On our way to the second floor, it was once again difficult to ignore the animosity that Sabrina had towards Marin. And once again, I was caught in the middle of it.
“So, Ryder, what do you think we should practice most? Our three-point shooting or the two point ones?” Marin asked.
“I thi-”
“Like you could get good at either of those in just two days,” Sabrina barked at Marin, cutting me off.
“Maybe not good, but hopefully I can luck into a couple points!” Marin said cheerfully. “I’m sure if we work together, we can put up a fight.”
“You can work with those three,” Sabrina said pointing towards Atticus, Cyrus, and Robbie who were walking in front of us. “Ryder and I will be doing some private lessons. I can teach him much more myself than all of you put together.”
“Then you should teach us too!” Marin said with a big smile.
“No,” Sabrina said bluntly.
“Why not?”
“Because there’s no point. We’re not winning this game, so there’s no need to waste the effort. You should all just focus on getting Ryder and I the ball, so we can score.”
“I-I really don’t think I should be getting the ball much at all…” I said. “I’m no good at basketball. I think if we all practice together, we all will have a better chance at getting better and developing some team chemistry that will help us in the next games.”
“You’re so modest, Ryder,” Sabrina swooned. “I’m going to take care of everything, so please don’t worry about anything, okay?”
“It’s kind of hard to not worry about things in this situation…” I said.
“Just don’t sweat the details,” Sabrina said. “All you need to know is that we’re both going to get out of here in one piece.”
“All of us are!” Marin said enthusiastically. Sabrina gave her a look of annoyance.
We went to the supply closet first and grabbed a rack of basketballs, as well as the basketball shoes that matched our sizes. We then arrived at the court and saw that it was empty. We left before the other group did, so it looked like we were going to get first dibs on the side of the court we wanted to practice on. Following the others, I joined them on the furthest court from where we entered. Facing the back of the room, we saw that there was another door on the left side that led to the hallway between the court and the soccer field. With our shoes laced, and the basketball rack positioned on the side of the room, Marin was the first to grab a ball and start dribbling.
“Check me out!” she said, as she poorly attempted to dribble the basketball between her legs before having it bounce off her shin and roll quickly away from her. “I’m just warming up!” she said after having tracked down the ball, before then grabbing it, and shooting an air ball from half court. It put a smile on my face, but Sabrina only shook her head.
We all then took a basketball each and got started with getting a feel for the weight of the ball and the shortcomings of our skills. Sabrina, however, looked like she was in her natural habitat. She made several three-point shots and a handful of layups while the rest of us chucked airballs with our horrible shooting forms.
“Whew,” Sabrina said, wiping sweat from her forehead. “I’m warmed up now. So, Ryder, are you ready for your training?”
“Did you play basketball in high school too?” I asked.
“No, but I played in some rec games at my old gym back home. When you’re tall, your friends will always pressure you to try basketball, so we’d often use it to get some cardio in.”
“You truly are a jack of all trades, Sabrina,” Marin said, walking over to us. “So, are you going to teach us now?”
“I’m not teaching you anything.”
“What if I just stand over here and listen?” Marin said while taking a few steps back.
“I don’t care what you do, as long as you’re not in the way.”
“Yippee! C’mon guys! Let’s learn from the best!” Marin said to the others, who came and joined us near the three-point line.
“After missing 98% of my shots, I’ll take any help I can get now,” Cyrus said.
“Well, I guess it’s safe to say that your hidden talent isn’t that of a basketball prodigy,” Atticus said.
“It’s not like you were making any more than I was,” Cyrus said. “And you’re way taller, so you have no excuse. You’re what? 6 '3? Let’s see a dunk!”
“I’m 6’4. And I am not risking my life for something as stupid as that,” Atticus said.
“Who’s asking you to risk your life? I just wanna see you rip that rim off of the hoop!”
“Is that a joke about my weight?” Atticus asked.
“Not at all! I just know that you’re definitely capable of a powerful dunk, reminiscent of the great Shaquille O'Neal, if you just put your mind to it!”
“I don’t care how much you try to gaslight me; I’m not taking flight for your entertainment. Why don’t you try it? Maybe then I’ll give it some thought.”
“You’re no fun, Atticus,” Cyrus pouted.
“Want to see me give it a whirl?!” Robbie said, taking the stance of a runner coming set before a hundred-meter dash.
“Knock yourself out,” Atticus said.
Robbie gave us a smile, and then sprinted towards the basket at a speed I didn’t know he was capable of. Once he was a few steps past the three-point line he jumped and reached towards the rim of the basket. He jumped much higher than I would have ever thought possible of him. Definitely way higher than I was capable of. We then saw Robbie slam the ball through the net while hanging off of the rim. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“Holy shit…” Cyrus said.
“Oh my god,” Marin said with her hand over her mouth.
“I told you that you should only expect the best!” Robbie said, still hanging off of the rim with one hand.
We then heard the front door of the court open and saw Carmen as well as the other team walk onto the court. Everyone was immediately stopped in their tracks though when they saw Robbie dangling from the rim of the basketball hoop on the other side of the room. These hoops were probably regulation size, or at least close to it, so he was at least a good 9-10 feet off of the ground.
“What the hell…” Carmen said.
“There’s no fucking way he jumped up there on his own,” Miles said.
“Maybe the guy isn’t all talk after all,” Conrad said, nodding with respect.
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Carmen then rushed over to where we were.
“Did he actually jump that high?” she asked us.
“He did,” Sabrina said plainly.
“You say that like it’s not insane?!” Carmen said. “He can’t be taller than like 5’8! There’s no way he could jump that high! Look at him!”
“You all disrespected my drafting method, but I feel like you’re all finally starting to understand why I chose the people I did,” Sabrina said smugly.
“I understand how you knew I used to play soccer, but how the hell did you know he could jump like fucking Mario?!” Carmen said.
“It’s common sense that master thieves are pretty nimble,” Sabrina said. “While it’s true that he is a disgusting creature, he is also quite gifted athletically, under all that grime.”
“I once had to jump from the second story of a burning building to the third story of a flooded building!” Robbie said proudly, finally jumping down from the hoop. “They used to call me ‘Rubber Legs Rob’ during my prime.”
“You all constantly badger me about what I’m hiding, and now we find out we have a future Olympic high jumper and a former soccer phenom hidden in our midst? You’re all such hypocrites,” Cyrus said, folding his arms.
“It’s not like I was keeping secrets, it just wasn’t relevant,” Carmen said while walking up to the rack and grabbing a ball.
“Not relevant, my ass,” Cyrus retorted.
“Also, I didn’t draft Robbie for his jumping ability, so you’re mistaken about that,” Sabrina said.
“Then what was the point?” Carmen asked.
“Even if that dirty mole rat can jump and put a few dunks in, it’s still not going to help us win. Like I said before, we aren’t going to be able to win the basketball game,” Sabrina said. “His only purpose is for doing the only thing he’s useful for.”
“Stop giving us the runaround, and just tell us,” Carmen said, annoyed.
“You want me to steal the ball a lot, is that right?” Robbie said, poorly attempting to spin the basketball on his finger. “And then feed it to you and ‘Mr. Detective’ over there?” He pointed at me.
“I’m glad someone gets it,” Sabrina said. “The point of this game is for Ryder and I to earn some money, and if you help by stealing the ball from the other team a lot, then you’ll earn your fair share as well. Scoring isn’t the only way to gain stats in basketball after all. Rebounds, steals, assists, there are a lot of ways that you all can earn your own money while helping Ryder and I earn the most.”
“So, I’m guessing that I’m here to get rebounds then?” Atticus asked.
“Correct,” Sabrina said. “You’ll also have some use in the other games as well though.”
“And what about me?” Marin asked.
“I didn’t pick you willingly, so you’re just dead weight.”
“That’s not nice! I’ll have my moment in this tournament, just you wait and see!”
“Okay, so Ryder is here because you’re a yandere, I’m here because I used to be good at soccer, Atticus is here because of his height and size, Robbie is here because he’s nimble, and Marin is here because you had no choice but to choose her…so what’s the deal with drafting the twig?” Carmen said, pointing at Cyrus.
“He’s not as dumb as he looks,” Sabrina said.
“A wonderful, backhanded compliment! Why thank you!” Cyrus said.
“This team is built for victory in both soccer and baseball, so you can all rest easy knowing that no matter what, your lives will be spared as long as you all focus on your strengths,” Sabrina said.
“Even if you say all this, I can’t help but be nervous when I look at what we’re up against,” Carmen said.
I looked over at the other team and couldn’t help but agree with Carmen’s lack of confidence in our chance of being able to compete with them. Miles was making three after three, Conrad was dunking the ball with authority, Keon was putting up perfect layups, and Mia and Amber were shooting free throws with perfect accuracy. The only weak link seemed to be Maya who was constantly tripping over nothing. Emma hadn’t even lifted a finger so far, but she seemed to be spending her time looking over at us rather than paying attention to her own team. It’s possible that she was trying to gauge our strengths and weaknesses to formulate a strategy of some kind. Their whole team (minus Maya) looked like they would be formidable foes no matter what sport we might play them in.
We practiced for another hour. During which, Sabrina was trying to correct my shooting form while yelling at Marin every couple minutes for getting too close to us during her instruction. Atticus was practicing catching rebounds off of the backboard that Cyrus was throwing up, and Robbie was practicing stealing the ball from Carmen, which wasn’t very difficult due to her having one hand over her nose the whole time.
“He smells even worse when he’s sweaty!” Carmen gagged.
Lunch was getting close, so we called it quits for the time being and went to the cafeteria for a break. The other group had already left a couple minutes before we did so it was probably safe to say that they had the same idea we had. Once we entered the cafeteria, we saw the rest of them eating what looked like a variety of different sandwiches. Looking towards the counter by the kitchen, there were three different towers of sandwiches labeled “Chicken Salad,” “Turkey BLT,” and “Veggie” respectively. I was starving so I grabbed two from the “Chicken Salad” section and went to take my seat with Sabrina sitting on one side of me and Marin on the other.
“Even though we are rivals, it’s still nice to be able to eat together,” Marin said to the others.
“It’s true,” Keon said. “And while we’re all here, I should tell you what Carmen, Emma, and I found while checking the shop.” Everyone listened closely. “There were a few things that maybe could be jerry-rigged into some sort of escape weapon, but we all agreed that there’s very little chance that we could use them effectively, so that left us with just one thing that was a guaranteed escape ticket, and I need everyone to listen very carefully.” Everyone looked excited, but looking over at both Carmen and Emma, they looked like they had lost their appetite. “These items are legitimate escape tickets, literally. There are two of them in the shop and they are a thousand ‘LD’ each. When we talked to Alex about them, he said that they are basically ‘get out of jail free’ cards that we can buy to leave this place. There’s a large catch though, and once I say what it is, I hope you understand why no one is allowed to even think about getting one. The catch is that once they are both bought, the people who buy them are able to escape this place unharmed, but the remaining people here…will be executed.”
“Executed?!” Miles yelled. “Why does everything we do involve someone getting executed…”
“Okay, so if they are both purchased, everyone else dies, but what if only one is purchased?” Amber asked. “Does that person get to leave and the rest of us get to live?”
“That’s exactly right,” Emma said. “If only one is purchased that person will get to leave with no consequence to the others.”
“That puts us all in a really shitty situation, huh?” Cyrus said. “It feels like no matter what, we should let at least one of us leave, since it has no bearing on the lives of the rest of us, but I doubt we’ll all willingly just let someone else leave instead of us. This is like a social experiment on the human psyche.”
“Exactly,” Carmen said. “Even though it would do us no harm physically to let one person leave, I doubt we’d be able to sit idly while they do so.”
“These tickets must be the true motive…” Mia said quietly.
“However, without playing the basketball game, we don’t even know if someone can gain that much money,” Atticus added.
“That’s true,” Keon said. “I vote that we just forget about the tickets all together and try to find a different way to escape. If one of those tickets gets bought, it’s very likely that someone would cave and buy the second ticket, which would result in all of our deaths.”
“What if we have a vote to let someone leave?” Miles asked. “Then no one could be mad about the results!”
“You say that like anyone would vote for you,” Carmen said. “Everyone would just vote for themselves or spread them out evenly if they were sure they weren’t going to win, so that no one would win. It would never work.”
“Which is exactly why we should all ignore it,” Keon said. “The only reason I’m making it known that these tickets exist is so that we can be sure that everyone understands the risks, and no one can plead ignorance if they find out they are for sale on their own and buy them. So, does everyone understand?” Everyone nodded. “We’re going to need to keep racking our brains for a better method of escape than just trying to tunnel out with the tools in the shop, so please give it some thought everyone. Also, like I said before, every time anyone makes a purchase from the shop, it will need to be approved and then written down in a log so that everyone can be made aware. Obviously, that won’t be until after the conclusion of the basketball game though.”
“The more we learn about this floor, the more nervous I get…” Amber said. “It feels like it’s perfectly set up to try and drive us all apart.”
“It seems so, but we cannot let them get their way…not again,” Keon said. “As long as you all follow my instructions, I promise we will get through this.”
“Even if you say that, after the baseball game–which would be eight days from now with the practice and game days–we’ll have to vote to execute someone,” Cyrus said. “Time is running out.”
“That’s plenty of time to think of something,” Keon said with shallow confidence.
“I hope you really believe that,” Cyrus said.
As we ate, the uncomfortable atmosphere I felt during breakfast this morning before the draft took place was back and was arguably denser than before. Even the people who took the roles of comedy relief unto themselves weren’t able to break through the silence. The only one who didn’t look uncomfortable was Sabrina, who was as calm as ever as she kept trying to play footsie with me under the table. After a while, the other team excused themselves to go back and practice, and we were left by ourselves in the cafeteria.