Exy was a bastard sport, an evolved sort of lacrosse on a soccer-sized court with the violence of ice hockey, and Neil loved every part of it from its speed to its aggression. It was the one piece of his childhood he'd never been able to give up.

"I'll call them later with the score," he said, because Hernandez was still watching him. "They didn't miss much."

"Not yet, maybe," Hernandez said. "There's someone here to see you."

To someone who'd spent half his life outrunning his past they were words from a nightmare. Neil leaped to his feet and slung his bag over his shoulder, but the scuff of a shoe behind him warned him he was too late to escape. Neil twisted to see a large stranger standing in the locker room doorway. The wife beater the man wore showed off sleeves of tribal flame tattoos. One hand was stuffed into his jeans pocket. The other held a thick file. His stance was casual, but the look in his brown eyes was intent.

Neil didn't recognize him, which meant he wasn't local. Millport boasted fewer than nine hundred residents. This was a place where everyone knew everyone's business. That ingrained nosiness made things uncomfortable for Neil and all his secrets, but he'd hoped to use that small-town mentality as a shield. Gossip about an outsider should have reached him before this stranger did. Millport had failed him.

"I don't know you," Neil said.

"He's from a university," Hernandez said. "He came to see you play tonight."

"Bullshit," Neil said. "No one recruits from Millport. No one knows where it is."

"There's this thing called a map," the stranger said. "You might have heard of it."

Hernandez sent Neil a warning look and got to his feet. "He's here because I sent him your file. He put a note out saying he was short on his striker line, and I figured it was worth a shot. I didn't tell you because I didn't know if anything would come of it and I didn't want to get your hopes up."

Neil stared. "You did what?"

"I tried contacting your parents when he asked for a face-to-face tonight, but they haven't returned my messages. You said they'd try to make it."

"They did," Neil said. "They couldn't."

"I can't wait for them," the stranger said, coming down to stand beside Hernandez. "It's stupid late in the season for me to be here, I know, but I had some technical difficulties with my last recruit. Coach Hernandez said you still haven't chosen a school for fall. Works out perfectly, doesn't it? I need a striker sub, and you need a team. All you have to do is sign the dotted line and you're mine for five years."

It took Neil two tries to find his voice. "You can't be serious."

"Very serious, and very out of time," the man said.

He tossed his file onto the bleacher where Neil had been sitting. Neil's name was scrawled across the front in black marker. Neil thought about flipping the folder open, but what was the point? The man this coach had researched so carefully wasn't real and wouldn't exist much longer. In five weeks Neil would graduate and in six he'd be someone else somewhere very far away from here. It didn't matter how much he liked being Neil Josten. He'd stayed here too long as it was.