Game Day
TODAY WAS THE DAY that I showed that I was the best. But Stephanie White wasn't making it easy. She too was on the volleyball team and luckily...hated me.
Both teams were practicing in the gym on either side of the net and the student sections were filled with both school colors.
Mama blew the whistle to huddle us up, it was time to start. I looked up towards the stands to see Tomas and Juli. But right next to them was...Christopher. Once again he was staring at me, but also at Mama.
He looked between us with a suspicious glare, but the bell rang and the scoreboard was lit. I started to walk away when his eyes lit up in recognition.
He knew.
☆✼★━━━━━━━━━━━━★✼☆
NEW POV: CHRISTOPHER DAWSON
SHE WAS EXPLOSIVE and I mean that in a good way. Everyone was good at the sport they played, hence why they play it. But she was just...out of her league. She rarely made any mistakes and had the crowd going wild. The Jubilee coach tried every possible way to get her kicked out or stop her.
She saved almost every ball that came at her and swung with the power of twenty men making it almost impossible to save the ball from hitting the ground. Steph was nowhere near as good as she was. I felt not one ounce of concern for Stephanie who pouted on the bench.
Just because she's my girlfriend doesn't mean I like her
It was an act, a ruse for popularity. But sometimes she took it seriously.
But I felt rage, I finally figured out why she looked so familiar. Camila Espinoza the friendship bracelets we'd made were still on her wrist. The white and blue beads hung from my wrist as I pulled at it. She was back. But why?
Why did she leave in the first place?
Her mother sat on the sideline jotting down notes with a clipboard and watching her players play their hearts out. The quiet of the crowd was deafening as the last point of the match approached. The one point that could determine if our school won Jubilee for the first time in a year.
Camila's movement amped as she jumped and took one last swing on the ball. The sound in the gym erupted as the ball hit the white line by a few inches and an entire dogpile of girls made its way onto the court. You'd think they'd just won a whole championship with the way they were reacting.
Her confused face made me chuckle as a million girls ran and wrapped their arms around her. She didn't realize how much she mattered now or how much she would matter from now on.
The way home was silent except for the silent music playing from my stereo, as I pull up I notice a familiar shade of blonde hair and green eyes that illuminate in the bright headlights.
Mom.
The person who I might've hated the most in this world. But with reason. She did things that weren't things I agreed with. But the things she did were inhumane. Selfish and just things a bad person would do.
She had shown a big of an effort to try to make it up to me, but the damage was done. It wasn't just this incident that pushed me far from her. It was my entire upbringing, the way she'd leave me alone on holidays just to further her political career after my father died.
The only person who understood me and the one person I could look to. But now he was gone.
I stepped out of the car and she stood, she was fully dressed in her office attire. It looked like she was here for a while, her shoes were off and her jewelry lay in her hands.
"I forgot my keys at the office-"
"Whatever" I pulled my keys out of my sweats and opened the door not bothering to hold it for her.
"Thank you" She whispered as she threw her heels to the ground "Are you hungry?"
"Nope" I tossed my shoes near the door and made my way up the carpeted stairs to my room.
Snowboards lined my wall horizontally, posters of snowboarding legends hung up above my bed frame and the average amount of clothes decorated the floor. I dropped onto my bed and tossed my shirt on the floor with the rest of the clothes.
I scrolled through my phone for a while before closing my eyes and falling asleep.
☆✼★━━━━━━━━━━━━★✼☆
I heard crying. It was the middle of the night and sleep tried to pull me back but I couldn't. I opened my door slowly and the sounds got louder.
Gasps and cries. They came from downstairs, I quietly made my way down making sure not to make a single noise, but the first thing I noticed was the picture of dad was off the mantle. But there she was, my mom held the picture close to her chest as she cried. She sat on the couch facing away from me but I barely could see her.
She was falling apart, curled almost into a ball of sadness as she talked to herself, "I don't know what to do with him, Gray. I feel like he's farther away from me every day"
She sniffled and let out a deep sigh, "I don't know what to do anymore, I've made my mistakes and I'm trying so hard to make them up. All I want is for you to come back to me...to us. I miss you so much"
She stood and walked back to the mantle placing the picture back up her face clean of tears now.
I stood leaning on the doorframe, I didn't care enough to hide. She turned and flinched at the sight of me standing nearly in front of her.
"What are you doing awake?" She took a look at the clock almost not believing it herself "It's 4 am"
"I could ask the same" I walk toward the kitchen her footsteps follow.
"That's not an answer, it's a school day" She yelled
"Yet you didn't mind me coming home late" She was speechless and it filled me with joy "Stop the useless try at parenting, it's pathetic"
"Listen-"
I cut her off, "No you listen, I had to abandon my childhood because the only person who ever cared about me was dead and you were slowly falling apart in front of me. To depressed to take care of your child. I get it, grief is hard but I lost my father!"
She had a million people helping her get through it, I had no one. The only other person who ever understood me had also left, so I had to get through the loss of the three most important people in my life.
A mother who once cared, a friend who was always there to suddenly never there, and a father who would never be coming back. All the tragedy that a young boy endured alone because he had to take care of his mother before himself.
I took a deep breath as I saw her eyes water, "I'm so s-sorry"
It was a nice set of words but I felt no need for them, "Apologies won't give back all the experiences and all the things you've taken from me"
I take the bottle of water I'd come for in the first place and went back upstairs not bothering to say anything more, I refuse to let my problems define me.
She might be the only person I had left but I wasn't so sure I even had her to begin with. After that, sleep was no longer possible.
This was definitely a tough chapter to write but here it is!
I also want to announce that I'll be going on vacation soon so during two weeks in August I'll unfortunately not be able to write so I'll make sure to crunch out as many chapters as I can before then.
Until later, M.