Page 27 of Chasing Headlines
His eyebrows lifted. “Not a bad trade. But you're with the school paper, right?”
“That's me. Liv Milline, Reporter Chica, I heard Antonio call me.” I laughed.
“Yeah. He's funny. I'm Landon. Most people call me Lan.”
A pause. I glanced over at the field. Coach shouted at wilted-looking ballplayers. One guy doubled over the warning track. His body shuddered.“Ew. That's bad.”
Lan shrugged. “There's always a few. Anyway, so.”
“So?”
“I have a research assignment for my summer two class due Friday and I need data.”
I blinked. “Data?” My brain was stuck somewhere between a player needing medical attention, and the person who could provide it was sitting here. “What?”
“Back issues of the Van Weekly. I'm thinking that if I can pull the last issues from each season, I can build out a database of key metrics. Injuries, hit ratios, all kinds of stuff.”
Oh. We're still on the trade.
“The journalism department keeps all that in like a ShareDrive or something?”
I shrugged. “Back issues? Probably. You just need access?”
“They let us apply for guest credentials for the archive, but I didn't decide on my topic until . . . yesterday. So, yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck.
Ah. Procrastination. “I’ll see what I can do. Maybe I can shortcut you to the front of the approval line or something. Guest access for twenty-four hours. I'm sure it's do-able.”
Coach yelled something different than the short, sharp barks of: “Go. Go. Go.” I scanned the field. A group of three guys knelt at the edge of the grass, one was the shuddering guy from earlier. “I think you have some new patients.”
He sighed. “Not one of the perks.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Eh. They'll live. Always do. A few years ago, the heat out here was so bad, we kept having to take someone to the ER, felt like every day. That coach isn't here anymore.”
“Ah. But the sun still is.”
He huffed out a breath. “Yeah.” He chuckled. “That's Texas.”
“I feel like you're needed for trainer things, but before you go. You'll send me soft copies?” I batted my eyelashes. Oh, I did. I needed to not be stuck trying to making sense out of this Schorr-iffic amount of paper.
“It'll be a FastTransfer link. Use that email for the Share credentials. Please.”
“I got it. Fair trade. Can't wait to work together this season.” I gave him a salute. “Now go, save the fish. They're bordering on deep fried.”
“You're a weird one.” He shook his head as he turned away.
A tiny, miniscule breath of air stirred, just as lifeless in this heat as the over-cooked ballplayers.
Just enough to rifle the papers and toss a couple to the floor. Lan had left them behind for me. I grumbled and retrieved the couple of escapees. An email exchange, with history, had been printed out. With hyperlinks to demo videos. The actual hyperlink masked by a formatted link—blue with underline.
Yeah, I'll file that alphabetically all right. But would it be under U for Up, or Y for Yours? If I could find a magnifying glass, I could set it all on fire?
It was time to go, either way. I could still catch Coop and 'make nice' or whatever. Make nice. I was nice! Ted, Antonio, Lan all thought so. Even Smirky Sunglasses Guy before he was Coop. All of them had been . . .
And that's when it dawned on me: I hadflashedBreslin Cooper. My longtime baseball crush. I groaned and buried my face in my hands.
Dammit Liv!