Chapter 41: Party Time & Freshman Prom

Chapter 41: Party Time & Freshman Prom

Although I had gone out with the rest of the team after the game, I still had a while to wait before going to Chloe’s birthday party, her birthday had been on Thursday, I had given her a card, but that was all, I hadn’t planned on a present, since I felt our friendship hadn’t reached that stage again.

It was lucky that I had some time, since I received a surprising phone call.

It wasn’t often that I had a call on the house phone, those I regularly talked to know to use my cell phone. My Mom had taken the call, shouting out that it was for me. I took the receiver from her with a questioning look, she just shrugged.

“Hello, Jack speaking.”

“Hi Jack, it’s Geoff Chambers, from the Athens raceway, you finish school next week right?”

“That’s right Geoff.”

“I wonder if you could do me a favor when you finish school, the car you drove around our track got smashed up, I need someone to get it set up for a race here the end of next week, you were the first person I thought of.”

“I would love to, Geoff, let me check it is okay with my parents, if they say it’s ok, I will be your man.”

“If you can’t organize a ride, I will try and sort something out.” Geoff offered. Mom came out of the kitchen, so I was able to ask for permission straight away, she agreed, so it would just mean sorting out a ride to get there. I passed the good news on to Geoff, who agreed to talk later about details.

Then it was time to get ready for the pizza party, the phone call was going to make me tight on time.

When I walked in the pizza parlor, I was surprised to find I was the first one there. I got a soda to tide me over till the rest of the expect guest arrived.

I had a number of people congratulate me on the game that afternoon, the varsity team was still playing, they were due to finish in the next half hour, that might have been the reason the others were late, they could have gone to the game.

It was only twenty minutes before the rest of the expected people started to arrive, I joined them as they grabbed a table to eat at. They ordered drinks and a pizza, I followed the waitress to the counter, giving her $100 bucks to cover the bill, she took it in surprise, having expected most of the kids would have had to get money from their parents to pay for the meal. Having the money in advance was probably a rarity for the place.

I didn’t plan on paying for the whole night for those who turned up, but this was some of the nicer people in the popular crew, so I felt happy helping them out.

I rejoined them when the first pizza arrived, we all took a slice. Chowing down while the others talked and I mostly listened, I didn’t participate much in the conversation, not knowing some of the people they were talking about, but I didn’t feel left out by the conversation, I was asked for my opinion on certain school things which everyone knew about.

Chloe and Gemma turned up as the pizza was being finished off by a couple of the guys, who were eating faster than the girls, big surprise there right.

The atmosphere picked up as more of the group expected arrived, I tended to step back normally in this sort of situation, letting the friends who got on best to set the trend in the conversation. But this time I would put a comment in here and there if I thought I could contribute. Strangely it actually seemed to increase the intensity of the discussions rather than detract from it, which is what I had always been worried about.

Gemma had found a seat close to me, she didn’t talk much with the others, but then Chloe was dominating so much of the conversation it wasn’t required.

In a short gap in the talk, when it was quiet enough to hear yourself or others talk, I asked her if she had a date to next week’s freshman Prom dance. She looked at me in surprise, but also looked interested when she told me no.

“Would you go with me Gemma?” I asked.

“I would love too Jack.” Gemma replied, before going bright red.

I smiled at her and patted her hand, I hadn’t gone red for once, but knew how it could be.

When I looked back at the rest of the table, I was surprised to see everyone else looking at us, I guess asking Gemma when it was quite enough to hear each other wasn’t such a great idea, after seeing everyone else staring at us.

A couple of the other girls grabbed Gemma and dragged her off toward the bathroom. Left by myself to contemplate the age old question “Was there a conference room in the women’s bathroom?”, I didn’t know what to do, feeling very conspicuous I headed off, I went back up to the order counter, I ordered a large Hawaiian thin crust and a five meat hand tossed pizza for the table and paid for them. It was getting close to the point that I would need to leave so that would be it for me paying for things.

I headed back to the my table, Chloe got up and cut me off before reaching it, “Jack that was a lovely thing you just did, Gemma really wanted to go to the dance, but she didn’t want to go by herself, I don’t think she would have accepted anyone else’s invitation but yours though.”

“I’m not sure I would have gone with anyone else but Gemma.” I replied.

“Not even Bailee?” Chloe asked me laughing.

“Alright you have me there, maybe Bailee.” I conceded, since I considered her almost as good a friend as Gemma.

Chloe just started laughing at me, when she got it under control, she commented. “Don’t let Gemma here you say that, she won’t feel she can compete with a Hollywood starlet.”

“Gemma could compete with any woman for looks and personality as far as I’m concerned.” I argued back.

Chloe just gave me a long look before giving her reply. “I really believe you mean that Jack, Gemma would love to know that, but she won’t hear it from me.”

The next week was final exam week, so all the students at school were stressing over them, which started the review of everything that might be on it, then getting worried they might have missed something in the review process.

Another interesting item that came to my attention was going to be out the last week of school, the state’s high school baseball rankings and all-conference team.

It wasn’t something I had thought about, the freshman statistics and all-conference team was basically just for giggles, it wasn’t really taken that seriously by scouts for universities or pro ball teams. JV was looked at, but it was the varsity statistics which might turn into a university scholarship offer.

I didn’t have much choice about discovering the results though. On Monday Ben caught me in a bear hug when he saw me, swinging me around and laughing. I couldn’t understand what had gotten into him and would wait for an explanation. It was only when he put me down and saw my confused stare, that he took pity on me.

He pulled a newspaper out of his backpack, and opened it to the correct page and told me to read.

I guessed he was mentioned somewhere, so gave the list of names a glance looking for his name, I found it in three columns, batting average(BA), at 0.58 he was in the top third of the list, runs batted in(RBI), he was the same. But best of all he was named Batter Number Three on the all-conference team. I smiled and congratulated him. He thanked me, but still looked a bit confused, so I had another look at the list, to see if he was mentioned anywhere else, that was when I saw my own name.

It was in the earned run average (ERA); I was top with no hit for bases given up. I didn’t see Ben’s name anywhere else, but I did see mine and some of the others, so I studied each list more seriously.

I had made top of the batting averages, with a perfect 1.0, third in homerun hits, top in RBI, total, I was also in the all-conference team, Batter Number 4, Short Stop and opening Pitcher.

I was happy to see that Tim had been fourth in the ERA and had also made the all-conference pitching squad.

I turned to Ben, “Wow, I didn’t know I had that good a season.”

Ben just laughed, “I knew, the first time you told me how to bat, after that I would do everything you told me to do, whatever it was, you’re just a natural baseball player.”

“Well it was only freshman games; we’ll have to see if we can do the same next year in JV ball.” I replied.

“Yeah right, like you wouldn’t be able to transfer that kind of ability to the next level. Whatever, well done, I just hope I can make the team to hang on to your coattails for another season.” And he took his paper back and walked off.

Apart from exams the only other topic of conversation was about prom, this was mainly the seniors who were so excited, they had completed their exams already, taken the SAT tests, so they were looking forward to the final hurrah of high school, the Senior Prom.

There were groups going around politicking for the prom king and queen, pitching for their choice.

For the rest of us, it was the final shindig of the year, a chance to plan for something to relieve the stress once our own exams were complete. The Freshman Prom is not part of the Senior Prom. The Senior Prom is sponsored by the Junior Class for the seniors who are graduating. The Freshman Prom is sponsored by the Sophomore Class as a practice run for the next year when they would be in Junior Class and need to sponsor the Senior Prom. Who knew high school could be so complicated socially.