Chapter 15: Shall We Play A Game?

"So, how was the first day for you?" Tim's father, Raymond, was sitting on the desk chair while his son was finishing his first journal entry for his honors U.S. History class.

"It was pretty good, Dad. You were right about the girls. Everywhere I went, I started seeing more and more girls looking at me and then looking away if I made eye contact with them. I'm not used to the attention, but so far it isn't bad."

Raymond was practically bursting with pride. His son who, just a few months earlier, was living a sedentary life with no friends and no desire to find any, was finally blossoming. A possible girlfriend was no where on the horizon, though, and he had even begun thinking about accepting that his son might be homosexual. While intellectually he would not have minded if his son was homosexual, deep down he hoped it would not be true. Instead he wished his son was just dealing with low self esteem issues.

His son was a short, pudgy kid who was more interested in the imaginary life in his own head than the real life around him. Now, he could see the butterfly as it emerged from the cocoon. His son was growing to be an amazing young man, and was living a life that only Hollywood could have conjured up! Raymond had a front row seat and was determined to help guide his son anyway he could.

"How are your classes? Are you happy with them? I remember you told us you were worried about having the time to be in the honors courses."

"No problems there, Dad. I just need to budget my time. The work isn't too hard, it just takes time. No more just sitting back and waiting until the last second to do things."

"Well, good. Remember, you always need to make sure your grades are up! Your mom and me are gonna be pissed if they start slipping." Tim's father stood up and patted his son's shoulder. "Come on. Dinner is ready."

Tim stopped his father before he could leave the room. "Hey, Dad, would it be okay if we return some of these polo shirts for a little bigger size?"

"Well, yeah, of course. I don't mind, but don't you think the girls might, Tim?" his father asked with a smile.

"Oh, I know. I got a few compliments on them already, but I'm thinking about the rest of the year. I'm gonna keep working out, and I know for a fact I will be getting bigger. I don't want to rip them just trying to stretch them over my body. Just a couple of sizes bigger and they will still fit tight, but won't rip."

"Sure, no problem. I should have thought of that when we were buying them in the first place. We'll go this weekend, and trade them up for bigger sizes. Now, I understand your mom made your favorite, and from the torrent of colorful adjectives that were coming out of her mouth, I'm guessing she burnt it ... again."

"Dadgummit, son! This is football! You are allowed to hit the guy! In fact, it's even highly encouraged! Now, get in the front of the line and do it again!" Coach Alvarez was still mumbling to himself as he walked back away from the hitting drill, still visibly discouraged with the performance of several of the freshman linemen.

The hitting drills for the freshman offensive and defensive linemen continued. They understood what the coaches wanted from them but, after a full morning of practice, followed by a full day of school, and a good hour into the afternoon practice, the players were beginning to tire and make stupid mistakes. Practice was becoming repetitive.A few of the players who were doing well were beginning to resent those who were not as up-to-speed.

"Come on, Gary. You've got this, man. Keep your head up, and drive with your feet right through the tackle. Remember to hit right through him, or you might not have enough power to bring him down."

Tim Murphy was trying to get his teammates ready for their first action of the season that Saturday morning, a practice scrimmage with the Alamo Heights Mules.

Alamo Heights is an suburb within the city limits of San Antonio. Originally it was on the outskirts of town, but San Antonio grew and surrounded the small city of nearly eight thousand. Those families living in the Alamo Heights city limits, however, are some of the most affluent in the area, mainly doctors and lawyers.

As a result, the children within the Alamo Heights Independent School District have the best of everything, be it facilities, teachers, equipment ... and, of course, family support. They were rich kids, but they also had a reputation of living up to expectations. Then, when they go home, they are greeted with lush, manicured lawns and large, beautifully maintained homes. Driving down any number of residential streets in Alamo Heights, one could easily spot several properties previously featured on many 'home and garden' magazines as well as TV shows airing around the country.

"Oh come on, Cindy, I can't believe you wanna ruin what you have with Troy just to see what Tim Murphy can do in the bedroom. Jesus, you know I'd do anything for ya, but Troy is a good one, and you should not be hurting him."

Jennifer Smith was sitting in the passenger seat of Cindy Diefendorf's Ford Focus. Cindy was detailing her infatuation with the new freshman football god. Cindy was not alone in her infatuation. It seemed all the girls in Roosevelt High were engaged with discussing him. If the government happened to be listening to the phone calls of every girl from Roosevelt, for whatever reason, they would be hearing about every single second of Tim Murphy's day, from the route he takes from the locker room to second period, to which girls attempted to talk to him, to how he pretty much wrote off each one.

On top of all this, the girls were circulating numerous pictures of Tim walking through the halls, drinking from the water fountain, etc. There was even a short video that was quickly going viral, featuring the hair maneuver Cindy and Jen caught during homeroom when they were choosing lockers. Someone had filmed him from their homeroom seat while Tim was finding his locker.

Not surprisingly, given the overabundance of attention, there were even a few rumors being started that Tim Murphy could be gay, since he had not yet made it clear which girl he wanted.

"Jen, I'm not leaving Troy. That would be nuts, and I know that. I'm just saying, wouldn't you want to have a taste of Tim?" Cindy answered her long time friend as they shared a soda in the Sombrero Rosa parking lot. "I'm just saying that he is one gorgeous hunk!"

"Duh! I might be a lesbian, but I'm not blind. And to answer your question, no, I don't want to try a taste of him." Jen visibly shook in disgust at the thought of "tasting" any boy, even one as seemingly perfect as Tim Murphy.

"So, what have you heard about him? Is he a transfer student or something?"

"No. Get this! Apparently, he has been living here his whole life, and no one ever noticed him before."

"No way! Jen, I have to call bull on that!" This same conversation was being repeated, many times that evening, between the girls of Roosevelt. Phone calls, tweets, instant messages and plain old one-on-one conversations were all centered around Tim Murphy.

"You mean a gorgeous creature like that was running around under everyone's eyes, and no one tried to scoop him up!"

"No, look at this!" Jen opened her backpack and produced a yearbook from Krueger Middle School and found the one and only non-mugshot in the whole book of Tim Murphy. The picture was of the Krueger Academic Pentathlon team, and seated in the front row was a short, fat Tim dressed in a basic t-shirt with a pocket on the chest and athletic shorts that, at one time, were probably athletic sweats. He was smiling, and it was an awkward smile -- half 'I don't wanna be here' look that a lot of the nerds forced to take pictures were wearing as faces. The other half was a 'Please help me get out of here' look. There were three medals hanging from his neck. The caption read "Tim Murphy earned a Gold Medal in Literature, a silver medal in History, and the entire Krueger Academic Pentathlon team won silver in the 'Super Quiz' during this year's statewide competition in Austin."

"This is my little brother's yearbook from last year. While he is still at Krueger for another year, he told me about Tim."

When Cindy took the book from Jen and looked closer at the picture, Jen added, "Yeah, apparently he is a total nerd, and that's why no one knows anything about him."

Cindy's jaw threatened to hit to floor.

"Well, I think there may have been a couple more reasons why none of the girls know anything about him." They both started giggling. "How did he go from this," she pointed at the yearbook picture, "to this..." Cindy started as she grabbed her phone from her purse between the seats. She pulled up a picture that someone had secretly taken of Tim, who was in line at lunch and laughing with another freshman while one of the lunch ladies served him.

"Well, my brother said the story going around the locker room at Krueger is that Tim got sick, like during the first week of summer. He actually spent, like, the whole first month of summer in the hospital. When he came out, he'd lost a lot of weight, like a hundred pounds or something. Some kids say they saw him later running around his neighborhood. He started working out like crazy, and then, I guess, he finally got his growth spurt. Supposedly, he was running in the mornings, lifting weights and boxing, or something after that, and then in the afternoons he would take his little sister to the library."

"Are you sure about this? I mean, come on, it's a story from a middle school boys' locker room." Cindy was trying to poke holes in the story because it just seemed too mythical to believe. "Jeeze, it sounds like some kind of a movie of the week, or something." The entire time Jen was telling her story, Cindy could not take her eyes off the picture of Tim on her phone.

"You know Peggy Morgan, right?" Cindy nodded affirmatively. "Well, this summer she was working at the library at school, since she had that broken toe and couldn't be a lifeguard this summer. Anyway, I remember her telling me this summer that she'd been watching this great looking hunk, who was coming into the library pretty much everyday and reading book after book. Sometimes he brought a little girl, probably a second or third grader, with him. Peggy thought the hunk was her father or something."

"So, Peggy told me after school today that she remembered that the guy was Tim Murphy, especially when she remembered he had, like, a meeting with Ms. Barrett's husband, the freshman football coach, one day in the library. Yeah, she kept saying she thought the hunk was, like, in college already, or something, and that he was incredibly sexy looking ... and, like, the stuff he was reading showed he was obviously smart, too." Jen took a drink from her soda and waited for Cindy to say something, but she was still under the spell of the picture on her phone. "Hellloooo? Earth to Cinnndyyyy." The giggling started up again this time with Cindy adding a wonderful blush.

While they were sitting in the back row of the parking lot enjoying their drinks and talking, Jen noticed a group of large boys crossing the street from the school and coming toward the restaurant. While sitting in the car, the girls had a perfect view of anyone coming or going from the restaurant. That was done on purpose, just in case some bit of gossip needed to be confirmed or denied in the morning. Many relationships hit rocky spots because of who sat at what table at Sombrero Rosa, and with whom. The facts needed to be uncovered and sorted properly!

"Looks like the freshmen finished their practice a bit early and, yes, the object of your fantasies is right there with them."

"Oh, you can just keep quiet, miss Jen." Both were still smiling. "He is not the object of my fantasies."

"Oh, he isn't?"

"Well," Cindy paused and then looked over at her friend in the passenger seat, " ... not yet." She picked up her commemorative cup and exited the car with Jen quickly following.

The guys were indeed freshmen, come to wind down after a hard practice, and had just sat down together at a big table on the patio.

They were actually looking to set themselves up as the new kings of the freshmen class, and to make themselves available for any higher grade girls, as well. That was the basic idea, at least. However, having two of the best looking and most popular girls in the school ask to join their table changed that entire dynamic. It was like the entire restaurant quieted down so no one would miss a peep of what was happening at the large table on the patio.

"Hi, I'm Cindy and this is Jen, do you mind if we join you guys?"

The other kids, eating both inside and out on the restaurant's large patio, got a first hand look at what 'deer caught in oncoming headlights actually looked like.

Tony Parker was the first to get a hold of his faculties. "Um, oh yeah! Sure, ladies! Please, have a seat."

Jeff Smith grabbed a chair from one table, and Mark Mazzurana grabbed from another. Tony was a naturally gifted BS artist with women, so he was able to act the most mature and spoke up to both tables, "Sorry guys, may we borrow the chairs?" The obviously dumbfounded nerds at one table just nodded while the older couple at the other table were smiling at the antics of the two boys who obviously did not have the proper amount of blood in their brains at that time.

"I'm Tony," he said, with both hands on his chest, nodding at each of his friends, "That there is Mark, Jeff, Johnnie and Tim."

Both girls made a point to sit directly across from Tim by standing and waiting for Johnnie to move a seat over. He smiled to himself, shook his head, and scooted over a seat, bringing his meal with him. He was more interested in the meal than the girls ... so was Tim. That aggravated the girls to no end!

"So do they talk, or what?" the blonde, wet dream inspiring Cindy, asked in a tone that actually made her significantly less attractive.

"Of course, we talk, " Johnnie said after make a show of swallowing, "but with so many other guys sitting here with no food in front of them and obviously willing to talk to two very attractive girls such as yourself," he took a drink of soda. "we didn't want to seem uncouth." Johnnie cleaned his fingers with a napkin, wiped his mouth with the same napkin and took another bite of one of his tacos. Tim didn't say a thing and just continued eating his own tacos and enjoying his iced tea.

Cindy, obviously not used to being ignored and embarrassed, was about to tear into Johnnie when Jen simultaneously stopped her friend from exploding into a rage and apologized to the group at the table. "No, you are quite right. It's just that we came over here with certain expectations and when you did not immediately give in, well let's just say 'we ain't used to that.'"

Johnnie finished his last taco and, with a genuine smile, said, "No harm, no foul. Like Tony said, I'm Johnnie and this is..."

Tim noticed the small nod from Johnnie and introduced himself. "I'm Tim, Tim Murphy. We just finished football practice and, while we came to just get something to drink, well, we just could not resist the smell and got a few tacos, too."

"Yeah, same thing here. We just finished dance practice. We are Patriot officers and we pretty much run the squad. But now that the pleasantries are over with," Cindy turned her stare directly to Tim, "what's your story? No one knows who you are."

"Damn, Cindy, nice way to beat around the bush." Everyone at the table laughed. A few people out on the patio laughed as well.

"Well, I want to know, and I'm pretty sure I ain't the only one," Cindy said as she waved her hand around the patio, indicating a few of the other diners.

"What do you want to know? I know a bunch of the people here, but they might not remember me. I had a little growth spurt over the summer."

"Pffftttt!!! 'Little, ' he says," Johnnie commented, just loud enough for the table to hear as he accented his joke with a sly smile.

"Actually, about a week into summer I got a tapeworm. I had to spend over a week in the hospital. When I came out, I had lost about seventy five pounds, and my metabolism had shot into orbit. I had never exercised, before; but when I got home I started and found out I really liked it," Tim explained.

The guys at the table had heard the story before but calmly paid attention and watched the girls' reaction. "I've been living at the same house since fifth grade, and I went to middle school at Krueger; but I was a short, fat kid that no one paid attention to." Tim took a sip of his iced tea and looked at Johnnie. "What was it Coach Brown said about me?"

"He said you looked like a pear with toothpicks for arms and legs." The table laughed again and several nearby tables joined in the fun. Tim just blushed.

"So I guess our reconnaissance was correct about you being a nobody at Krueger and growing up kind of quickly." Cindy leaned forward, accentuating her ample cleavage over the table at Tim and asked, "So, you got a girlfriend?"

It was like a bad high school TV drama when the entire restaurant inhaled in shock in response to her asking the question. The rumors probably started flying right then and there. Was Cindy trying to two-time her boyfriend? Was she going to dump her boyfriend in order to date a freshman? Jen playfully smacked Cindy on the shoulder and scolded her, saying, "Leave him alone, you hussy. You got a good man waiting for you. You don't need some snack to ruin your appetite before dinner. Leave him alone." Both Jen and Cindy were giggling. After a moment, "But I did notice you did not answer her question."

Tim actually surprised himself when he answered in a normal, conversational tone, like he had no problem talking to women, "Nope. No girlfriend. I haven't found one yet that could keep up with me, or that was willing to partner up to take care of business." The booming sounds of several "ooohs" filled the patio and were quickly followed by boisterous laughter. There was even a "YEAAAAAAH! BOYEEEEEE!"

Once laughter slowly faded and people were settling down, Cindy playfully pointed at Tim, "You, sir, are going to be trouble. We would love to stay and chat some more, but we have to go."

"Aww, you interrogate me and then don't even give us a chance to find out about you and your friend here. Obviously, you two are very popular at Roosevelt. I can tell that by how pretty both of you are. You probably have a long line of potential paramours constantly chasing you. So, Cindy, please tell us," Tim waved to indicate his friends around the table, "about the two of you," he finished while pointing to both of the seniors.

"What would you like to know?"

"Well, first of all, Jen there said you had a good man waiting for you at home." Tim then leaned forward over the table and pumped his pectorals up and down like he was playing bongos. He had done the same move Cindy had just done but added his own accent to it. "Do you have a boyfriend?"

It seemed like the entire patio started howling in laughter, and everyone was laughing at Cindy's reaction to being one-upped in front of people. She was turning red, not from embarrassment, but from anger. The queen of Roosevelt high was being laughed at, in HER hangout spot. Jen spotted Cindy's anger threatening to erupt and immolate every diner on the patio. Thankfully, Tim noticed it as well and quickly changed the subject. "I'm just playing, Cindy. Say, I heard someone say you and Jen were seniors, so you are probably getting ready for college. Do you know where you are going?"

Jen noticed Cindy was calming down but not yet ready to continue a conversation so she answered first. "Yes, sir! We are both going to college. I have already received my acceptance to UT Austin and will be there next fall. I am so excited!" She was bouncing excitedly in her seat, and her happiness was infectious. It quickly drained all the brewing contempt from the immediate area.

"What about you, Cindy?"

"Well, yes. I also got my acceptance to UT Austin, but I haven't made up my mind. I have my heart set on the Ivy Leagues, but I need to figure out if I want to leave home for THAT far away, or get a great education near here and come home whenever necessary." Cindy was nearly over her mad and was visibly in a quandary about her schooling. Everyone figured it was just as she said, rather than the life-long mission her mother had placed her on, ever since her first menstrual cycle.

"Well, it is good to have options. We are just now freshmen, and I guess we all have some time to make up our minds about college," Johnnie added to the conversation.

"Are you kidding me! Look at you guys! You guys are all in incredible shape and are just getting ready for football. Personally, I can't wait to see how you guys grow into a team. Maybe you can bring TR another state championship in football." Jen reached over and grabbed Mark's arm to give the bicep a squeeze. "You guys certainly are bigger than any of the other freshman classes I've seen since I've been here."

"And you, Mr. Murphy ... there is something about you that just screams 'look out for this one!' You're going to be interesting to watch," Cindy said while pointing at Tim. She looked down at her now ringing phone and, seeing the time and who was calling, she got up quickly from the table. "Oh jeez, Jen. Come on! That's my mom. We gotta get going."

Both girls grabbed their purses and rushed out the door to their car in the back of the parking lot. Cindy was apologizing to her mother a little too loudly. They walked right by the side of the patio where the guys were still sitting and waved goodbye while jogging to the car. The effect of jogging was noticeable on their young, energetic bodies. The guys at the table noticed. The other males in the restaurant noticed, as well.

"Oh shit, yeah, guys! Come on. My mom should be here to pick me up by now. If you all want rides, then come on, and let's get back to the locker room."

Tim and Johnnie threw away their empty bags from the food they'd bought and hustled with the guys out of the restaurant and back to the school. They beat Mark's mom to the locker room door by a couple of minutes.

The JV team had the honor of the first scrimmage with Alamo Heights. This would be the second time most of these players would see the Mules, having played them in a scrimmage the year before.

The majority of players on the JV were now sophomores. A few juniors, considered third- or fourth-string varsity, were staying in JV for the playing time. No one wants to spend all this time and work practicing football, and never play. So, most juniors who knew they would never get to play on the varsity, be they not that good or just not good enough to beat out other players, would willingly play on the JV.

This year's JV squad was a little above average, and beat the Alamo Heights JV team easily, 21-7. There were no official scores kept, since the rules for scrimmages were a little different than regular games. There was no kicking or punting at all. Drives continued only if the offense could make ten yards in three downs. If the defense could stop them three drives in a row, then the other team's offense was allowed to take the field. While a team was on offense, their offensive coaches were allowed on the field behind the offense and could stop a play before it started in order to do some teaching to someone doing something incorrectly. If an offense was stopped and had players admonished for doing something wrong, it was considered a "win" for the opposing defense.