Learning Curve

Finn

Through the darkness, Ace guides us across campus, past Newton and the dean’s office in Stewart until we reach Nash Mathematics Center. There isn’t much I know about this mysterious mission to what Ace claims will be the coolest part of our college experience, but I know if it’s much farther of a walk, I’m giving up and going back to the dorm.

“Ace, I swear if you’re taking me into some back alley to watch a bunch of dudes do a séance-style circle jerk or some shit, I’m going to kill you,” Blake remarks, mirroring my thoughts impressively.

“Ditto on the killing.”

“Cool your jets, boys,” Ace chides, waving a hand before circling around to the back of Nash like a cat burglar in a cartoon. His stride is animated, and his toes are pointed as he high-steps.

In the center of the massive building, a set of cement steps that lead to nothing but more darkness makes Ace’s eyes light up and his posture straighten. “This is it. We’re here.”

“We’re here?” Blake asks, annoyed now. “What the fuck is going on?”

I still don’t know why Blake Boden is with us, seeing as the guy just won one of the biggest games of the year and could be celebrating with his teammates while co-eds hang on his every word, but I’m not mad about it. So far, he’s doing a hell of a job of asking all the questions I’d be forced to ask on my own if he weren’t here. Plus, I thought the star quarterback of a Division I school with the kind of national attention that he has would be stuck-up or cockier than shit. Instead, he’s kind of wholesome. Confident, sure, but not at all the kind of fuckface I like to beat the shit out of.

“Relax, Boden,” Ace says, an ironic command, given our current location in front of a creepy, abandoned stairwell. “We’ll go down in a sec. Just waiting on Julia to get here.”

“Pretty sure Blake’s primary concern isn’t the holdup,” I reply with a howl. “We want to know what the fuck’s down there in your little mystery cave.”

Before Ace can answer, Julia’s hurried voice cuts through the stillness around us. “Hi, hi! Sorry we’re late! We had a little wardrobe emergency, and—” She stops talking as the three of us turn to look at her, a small smile forming at the corner of her mouth before she continues. “Right. You dudes don’t care about clothes.”

Scottie is at her side, clinging to her elbow and avoiding any and all eye contact with me. She’s no longer in the cheerleader uniform I saw her in this afternoon, sporting cutoff jean shorts, white Pumas, and a white T-shirt that reads “Feeling very IDGAF-ish” in black letters instead, and her hair is in a ponytail that cascades down her back. She’s fresh-faced, like she showered off the heavy makeup from today’s game that all the cheerleaders wear, and even more gorgeous than I’d let myself remember.

Yep. I’m still a fucking idiot.

“Scottie came along so I wouldn’t be the only girl at the sausage fest,” Julia remarks, making me smile despite myself. She’s so carefree and funny—almost the way I would expect Scottie to be, given her silver spoon background. I’m always surprised by Scottie’s grit.

But when Julia looks down the stairwell we’re currently standing at the top of, her grin vanishes. “Um, is it just me, or is this giving murder-y vibes?”

“Wait…that’s where we’re going?” Scottie questions.

“Just relax, ladies,” Ace attempts to reassure as he wraps an arm around Julia’s shoulders. “It’s all good in the hood.”

“If I end up in a sex-trafficking ring because of you, Coach is going to be so pissed,” Blake teases, making Ace roll his eyes.

“Come on. We have to get down there before we’re late.” Ace unwraps his arm from Julia’s shoulder and takes her hand in his instead, walking down the stairs with her at the front of the group.

“I swear, Ace, if I didn’t know where you were taking us, there’s no way I’d be following along,” Julia comments. “This is creepy as fuck.”

“At least you know where you’re going,” Blake says through a barking laugh as he follows Ace and Julia down the steps. “Ace hasn’t told us shit.”

“Yeah,” Scottie mutters. “I’m also in the dark.”

“It’s going to be worth it, Scottie! I promise!” Julia calls over her shoulder, but Scottie is still standing at the top of the stairs. I’m beside her, of course, but the power of her indifference is like a force field between us. A force field of my own making, I realize, but fuck if I don’t hate the way it feels.

“You okay?” I ask, my feet refusing to leave her behind.

She nods, her eyes flicking to mine twice before actually settling there. She digs her top teeth into her bottom lip, hesitation to engage with me within her every movement. “I guess you could say I’m not a big fan of the dark.”

Before I can even process what I’m doing, I reach for her hand, gently wrapping it in my grasp. Startled, her big doe eyes meet mine, and the urge to pull her to my chest and kiss her hits me like a fucking truck.

“Finn?” she asks, my name a whisper on her perfect lips. I’m confusing her; I know. Because I’m confusing me too.

“I got you,” I soothe through a pointedly averted gaze. Focusing on anything but Scottie’s eyes or her lips or the way she smells like vanilla and honey is the only thing I can do to keep my sanity right now.

She grips my hand tighter as I guide us down the stairs, and I hate that it makes a small smile form at the corner of my lips. I feel two times taller when she acts like she trusts that I can keep her safe.

Ace knocks on the closed door at the bottom of the stairs four times, a unique staccato making it obvious that it’s some kind of code. It swings open five seconds later, a big, burly-looking guy with a fully shaven head peeking his upper body out.

“Name.”

“Ace Kelly,” my charismatic roommate says cheerfully, like this isn’t the start of at least ten horror movies.

“Everyone else?” the big, scary dude asks then, his eyes narrowing.

“My friends.”

Baldy’s eyebrows draw together, and then the door slams shut, right in Ace’s face. Blake starts laughing, and Scottie looks at me, her eyes wide in question. I don’t have an answer, so I just shrug.

As Ace turns around to look at us, he appears nervous for the first time. “Nothing to worry about. I’m sure this is just part of the process.”

I nod. “Right.”

Scottie pulls her hand from mine and rubs her hands up and down her bare arms, looking over her shoulder and back up the staircase, our moment gone. “Jules, I think I’m gonna—”

The door slams open again, and the burly dude waves us all in with a frown on his face. Blake, shocked, pats Ace on the shoulder as he follows him in.

I gesture for Scottie to go ahead of me to give her some security now that we’re not holding hands anymore, and she accepts shyly. I work hard not to watch her ass as she walks and, instead, settle for watching the sway of her dark locks as her ponytail moves side to side.

The hallway is dark as we pass the man at the door and proceed inside, and a dingy, metallic smell settles inside my nose. There’s a dull roar of noise up ahead, but no light whatsoever that I can see.

Ace turns the knob to open the solitary door at the end of the hall, and a room full of paint and supplies illuminates. A single bulb is hanging from the ceiling on a small chain, and the sound of something even louder comes through the door on the other side. Ace tries the knob for that door but finds it locked. After a small shrug of anticipation, he does the special knock again, and the door swings open.

Scottie navigates through the piles of paint cans, and I follow behind to bring up the rear.

A girl with long blond hair and startlingly pretty blue eyes stands just inside, a clipboard in her hand and a scowl on her face. She looks a few years older than us and carries the kind of confidence that makes you feel like she’s in charge.

“You’re on my shit list, Ace,” she says in greeting, and immediately, Blake smiles back at me with wild eyes.

“Hey, Lex. Good to see you,” Ace replies, his posture relaxed now that we’ve successfully made it inside.

Her eyes are hard but beautiful as she glances behind Ace and Julia to Blake, Scottie, and me. “I see you took it upon yourself to just…invite people.”

“They’re trustworthy. I swear. Signed a blood contract and everything before I brought them.”

She rolls her eyes. “Fucking hell, you’re always a thorn in my side.” She turns to Julia. “And, you. You should know better than this.”

“Sorry, Lex.” Julia is sheepish but not actually scared. It’s obvious both Ace and Julia know “Lex” in some other capacity than whatever tonight is.

She grabs her clipboard and unlocks the pen from the top of it. “What are their names? I need them.”

Ace points back at me. “Finn Hayes. And in front of him, Scottie Bardeaux.”

Blake takes it upon himself to step up and hold out a hand toward Lex like a true gentleman. “I’m Blake Boden.”

She glances down at his hand and then back up at his face before averting her attention away from him entirely and speaking to everyone. “You have to sign an NDA. Give fingerprints. And if any of you talk about Double C to anyone, I’ll make sure they never find your bodies.”

“You gonna murder us, Lex? Won’t that make the family cookouts a little awkward?” Ace teases, and she glares at him. He holds up both hands. “Got it. First rule of Double C is don’t talk about Double C.”

She pulls out a cell phone and opens an app, flipping over Ace’s hand and scanning his fucking fingerprint. His eyes go wide as she shows it to him.

“I can put this anywhere I want if I need to. Understand me?”

Holy shit, who is this girl?

Ace nods, a dutiful puppy on the leash of his owner. Still, he’s also him, so he has a comment.

“Did you rob the FBI or some shit? How the hell do you have a thing that scans fingerprints, Lexi?”

“I made it in my free time in comp lab.”

Ace nods as though that checks out, making Scottie actually look at me with frightened eyes. All I can do is make them back. I mean, I’m confident, but not enough to think I can somehow protect us from a girl who makes fingerprint scanners in her spare time.

“Do I need to give a blood sample too?” Julia asks as Lexi scans her hand.

Lexi is unfazed. “Don’t tempt me.”

“I’m Blake Boden,” Blake repeats for the second time as she moves on to scanning his hand. “Not sure if you heard my full name over the noise.”

“I heard you.” Lexi doesn’t even bother looking up in his direction as she pushes a button on the screen of her phone and drops his wrist.

“The name doesn’t ring any bells?” Blake continues, undeterred and desperate. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him like this before.

“Last year, you threw for a record 3,995 yards, completed forty TDs, and only had three interceptions,” she rattles off like it’s no big deal.

“Wait…what? You know my stats from last year?”

“I know everyone’s stats.”

Blake’s smile is sly and amused. “But you also know my stats.”

“I also know you lost in the second play-off game like a chump.”

Ace snorts so hard, Julia has to turn him around when snot flies out of his nose.

And Lexi just moves over to Scottie to get her digital signature for the NDA and take her fingerprints like she didn’t just deliver a life-threatening burn.

Blake, rather than looking offended, makes gah-gah eyes at her the size of Texas.

I offer my hand as Lexi gets to me and watch as she scans my print, and then I quickly scribble a signature on the NDA when she shoves it toward me on her phone. As soon as she’s done with me, she pushes back through the others and starts to walk down yet another dark hallway, rattling off information as we follow. “Computare Caterva is the most exclusive society on campus. No one knows we’re here. No one knows what we do. And it will stay that way. When we’re having an event, you’ll get a text. It will just say the time and where to be. Bring cash if you’re smart. Bring more cash if you’re shit at betting, so the rest of us can profit.”

There’s a finality in her speech as she throws open the door at the end of the hall to reveal a sunken room full of no fewer than fifty people. Bodies writhe and people shout as they hold cash in the air for runners who circle the room to exchange it.

Ace and Julia move through the door expediently, but Blake pauses, holding Scottie and me up from doing the same.

“So, you need my number?” Blake questions Lexi, having paid attention to the entirety of her speech like the best student in the class. “For the texts? And, you know, anything else would be okay too.”

She looks from him to us, including the three of us instead of answering him directly. “I already have your number.”

“How?” Blake asks, mystified, and this time, she looks directly at him.

“Because I’m the smartest girl you’ll ever meet.”

“Well, smart girl, how about you give me your number?” Blake grins. “Feels like it’s only fair.”

“I don’t date football players.”

“Why not?”

Lexi smiles then, the first real smile I’ve seen her make since we arrived. What she doesn’t do, however, is answer. “Have fun. If you lose your ass tonight, sorry about your luck. Though, if you’re as smart as I hope you are, you know that betting is never about luck.”

She walks away, and just like that, we’re dismissed.

“I’m going to marry that girl,” Blake whispers as he watches her move to the center of the room where what looks to be a boxing ring with a cage surrounding it sits.

I use my own momentum to push Scottie and Blake farther into the room, going up and around a group of people before climbing down into the sunken center to where Ace and Julia are standing in the back row. Students jostle back and forth as someone in the front stumbles and falls before their friends pick them back up to standing.

Ace spots us coming and turns to help Scottie jump down beside Julia first. Blake follows, though his eyes still wander the room, looking for Lexi.

“Yo, Blake,” Ace says through a laugh when Blake trips off the step and falls into them. “How about you pick your jaw up off the floor and pay attention to what you’re doing, dude? I’ll never live it down if I bring the Dragons quarterback somewhere and get him injured.”

“I’m going to marry that girl,” he repeats as he stares at Lexi, who’s now on the far side of the ring collecting money, one of her feet through the ropes, prepared to climb in.

“Do you even know who that girl is?”

“My future wife?”

“I’m not sure if you noticed, Blake, but Lex didn’t appear all that interested in you,” Julia chimes in, a little smile on her lips.

“Yeah.” Scottie giggles. “Kind of seemed like she didn’t give a shit about anything you were saying.”

“Mark my words, ladies. That girl will be mine.”

Both Scottie and Julia laugh some more, and Ace and I look at each other like Blake has lost his ever-loving mind.

“Listen up, everyone!” Lexi calls from the center of the ring, a microphone in her hand and her voice echoing throughout the room. “Tonight’s official activities will commence shortly. But we’re going to need a volunteer to step up to the challenge.”

“What’s the challenge, Lex?” a guy yells from the crowd.

She smiles. “A guy with big enough balls to fight Donnie Marks.”

“Wait…he’s a fucking ex-UFC fighter, Lex! Are you nuts?” another guy yells out.

“Looks like your balls are too small,” she teases and glances out toward the crowd. “C’mon, you assholes, someone needs to step up. Otherwise, we might as well pack it in early.”

“Dayum,” Ace mutters when Donnie Marks steps into the ring. “He’s a big motherfucker.”

“Don’t you dare, Ace,” Julia states firmly as she pokes him in the chest with her index finger.

“What? You don’t want me to fight him?” he questions with a grin on his lips. “I can hold my own, babe.”

Julia’s lips move down into a frown. “If you manage to hold your own, I will personally finish you off later.”

“Wait…what?” Ace’s eyes go wide. “Finish me off? Sounds kind of nice.”

“As in murder you, you idiot!” she exclaims and shoves him in the chest.

“Are you sure that’s what you mean?” He starts to open his mouth again, but Julia slaps her hand over his lips.

“Shut up, Ace.”

He laughs. And then I’m certain he licks her palm because she jerks her hand away on a disgusted laugh.

“Ew! You’re so gross!”

“By the way, whoever volunteers to fight Donnie gets ten percent of the betting pool,” Lexi announces, and my ears perk up.

Ten percent of the betting pool? I look around the room, taking in the size and scope of the crowd and quickly deducing that most of the people here look like they come from families with parents who keep their bank accounts stocked full of cash.

You know, the opposite of my family.

I think about how I still haven’t managed to find a steady job that fits into my class schedule and how Travis and Jack will need new basketball shoes and the fees that go along with their playing high school ball.

I think about how Willow wants to go to homecoming and probably has a dress in mind she knows she won’t be able to afford.

I think about how our dick of a father spends all his money on booze and our mom’s paycheck barely covers food and rent.

By the time I add my student loans into the poor-people-problems equation, I realize the decision is already made.

“I’ll do it!” I call out over the crowd and lift an arm so Lex can see me.

“What?” Scottie damn near shouts, and she reaches her hand out to grab mine and pull it down from its raised position. “You’re going to fight him for money?”

“Not all of us have life handed to us, princess.” Deep down, I know she’s trying to stop me because she cares, but she has no idea what it’s like to walk a day in my shoes. I don’t need her judging the choices I make in order to survive.

She stares at me, her eyes widening with both anger and fear. “Finn, this is crazy. Don’t do this.”

“Finn Hayes, right?” Lexi questions through the mic.

“That’s right,” I confirm loudly, which leads to Scottie letting go of my hand entirely.

“All right,” Lexi says with a nod. “Come on up and show Donnie what you’ve got.”

“Holy shit!” Ace whisper-yells, shoving me in the chest as his excitement gets the best of him. Blake claps me on the shoulder encouragingly, but Scottie, unable to stop herself, grabs my hand again and squeezes tightly.

“Finn,” she pleads when I look down to meet her eyes. “Please don’t do this.”

What she doesn’t understand is that I’ve spent most of my life…fighting for my fucking life. And for my mom’s. And my siblings’.

When you have an abusive drunk for a father, you go through so much shit in your childhood that there isn’t much that scares you anymore by the time you become an adult.

You learn to fight. You learn to take punches. You learn to survive.

Scottie’s green eyes are imploring, and the desperation inside them breaks into my carefully crafted wall. I lean down to whisper into her ear. “I’ll be fine.” My voice is gentle in a way I know no part of me will be soon.

“Finn.”

My name is anguish, her voice a plea. Everything in me is drawn to her need for comfort—to her level of care for a fuckup like me.

Digging my hands into the taut sides of her ponytail, I press my lips to hers and kiss her. It’s a short kiss, but I make the most of it, savoring the soft plushness of her lips and the way her tongue tastes like the strawberry-flavored gum I always see her chewing in class.

“Just in case,” I say on a whisper when I pull away. Her eyes shine with both surprise and fear as I turn for the ring and don’t look back.

The guy she knows now won’t exist anymore when I’m done with Donnie Marks anyway.