The Freshman (Kingmakers) Read online

  The Freshman

  Sophie Lark

  Contents

  Soundtrack

  1. Leo

  2. Dean

  3. Anna

  4. Leo

  5. Dean

  Anna Wilk

  6. Anna

  7. Leo

  8. Dean

  9. Anna

  10. Leo

  11. Dean

  12. Anna

  13. Leo

  14. Dean

  15. Anna

  16. Leo

  17. Dean

  Leo Gallo

  18. Anna

  19. Leo

  20. Dean

  21. Anna

  22. Leo

  23. Dean

  24. Anna

  25. Leo

  26. Dean

  27. Anna

  28. Leo

  29. Dean

  30. Anna

  31. Leo

  32. Dean

  33. Anna

  34. Leo

  Dean Yenin

  35. Dean

  36. Anna

  Epilogue

  Zoe

  Miles

  The Rebel

  Brutal Birthright

  Underworld

  Kingmakers

  Thanks For Reading!

  Meet Sophie

  For Arin & Kika, who made it possible for me to finish this book by taking over the massive workload to manage our Love Larks group. You’ve made it such a positive, rowdy, and welcoming hangout for women. It’s my favorite place on the internet. Thank you for keeping me sane while this book was trying to kill me!

  Xoxoxo

  –Sophie

  The Freshman Official Soundtrack

  Spotify → geni.us/freshman-spotify

  Apple Music → geni.us/freshman-apple

  Love Chained – Cannons

  Best Friend – Saweetie, Doja Cat

  Billie Jean – Michael Jackson

  Major Tom – Shiny Toy Guns

  Daisy – Ashnikko

  Little Dark Age – MGMT

  Heart Of Glass – Miley Cyrus

  Queen – Loren Gray

  Save Your Tears – The Weeknd

  Fire for You – Cannons

  affection – BETWEEN FRIENDS

  Tongue Tied – Grouplove

  Candy Shop – 50 Cent

  Crazy in Love – Sofia Karlberg

  The Spins – Mac Miller

  Wicked Game – Chris Isaak

  HEAD OVER HEELS – LoveLeo

  1

  Leo

  We’re twenty-three minutes into the State Championship game.

  We’re playing Simeon, an athletic powerhouse stocked with muscle-bound behemoths who look like they started shaving in the second grade, and who might have been born with a basketball in their hands.

  Every one of their players is better than every kid on my team.

  Except for me.

  And me is all I need.

  I’m paired up against Johnson Bell, their power forward. He’s 6’7, a full two inches taller than me. He’s fast, and he’s strong, I’m not gonna lie. And most of all, he’s fucking cheap.

  This motherfucker has been chippy with me all game. Chopping at my arms, charging me, slashing me with his uncut fingernails like he’s trying to embody the wolverine mascot plastered across his chest.

  He knows as well as I do that the head coach for the Kentucky Wildcats is sitting right in the front row at center court, watching us both. Kentucky has added more players to the NBA roster than any other college. They call it “One and Done”—you play one year for their school, and you’ve got a better chance of going pro than any other D1 school.

  Bell wants to be a star.

  I already am a fucking star.

  Bell takes the ball up the court, trying to drive past me. He does some fancy dancing with his giant feet in his vintage Jordans. It doesn’t faze me for a second—I keep my eye on his navel. Like my dad always says, you can’t go anywhere without your bellybutton.

  Without even looking at the ball, I slap it away from him with my left hand, knocking it over to my right. I plow past him in the opposite direction, sprinting for the basket. Their guard tries to block me, and I pull up short, sending a gorgeous arcing shot over his grasping fingers. I’m seven feet behind the three-point line and it doesn’t matter a bit—the ball drops through the net without even grazing the rim.

  The roar of the crowd hits me like a slap. My eardrums vibrate. My heart thrums in my chest.

  There’s no feeling quite like being adored by a thousand people at once.

  The buzzer sounds, signaling the end of the first half. I go jogging back across the court while my teammates slap me on the back. We’re up six points.

  While my team hustles down the tunnel toward the locker room, the dance team is running in the opposite direction up to the court. Anna and I pass each other in the darkened hallway.

  She’s all dolled up in her drill gear—blonde hair pulled up in a high pony, face painted and every inch of her sprayed with glitter. It always makes me laugh to see her in her dance clothes, since bright and tight is the opposite of what she wears normally.

  She gives me a little fist bump as we pass, saying in her low voice, “You’re gonna win, Leo.”

  “I know,” I say, grinning back at her.

  Anna is my best friend. We grew up together, closer than siblings. Our fathers run this city together. Our mothers went through their pregnancies together, Anna and I were born only two months apart. She’s older than me, which she loves to rub in my face every chance she gets.

  Anna is the only person I’ve ever met more intense than me. Sometimes she scares me a little. But mostly she’s my balance, my rock.

  Here at Preston Heights, I’m the fucking man.

  Everybody wants a piece of me. They all want to sit by me or talk to me. All the girls want to date me.

  They think they know Leo Gallo.

  Anna is the only person who actually does.

  She knows exactly who I am, and she doesn’t try to change a damn thing about me. Unlike my parents.

  I saw my mom and dad sitting two rows behind the Kentucky coach, just a little to his right. They never miss my games. They’re always there, cheering me on. Celebrating my wins even more than I do.

  It’s my dad who taught me how to play. He was a college star himself, before Uncle Cal and him got in some kind of scrap, and his knee got all fucked up.

  Doesn’t mean he can’t still work me on the court, though. My dad taught me everything I know. He practiced with me, drilled me, taught me how to read my opponent, how to watch the flow of players on the court, how to outwit and outplay every guy I came up against. How to destroy them mentally and physically. How to beat them before I even made my first move.

  My father’s pretty fucking smart. You don’t become the Don of Chicago any other way. And you sure as hell don’t stay there being stupid.

  He taught me how to play basketball. But what I really want him to teach me is how to run the world.

  I’m not trying to be an athlete.

  I’m trying to be a fucking king.

  I’m still gonna win this game, though. Because I win everything, always.

  We head back to the locker room so the coach can tell us how we fucked up, and how we’re supposed to fix it in the second half. I’m barely listening to him—I’ve watched more game tape from before I was born than this guy has ever seen. He’s just a teacher who happens to have the best damn player in the country on his team.

  I gulp down a lukewarm cup of Gatorade, while listening to the pounding beat of “Billie Jean” emanating from the gym. I’ve seen Anna practice this number a dozen times, but I still wi
sh I was out there to see her do it live, in costume, in front of all these people.

  Her parents are sitting right next to mine—Mikolaj and Nessa Wilk, the boss of the Polish Braterstwo and the princess of the Irish Mafia. Anna’s parents started out as enemies, a lot like mine. And just like mine, they’re weirdly obsessed with each other. I guess Anna and I should be glad we both come from families with parents that love each other, but Jesus, you shouldn’t have to tell grown adults to get a room.

  Anna is to dance what I am to basketball—the fucking best. She makes the rest of the girls on her team look like they’ve got clown shoes strapped to their feet. She’s always front and center, grabbing your eye from the second she starts dancing, and refusing to let go until long after the music fades away.

  I’m pulled back toward her, even though I know Coach will be pissed if I don’t stay till the bitter end of his motivational speech. I wait until he’s at a particularly rousing point, then I pretend like I think that was the end of it, leaping to my feet and shouting, “That’s right, Coach, we got you! Let’s get out there and WIN THIS FUCKING THING!!!”

  The locker room breaks out in whoops and howls, everybody stomping the floor and chanting like we’re Spartans going off to war.

  We run back out to the court, me ahead of everybody else, wanting to catch the end of Anna’s dance.

  Billie Jean — Michael Jackson

  Spotify → geni.us/freshman-spotify

  Apple Music → geni.us/freshman-apple

  The dance team is dressed in some kind of bizarre Day of the Dead skeleton get-up. Their faces are painted like bejeweled skulls and they’ve got flowers in their hair.

  Anna is Captain of the dance team and the head choreographer. Watching her numbers is like watching a fever dream. They’re wild, intense, and hard-hitting. The pounding bass of the song shakes the bleachers, and the girls look like they’re possessed—none more than Anna.

  You would think she didn’t have a bone in her body. She flings herself around, strong and precise and tight as a whip.

  I take back what I said about the other girls—Anna is a ruthless drill sergeant, and they absolutely know how to hit their marks. It’s just that no one comes alive like Anna. She looks supernatural as she whirls through her triple-pirouette then drops down in the splits. The crowd screams just as loud as they did for me.

  The dance team are champions in their own right. They took nationals all three years that Anna was Captain, even beating out those bitches from Utah who had been formerly unbeatable with their bleach-blonde hair and mile-wide smiles.

  I almost forget that we’re in the middle of a game.

  I forget everything but the low, flashing light and the throbbing beat and wild, brilliant dancers. They’re supposed to be hyping up the crowd, keeping the energy high during the break. They’ve done much more than that—they’ve brought a new level of darkness and intensity to the proceedings. They’ve made it seem as if this game truly is a matter of life and death.

  The song ends, and the overhead lights burst on. I remember that I’m in a high school gymnasium. I smell the sweat and rubber and floor polish once more. I see my parents looking proud and anxious, and Uncle Miko and Aunt Nessa looking how they always do—Miko somber and intent, Nessa bright-eyed and eager.

  Anna is leaving the floor, giving me a wave on her way out. A boy in a varsity jacket intercepts her. I don’t recognize him—he must go to Simeon. He blocks her path, trying to engage her in conversation. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but from the smirk on his face, and the way he grabs her arm without permission, I’m guessing it’s something along the lines of, “Hey girl, you’re pretty flexible. I’d like to see you wrap those legs around my head . . .”

  It’s the kind of thing guys used to say to Anna at our school, until they learned their lesson.

  I grin, knowing exactly what’s about to happen.

  Sure enough, Anna grabs his hand off her arm and bends his wrist back, all the pressure concentrated on his pinky. Even from across the gym, I can hear the varsity douche scream like a little girl. Anna brushes past him, whipping him in the face with her ponytail as she passes. The guy cradles his hand, muttering something after her as she walks away.

  I cast a quick look up at Uncle Miko.

  He watched that whole exchange the same as I did. Now his ice-blue eyes are narrowed to slits, his jaw rigid with rage.

  All I can say is that kid is pretty fucking lucky to get off with nothing more than a sprained wrist. If he put one more finger on Anna, he wasn’t likely to make it home tonight at all.

  Grinning, I jog over to the bench to slug down a last gulp of water before the ref blows his whistle.

  Moments later, the game is back in full swing, and we’re running harder than ever. My team is amped, but so are the Wolverines. They’re running a full-court press, fueled by fury that the game is even this close when they’re supposed to be the best team in the state.

  They are the best team. But they don’t have the best player.

  Johnson Bell is fighting hard for that title.

  He’s a big dude, thick with muscle, sweat dripping down his face just two minutes into the third quarter. I’ll give him credit, he’s the toughest opponent I’ve faced this year. But tough just isn’t good enough.

  Still, it’s hard carrying the rest of these assholes all on my own. Kelly Barrett misses an easy lay-up, and Chris Pellie turns the ball over twice. I have to make four more baskets just to keep the game even.

  As the third quarter comes to a close, my team is up three points. I’m driving to the hoop when that fucker Bell comes up hard behind me. I jump to shoot, I’m up in the air, and he knocks my feet right out from under me. He sends me pinwheeling, crashing down in an awkward sprawl that slams the air out of me.

  The crowd gasps and then starts to boo, at least on the home team side. The Wolverine fans laugh and jeer at me.

  That makes me angrier than anything. I HATE being laughed at.

  Bell gets the foul, but I want him kicked out of the fucking game. You don’t go at somebody’s feet—it’s dangerous, and it’s goddamn disrespectful. I haul myself up, breath wheezing in my lungs, and whirl around to face him. He smirks at me, his big, dumb face showing nothing but pride.

  I’d like to murder him.

  But all I can do is take my shots.

  I sink them both. That doesn’t mollify me in the slightest. Blood throbs against my temples. All I can see is Bell’s smug face.

  The Wolverines inbound the ball. Their point guard brings it up the court, then passes to Bell. I guard him, tracking him close. He dribbles carefully, knowing I’m fast as fuck and I’d love to steal the ball back in revenge.

  He doesn’t know I’ve got something better planned.

  If he wants to play dirty, I’m happy to roll around in the mud.

  I pretend to go in for the steal, and instead I shoulder-check him hard in the face. My shoulder slams into his nose, and I can hear the thud, his grunt, and the instant patter of blood dripping down on the boards.

  “Oops,” I say.

  I take a foul too, of course, but I don’t give a fuck. Bell’s eyes are already swelling up as he takes his place at the free-throw line. Unfortunately both teams are in the bonus now, which means that a hard foul leads to two free throws.

  Bell makes the first but misses the second, blinded by the pain in his face. I laugh to myself, quietly.

  The buzzer rings to signal the end of the third quarter.

  The coach immediately hauls me to the side, chewing me out for hitting Bell like that.

  “How many times have I told you not to lose your temper?” he bawls at me. “Don’t you know the Kentucky coach is right up there in the stands watching you? You think he wants some hothead on his team?”

  “I think he wants the best,” I say, pushing past the coach so I can wipe my face and chest down with a towel.

  The last quarter is a fucking brawl. My team is pissed, th
e Wolverines are even angrier. The ball turns over again and again as we battle for every single point.

  I sink a gorgeous three-point shot, only to have our point guard Alastair Brown immediately turn the ball over to the other team. They score twice in a row, almost catching up with us.

  On the next play, the ref calls a foul on me again, and this one is utter horseshit. I didn’t even touch Bell. He sinks both his free throws, taking the Wolverines ahead by one point.

  There’s only eight seconds left in the game.

  The coach calls a timeout so he can set the next play.

  Pulling us into a huddle, he says, “Barrett, you’re gonna set a screen for Brown. Pellie will inbound the ball to Brown, Brown will take it up the court, and once he gets past half-court, Gallo will come and set a high screen. Brown will drive to the hoop and if you have a shot, then take it—if you get covered, give the ball to Miller instead.”

  I can hardly bite back my retort to that cockamamie bullshit.

  Me, set a fucking screen? You’ve gotta be joking.

  I carried this team to the state championship on my fucking back. I’m not about to let Brown fuck this up, and I’m ESPECIALLY not going to let Joey-fucking-Miller take the buzzer-beater, just so he can chuck a fucking brick up there as usual.

  I don’t even bother to argue with the coach. He’s the one who’s gotten emotional over that foul, and now he’s not thinking straight.