Page 18 of Wild Card 13

Especially because we kept losing ugly enough to feed the narrative.

“Burns.”

I looked up.

One of the Player Operations assistants stood near the locker room entrance holding a tablet against his chest. Young guy. Nervous already.

That wasn’t usually a good sign.

“What?”

“You gotta report upstairs. Executive Conference Room B.”

A few heads lifted immediately.

Marco leaned back in his chair nearby, water bottle dangling from one hand. “Ooooh. Bureaucratic summons.”

“Shut up.”

Cam looked over from across the room. “What’d you do now?”

“Nothing.”

“That sounded dishonest,” Boris muttered.

I pointed at him. “Nobody asked you.”

“You answered too fast.”

Fair.

The ops kid glanced down at the tablet like maybe the answers lived there. “Player Operations requested you immediately.”

Fantastic.

I sat back slightly trying to remember the last thing I’d ignored. Which narrowed absolutely nothing down.

Marco watched me for a second too long before speaking. “You forgot something.”

“I didn’t forget.”

“You definitely forgot.”

“I probably intentionally ignored.”

“There it is,” Milo said without looking up from his newspaper. “Personal growth.”

A couple guys laughed under their breath.

I rubbed a hand over my jaw and exhaled slowly.

Then it hit me. The community outreach prep meeting. Sarah Yu had sent three emails about it with increasingly threatening subject lines.

I missed the first one because we landed late from Denver.

Missed the rescheduled one because Cam decided we needed an impromptu players-only meeting after practice.

The third one I might’ve blown off because the email used the word optional in the second paragraph.