Top Ten by Katie Cotugno
“Can you leave it?” Ryan blew a breath out, irritated both at her and at himself for not keeping his mouth shut. “I don’t exactly have a choice.”
Gabby’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
Ryan shrugged. He hadn’t said anything to Gabby about the conversation he’d had with his mom the day before in the kitchen. Best friends or not, there were limits to what he could tell her. Money had always been easy for her family; she and her sisters and Shay were all heading off to private colleges to study things like English literature that had no practical application in the world, and everything would work out just peachy for them. Meanwhile, if Ryan couldn’t swing this fucking scholarship, he’d be lucky if he wound up working at Walter’s for the rest of his life, still selling the last of the vegan hot dogs when he was old and gray.
“Huh?” Gabby was still looking at him. “Ryan. What does that mean, you don’t have a choice?”
This time the woman turned around and actually shushed them, an exaggerated shhh like a librarian in a Saturday-morning cartoon. Ryan almost laughed, but Gabby looked mortified, whipping around to face forward blankly, her cheeks going a bright screaming pink.
Ryan sat there for another moment, sulking. He was tired; it had been a mistake to tag along to this thing, obviously. Maybe he was exactly the kind of dumb, uncultured person Shay and Gabby thought he was. Maybe it was useless to try to be anything else.
“I’m going to go,” he whispered finally, touching Gabby on the shoulder to get her attention since she was still staring straight ahead like a kindergartner who’d been scolded by her teacher. “You can get a ride home, right?”
“Seriously?” Gabby made a face. “You’re leaving?”
He looked at her ominously. “My head hurts, okay? I’ll see you in the morning.” He got up to go as the crowd applauded; to his surprise, Gabby followed him right up the aisle.
“Did you get another concussion?” she asked once they were outside on the huge, sagging wraparound porch; the front yard was soggy-looking, speckled with patches of dirty snow. “Have you been walking around since this afternoon with another concussion and you just, like, didn’t mention it?”
In fact he was fairly sure that was exactly what had happened, but he didn’t want to tell that to Gabby. He didn’t actually intend to tell anyone. “I didn’t know I had to give you a report on my health every time I saw you,” he said instead.
Gabby scowled. “I’m not a brain doctor, Ryan, but I kind of think three concussions in three years is a big deal. Don’t you know all that stuff about professional football players, like, losing their minds and—”
“I’m not a professional football player, Gabby, Jesus. Can you stop?”
“You stop!” Gabby frowned. The two of them faced off for a moment, unyielding; finally, Gabby sighed. “I need to go back in there,” she said. “I don’t want to miss Shay. Will you text me when you’re home safe, at least? So I know you didn’t die?”
Ryan rolled his eyes, unable to stop himself. “Why are you so interested in me all of a sudden?”
“Because you’re my best friend, you idiot,” Gabby said. “What kind of question is that? And what do you mean, all of a sudden?”
Ryan shook his head. “Forget it,” he said. He wasn’t thinking straight; he sounded whiny and stupid and jealous, like the ridiculous person she and Shay thought he was. There was nothing to be won here. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Ryan felt better almost as soon as he got away from that claustrophobic Victorian. He climbed into the Pampered Paws van, instantly recognizable in the sea of dark Volvos and Mercedes SUVs parked up and down the street. It was probably a miracle he hadn’t been towed. He rolled all the windows down even though it was freezing, his head clearing as he took deep sips of the cold, clean December air. Who wanted to spend a perfectly good Thursday night listening to amateur cello music, anyway? Maybe he’d text Remy and some of those guys, see if anybody was doing anything. He was grabbing his phone out of the cup holder when he realized that his route home was going to take him directly past Arcade World.
Arcade World, where Chelsea Rosen worked.
Ryan put his phone back down.
Arcade World was a massive windowless building off the side of Route 9 that housed batting cages and an abbreviated nine-hole mini-golf course, plus a dark, dank laser tag setup that was, as far as Ryan understood it, mostly just a place for people to fool around. It been a really popular venue for birthday parties in third grade but also had kind of a seamy quality, like it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility that you might get stabbed halfway through a game of Iron Man pinball. Inside, it was cold and smelled like feet.
Still, Ryan felt himself cheer up by two massive clicks as he walked through the entrance, the blinking lights of the ancient Donkey Kong and the rattle of the Skee-Ball machines, the arrhythmic thud of a little kid playing Whack-a-Mole. His step quickened as he headed toward the back, past the virtual horse races and the glassed-off room of pool tables, the line of driving games.
Sure enough, there was Chelsea, standing behind the prize counter, where you could trade your tickets in for dumb plastic knickknacks. She was wearing a bright blue polo shirt with the Arcade World logo on it, her dark curly hair up in that same giant bun as last night. She had a big pair of glasses that made her look a little bit like a teen-movie nerd girl due for a makeover montage, except for the part where Ryan didn’t actually think she needed a makeover at all.
She was handing a suction-cup basketball hoop off to a middle-schooler when she saw him; she looked surprised for a moment, then smiled a slow, easy smile. She didn’t say hello or call out or anything, just stood there with perfect calmness and waited for him to approach, hands on the glass-topped counter in front of her. Ryan liked that about Chelsea, how it already felt like she was onto him somehow.
“So okay, can I ask you something?” he said, leaning across the glass counter a little farther than was strictly necessary and nodding up at the ten-speed mounted on the wall behind her. “Does anybody ever win the bike?’
Chelsea thought about that for a moment. “I can’t say with any authority that nobody has ever won a bike,” she told him. “But I can say that’s definitely the same one that’s been up there since I started working here.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s the same one that’s been up there since I was eight.”
“Could be,” she agreed. “Do you come here a lot?”
“I mean, I did when I was eight,” Ryan said.
Chelsea raised her eyebrows. “And now?”
“Now? No,” Ryan admitted. “I, uh, heard you worked here.”
“So you decided to come bother me at my place of business?” she asked.
That took him by surprise. “Am I bothering you?” he asked.
Chelsea looked at him for a moment. “No,” she said finally, and smiled. “You’re really not.”
GABBY
“So are you coming tonight or what?” Ryan asked Gabby a couple of Fridays later, the two of them heading downstairs and out the side entrance after eighth period. It was the end of the last full week of classes before the break, everybody rowdier than usual; the lawn inside the big circular drive in front of the building was decorated with a Christmas tree, a light-up menorah, and a giant kinara. “Game’s at the college at seven.”
“I guess?” Gabby frowned. “I honestly don’t think you should play, dude.”
“Oh, really?” Ryan smirked at her as if this was entirely new information, like they hadn’t been having some variation on this exact same argument since the night of the concert. “Well, in that case, let me hang up my skates forever. I’ve been thinking about taking up macramé.”
“Stop,” Gabby said as they crossed the parking lot. She was riding with Michelle and her new boyfriend today, could already see them waiting for her; she knew she only had another few seconds to make her point. “I’m not kidding. Did you ever even tell your mom
“Gabby . . .” Ryan rolled his eyes. “There’s nothing to tell her about. My head’s fine.” He shrugged, broad shoulders moving inside his jacket. “This is important, okay? This is the time of year when college scouts start sniffing around. It’s not the time to freak out ’cause I bumped my head.”
“I’m not freaking out,” Gabby protested. She hated that phrase, like just because she had anxiety the things she worried about weren’t real. Still, she’d been carrying around a pack full of dread for the last two weeks, the unshakable feeling that something bad was about to happen, and she wasn’t sure how much of it was valid concern over her best friend doing something dangerous and how much of it was some guilty echo of what he’d said outside Shay’s teacher’s house: Why are you interested in me all of a sudden?
Gabby knew she’d been distracted with Shay the last few months, that much was obvious, but she hadn’t realized Ryan had noticed it, too. She worried she hadn’t been there for him. She felt weirdly, naggingly at fault. I’m still here, she wanted to tell him, but that felt ridiculous and corny and embarrassing, so instead she worried incessantly about his brain smashing all over the ice.
In any case, she got the impression that there was no way she was going to win this argument right this instant. “Is Chelsea coming tonight?” she finally asked.
Ryan shook his head. “She went home early today,” he reported. “She’s got a cold.”
Gabby nodded. He’d been hanging out with Chelsea Rosen nonstop the last couple of weeks, which probably would have bothered her a little if she hadn’t been reasonably sure it would burn itself out in a few more days. Ryan would get tired of her, eventually, like he always got tired of the girls he hung out with who weren’t Gabby herself. “That’s because he’s never boned you,” Celia had pointed out helpfully, when Gabby had made the mistake of mentioning it some months ago. “It keeps you interesting to him.”
Gabby shook her head now, both to clear the memory and to keep from wondering, like she always did when she thought about that particular exchange, if Celia might have had a point. “Anyway, yes,” she said, sighing loudly so that Ryan would know she was only agreeing under protest. “I’ll be there.”
GABBY
The rink was at the state university branch twenty minutes south of Colson; Gabby cajoled Shay into driving her down there with promises of milkshakes and cheese fries after the game. “Can I make a spectacle of myself and leave halfway through?” Shay asked, lips twisting wryly. Gabby blew a raspberry against her cheek, making a joke of it though she knew Shay had actually been kind of pissed about the disappearing act she and Ryan had pulled at the recital. Sometimes it was like she didn’t know how to be both Shay’s girlfriend and Ryan’s friend at once.
It was a tight game, which didn’t actually make it much more interesting than normal; Shay loved hockey and knew all the rules, though, which Gabby was surprised to find out. “How come you and Ryan never talk about this?” she asked, reaching for the popcorn. “It’s like, the actual only thing you have in common.”
“Well,” Shay said, in a voice that wasn’t quite as lighthearted as Gabby might have wanted, “also you.”
She slipped out to the bathroom during the second period, but she got turned around and wound up coming in through a different door than she’d left through, which put her weirdly close to the Colson bench. She was trying to figure out if there was a way for her to cut across the bleachers without displacing too many people when the noise of the crowd turned alarmed: Gabby whirled around to look just as one of the Colson players hit the rink with a sickening crunch, helmet slamming into the ice hard nearly enough to crack it.
It only took her a second to realize it was Ryan.
“Jesus Christ,” Gabby yelped, heart like bloody pulp in her mouth as the team clustered around him and the ref skated out to the center of the ice; she shoved right past one of the Colson coaches to try and get a better look.
“He’s all right,” the coach said—Williams, Gabby thought his name was—glancing over at her distractedly. He was the assistant coach, Gabby knew, though he was older than Coach Harkin and had more of a dad air about him, like probably he went home to his wife at night and ate meat loaf and watched back-to-back episodes of NCIS on cable. “Nature of the beast,” he said now as Ryan sat up dazedly. “Everybody gets a bump on the head every once in a while.”
A bump on the—God, that phrasing made Gabby furious. “He’s had three concussions, actually,” she blurted, before she could stop herself. “So it’s a little more than a bump on the head.”
That got the coach’s attention. “Three?” he asked.
Gabby blanched. Her instinct was to backpedal, to say maybe she’d been mistaken. But that was ridiculous. She wasn’t mistaken; she knew for a fact. And this was Ryan’s brain they were talking about. This was his whole entire life.
“Yeah,” she said, looking Williams right in the eyeballs and knowing she was taking a terrifying fucking chance. “Three.”
GABBY
Gabby knew the Colson team would get right on the bus back to school once the game was over, so she had Shay detour in that direction on their way to the diner for milkshakes.
“Seriously?” Shay asked, skepticism written all over her sharp, lovely face. “Can’t you just text him?”
Gabby couldn’t. She left Shay in the car listening to a podcast and posted up near the door to the gym, stamping her feet on the concrete to try and warm them. It was freezing and slightly damp out, that heavy black purple sky that threatened snow.
“Hey,” Ryan said, turning up after what felt like forever and grinning when he saw her, his wet hair icing over a bit in the cold. He smelled like he always did after hockey games, mildewy locker-room showers and Axe body wash, still red-faced and a little sweaty like his body hadn’t gotten the message to cool off yet. “What are you doing here?”
“I think I fucked up,” she blurted out.
Ryan laughed at that. “Why,” he asked, “what’d you do?” Then, looking at her more closely, realizing somehow that she wasn’t screwing around: “Seriously, what’d you do?”
Gabby took a deep breath.
RYAN
“What?” Ryan asked again, staring at her in the glare of the orange safety light affixed to the side of the building. “Really, I just—you did what?”
“I’m sorry,” Gabby said again. “It’s not like I went to him specifically to tattle on you. I just kind of panicked.”
“No,” Ryan said, trying to keep his voice level, “panicking is when you called 911 on me at that party because I scared you, and that was fine. But this—”
“Wait a minute,” Gabby said, frowning, her posture straightening out a bit. “You had a concussion at that party, Ryan. You passed out at that party. And you have a concussion now.”
“You don’t know that,” Ryan snapped. “Are you a doctor?”
“No, actually,” Gabby retorted. “I’m somebody who knows you’ve gotten your head slammed against the ice twice in the last couple of weeks. I’m somebody who knows you couldn’t even focus enough to sit still at Shay’s concert the other night.”
Oh, please. “Shay’s concert was a snooze of fucking epic proportions, Gabby.”
Gabby threw up her hands. “Look,” she said. “I’m not going to sit here and watch you smash your brain to soup trying prove what a big man you are. I won’t.”
“So don’t, then!” Ryan mirrored her gesture. “Who asked you to watch to begin with?”
“You did, asshole! You asked me to come to your stupid game!”
Well. That was true enough, Ryan guessed, though he wasn’t about to concede the point. “Fine,” he said instead. “So I should just quit hockey altogether so that you don’t have to worry about me? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Can you stop trying to make it about me worrying?” Gabby asked. “That’s not what it’s about. But yes, basically. I’m telling you th
“Like what?” Ryan glared at her. “What exactly do you see me doing?”
“What, like, when you grow up?” Gabby looked at him like he was a moron. “Anything! Become a sportswriter. Be a lawyer. Start a business.”
“Like dog grooming, you mean?” Ryan scowled at her.
Gabby’s eyes narrowed. “Now you’re being a dick.”
“And you’re being ridiculous. I’m not going to go to law school, Gabby. Be real.”
“You could! Why couldn’t you?”
“Because I am not fucking smart enough for law school, Gabby! Jesus Christ.” Oh, he hated her for making him say it. He kind of hated her, period. He wanted this conversation to be over.
But Gabby was shaking her head, incredulous. “You are so,” she insisted, stubborn as a little kid. “You’re—”
“I’m not. And it’s insulting to say it to me. I’m not you, and I’m not Shay, clearly, so—”
Gabby’s eyes widened. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Forget it.”
For a second he thought she was going to push, but in the end it must have felt too dangerous to her, and for that, at least, Ryan could be grateful. “You realize I need to keep playing if I ever want to get out of Colson,” he continued when she was silent for a moment. “The only way I’m ever going to college is a hockey scholarship.”
“That’s not true,” Gabby said.
“Oh, really?” Ryan demanded. He was enjoying himself a little bit now, in some messed-up way. “Even if I got in someplace with my grades, it’s not like my mom has some kind of magical college fund in a coffee can on top of the fridge.”
“There are loans,” Gabby pointed out in a small voice.