Chapter 56: Sadie: Hashtag

SADIE

Comments race up her screen. I’m close enough to catch a few before they vanish, including one that calls me an ugly pickle.

An ugly pickle? She’s been live for less than a minute, and someone has already compared me to a damn pickle.

I want to turn her jacket inside out and show everyone the tag she keeps avoiding. The people around us have seen her dodge the question. Her viewers haven’t. They’re getting Dixie’s version, and from the comments, they’re buying her bullshit.

"Say hi, Sadie." She brings the phone closer.

She wants me angry in front of everyone. Or maybe she thinks I’ll leave and let her keep our seats.

Fine.

I reach for the phone. Her smile lasts until my fingers close around it. She holds on, staring at me over the screen.

"Sadie." Her voice drops. "Give it back."

I tug the phone free. Dixie reaches for it as I step away, and her friends rise around her. Marcus blocks the aisle before any of them can get near me. Nia joins him, then others, giving me space I’m grateful for.

My heart is beating a little too fast for someone who has a speech to make. I turn the camera toward myself anyway and check that my face is on the screen.

"Hi, everyone." I give them the same smile Dixie gave me. "I’m Sadie, captain of Boreal’s Quiz Bowl team."

The comments get uglier. I stop reading them and keep my eyes on the lens.

"Dixie asked you all to help settle this, right? Then you should hear my side too." I hold the phone steady. "This is Trey Mercer’s real number seven jacket. He gave it to me."

"Give me my phone back," Dixie snaps behind me.

"In a second." My grip tightens. "I don’t want to stand here fighting over Trey. And honestly, I’m tired of having to explain myself every time another girl thinks I shouldn’t be close to him. You can think I’m too unpopular, or too much of a nobody, or whatever the issue is. Trey still gave me the jacket."

A fresh wave of comments climbs the screen. I catch a few words, then decide I’ve read enough.

"Knowing Trey isn’t a prize and it sure as hell doesn’t add years to anyone’s life. I’d really like to come to a hockey game without getting accosted over it."

Dixie slips around Marcus. I move back before she can reach the phone.

"As for the jackets, I showed everyone here the tag inside mine. I scanned it, and Trey’s athlete profile came up. Dixie says hers is real too, but she won’t show us the tag. Trey told me he keeps the jacket he wears and gave me his spare, so I’m curious where hers came from." I angle the phone toward her. "Show us yours and I’ll shut up."

Dixie aims for the phone again. I move it out of her grasp and face the camera.

"Until she does, I’m the only one who’s shown any proof. That’s not me trying to act smart. That’s just how proof works." I glance at the comments before adding, "So maybe stop calling me names and send Dixie some positive affirmations instead. She might need them to find her original seat. Hashtag GoFindYourOriginalSeat."

I give the camera my sweetest smile. "Thanks, guys."

Then I lower the phone and head back toward Dixie, leaving the livestream running. Marcus and Nia move aside. All she has to do is take it from me, and we can finally sit down.

For a moment, I think that’s what’s going to happen but she snatches the phone. Her free hand follows so quickly I don’t even realize she’s raised it until my head jerks to the side.

"How dare you touch my phone?"

The row goes quiet around me. My cheek burns, but I’m still standing with my face turned away, staring at a seat I should have been sitting in by now.

I bring my fingers to my cheek. The corner of my mouth stings more sharply, and when I touch it, a little blood comes away on my hand.

One of her claws must have caught me.

The sight of the blood brings back the Kincaids’ house and all the times I had to keep my anger to myself while I worked there. Answering back only made things worse, so I learned not to.

Dixie is still in front of me, with everyone watching and that old habit almost wins.

My palm catches her across the cheek before I can lower my hand.

"How dare you touch me?" I demand.

Dixie goes still, one hand pressed to her cheek. Her friends start shouting, and people in the nearby seats join in, but I can hardly follow any of it with my own face still stinging.

"What?" I ask her. "You hit me first. All you had to do was move to your own seats. Did you think I wanted to spend the night arguing with you?"

"What’s going on here?"

I turn toward the voice. An usher has reached our row, and everyone is giving her room to get through. Her eyes move from Dixie’s hand on her cheek to the blood at the corner of my mouth.

"We have tickets for these seats," Nia explains before I can answer. "They were sitting here when we arrived. We asked them to move, and they refused."

The usher turns to Dixie. She snatches her purse off the seat before the woman can ask her anything.

"Come on," she tells her friends. "We are leaving this stupid game."

For all the trouble they caused over staying, her friends gather their things in a hurry. They glare as they pass, and Dixie follows, phone gripped tightly in her hand.

I watch until all of them have left the row.

"I’m sorry about all this." I turn to the usher. "We just wanted to sit where our tickets say."

Her eyes settle on my cheek before moving to the empty seats. "You can now. But if I have to come back because there’s another fight, I’ll call security. Anyone involved could be ejected. Understood?"

"Understood." I touch the corner of my mouth, then lower my hand.

She moves on to the next section. I wait until she’s out of earshot before looking back at my team.

Nia’s the first to reach me, her hand closing gently around my wrist. "You’re bleeding."

"It’s small." I press two fingers to my mouth again. "Barely anything."

"That’s not nothing, Sadie." She tips my chin toward the overhead lights, studying the cut with more focus than I want right now. "You should get that looked at."

"I’m fine." I ease out of her grip, though the sting says otherwise. "It’ll close on its own."

She doesn’t look convinced, but she lets it go, which is its own kind of kindness.

Marcus rests a hand on my shoulder. "Okay, that was kind of badass."

"Kind of?" Noah says. "That was hot. You went full James Bond on her."

I manage something close to a laugh, grateful for the excuse to stop thinking. "James Bond wouldn’t have spent twenty minutes trying to get to his seat."

"Yeah, but you looked better doing it."

Nia is still watching the aisle. "I thought she was going to come back at you after that slap."

Priya waves her off. "Prez had it handled. Besides, Dixie should’ve known better. Trey literally brought Sadie lunch—"

My hand lands over Priya’s mouth before she can finish. She starts laughing behind it, which only sets the others off.

"Can we please keep one thing about me out of the public record tonight?" I ask.

She nods against my palm. I remove my hand, and she gives me a look that says she’ll finish that sentence as soon as we’re alone.

Nia leans closer. "You know Dixie could go live again and say anything she wants, right? What if this becomes a whole thing?"

My stomach sinks because, yes, I know. Her viewers had already decided I was an ugly pickle before hearing me speak. I can imagine how they’ll react if she tells them I snatched her phone and slapped her. Both things happened. I would’ve preferred to settle this without hitting anyone, but Dixie made that difficult when she hit me first. Whatever comes next, I’ll have to deal with it.

I force a smile for Nia. "I’ll handle it. And if she tries to drag Quiz Bowl into it, I won’t let that work." 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

"I don’t care about Quiz Bowl right now," she says. "I care about you. Those girls can be awful."

"I know." I glance down the aisle, then back at her. "Let’s wait and see what she does. Half that arena watched her hit me first. I proved my jacket was real before any of this happened. If she wants to lie about tonight, she’s going to have a lot of witnesses to lie around."

Nia presses her lips together, then gives me a small nod.

We sit down at last. The rink is right in front of me, but I check the aisle and the rows around us first for Dixie and her friends. They’re nowhere nearby.

I breathe out, slowly this time.

A few people are still looking at me. Some seem impressed, while others look annoyed. Maybe they follow Dixie.

If Lola were here instead of buried in research work, she would’ve handled Dixie twice as fast and probably had steady hands afterward. Mine are still shaking. Strange, though, how good it feels to know I managed without her.

Would I have felt this way if I’d stood up for myself at the Kincaid estate?

I slip back into Trey’s jacket and turn toward the ice.