Chapter 4 The Press Conference

MIA

Derek, Caleb's agent, paces the room like a man who has never once sat still.

"Smile. Touch shoulders. Look at each other like you're in love, not like you're doing taxes together." He claps once. "This is the debut."

I'm wearing Caleb's jersey, number seventeen, hem falling almost to my knees.

"You ready?" Caleb asks, low, just for me, as we walk toward the folding table.

"No."

"Good. Neither am I." His hand brushes mine, just once. "Just follow my lead."

Cameras click the second we sit down. The first few questions are easy. Then a woman near the front leans forward.

"Caleb, what does Mia mean to you?"

The room goes quiet.

He doesn't look at his notes. He doesn't look at Derek, who is mouthing something frantic from the sidelines. He looks at me.

"She makes me want to be better," he says. "Not for the cameras. For me."

My heart does something violent and stupid. I keep my face still.

After, in the hallway, Chloe practically tackles me with her phone already lit up.

"It's everywhere," she says. "Fake relationship goals, forty thousand likes in twenty minutes."

"He wasn't supposed to say that."

"Doesn't look like it bothered you much." Her eyebrows lift. "You're blushing, Mia Lin. You. Blushing."

"It's hot in here."

"It's October."

Caleb finds me by the equipment room a few minutes later, tie loosened.

"That wasn't in the plan," I tell him.

"I know." He rubs the back of his neck. "It came out before I could stop it."

"Derek looked like he was having a stroke."

"Derek can have several strokes, honestly." A small smile pulls at his mouth. "Was it too much?"

I think about lying. "No," I say instead. "It wasn't too much."

Something passes between us. He opens his mouth like he might say something else, and then Coach Daniels calls his name from across the rink and the moment breaks apart before it can become anything.

That night, I pull up the headline again. She makes me want to be better. I read it four times before I make myself put the phone down.

My mom calls from the living room, weaker than usual tonight. I find her curled on the couch, TV playing something she isn't really watching.

"That's the boy from the news?" she asks, nodding at my phone on the counter.

"That's him."

"He looked at you like you were the only person in that whole room." She watches my face closely, missing nothing even now. "That's not something people fake well."

"It's a contract, Mom. That's all it is."

"If you say so." She doesn't push, just reaches for my hand and holds it a moment. "I just want you to be careful with your heart, baby."

"He's not worth anything except thirty thousand dollars," I say, and even as it leaves my mouth it tastes less true than it did a week ago.

She smiles like she knows exactly what I'm not saying.

I help her to bed and go back to my room. My phone buzzes again.

That went better than I expected, Caleb writes. Derek's still recovering from the aneurysm I nearly gave him.

Good. He deserves at least one.

You looked surprised, he writes after a pause. When I said it.

I was surprised. That's not something you say for cameras.

Another pause, longer this time.

Maybe I wasn't saying it for the cameras, he writes finally.

I read the message four times, same as the headline, trying to find the version of it that's safe to believe. I don't find one. I set the phone down, turn off the light, and lie in the dark a long time, his words tangled up with my mom's warning, both of them circling the same fear I'm not ready to name out loud.

By Monday, the photo is everywhere. Someone made a fan account. Someone else made a hate account. Chloe forwards me both without comment, which is somehow worse than if she'd said something.

Caleb finds me at my locker before first period.

"You've seen it."

"I've seen several versions of it."

"Derek wants us to do an interview. A bigger one. Says the appetite's there."

"Absolutely not."

"That's what I told him."

"You told him no?"

"I told him you'd say no, and that I trust your instincts more than his spreadsheets." He leans against the locker next to mine. "He wasn't thrilled."

"Since when do you trust my instincts?"

"Since Friday." He says it simply, like it isn't a big admission. "You stood in my father's office and told him the truth to his face. Most adults I know can't do that."

"That wasn't instinct. That was just anger."

"Sometimes those look the same from the outside."

The bell rings before I can figure out how to respond to that, and he peels off toward his class with a small nod, leaving me standing there holding my books a beat too long.

At lunch, Chloe slides into the seat across from me, scrolling. "Someone made a whole edit. Music and everything."

"Please tell me you're joking."

"I wish I was." She turns the phone around. Thirty seconds of us at the press conference, his quote overlaid in cursive font, some acoustic song playing underneath like we're the plot of a movie. "It has more views than the actual news clip."

"This is a nightmare."

"This is free press for a boy trying to get drafted, is what this is." She sets the phone down. "You know that, right? Every bit of this helps him."

"I know."

"Does it help you?"

I think about the wire transfer that's supposed to hit my account tomorrow, the hospital folder waiting on the counter at home. "It helps my mom. That's the only part I care about."

"That's not what I asked."

I don't answer that, because I don't have an answer that doesn't scare me a little to say out loud, and Chloe, for once, doesn't push, just watches me with an expression I can't quite read before turning back to her lunch.