Chapter 14

I managed to make it out of practice without any more confrontations again, although I was getting a little annoyed that to do so basically required me to skip going into the locker room after practice. Since I sometimes stayed with Miguel and Tyrell, and now I was staying after with Wayne and Bennett, it was hard to know when I was going to be done and headed either to the locker room or starting my walk home.

Had Elijah been a patient person, he would have just waited and watched for me to leave, but he wasn’t. The longest he lasted was four minutes, at which point he went into the locker room.

He had always been short-sighted, although this time, it worked out in my favor.

I made the walk home, already shifting from practice mode back to school mode. It wasn’t that bad, since the study Coach had me doing on plays and learning to read the offense was kind of similar. I still missed the days of middle school ball, where it was a lot less structured and more just fun, instead of high pressure.

Actually, thinking of how I played the game those two years in my dream life, it had been about the same. I was having a good time, showing off and trying to be the big man, instead of doing the work it would take to win games.

It was a startling revelation, really, and one that shattered some of the notions I’d had, during and after the dream. In it, I’d been convinced, both before Dad died and after, that I’d been on track to make varsity, state wins, a college scholarship, and the NFL.

It was clear to me now that I hadn’t actually been on track for any of those things, because I wasn’t taking the game seriously enough. Maybe I would have taken things more seriously once I made varsity, but it would have been a big transition, considering how Coach Heidemann kept saying this was just easing me into it.

Well, at least I was doing the work now. The same was true of my schoolwork, which was intensifying as we got further into the year. Especially now that I’d given up my Saturdays, which I had been spending almost all day studying, to help Eduardo’s family.

It was a good thing, both because I was convinced it was what was going to help Dad, and because it was a nice thing to do for his parents. But it meant I was having to compensate, staying up later so I could get everything done ... with the exception of Wednesday nights. I wanted to be well-rested for game day Thursdays.

Mom and Dad were both working when I got home. This was a little unusual since Mom was usually busiest on weekends when people had time for hair appointments, but it happened sometimes.

I took the stairs two at a time, ready to dump my gear and collapse for five minutes before taking a quick shower and getting to work. Instead, as I pushed my door open, I froze.

Josh was standing with his back to me near my desk, rifling through the drawers. A bunch of stuff that had been inside the drawers was scattered on the floor around him, like he didn’t plan on even trying to hide that he’d been in there.

“What the hell are you doing in my room?”

He didn’t answer. He just turned halfway, as he put something in his pocket, before turning back and closing the desk drawer.

“Josh,” I said again, stepping fully into the room. “What are you doing in here?”

“Nothing,” he said trying to walk past me, not looking me in the eye.

I sidestepped, planting myself between him and the exit. “Like hell you were! What’s in your pocket?”

“Nothing. Get out of my way.”

“Not until you show me what you took.”

“I didn’t take anything!” he said, his voice going higher pitched than normal as he tried to go around me again.

I reached for his arm, but he still made to push past me, trying to jerk his arm free. I tightened my grip, pulling him to a stop. “Cut the crap, Josh. If you didn’t take anything, why were you digging through my desk?”

“Let go of me!”

“Not until you tell me what you’re hiding.”

I reached for his pocket. He tried to stop me with his free hand, but I swatted it away and pinned him against the wall. He squirmed, shoving at me, but I found something with a familiar shape to it. I held him still while pulling a small, scuffed medal out of his pocket that I’d won during my first season of peewee.

It had been years ago and was probably silly to still have it, since I’d been six at the time, but it had a special place in my heart and I’d held onto it. To say I was furious was an understatement.

“This isn’t yours!” I demanded, shaking it in his face. “Why the hell would you take this?”

“It’s just a stupid medal! No one cares about it but you.”

“If you don’t care, then why’d you take it?”

“I was just messing around,” he muttered.

“Bullshit.”

He looked furious and for a moment I thought he was going to swing at me. I relaxed my grip on him, just in case, so I could either block it or step out of the way, but he only jerked his arm free.

“You can’t tell me what to do.”

“Steal my shit again, and I can break your damn face.”

“You want to?” he asked, something cold and hollow in his voice.

We both heard the door downstairs open and then shut, signaling mom coming home from work. He gave me an evil grin and took a step toward the door and for a moment I thought he might make a run for it, maybe to mom for protection. He didn’t.

Instead, he said, “Let me do it for you.”

Before I could react, he turned and slammed his face into the edge of the doorjamb. There was a sickening sound as blood splattered across the wood, bright and shocking against the white paint.

He staggered sideways from the blow, even if it was self-inflicted, clutching his nose, and gave me the coldest look I’d ever seen.

I was so stunned I didn’t even move. Not until he started screaming.

“Mom! Mom!” he yelled as he took off into the hall and then thundered down the stairs.

I raced after him. He’d set me up perfectly. I’d say I should have seen it coming, but how could I have guessed he’d break his own nose just to get at me. I made it downstairs just as Mom rushed into the kitchen to see what all the noise was about.

“Oh my God, Joshua!” She rushed to him, tilting his face to examine his bloody nose. “What happened?”

“Blake punched me in the face!” Joshua’s voice cracked with fake tears.

Mom spun on me.

“How dare you hit your brother?! What is wrong with you?”

“I didn’t hit him! He’s lying. He did it to himself!”

“What? Why would he hurt himself?”

“Because I caught him stealing from my room! He was going through my desk, took my peewee football medal.”

“Your what? Why would Joshua want some old medal?”

“I don’t know why he wanted it, but he took it!” I pulled the medal from my pocket. “Here, I caught him with it!”

“He’s lying!” Joshua sobbed, keeping his hand pressed to his nose. “I didn’t touch that stupid thing. He’s always bullying me, Mom. He hates me and now he’s making up stories!”

“I saw him do it! He slammed his own face into the doorframe!”

Mom pressed her lips together. “That’s ridiculous, Blake. You must think I’m stupid to believe something like that.”

“But...”

“No. I’ve had enough of your lies. You’re grounded for two weeks. And if you ever lay a hand on your brother again, it’ll be much worse. Do you understand me?”

“This isn’t fair!” My voice rose with frustration. “He’s manipulating you!”

“Go to your room. Now.”

I stared at them both. Mom had grabbed a paper towel and was pressing Josh’s nose firmly as she tilted his head back. He was eating it up, playing the victim, but when she looked away from me for a second to get more paper towels, Joshua’s eyes met mine with that same cold emptiness. The same evil smile.

I spun around and stormed up the stairs, slamming my bedroom door behind me.

Thursday was the farthest away game we’d played yet. L.D. Bell High School was clear on the other side of Dallas, a good four hours away from Wheaton. To manage it, we got an early release at lunch. The game itself was scheduled for five pm, which meant we’d get back to Wheaton around midnight. It was a crazy long day, but that was one of the downsides for a rural division that was as spread out as ours.

We got to eat lunch at school and they would feed us pizza on the bus on the way home, but it was still going to be a really long day. If this was a varsity game, half the town would follow the convoy to the away game, but the Freshman and JV teams were lucky to get some of our parents, let alone people not related to the players.

We also didn’t rate the charter bus the varsity team would get for far away games. Just the standard school bus.

Elijah and his buddies staked out a spot at the back as soon as they were on, like they were still in middle school and it actually mattered. Wayne, Clark, and Bennett had been jelling with my other friends over the last week after all of the extra time we’d spent practicing together to get them ready for game day.

They’d even come over and sat with us through lunch today, which was a good sign. The freshman team was now almost evenly split between our table and Elijah’s, which was a sign that things maybe were shifting our way and Elijah was finally losing whatever pull he might have managed the first week of school.

It was all temporary anyway. Varsity and JV guys, and their friends and girlfriends, tended to all sit together at one table and most of the guys were just waiting until they got off the freshman team and onto one of those so they could move and eat lunch there.

Part of me, the part that still felt the dream life, found all of this stuff to be pointless. In the long run, it didn’t matter who ate lunch with whom. It was all high school nonsense.

But the rest of me was in high school and knew that, in a way, it mattered a lot. High school could be brutal for some kids, and which social group you ended up in would matter a lot.

Besides, if I could save people like Wayne and Bennett from Elijah’s orbit, I was ultimately doing them a favor.

We pulled into the parking lot of Pennington Field and were sent off into the visitors’ locker room. It was actually a really nice field, although that wasn’t so surprising for Texas. Football was king here, and schools spent a lot of money on their athletic departments.

The sun was still pretty high in the sky as we warmed up for the game, which was a first. Normally, we didn’t even get on the field until seven, so a five o’clock start was earlier than normal.

The sun and the heat weren’t the things I focused on, though. More important was how Elijah was glued to Hunter’s side all through stretching, whispering the whole time. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but Hunter’s expression was somewhere between uncertain and concerned.

I could imagine what Elijah was saying. All of his cronies on the offense were riding the bench, and Hunter was the only one still on the field, able to throw the game. The fact that he’d been benched and still had not changed his mind was ... unbelievable. Well, unbelievable if I didn’t know Elijah.

By the time we finished warm-ups and headed for the locker rooms to gear up the rest of the way and do our run out, Elijah looked smug, leaving Hunter behind, looking frustrated.

I sped up to catch up to him and then slowed to match his pace. Hunter almost flinched, like he thought I was about to take a swing at him, now that he was by himself.

Like he thought I was Elijah, willing to burn everything down for his own petty grievances. But Hunter didn’t look angry or hostile like he normally did. He looked scared. Maybe Elijah didn’t like him playing his best with us on the field or maybe Elijah just thought Hunter was somehow to blame for what happened to them. Whatever it was, Elijah had threatened him.

That much was clear.

“I don’t know what he told you, but don’t forget that he’s where he is because he can’t control himself. Don’t screw this up and end up like him.”

“You threatening me?”

“No, I’m giving you a heads-up. Do you want to spend your high school career riding the pine or stuck on JV, or do you want to have a chance to play D1 college ball?”

Hunter looked from me to Elijah’s back. He was stuck somewhere between being pissed and being afraid, although it seemed pretty clear he didn’t know which of us to be afraid of and which of us to be pissed at.

He chose to run, walking faster, to put some distance between us.

“Your choice, man,” I called after him.

I had to say, I much preferred running out onto the field at home than playing in someone else’s stadium. The home stands were packed while ours were only half full. Also, it felt like a lot of those on the visitors’ side were people from Bell that couldn’t get seats on the home side.

To add to the poor start, they got the coin toss, so they got the first drive. It had to happen, but it always felt like we started things off on the right foot by starting on the offense.

Our guys did a good job on defense, stopping their drive in just four downs, forcing it to end with a punt. I guess that was the good thing about my not being on defense. Elijah’s friends on that side had no reason to throw anything. Hell, none of my friends really were on that side, either. All the guys Elijah had singled out as targets early in the year, were on offense.

“Alright, offense, let’s go!” Coach Heidemann said, clapping.

We ran out onto the field and lined up. This was it. I’d convinced Coach to change the lineup and we’d done the work all week to be ready for this.

Now I had to show him something.

On the snap, Clark did his job, exactly as we’d been practicing it. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how much of my concentration had been used keeping an eye on Jake and Hunter, trying to figure out when the other shoe would drop and they’d turn on me.

Now, I could focus entirely on my reads. I didn’t have to go past my first one. Miguel cut across the middle and managed to break free of his defender. It was a short route, Coach wanting us to feel out Bell’s defense before we tried anything fancy. Miguel pulled my pass in cleanly and turned upfield. He gained eight yards before a defender managed to pull him down.