The Plus Side of Negative Thinking

Chapter One

Coach Carter found him tucked away behind one of the goalposts. He was smoking a joint and flipping through a magazine called, simply, Sheep! 

"Jeisson," Coach Carter said, her voice more amused than angry. 

Jeisson, startled, threw the joint before looking up at her. She couldn't see his eyes through his reflective sunglasses. "Coach," he said, a smile peeking at the corners of his lips. "Did you know that sheep can self-medicate? They'll actually find plants in the wild that can cure their ailments."

Coach Carter looked pointedly at the joint, sitting, still smoking, several feet away in the grass. Her short curly hair didn't move at all in the wind. It was so stiff and thick, it was more like a helmet. "And what ailment are you self-medicating?"

"Color blindness," Jeisson said with a somber expression.

"Oh, really?"

"It's a serious affliction. Sometimes I can't tell green from brown."

Despite herself, Carter laughed. Until her eyes drifted from the joint to a nearby cluster of fresh dirt mounds, small plants protruding from them. Her smile faded. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Oh, no,  of course not! I would never grow--"

"Bamboo?"

"Oh, well, then yeah. That's exactly what it is."

Carter let out a long-suffering sigh. "That's going to be a bitch to get out, you know."

Jeisson shrugged. He ran a hand through his blonde locks, brushing it out of his face.

"You've been called to the principal's office," Coach Carter said. "Come on."

Jeisson stood, seemingly unperturbed by this news. Honestly, he was just thinking about all of the things he had done recently that would earn him a trip to the principal. He had thought of nine things by the time Coach had walked him back across the field, passing all the students that were running the mile around the track, as Jeisson was supposed to be.

"You can keep this," he said, handing Coach the magazine as they parted ways. 

She flipped through it. "Gay sheep... huh." 

***

Jeisson took his time making his way through the hallways of the school. It was a nonsensical building. It had started off as a simple, two-story, square building. Over the years, to accommodate the growing population of students, annex after annex had been attached, first to the main building and then off of each other. The annexes were all of varying sizes and stories. 

So Jeisson wandered through several of them, taking the longest way around to the principal's office, passing row after row of dark green lockers. He wished he had pocketed the joint before leaving the football field with Coach Carter. Marijuana didn't come cheap in the small suburb of Wheaton, and legalization had seemed to have no effect on that fact. But then Jeisson remembered he still had one more joint in his pocket.

He rounded a corner to see a group of boys huddled around a locker. Two of the boys were stocky and menacing-looking. Wrestlers, if Jeisson wasn't mistaken. The third was a scrawny, pimply freshman. He was shaking his head frantically while the taller wrestler poked him in the chest.

"I swear I didn't mean to," the freshman said, his voice surprisingly deep. Puberty hit people in all different kinds of ways, Jeisson figured.

"Those essays were way too smart to be written by us," the taller wrestler said. "You wanted us to get caught!"

The shorter wrestler body-checked the kid, slamming him against the locker with one turkey-sized hand. 

"Whoa now," Jeisson said, rushing forward to intervene.