Another Pan by Daniel Nayeri Read Free Book Online

wait while he and his friends went over to the boarders. After a few minutes of talking, Connor was looking more and more pissed off. “Be right back,” said Wendy, starting toward them. But of course, John followed one step behind. He was fascinated with all things Connor-related. As she approached, Wendy could hear them arguing about last week’s preseason game.
    “Hey,” said one of the boarders, a kid whose parents were some sort of South Asian royalty, “your boy took the money, and now you’re trying to punk out. Pay up, bro.”
    Connor’s face was growing pink. “Nobody on this team would agree to fix a game. Go sell your bullshit somewhere else.”
    “Yeah, I get it,” said the kid in the fake street accent they all cultivated. “You’re sticking up for your boy. That’s cool. But he
did
agree, and now he owes us.”
    “Relax, man,” said another one of the boarders. “It wasn’t like we asked him to lose. Just shave a couple of points to cover the spread.”
    “Same thing,” said Connor, the anger rising in his voice. “He’d never do that.” He glanced at his friend with his blond eyebrows in a furious tangle.
    “So we’re in agreement there,” said the Indian boy, trying to sound suave but coming off sleazy instead. “He didn’t do it. Now he has to pay for all the lost bets.”
    Wendy wondered why these guys cared about a few lost dollars, anyway. It was probably nothing to them. Maybe they just wanted to bring Connor down a notch. People were always trying to do that. She felt a tingle of pride at the thought. Just as she was trying to decide whether she should approach Connor or keep hanging back, she saw someone running toward them from the direction of the dorms. He was tall, his brown hair bouncing as he dashed toward them with long, easy strides. He was wearing the dorm crew shirt, a white polo with the Marlowe crest.
    “What’s going on here?” he asked with an air of authority that made even the lacrosse boys take notice.
    “Who’re you?” asked Connor.
    The handsome newcomer gave a friendly grin that made Wendy smile involuntarily. He held out his hand. “I’m Peter, the new resident adviser. Everything OK here?”
    “This punk won’t pay up,” one of the boarders, a Chinese boy with a crew cut, blurted out.
    Wendy noticed that all four boys were looking eagerly at Peter. One of them had on a smirk that revealed a large gap in his teeth.
Wait,
thought Wendy, glancing at the Chinese boy.
Do they all have a missing . . . ?
    But then her attention was diverted by Peter, who spoke with the cool confidence that had belonged to the Indian boy only a second before. Not uncomfortable
adult
authority, but the kind of confidence that Connor always had — the kind that only one person in every group can display. “Pay for what?” Peter said blandly, and Wendy thought she saw him warn the Chinese boy with his eyes. “Let’s go.
Now
.”
    The four boarders fell in line in a way that Wendy had never seen any Marlowe kid do for an RA, or a teacher, or even the principal. From the corner of her eye, Wendy could see John staring with awe, his admiration finding a new target.
Not again,
she thought, since John’s hero roster was growing longer and longer with each passing day. And now that John’s plan to change his online image had totally failed with the lacrosse boys, he would be looking for a new group to admire — probably a group that didn’t care as much about image, a set of friends that didn’t have time for Facebook, who were more
street,
as John would put it, which was bad news because the boarding kids were big trouble.
    Peter leading the way, the boys walked to the other side of the field, where a girl Wendy had never seen was waiting for them. She, too, was wearing the white crested polo shirt. Wendy was still staring with curiosity in Peter’s direction when she felt Connor’s arm around her shoulder. He was still sweaty, and she pulled away a little, then