"yep." he's having way too much fun with this. the death glare dakota gives him must be pretty spectacular, because it's enough to make him go, "it really won't be that bad. he's going to be upstairs with me, and you'll be in the basement. you're literally the furthest away from him you can get." oh great. the basement.
the basement means that she gets her own space, but the basement also means that she's cold, and the walls are concrete, and that's where all the bugs go. of course they would put her in the basement.
"stop looking like we just sentenced you to prison." he's not even looking at her while he talks, saying it offhandedly, like he doesn't care that much. "the basement here isn't bad. it's not like the other basements you've stayed in." she looks at him while he's talking, like he's talking from experience. she wonders how many houses he stayed in before this one. she wonders if they were as bad as the ones she was in.
she's startled out of it when he starts moving. "come on, i'll show it to you." she follows him down the hallway and looks around. the floors are nice hardwood, and there are pictures on the walls of... wait.
"is that julie?" she's pointing at a picture of a hockey team dressed in red, white, and blue uniforms. julie's front and center. dakota feels like she's seen this picture before, maybe in-
"yeah, we played for team usa a few years ago during the goodwill games. huge international hockey tournament. that's how we all met, actually." dakota scans the picture. fulton's in the back row, standing between vicky and the other boy he was with all the time, what was his name... oh. dean portman.
the more she looked at the picture, the more she realized that almost all the kids in the picture were part of the hockey team at eden. "wait, hold on. you guys won an international competition, meaning that you're the best in the world, and the school still put you on the JV team as freshmen?" fulton stiffens beside her and looks at her, confused.
"how did you know about that? you didn't even go to eden then." dakota shrugs.
"vicky kinda gave me the rundown. wait, how did you know i didn't go to eden as a freshman?"
they just look at each other them, dakota staring at him like she's giving an interrogation and fulton looking like he had accidentally said too much. it's not like her scholarship status was necessarily a secret, but she didn't go around telling people the story or anything. in fact, she hadn't told any of the ducks that she was a transfer, even vicky, and eden was a big school, so it's not like he would have noticed her transferring in or anything. so there was no way fulton would have known anything about her unless he got it from somebody else.
if she was a normal person, she wouldn't care. she would have laughed it off that he knew, maybe with some offhanded comment about how he had ruined her mysterious vibe, and they would have laughed and no harm would have been done. but she's not a normal person, and the fact that he won't tell her how he knows makes her worry about what else he had found out about her. it makes her worry even more about who else might be able to find out.
she opens her mouth to ask him again, to interrogate him more, and she knows she looks hysterical, but she needs to know where he found that out, and-
"hey fulton, can you show her the basement and let her put her stuff in it while we're waiting? that'll save us a little bit of time later." the man's voice comes from the kitchen around the corner. she and fulton stare at each other for a second longer before they look away. dakota stares at the floor.
"uh, yeah. sure," fulton replies. he looks back at dakota and tilts his head towards a large door that's next to them. "c'mon." he opens the door, holding it for her as she walks through the doorway, bag in hand. she's almost stepped down the first step when she feels a hand on the strap of her duffel bag, and it feels like a full-body shock. she jerks her hand away, looking at fulton right as he jumps because of her sudden movement. she's holding her bag close to her chest now. she probably looks crazy. fulton's staring at her, but it's not confused, just surprised. "sorry," fulton says quietly, but he doesn't push it.
YOU ARE READING
roller derby queen ~ j.g.
Fanfiction"roller derby is nothing like hockey, so you're delusional if you think we have anything in common." in which dakota blakely finds herself surrounded by players for a sport she hates, a worst enemy that becomes her best friend, and a girl that she c...
