Off the Field

Chapter Eighteen

Hey guys! I am SO SORRY I've taken 2 weeks to upload - I thought it'd been 5 days max. Crazy how fast time flies. I took the ACT last weekend, yuck. (For my non-American readers: the ACT is one of those pointless standardized tests you take to get a number that tells you how "smart" you are for college...it's a dumb system.) And my birthday was this weekend whoohoo!! Anyway, I've been super busy and stabbing myself in the eye because of chemistry, but yeah. I hope you like this chapter - I meant to upload it like a week ago, oops. I call this the chapter where all crap hits the fan but yeah, you'll see why. Please shoot me a comment/vote! :)

Gracias! <3 vb123321

Chapter Eighteen

Mal, I knew, wasn’t the type of person to hold grudges. No matter how mad she’d gotten at me in the past, she hadn’t avoided me for more than twenty-four hours at a time. So I figured I’d let her cool off before I went to try and talk with her again.

But first hour Monday morning, as I walked into my history classroom on time for the first time in weeks, Mal didn’t even look at me all class. Pretending to take notes, she ignored my attempts to talk to her, and eventually, as Ms. Wilson told me to be quiet, I gave up. Though I felt like kicking something as I watched her walk out of the room with Davis, chatting and laughing.

Between her and Kasey, it was shaping up to be a splendid week. As we made our way to our lockers, I couldn’t help looking for her familiar blonde ponytail, which earned me a slap around the head from Ray and a “dude, are you crazy?” He had given me a pep talk on the way into school about how I wasn’t going to give her any attention, but I’d forgotten just how distracting she was.

The day dragged on. By the end of it I was convinced that Mal was never going to speak to me again and I’d almost gone crazy trying to ignore the flirtatious looks that Kasey sent me from across the room. How had it taken this long to notice her hold on me?

My determination to forget her paid off only on the field. I threw myself into concentrating on the plays we practiced and the sprints we ran, preferring the sore muscles and sweat pouring down my face to her. Soccer could make me forget anything – although it was hard to ignore Davis’ black eye.

“He looks like he wants to kill you,” Ray said to me as we waited in line for our turn at the drill. “Not that I blame him.”

I clapped Kyle Jennings on the back as he jogged back toward us, saying, “Nice shot,” and then looked out at Davis as he took the ball up the field. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to fix that. What am I gonna do, walk up to him and apologize for socking him the face when I don’t even remember doing it?”

Ray shrugged. “Something like that.”

I decided it was probably best not to mention that I wanted to punch Davis again for making Mal cry. Instead, I called the guys back to the center of the field to stretch out as practice came to an end. Out of the corner of my eye, as I listened to Coach’s short talk, I saw Kasey walking to her car from the gym, her ponytail swinging. She met my eyes briefly, with a bit of a challenge, but I looked away.

Done with you.

When I collapsed on my bed a few hours later staring at my phone, which held several messages from Kasey but none from Mal, I tried to assure myself that it couldn’t get much worse than that. By the following morning, however, it was clear that it could.