“I’m not getting involved either,” I say.
“Alright.” Coach’s voice cuts through the noise and the room pulls itself together immediately. He steps forward, arms folded, looking between Luke and Martin with an expression that sits somewhere between exhausted and deeply unsurprised. “How much?”
Luke blinks. “Twenty dollars.”
“Twenty dollars.” Coach repeats. “You bet twenty dollars on whether J would walk in here with a crutch.”
“Technically the terms were crutches or a cast—”
“I don’t need the terms, Martin.”
Martin closes his mouth.
Coach looks at them both for one long second, then shifts his gaze to the rest of the room.
“Here’s what I actually need from you,” he says, and then glances at me. “All of you, sit down.”
Benches scrape as the room finds its order. Coach waits until e
