering the faculty senate meeting, which is basically two hours of academic jargon and the distinct sound of democracy dying of boredom.

I'm half-paying attention, adding shading to my squirrel's tail, when I feel the temperature in the room drop by several degrees. Not literally—the heating in this building has the consistency of a dying man's last promise—but figuratively, in that way that happens when Poly's gaze lands on you and lingers a beat too long.

"Which brings us to sports," Poly says, and her voice takes on that particular lilt I've come to recognize as the preamble to something I won't like. "The Athlete Spotlight Series has been one of our most consistent performers. Readers love the human-interest angle. They want to know the person behind the jersey."

She clicks to a new slide.

A photo of Kentaro Azuma fills the screen—all sharp angles and cold intensity, his hockey mask pushed up to reveal a face that could freeze the rink without any help from the Zamboni. He's mid-game, caught in that perfect moment of focus sports photographers kill for: eyes locked on the action, muscles tensed, the kind of singular concentration that makes for great photos and, in his particular case, a fucking nightmare of an interview subject.

I barely manage to swallow my groan.

Oh, come on.

I was just thinking about this asshole. Does he have to haunt my Student Media meetings too?

First the rink. Then the Pond. Then my thoughts all fucking weekend because, annoyingly, some of the shit he said managed to lodge itself in my brain. And now his gigantic miserable face is staring down at me from a projector screen.

Why is he everywhere?

The thought makes me pause.

Huh.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remember him grumbling those exact words about me at practice a few weeks ago.

Well, congratulations, Sunshine. Apparently the feeling is fucking mutual.

The collective wince that moves through the room is almost audible. Marcus makes a sound like air escaping a punctured tire. Jade's perpetual worry-face deepens.

"Kentaro Azuma," Poly says, as if she's announcing the discovery of a new continent instead of the journalistic equivalent of a minefield. "Goaltender for the Ridgewater Warriors. Record-breaking save percentage. NHL scouts circling. And—" she adds, "—notoriously difficult with media."

Understatement of the century. Kentaro Azuma makes interviewing seem like extracting teeth. Without anesthesia. While the patient is actively trying to escape.

I feel the shift before I see it—the subtle rearrangement of bodies, the way eyes slide toward me like magnets finding north. I keep my face carefully neutral, because the worst thing you can do in a room full of journalism students is show weakness. We're like piranhas that way. We can smell blood in the water, and the first sign of hesitation is an invitation for everyone to start circling.

Poly turns to me with a smile that has all the warmth of a tax audit. "Taylor. Since you're already embedded with the hockey team for your beat coverage, it makes the most sense for you to take the Azuma profile."

There it is. That carefully crafted moment of bureaucratic sadism, wrapped in the language of logical assignment. The smile doesn't reach her eyes. If anything, her eyes are doing the opposite of smiling—they're performing some complex emotional calculus that involves several variables, all of them variations on how can I make Taylor's life harder.

It's no secret that Poly and I operate in a state of mutually assured annoyance. The official story is professional disagreement. The unofficial story, which everyone knows and nobody discusses in meetings, involves Poly's ex-boyfriend attempting to hit on me at a department mixer last year with all the subtlety of a freight train. I shut him down—politely, I might add—but something about the way his eyes tracked me for the rest of the night must have registered on Poly's jealousy radar, because ever since, I've existed in her mental filing cabinet under "Problems To Be Solved Via Assignment of Difficult Tasks."

I sigh, not because I'm surprised, but because the performance of exasperation is expected. If I didn't sigh, Poly would think she hadn't hit the mark, and then she'd just keep swinging until she found a softer spot.

"Awesome! The hockey guys love me," I say, and the lie sits on my tongue with the distinct flavor of impending regret. "Especially Kentaro. We're basically besties."

The room is so quiet I can hear the ancient air conditioner gasping for breath in the corner. Marcus gives me a look that's equal parts admiration and have you lost your mind.

Poly's smile doesn't budge, but something flickers behind it—the briefest flash of disappointment that I didn't crumble. "Excellent. I was hoping you'd say that. The piece needs to be comprehensive—playing style, background, personal interests, the whole package. And photos, of course. Lots of photos."

"Obviously," I say, because what else am I going to say? Actually, the hockey guys tolerate me at best, and Kentaro Azuma looks at me like I'm something his skate accidentally ran over?