Dragon was their downfall. The snowball effect increased ever so slightly thereafter. They over reached and Hudson County couldn’t make up the difference.
It was a case of winning the objective but losing the war.
We were having a good time, though.
“I promise you will not regret letting us stay a bit later today,” Rachel said.
“I will fully regret whatever speech you’re about to launch into. For legal reasons, I did not listen to anything that you’re about to say.”
“I bet you say that to all the students,” she said, raising her mug of root beer.
“I keep getting older. They stay the same age,” I grumbled.
“Of all the things that I expected you to say, that is probably the worst.”
“Professor!” Esther said, flashing a smile. “Are you saying that we can run away together? That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
I held up my cup of diet soda, brandishing it like I was holding a ring for a wedding. “With this cup, I will throw away the entirety of my academic career to pursue a student and we will run away to a little island somewhere and set up our own little combination book and coffee shop.”
It’s important to be dramatic and silly. Sometimes having both together can cut the tension like a knife.
The hum of conversations around the team didn’t die down at all, and my stunt only caused more giggles.
Perfect.
I had enough on my plate without dealing with the ethics committee. I could picture them knocking at my apartment door and wondering why I was harboring a student. It’s these kinds of things that give professional ethicists ongoing work.
“All right, but impromptu engagements aside, you guys are great in that first game. Keep that up and work on some of the things that make us great. Asher, you’re doing great. Supporting the guys weaving in and out of the lanes,” I said.
She gave a thumbs up.
“We’ve got Sussex in two weeks. They just about tied with these guys last week.” I looked at the group. “Then one more versus Hunterdon.”
There was a hush of localized attention. I basked in it.
“With that said, please crush these people into the dust. I would like to get some more bratwurst.”
I don’t like to dwell on the failings of other students, so I’ll spare you the rest of how we destroyed their team. A lady doesn’t smash and tell.
Suffice to say, it was like when the level ninety-nine villainess went and demolished her competition in the third book through subterfuge and fourth-dimensional chess. It felt earned, but… it wasn’t about them.
It’s about me.
The rest of the night was the unabashed professor of esports just winning.
---
Stacey: Another win in the books? Heck yes.
Kelly: Shouldn’t you be telling us about your plans with Mr. Johnston?
I got a message from Amir outside of the group chat.
Amir: You probably shouldn’t ask about that.
With every relationship, you learned more about yourself, even as you learned about your partner.
There was a long moment there where I kind of wish I hadn’t read that. If Stacy was on the phone with Amy or talking about something and I was texting them at the wrong time, then that was a problem. Kind of put a dampener on my celebration. But that’s okay. I just got to think about the entire ride back home to Ridgewood. In fact, I was close to having taken the railway from the pass station all the way back, but being responsible for your students meant being responsible for your students.
All I meant with it. I just kind of zoned out most of the ride back and let it ride. It was another win, but it kind of felt like we lost. I heard a bunch of beeps from Stacy, but I wasn’t able to look and I really didn’t want everyone else in her business so I knew that when I got back to the house, I was going to have to sort through my feelings and then maybe hers.
Hope is something that’s difficult to put into words. But it’s there and you take it. It’s a thing that keeps you going. But then sometimes, your hope gets dashed because you had this idea of what the world was going to be like. It doesn’t really align with the reality of the situation.
The reality of the situation was that they wanted something different. She didn’t tell me your text messages what it was. That was different, but it was pretty clear that this was a deal-breaker for one of them. She was very outspoken about her desire to not have any kids. When she was young, Stacy was parentified. Her mother, who I still love, didn’t have any village. Joe, she had her daughter raise her other siblings. Now this wouldn’t have been a thing if Stacy had been born a boy, but since she was a girl, Stacy’s mom did not have it going on. She just made Stacy do the emotional labor. That would have been possible if perhaps their family life was a little better.
---
With only two teams left, the heat was on to figure out who they had that could play. Our next one was going to be with Sussex, and Sussex would come to us. Then it would be Hunterdon and I had to check the schedule, but I thought that was going to be an away game. It would also be our last game of the season. It was kind of fitting that they made things work around the school schedule to accommodate this.
I knew that none of the students wanted to play on Thanksgiving Day, but having the games on Thursday nights and having the teens rotate around the way they did ensured that there would be lots of options in case things happened. They would call none of the finals in case of snow. Atlantic City was prepared for us. We just need to get past our last two teams.
The first thing we did while preparing was to get a list of all the Sussex people. Hunterdon was one of the smaller counties in the northern conference. Sussex had more.
They also had two players with a strong, if not large, following. I rooted through some YouTube videos and yes, once again it was a combination of the person who could play the game but also and put clips together.
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It really showed how much I had looked at these guys’ player profiles. I loudly snorted when I only saw a thousand followers on the YouTube channels. Big dog 0 5 was one of the two players that I have my eye on. He was an expert bot. Though he play, filling in how we had Esther do, his primary thing was to play bot Lane, and he often played with his sister.
Now I’d seen a two brother combination thus far, but I hadn’t seen a brother and sister Duo. It would be almost as rare as finding a pair of sisters streaming together. Whether it was because they grew up together or because they’re both just so unnaturally good, they were easily one of the more interesting to watch teams I’d seen. Unfortunately for me, they didn’t stream, meaning that I would not check their stats out live. But I could see their matchup against Hudson and the breakdown was that Sussex had won the first one, Hudson had won the second one and then Sussex squeaked by with the final Victory giving him the match.
Either was an off day for big dog 05 or it was just him not being able to play with his sister because, according to the notes in their thing, she was 17.
Now this is a whole industry about influencers putting their kids and their families up on video and kind of profiting off of that way before a kicking. Understand what’s going on. You can’t really give informed consent for a kid at least. The person who is the adult really should protect a kid from being an internet celebrity. Just because a kid wants to be big on YouTube doesn’t mean that the ones that don’t should. To be fair, big dog 05 never showed his sister’s face, but you can hear her voice a lot. In fact, they were pretty good at communicating, and I had sent Rachel a few things for her to go over before training on Tuesday. It was just another thing that I hadn’t gotten, really. Either. There was something going on, or they had a lot of shortcuts worked into their speech patterns. You would hit a button and then it would affect a change inside the game that was equivalent to you. Pressing a few keys together, making the two of them had created macros where they would just use a one word thing and then move. There was also a bit of inflection going on there. I could hear it in his voice. When he said dragon with a? Versus dragging with a. It was very clear what they meant to each other. Especially when she would respond with the same inflection on the same part of the word.
I could not listen in on their conversations. I could watch them from the other side of the fields, but really I couldn’t get in between them or learn anything more than I would learn from just observing the poor state. But it was good enough.
I was thinking about giving ourselves a shorthand. Cuz every time I went to Dragon it was a dragon? And everyone had to quickly opt in or opt out. But then again, that’s speaking to give people versus speaking to one other person. The bot and support are always closely tied together. If they’re playing according to the current meta.
So what I was observing in the difference between their YouTube and streaming content was that they worked fantastic as a team, but he was having trouble with his bottom lane support. Unfortunately, the other player on the Sussex team was not the support. And aside from playing one werewolf character, I had little to say about that person. They were less entertaining.
Hunterdon, unfortunately, didn’t give me anything to work with. I was going to need some help to break that nut in two before our match in 2 weeks. But it was looking like the Northern conference was going to be us, Essex and maybe Passaic.
I was going to get my vacation and trip down to plain Atlantic City and then shortly thereafter. I was going to get on my boat to get to the Caribbean since Mom 2 years ago; it was going to be the first time she could return home, and I was going to enjoy it.
With Halloween coming in this week, we had our day off of playing. They called it a buy week. I called it a free night.
Because of the holiday, we didn’t have a match on Thursday the 31st. We did, however, have practice, which went exceedingly well, and I asked the guys that if they would not go trick-or-treating that they might as well play some games together as a team on Halloween. A lot of the kids already had plans to go to a party or something, so I let that one slide.
Rachel and Esther both came to to join me that evening and we worked it for about three hours with Amir and Stacy. Stacy still hadn’t opened up about what had happened, but she knew I wanted to talk to her.
I also wanted to know if she was going to date him. Not because she might not like him, but I thought he was cute. At the very least, he seemed like a sincere guy. Maybe she’d come on too strong?
But that wasn’t my story to figure out until she told it to me. I was off to wait and let her tell me at the appropriate time. Which, just so, was her office Halloween party that week.
---
I had to work myself into my bad professor outfit. Now you’re thinking, aren’t you a good professor? And the answer is yes. But really when people saw me they would think sexy Professor, and I was going for bad Professor. Not bad as in naughty, but bad isn’t actually bad at their job. For props, I brought a fake binder full of A+ grades to give out. It was a bunch of gold star stickers and rapport card stickers. I also had a tweed jacket on and also Slytherin robes to complete the outfit.
I got my specialty glasses lit up like the Guy from Evangelion and honestly; I felt like I was Professor Mcgonagall, if she was a Trinidadian.
Amir and Stacy finally work together on their couple’s outfit. Something that they’d seen in Comic-Con inspired it. He went as Frozone and she went as Mr incredible. Could she have gone as elastigirl or Frozone’s wife? Yes.
She thought it was funnier because of the bromance. I mean come on. They talk to each other all the time and they have superhero careers in the background that they go back together with. It’s just one of those things that you kind of notice in the background and no one really actions on.
Suffice to say, it was super cute, and she had fake muscles and most importantly, because it was a chilly night, Leigh was warm.
I met them at Amir’s apartment, and we walked over. Someone had removed all the lawyer materials from her large office so we could enjoy our little party there. She had even invited Rachel.
“Rachel, are you dressed up as a taco truck?” I said
“No Professor, I’m a sexy Taco truck.”
“I don’t even know what that means. Is a truck sexy or are the tacos sexy?” I said.
She smiled, trying to trap me into some sort of joke that I knew was coming, but I let it go. Honestly, I was just sad that she had brought no real tacos, but that was because Stacy had the thing catered. It wasn’t until about 6:30 when Mr. Johnston showed up that things took a turn.
You see, Stacy had dressed like Shuri from Black Panther. She had the outfit from the second movie. The one where she gets a power suit. Yeah, that one. It was sweet.
He had shown up in the regular Black panther outfit but just for the hellfire gala ball. After saying hello to all of us, he excused himself to speak to Stacy in her office. That led to a lot of side discussion where we all kind of looked at them sideways.
We definitely didn’t stack up next to the door and try to hear what’s going on. We definitely didn’t imagine the scenario in which he came out and expanded on. Why this had happened?
If they were an off again on-again type of thing, then I could see this being them getting back on again. I was going to withhold judgment here and see what they actually did.
“So Professor,” Rachel said. “You can walk home from here, right?”
“Of course,” I said. “You walked here too, didn’t you? What’s going on?”
“Yeah, I live nearby, live by the library. I just want to make sure I had someone to walk home with after this.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “I can definitely help you there. I want to see what’s going on with these two before I make any moves tonight. But how’s your job?”
“Well about that, apparently the boss’ divorce is over and now he is back on the market again.”
“Is he bringing in a new girl every day or something?”
“He said he would, but he actually just brings the same girl around every time.”
They came out and yeah, I’ve seen that hair before. He was smiling; she was smiling, and everything seemed good with them.
“Speaking of on the market,” Rachel whispered, leaning in closer. “Did they work whatever tension out yet? It’s been killing me.”
I turned to her, putting my smile to work.
“You know that I see Mr. Johnston often,” Rachel said.
The man in question was making his rounds. I urged her to be direct, but she was avoiding being overheard. This wasn’t a bar. The music was not loud. What it had was a cowbell. Just not loud enough to cover our talk.
“It’s really loud in here.”
“Anyone asking why a divorce lawyer would need to have a sound system installed in their office either has had a blessed life,” I said.
Rachel’s eyes flashed jealousy for a moment before returning to her grin.
“Maybe she’ll need a partner one of these days,” Rachel said. “Anyway, about Mr. Johnston...”
“Rachel!” a warm man’s voice said. “So good to see you here!”
“Oh, hey!” she said, as if we hadn’t been about to talk about him. “I started college!”
“She scared me by making me her advisor,” I said. “The girl doesn’t know when to quit.”
“That’s incredible. It’s never too late, you know.” His costume definitely made me think he knew the movie well.
“I know exactly when to quit,” Rachel said, crossing her arms above the sign for the Tacos. “I’ll quit when I win.”
“That’s the spirit,” Mr. Johnston said.