City Skylines

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

We had subs now.  We had our full team, minus Mary Beth and Victoria.  We went out onto the field at the end of halftime.  Ten minutes into the half it was tied, 4-4.

Suddenly, I started getting very woozy.  And mystery girl, who was marking me again, seemed to realize it and smiled.  What did she do?  I thought of what happened during the game, when she would've had the chance to do something to me.

The water jug.  She drugged the water jug and I drank it during halftime because I didn't have my own water.  I called a time out.

"What?" Jill asked as we got off the field.

"No one drink the water.  Has anyone had any from the jug?"

Everyone shook their heads.  "Good.  No one drink it.  At all."

"Why?" Meghan asked.

"The girl who's after us.  She drugged it so after the game when we're tired and drugged then it'll be easier for her."

"How did you find out?"

"I drank the water during halftime, I can feel it working on me now."

"Go inside.  Down the stairs.  There's antidotes there," Lanie said.

I nodded and jogged inside.  I went down the stairs and pulled out one of the shelves.  I grabbed the antidote that works for most depressant drugs, and injected it into my arm.  I waited to see if it worked.  After a few minutes, I was feeling a bit better, so I grabbed a small case of it, just in case someone else drank the water, and I ran back out to the game.

I looked at the scoreboard.  It was 5-4.  We were winning with 5 minutes left.  I called off one of the girls, and ran on as her sub.  Mystery girl from the other team was on me again.  She was doing it on purpose, just to annoy me.

"Surprised you're back," she said.

"No you're not.  You just wish I wasn't back."

She laughed as the ball came down the field towards us.  I leaned into her, and then exploded off and ran to get the ball.  I felt her stick hook around my ankle, and I fell.  The ref didn't blow his whistle.  Seriously?  How did he not see that?

I quickly got up as mystery girl ran to the ball.  I began to drop back to play defense as she started dribbling down the turf.  I went in for the block tackle, and it was beautiful.  I was low, and I got the ball clean off her stick.  The crowd cheered, but then the ref blew his whistle and called a hack on me.

I didn't even touch her stick!  I turned to drop, but then the ref blew his whistle again, a longer one.  He pointed to me and held up a green card.

"For what?" I asked.

"For not being five away from the ball."

"But I'm allowed to be closer if I don't play the ball."

"Two minutes," he responded.

That was so stupid.  As I stood on the sidelines watching the game, I noticed something.  In the ref's chest pocket, there was a $20 bill sticking out.  There was nothing wrong with that, he was allowed to have money with him.  But the money wasn't there before I went inside, and the refs were paid by the league, not at games.

They were paying off the refs.  That was the stupidest way to win.  I called our last timeout.

"What?" Abby asked.

"They paid off the refs.  Play as clean as you can.  We only have two minutes left in the game and we have a one goal lead.  If you can, keep it on the right side of the field.  I don't know if the ref on that side was paid off, but the one on the left definitely was."

"That makes sense," Abby said.  "They were doing a good job until after the other team called a time out and said something to the ref.  Then the shook hands, they must've slipped the money then."

"Just play our game and we'll be fine."

The ref blew his whistle to end the timeout.  My card had 10 seconds left, and once those 10 seconds were up, I exploded onto the field.  We just had to stall for one minute.

"Flow right!" I shouted, hoping my teammates would understand.  Jill nodded and received the ball from Lanie.  My other teammates started getting into the general spaces where we go for our warmup flow drill.  This drill always took forever, and we could stall for 45 seconds with it.

Jill passed the ball to me, and I passed it back to her and cut to the middle.  She passed it back to me and I sent it down the field to the baseline where Rose was waiting she dribbled into the circle and hit the ball into one of the other team's player's foot.

And they didn't call a corner.  They didn't even hold an advantage when the girl took the ball from Rose.  Fortunately, the time ran out and we had won.

We ran down to our goal where Meghan was running out.  We were all so happy we won.  After we shook hands with the other team, we lined up for our medals and trophy.  Once we all got those, and took a million pictures, I looked over to the sidelines.  Janessa was standing there with her arms crossed.  We got our stuff from the bench and started walking back to the car.

"Where are you going?" Janessa asked.

No one responded.

"I know you hate me for trying to keep you out of this, but this is bigger than what guys have ever dealt with."

"We can handle it."

"Really?  By coming here?  By not letting me know where you guys are?"

I nodded.  "We're doing fine on our own."

"Do you have any leads whatsoever?"

"That's not for me to tell."

"Because you don't want to admit I'm right."

"I never said we didn't."

"I thought you guys were smarter than this."

"Why did you come here?"

"To let you know how stupid you're being."

"We know what we're doing."

Suddenly Janessa's phone rang.  She answered it.  "What?... No... I'm trying..."  There was a long pause.  "No.  No, that can't be... Ok... Bye."  She hung up her phone and turned to all of us.  "This is why I can't run around looking for you."

"Why?"

"Because while I was gone, someone snuck in and killed Victoria."

I looked around the field, the mystery girl was gone.  Headquarters wasn't that far from school, she probably left right after the game.

"Guys, let's go," I said.  "We have to get away from here."  We grabbed our stuff and ran to our cars.  Janessa followed us.  I turned to her.  "Sorry, but we can't trust anyone."  Then I slammed the door shut and Jill stepped on it.

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Two deaths on the team. Do you think they should go into hiding, or fight for revenge? Which side is Janessa on? And who is that mystery girl? And what are they forgetting? Don't forget to vote and comment!