Chapter 4: Thursday, Aug. 16

I actually made it through the night without cramping and only woke up twice to piss. The second time was after 4:30 a.m., so I went ahead and got started on my day.

With a little extra time, I ate a couple of bowls of cereal in addition to a banana. That ought to hold me should I have to skip lunch. There were always the bananas at the fieldhouse if I needed something extra.

I gathered up all my stuff, making sure the water bottle was full before I left, and made it to the fieldhouse several minutes early. I actually had to wait for a trainer to get taped, but was one of the first out of the training room.

Today was our first in shells, but we were still prohibited from engaging in contact drills until next week. It took me a few minutes to get the shoulder pads on correctly and I had to get Ronnell to help me pull the practice jersey on over them before we hit the field to stretch.

Practice was different from the other morning sessions in that we spent most of it running plays with the base offensive and defensive sets. Coaches were continually pointing out which keys to look for as we lined up. I rotated in at both the U and V spots when backups ran plays, but never had a pass thrown in my direction. Most of the time was spent making sure the linemen were aware of their blocking assignments on a series of running plays.

One of the other receivers said that wasn’t unusual for the first week of practice. Coach Tucker wanted to get the basics covered before we started doing anything fancy like throwing passes.

We wrapped things up in plenty of time to get showered and changed for first period. Coach Tucker reminded us of the schedule for athletic period. I just hoped I wouldn’t embarrass myself when it was my turn to lift weights. I’d be happy if I came close to reaching the targets Coach Bennett had set for my maxes in each lift.

The morning classes held no surprises. Economics covered more budgeting stuff with an exercise in how to graph out projected expenses. We were assigned a few problems using different dollar figures representing assets and debits. It was basically more algebra.

Western Civ was more on Charlemagne with a reading assignment we were allowed to start on before the end of class. English IV involved reading some of Shakespeare’s sonnets with the assignment of writing an essay on their meanings. I kept the books for both classes in my backpack, hoping I could do some of the reading at lunch if I got enough of my running done in athletics to allow me time to do so.

That looked like a forlorn hope as I returned to the fieldhouse. Even with Coach Bennett moving me to the front of the line, it was going to take a while to get my lifting in.

The upper-body lifts went surprisingly well as I met my targets in all lifts and even exceeded them in most. Like I said, a percentage of not much still isn’t much.

The lower-body exercises were a different matter. My legs were so dead from all the running I’d been doing that I struggled in just about everything. I at least got close enough to the targets that Coach Bennett accepted my efforts without too much grumbling. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one dealing with the condition.

Once I was done, I immediately went out to the field and began running more gassers. I was able to get 50 in before the bell rang and decided to call it quits. It wouldn’t take long to do the last 25 I’d need for today and my legs were just about gone after the weight session. With luck, I wouldn’t cramp up in class again today.

I was surprised to find Morgan waiting on me when I exited the locker room.

“I missed you yesterday,” she said, hooking an arm through mine.

“Yeah, I was trying to get a jump on my punishment for getting detention,” I said. “I didn’t want to try to run 300 gassers in one evening. I barely survived doing 75 in one go yesterday.”

“You didn’t hear this from me, but scuttlebutt is that Dr. Franks is getting a lot of backlash from parents already,” she said. “I know Mr. Richards and some other lawyery looking people were at the Administration Building this morning and Mr. Patterson has apparently been making life rather unpleasant for school board members after Staci got detention.”

“I heard that Dr. Stirling had to step in at the volleyball match Tuesday night,” I said. “If this guy is trying to make enemies, he’s doing a bang-up job.”

We moved through what little student traffic there was through the South Wing and into the courtyard toward the cafeteria.

“So, who gave you a ride home while I was incarcerated?” I asked. “Benny, Wil, one of your other many admirers?”

“Jan Metzger,” Morgan said. “She actually stayed and watched some of last night’s practice with Bethany and me.”

“I wish I’d known,” I said. “I didn’t get out there until after 5 o’clock. I need to give Bethany a call. I haven’t even seen her this week.”

We got to the cafeteria to find the serving lines all but devoid of students. I grabbed two burgers today, paying a little extra, but I was determined to avoid the hunger pangs I’d battled the last three days. Having had a good breakfast for once would also help. I was ready for these first two weeks of practice to be over so I could get back on a more normal schedule.

Jed waved us down and we joined a table full of football players. I tried to read some Western Civ as I ate, but everyone else was busy discussing Andrew Pearson sitting at another table with the goth girl from detention. I noticed she was wearing black skinny jeans today with a different artfully ripped T-shirt.

“Who’s she?” Morgan asked.

“Violeta Ochoa,” Oscar Hurtado, another of the cabana crew, said pronouncing the name with a Spanish inflection — BEE-o-layta. “She goes by Vi (pronounced vie). Call her Violeta and you’re dead.”

“She was in detention with us yesterday,” I said, looking up from my reading. “She had her own run-in with Franks. Andrew’s moving pretty quick. He said he thought she was cute.”

“She looks like she could be pretty without all the makeup,” Morgan said.

“Don’t judge,” I admonished her. “You wouldn’t like people talking about you because of your haircut.”

Morgan had gotten a pixie cut late in the summer. Until Monday evening, her hair had been shorter than mine.

“It’s already growing out,” she said, ruffling the sides with her fingers. “It’s starting to tickle my ears.”

“We could always buzz it back down for you,” Jed teased. “We have access to some clippers. I’m sure Gary’d be happy to do to you what he did to me.”

“Not no, but hell no,” Morgan said. “My mother freaked out enough over this one and it was still long enough to put a part in it.”

I went back to reading, finishing just in time to dispose of my tray and pack everything up before the bell rang. I told Morgan I’d try to see her at practice, but I had another round of detention and more running to do. There was just enough time for me to hit my locker and swap out the Western Civ book for Chemistry and make sure I had everything for Algebra II.

Mr. Henderson had us grade our homework papers, then began reviewing Chapter 1. There were a couple of things I’d missed after being called out of Tuesday’s class that I had to ask about, but was pretty much caught up on everything by the time class ended. Now all I had to do was remember everything for tomorrow’s test.

Chemistry involved learning the names of various chemical compounds. Things like what do you get when you mix sodium and chlorine. The trick was adding different amounts of elements produced different compounds. Things got even more fun as you added more elements to the mix. Our homework assignment was 50 questions of that sort. The good thing was the book contained charts with the answers once you figured out how to read them. I was able to get a good chunk of the assignment done before class ended.

Creative Writing involved a lesson on sentence structure, which was basically grammar stuff we should already know. I tried to follow some advice from my English III teacher and write like Hemingway. Short sentences.

I received a pleasant surprise when Mrs. Cohen returned my Skokie paper with an A- on it. She liked several points I made, but docked me a few points for sentence structure. Go figure.

I stopped at my locker to make sure I had what I needed for homework. I should be able to get the Economics and Chemistry out of the way during detention, maybe even start reading Billy Boy’s sonnets.

The surprises continued when I got to the cafeteria.

“What are you doin’ here?” Mr. Dunwoody asked. “Your sentence has been commuted to time served. You should have gotten an email about it.”

I wish I’d known that before I ran 50 gassers during athletic period. I really did need to log in to that email account.

Assured I wasn’t going to be waylaid by Franks the moment I stepped foot out of the lunchroom, I thanked Mr. Dunwoody and hotfooted it for the fieldhouse. I had less than 30 minutes to get taped, dressed and out on the field. It really would have been nice if Coach Tucker had told me, assuming he knew.

I hurried to make it to the fieldhouse and get taped and dressed in time to get on the field before Coach Tucker.

“I was under the impression you were supposed to be elsewhere,” Coach said as we lined up for calisthenics. I guess he didn’t know, after all.

“Mr. Dunwoody said my sentence has been commuted,” I said. “I wish I’d known before fourth period.”

“Just think of it as being that much closer to being in shape,” he smirked before blowing a blast on his whistle to get us started.

As we broke up into position groups, Coach Wilson called me over.

“I saw you runnin’ your gassers yesterday during the period,” he said. “You were maintainin’ a pretty good pace. You covered, what, seven, eight miles? Think you keep the same pace on the track?”

“Well, there wouldn’t be all the stopping and changing directions,” I said. “Just running in circles.”

“I’m also the boys track coach and I’m a little thin on distance runners for next spring,” he said. “You should think about comin’ out. You may not be the fastest dude around, but you’ve got good endurance. You shoulda been runnin’ cross country.

“But we can worry about all that after football season. Right now, I’ve gotta teach you how to be a slot receiver. We’ll get back to the track stuff in February.”

I won’t say I was excited at the prospect, but I did find it intriguing. My availability for spring sports would depend largely on possible modeling gigs. We’d just have to see how much free time I had six months from now.

One thing wearing shoulder pads changed was it made turning to catch passes that much more difficult. I lost count of how many times Coach Wilson told me to “square up” as I came out of a break on a pass pattern.

We also worked against the DBs for the first time in drills. Some of them had a rather liberal interpretation of “noncontact” drills. I got bumped pretty hard as they worked on press coverage, which was quite effective against guys who weren’t fast enough to avoid it or strong enough to shrug it off. Guys like me, in other words. I found myself with a closeup view of the turf more times than I cared to remember. It wasn’t like I’d be playing in such situations in a real game, anyway.

The special teams segment again saw me fielding punts. Jeremy Porter could get some amazing hang time. It was like trying to field those high fly balls in right field when I played Little League baseball. The main difference was Little League didn’t have gunners on the coverage unit racing to decapitate you as you settled under the ball. At least they did observe the no-contact rule. For now. I’d gladly leave this job to guys like Ronnell Meadows or Calvin Hobbs.

Even the field goal/extra point work was adventuresome as we started working on some of the fakes Coach Ramirez had in the playbook. I basically had to catch the snap while rising off my knee and be running as soon as I had the ball. It helped that Jed could put the ball a little over head high on these plays, making me have to stand quickly. I just hoped he remembered to keep them a little lower when we were actually kicking.

Just in case he didn’t, Coach Ramirez had us run a “fire drill” in case of a bad snap. In those instances, I was to sprint the direction I was facing shouting “FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!” as the wing blocker on that side released into the flat as a receiver. It was much easier when Jeremy, the lefty kicker, was lined up than it was with the right-footed Fabrice. Of course, with my (lack of) arm strength and the shoulder pads, I pretty much had to get close enough to the receiver to hand him the ball.