Hello! This week was great because the last two days we've had off of school because of negative temperatures yay!! Gotta love winter sometimes, except I miss running outside. Anyway, I hope you like this chapter...we're getting close to the end. Maybe like 5 more? Can't remember. Please shoot me a comment and vote, let me know what you're thinking! I always need advice.
Gracias! <3 vb12331
Chapter Nineteen
I could barely see straight as I stormed down the hallway to my locker, my feet pounding like cleats against dry grass. The last thing I wanted to do was sit in class, but there was still a half hour left in the school day and I definitely couldn’t afford to skip. I grabbed a textbook from my locker without checking if it was the right one and then headed to the bathroom because I wasn’t quite ready to face everyone.
Wetting a bunch of paper towel, I mopped dried blood off my mouth and nose and drank about a gallon of water trying to get the taste off the back of my throat. My reflection stared balefully back at me with a swelling black eye and nose. Blood stained the front of my shirt and dirt from the cafeteria floor the back; I looked like I’d been hit by a truck.
Taking deep breaths didn’t really help me calm down as I walked to class because every time I thought about it I felt like kicking something. I couldn’t block it out, no matter how hard I tried; for the first time I hated that my thoughts always revolved around soccer.
Mrs. Jenkins stopped talking as I came into her classroom, her expression shocked and disapproving, but I offered no explanation as I strode down the row and flung myself in my desk behind Ray. The entire class was staring at me, I knew, though no one dared ask me anything as I glowered at the board. After a moment, Mrs. Jenkins cleared her throat squeakily and continued her lesson.
“Now, in Morte D’Arthur, the sword symbolizes…”
Kasey sat across the room from me, I realized belatedly; funny how she no longer came up flashing on my radar. Although I didn’t look at her, not wanting to see her smug smile, out of the corner of my eye I could still see her flouncing her ponytail and whispering to the boy sitting behind her. How had I ever fallen for that?
Mal was seated near the front but kept looking back at me anxiously, much to the chagrin of Davis, who sat to her left and spent most of the class disregarding his book as he tried to get her to talk to him. Ray turned sideways in his seat and looked at me questioningly, but I leaned my elbows against the desk and put my head in my hands, squeezing my eyes shut.
I warned you, Daniel.
Of course you’re not Jack.
Why had I ever thought he’d listen to me even for a second?
After a century of Mrs. Jenkins’ quavering voice, the bell rang and I bolted from the room with Ray hurrying behind me. As we made our way down the hall, I heard Davis calling Mal’s name, but when I glanced back, she had pushed past him and was headed toward me with her face burning.
“Danny –”
“Dude, what happened?”
I didn’t want to talk to either of them, so I ignored their stammered questions as we reached the lockers, expecting Mal to leave and find hers. But she stayed next to me with her arms full of books and a worried expression on her face. Ray dropped his stuff in front of his locker and leaned against it, looking at me.
“Coop, what did Clark say to you?”
“Clark?” My fingers slipped on the combination lock. “He didn’t do anything.”
“What?”
For the life of me I couldn’t remember the numbers of my combination, the tick marks blurring before my eyes. I spun the lock in frustration, knocking the locker with my knee, but it refused to budge. Aware that Ray and Mal were looking at me like I was crazy, I forced myself to take a deep breath and tried the lock again.
“Did your dad come?” asked Mal quietly.
I pulled on my locker again, but it wouldn’t open. Exhaling, I leaned my forehead against its cool metal, fighting to keep my voice steady as I said, “Yeah, he had some meeting with the athletic director anyway, so it was just so convenient to drop in.”
Ray and Mal exchanged a look I didn’t miss, one of those let’s-tread-carefully agreements that they always thought were so unobvious. I braced myself for the questions to come, and after a moment Ray said slowly, “So what happened?”
“I tried to talk to him calmly, like you said I should.”
He looked surprised and a little impressed. “And?”
Straightening up, I set my fingers on the lock again, determined to get it. “And it went about as well as I expected it to. He started lecturing me, I tried to say something, he blew up at me, I blew up at him, he told me I’m not a captain anymore –”
My mind blanked, my locker stuck, and I kicked it angrily, slamming my palms against it as Mal gave a small exclamation of shock. I looked at the two of them defensively, my breaths quivery and my hands shaking. Without a word, Ray shouldered me out of the way and spun my lock for me, popping open the locker.
“Good thing I always know your combo,” he said, clapping my shoulder, and took the book from my arm, chucking it onto a stack of binders.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, pulling out my backpack and staring listlessly at my books.
“Danny,” said Mal, her voice shaky, “I’m so sorry –”
“I don’t care.” I threw my trig book into the bag.
She bit her lip, her brown eyes wide. “But this is my fault! I should’ve just walked away and made you come with me – if they hadn’t said anything about me –”
“How the hell is this your fault?” I demanded zipping my backpack and throwing it over my shoulder. Mal looked at me miserably; she seemed to have forgotten she was supposed to be boiling mad at me. I shrugged despite the lump in my throat. “I don’t care, okay? It’s just a stupid –”
But the words choked in my throat, and after a moment of fighting with them, I gave up and slammed my locker shut. Mal’s eyes shone slightly, like she was about to cry, and that made me feel weird, so I looked at Ray instead, who said, “Are you going to practice?”
“Detention all week.”
“All week?” His eyebrows jumped in horror. “But – Semis!”
“Thanks, I figured that one out.” I swallowed hard, tugging on my backpack strap, and turned away from them. “I’ll see you around.”
Leaving the two of them staring after me, I weaved my way through the crowd of students chatting and laughing as they packed up to get out of there. As I passed Kasey’s locker, I had to restrain myself from losing it when I saw that she was still hanging all over that senior; her eyes watched me spitefully. Instead, I gave her an exaggerated smile as I walked by.
I spent the hour of detention with my head down on the desk, counting minutes pass by as I thought about the team out on the field, practicing for Semis. My entire body longed to be out there with them, enduring sprints and building strategy, messing around with Ray and the other guys, leading stretches and drills as a captain. It was only then, trapped in the dusty classroom, that it really hit me what he’d done.
Soccer had always been my most prominent horizon; I didn’t know what to do with myself when it had been taken away.
My dad had made it pretty clear that he didn’t want to see me at practice, so even though an hour remained when I was finished with detention, I didn’t bother going out to the field. I sat slumped in the library, pretending to study history while I doodled absently in the margins of my book. Time had never moved so slowly; I’d never realized soccer practice was so long.
When at last five-thirty rolled around, I made my way down to the front of the school, where my dad pulled up in the car. Chucking my backpack and unused soccer bag into the backseat, I slid into shotgun without saying anything to him. He put the car in drive and circled around the school, his jaw tight and his knuckles white on the wheel, and I focused on the passing scenery with such intensity that I thought I’d burn a hole through the window.
Minutes passed indecently slowly as silence stretched between us. I’d never less wanted to be anywhere in my life, and when we finally arrived home, I reached immediately for the door handle, desperate to get out. But my dad reached across and touched my arm, saying in a firm voice, “Wait a moment, please, Danny.”
I couldn’t believe him.
“Will you just leave me alone already?” I shook his hand off, pushing the door open to leave before I started yelling again. “You’ve made your point, okay? I get it.”
“Actually” – his eyes fixed on my face with a strange expression – “I think I owe you an apology.”
I froze with one foot out of the car: I’d never heard those words come out of his mouth, not to anyone. He took advantage of my momentary shock, his voice quiet and calm and strong though his eyes still looked wary.
“Five minutes. Give me five minutes to talk to you.”
After a long moment, I lowered myself back into the seat and shut the car door, trying to give a casual shrug. “Whatever. You’d probably force me to listen to you anyway.”
An irritated expression flashed over his face before he could bring it under control, but then he took a deep breath and said, “Mallory came and found me during practice.”
That one threw me off balance. “What – Mal?”
“Yes. I was surprised, too.” He looked through the windshield at Mal’s house, right next to ours. “That’s a good friend you’ve got, Dan. She told me exactly what happened in the cafeteria, how you stopped that senior from hurting her. She made quite a case about how you didn’t even hit the guy until he was messing with her.”
I felt like I’d headed a ball too hard. Goggling at him, I managed to say, “Mal did this?”
“Yes, that’s what I said. It was a very different version from what I heard from Clark, but Ray and a few of the other boys backed her up.”
“Clark only saw the end of the whole thing,” I said at once, tensing, “so he saw me hit the guy and assumed we’d been fighting the whole time.”
“I know. Mallory told me that.” He looked sideways at me, frowning. “I don’t understand – why didn’t you simply tell me what happened? You let Clark tell me his version without saying anything.”
I spread my palms across the leather seat, leaving damp sweat marks. “I tried to explain it to you, but you wouldn’t listen. You just kept talking about how it was my fault.” My fingers curled. “I know it’s my fault, but I just wanted you to know why I did it.”
My dad rubbed the bridge of his nose, sighing. “I realize now that I overreacted a little and assumed too much. I’m sorry, Danny, I should’ve listened to you.”
His apology was scrawled across his face, his eyes genuinely upset as he looked at me for my reaction. I couldn’t believe my ears; what exactly had Mal said to him to get him to act like this? Half of me wanted to get out of that car faster than anything, but I heard Ray urging me to talk to him – and, hey, if it didn’t work right then, I’d know that it never would.
Shrugging, I shifted in my seat, avoiding his eyes. “You never listen to me when you get mad, anyway. It’s nothing new.”
My stomach flopped as his eyebrows jumped and his frown deepened. “What do you mean? I would listen if you told me things, but you never talk to me about anything.”
I played with the hem of my t-shirt. “Maybe because all you ever talk about are college and grades and Jack –”
“Danny, I know you’re not Jack,” he said, holding up a hand. “I know you don’t believe me, but I don’t think you’re like Jack at all.”
“Why, because I’m not perfect?” I shot back, gripping the armrest tight. “Because I’m not acing all my classes and getting accepted into big colleges? Because I get detention and all teachers don’t love me?”
“No.” My dad clenched his jaw. “I don’t want you to be like Jack, Danny – you’re your own person.”
I snorted, pressing my palm against the window. “Yeah, okay. I know you’re disappointed that I’m not as good as Jack, but I don’t care.” His eyebrows lifted skeptically, but I plowed on. “I just don’t want you to think that way about Caleb, okay – do you even know that the kid hates playing soccer?”
“What?” He furrowed his brow. “What are you talking about now?”
“Caleb doesn’t want to play soccer,” I said, enunciating each word. “He feels like he has to because of me and Jack, but he really wants to do basketball or track or something. And he’s too scared to tell you because he thinks he has to be the next Jack.”
For a moment, my dad’s façade fell away, and my conscience winced at my judgmental tone as shock flashed across his features. He took a deep breath, passing a hand over his face as he gazed through the windshield at the house, as if he could see Caleb through the walls. I eyed him uncertainly; had he really had no clue?
“I didn’t really know either,” I said, feeling a little guilty. “He had to tell me, and I was pretty shocked by it, too. He kept it really quiet…you know Caleb, he won’t say anything until you force it out of him…”
“All this time I thought he enjoyed playing,” he said after a minute, shaking his head, and then he looked at me with a sudden flash of concern. “You want to play soccer, right?”
“Of course I do!” I almost laughed at the idea. “I love soccer and I want to keep playing in college and maybe eventually go pro – but I don’t want to be Jack. And neither does Caleb.”
“No...” My dad hesitated, frowning. “How do I bring this up with him?”
He was asking me for advice? Well, that had never happened before; I barely knew how to respond to such a foreign request.
“I’ll talk to him,” I offered, shrugging. “I’ll tell him to talk to you about it once his season wraps up. He’ll listen to me, for some reason.”
My dad looked at me with an odd expression, something in between a frown and a smile, and I shifted in my seat, glancing longingly outside – was it an appropriate time to get the heck out of the car? But even as I moved to grab the handle, he spoke again.
“I believe I owe you a much larger apology, then.”
“It’s whatever,” I mumbled, my cheeks burning.
“No, it’s not. I want you to know that I never intended to put this pressure on you – or on Caleb, for that matter. I only wanted the best for you.” He paused for a moment as I arched my eyebrows, and then he said, “To be honest, you remind me a lot of myself when I was your age.”
“I do?”
Even though my relatives always told me I looked exactly like my dad had when he was younger, I knew that Jack was the one who was really like him. He was smart and polite and ambitious, wanted to go to the same university that my dad had attended, even held the same career interests as him. It didn’t take a genius to know that I was the exact opposite.
“You probably don’t believe me, do you?” My dad smiled wryly. “What if I told you that I received more detentions my freshman year of high school than you have total? Or that I was arrested my sophomore year for underage drinking?”
I gawked at him. “You what?”
Forget getting arrested – I couldn’t even picture my dad in detention. It just didn’t compute: every time I landed myself in it, he acted like it was the end of the world. I couldn’t imagine what he’d do to me if I ever got arrested.
It took me a solid thirty seconds to get to indignation. “Than how can you lecture me about it? If you were even worse –”
“That’s why,” he said, his eyes dead serious. “I made a few too many mistakes when I was a teenager, mistakes I did not want you to make. I was fortunate enough to turn my life around before I graduated high school, but I must confess I was worried that you wouldn’t be so lucky.”
I sat back in my seat to let that sink in, shaking my head in disbelief. For a moment I eyed him suspiciously, waiting for the catch, but his face was more sincere than I had ever seen it.
“You could’ve given me a chance,” I said, something still tight and resentful in my chest. “I would’ve figured it out for myself eventually if you did.”
“Maybe I should have. I realize that maybe I didn’t come across right to you. But I didn’t want you to have to figure it out for yourself. You don’t want to get too near that kind of road, Dan; I’ve been closer than you to it, and it is not something you need right now.”
Swallowing hard, I fixed my eyes outside the car. A flurry at the window of my house drew my attention; my mom peered out at us briefly before disappearing again.
“We better get inside before she gets worried,” my dad said, following my gaze. “Thank you for taking this time to talk to me, Danny. But next time I don’t want to hear it from Mal first, all right?”
I shrugged, rubbing my palms against my sweats. Maybe he thought everything was fine and dandy between us now that we’d had this beautiful heart-to-heart, but there was still one thing weighing on me, so heavily that I couldn’t bring myself to ask about it.
“Now, I am in no way condoning your use of violence,” said my dad in a severe voice, and I exhaled silently, “because I still don’t think that you should retaliate in that manner. However –”
He let the word linger; I didn’t dare glance at him.
“Knowing the circumstances, I understand that the boy most likely deserved it. From what Mallory told me, I know you wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t touched her. She told me how you stuck up for her in front of him and also in front of that girlfriend of yours –”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I cut in, unable to stop myself; my anger sparked at the word.
“Yes, Mallory told me that as well.” My dad’s mouth twitched. “I’m proud of you, Dan. I know it was probably a difficult decision; I know what it’s like to be attracted to very good-looking girls. I’m proud of you for realizing what’s important.”
Speechless, I closed my open mouth, my whole face on fire.
“So, after some consideration,” my dad said, slipping into his coach voice, “I’ve decided that maybe our team needs its third captain after all.”
My heart leaped suddenly into my throat and my entire body tensed in excitement, hardly daring to believe it. I caught my breath, staring at him, my hands clenched tight on the armrest.
“I gave you the position in the first place because I hoped that you would learn something from it,” he said. “I had my doubts, but I think now I can trust you to try again.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“However, I do think that you should still serve your detentions.” He kept his voice stern and even. “But maybe you can see about doing lunch detention so that you don’t have to miss practice more this week. I need my captains on the field.”
“Don’t worry – I’ll be so good – I swear – I won’t –” I tripped over my words, my spirits soaring as I broke into a huge grin, relief washing over me. “You can count on me, I promise – I’ll be the best captain you’ve ever had –”
All at once, I couldn’t stay contained in that car. Pushing open the door, I sprang out and looked towards Mal’s house – I owed it all to her, really – and suddenly I just had to talk to her, to tell her what she’d done. I moved toward her house, but then stopped and looked back at the car to see my dad sitting there with a strange expression on his face.
“Thank you –” The word was unfamiliar in my mouth, but it wasn’t a bad feeling. “I don’t know – I just – thank you –”
As I broke into a run, pounding across the grass to Mal’s front porch, he stepped out of the car and leaned against it as he watched me go. And as I reached her front door, I glanced back at him and saw a smile spread across his face.