Chapter 5: Friday, Aug. 17

I did sleep well that night, but the alarm still came way too early. At least I’d get to sleep in tomorrow. We didn’t have to report for media day until 8 a.m. Unfortunately, this was today and I had to get my ass moving in time for another 6 a.m. practice.

I forced myself out of bed and staggered to the bathroom to begin getting ready. Dressed for school, I gathered everything I’d need for my classes, made my way to the kitchen for bananas and yogurt and headed out the door in time to drive to the fieldhouse by 5:30.

The mood in the locker room was rather lively, I guess because we were almost to the halfway point of our preseason work. We’d start practicing in full pads on Monday and Marshawn Taylor would finally get his chance to bring the pain. I wasn’t quite as enthused as he was by the prospect.

The little freshman girl — I learned her name was Stephanie — was again assigned to tape me up and I was dressed and on the field by 5:50. The practice was pretty much a repeat of the day before as we ran plays at halfspeed against the defense. We made it through without anyone cramping up, which I attributed at least in part to the relatively cool temperature. This afternoon would be a different matter.

The one big difference this morning was the music selection. Instead of the college fight songs, the stereo speakers were blaring out ‘80s music. Meredith Metzger, Bethany’s grandmother, would have been in heaven.

“Man, when y’all gonna play some real music?” Marshawn cried as we stretched.

“You make the playoffs,” Coach Tucker said, “and I’ll let the captains choose for the next practice. But I have to approve it. You can have some rap, but nothing with explicit lyrics.”

“What about when we win district?” Dontay Alexander, an outside linebacker, chimed in.

“If you go 7-0 in district, you can choose one day the next week,” Coach promised. “Within reason. Same conditions apply.”

“And when we make state?” Marcell Powers, one of our running backs, asked.

“Christmas carols,” Coach smirked, drawing groans from several players.

I actually liked that idea. The state final for our classification was scheduled for Dec. 22, the Saturday before Christmas, at the NFL team’s stadium.

Several players were calling out their musical choices, many which stood no chance of receiving Coach’s approval. Fabrice Buluwanayo’s suggestion of Ladysmith Black Mambazo received little support from the guys not into world music, which was pretty much everybody else except for Ngogwe Olangbuikwe, one of our slot receivers. It was still more popular than Luke Riley’s call for country and western.

During our huddle at the end of practice, Coach Tucker told us we showed good retention, meaning pretty much everyone had a good grasp on their assignments for each play. I guess those skull sessions Jed had organized helped after all. I was still feeling a little lost, especially when it came to blocking assignments on running plays, but I managed to get in front of defenders in most cases. How effective I would be in full-speed scenarios would be determined next week.

I felt a few hairs get pulled when I removed my tape back in the locker room. Looked like it was time to shave again. Maybe I could get that done during athletic period. At least it wasn’t as bad as Monday when Calvin ripped the tape off for me.

Classes seemed to be getting into the routine of the school year. After we graded our homework in Economics, Mr. Cochran hit us with a pop quiz. I wasn’t too bad, just 10 questions covering what we’d gone over the last couple of days. Most of the math was the same as we’d faced with the homework, just with different numbers.

We had another pop quiz in Western Civ, but it was just answering questions about the Carolingian Empire. If you kept up with the reading, it was simple enough.

English IV was ... interesting. Mrs. Albracht called me to her desk to ask how I’d come up with some of my points regarding the sonnets.

“I asked my aunt for a few pointers and she showed me the website I cited,” I said.

“And who is your aunt?” she asked.

“Karen Robinson,” I said.

“Dr. Karen Robinson? I know her!” Mrs. Albracht exclaimed with a smile. “I’d almost say that’s an unfair advantage, having a college professor in your hip pocket.

“Your essay was rather more than I expected for high school, especially the first week of the year, but I can tell by your writing style that you didn’t just quote her verbatim. Just make sure it’s your work, not hers.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said before I was sent back to my seat to read more sonnets.

The poems were so short, we could have easily read a couple of dozen during the class. It was the discussion of each one — often line by line, if not word by word — that slowed things down. We covered three of them before the bell rang.

We finished our testing during the athletic period with the backs and receivers running 40-yard dashes for time. We had some pretty fast guys on our offense with several running under 4.5 seconds and a few under 4.4. I was not one of them.

The way we were tested was to run four sprints with the times averaged out. Coach Wilson and one of the JV coaches clocked us and compared times. They were pretty close, usually within a couple of hundredths of a second. Ronnell Meadows had the fastest single time of the bunch at 4.29 with an average of 4.33.

Since this was the last group to test, everyone on the team was looking on as we ran our sprints. There was a mixture of encouragement and good-natured catcalls, the latter reserved for those who failed to reach their target times.

At least until it was my turn. They saved me for last.

“Wait! Let me get my sundial!” Chuck Edwards called out as I stepped to the line, drawing a chorus of hoots.

I surprised myself by breaking 5.0 on my first run. Just barely. My 4.98 was about two-tenths of a second faster than I’d run in PE last year.

“I jog faster than that,” Marshawn called out. “Chasin’ you down will be so easy, it won’t be any fun.”

My next effort was better at 4.92. Then I turned on the afterburners and ran 4.86 and 4.88 for my last two attempts. That got my average down to 4.91, slower than all but a handful of the biggest linemen.

“Maybe we can ask the defense to give you a 10-yard head start,” Jed quipped.

“Better make it 20,” Chuck countered.

“We all know my job is to get the snaps down on the tee for the kickers,” I said after I caught my breath. “Maybe I’ll be a little faster if I’m running for my life, but I hope we don’t have to find out.”

“We should find out right now,” Marshawn said. “Hey, Coach Wilson! I wanna challenge Supermodel, here, to a match race. I’ll give ‘im a 10-yard head start.”

My position coach was rather dubious, but Marshawn insisted. Once they hammered out the details, I reluctantly agreed.

I lined up at the 40-yard line with Marshawn at the 50, both in two-point stances. We had to stay on the hashmark and start on Coach Wilson’s whistle. He was positioned at the goal line with his stopwatch.

“Run like I caught you kissin’ my little sister,” Marshawn said.

All I could think of was the Kobayashi Maru, the no-win scenario from that old Star Trek movie. I just hoped to die with dignity, which meant not screaming like a little girl.

At the sound, I took off as hard as I could go with Marshawn giving chase, again screaming like a banshee. I like to think the extra breath he expended made the difference as I crossed the goal line a step before I felt his hand clamp down on my shoulder.

“GOTCHA!” he crowed as we tumbled to the turf to the laughter of our teammates.

“Not quite,” Coach Wilson said. “It woulda been a touchdown in a game.”

“Let’s do it again!” Marshawn shouted as he leapt to his feet. “I demand a rematch!”

“Save it for Monday,” Coach Tucker called out. “I don’t want anybody getting hurt roughhousing. Wait ‘til we’re in pads and do it legally.”

I wasn’t exactly thrilled to hear that, but I was more surprised by the head coach’s presence. I thought he spent the period in his office handling administrative duties.

“You were right, rookie,” Coach Wilson said as he helped me up. “You are faster when you’re runnin’ for your life, 4.79.”

That was still slower than any of the other skill positions. I hoped our season never came down to me having to outrun anyone.

“I just can’t wait for Monday!” Marshawn exulted as we headed to the locker room. “You gonna feel pain!”

Even Morgan was impressed with my time. I hadn’t realized she’d followed Coach Tucker to the field.

“I expect you to run at least that fast the next time another girl starts chasing you,” she chirped, drawing howls of laughter from the players who heard her.

“I won’t have to if you’ll block for me,” I replied. “Although I should probably have an escape route and a place to hide planned out.”

That only caused more laughter from the guys.

“Is that why they all chase you?” Chuck asked jokingly. “They know they can run you down?”

“Don’t let my little sister hear that,” Marshawn said. “She was on the varsity sprint relay last year as a freshman. He’d better have at least a 10-yard head start.”

Sounded like another no-win situation for me. Marshawn would pound me for fooling around with his sister, which I fully understood. He would also have grounds to pound me if I rejected her and hurt her feelings. I’d better just stay the hell away. I’m sure I could manage that. It was only 175 more class days until the end of the school year.

There was enough time before the bell that I was able to shave my legs with a minimum of blood. Showered and dressed, I grabbed my backpack and met Morgan outside. We headed for the lunchroom as the bell rang, being joined by what was becoming our regular group.

Morgan was carrying a little plastic shopping bag with a couple of items in it.

“Whatcha got there?” I asked as we walked along.

“My outfit for media day,” she chirped. “Coach Tucker gave me two of the polos the coaches wear for games, a blue one and a white one.”

“They had some in your size?” I asked, only mildly surprised.

“No, just the smallest size they had,” she said. “I could wear them as a dress if I wanted. They hang down past my knees. I’ll have to dig out some khaki shorts or slacks to wear with it. He also gave me one of their caps.”

She pulled out a blue cap and plopped it on her head. It came down over her ears.

“Here, let me adjust that for you,” I said, stepping behind her.

It took a couple of seconds to get it to fit to her liking. I didn’t pull it as tight as it could have gone, but she still looked like a little kid wearing an adult’s cap.

She put the cap back in the bag as we caught up to the rest of the guys.

We went through the serving line and found a table that would hold most of us. I noticed Andrew was sitting with Vi Ochoa again.

I pulled out my Algebra II book and began reviewing for my test as we ate. Morgan walked me through a few equations between bites. I felt I understood as much as I was going to and put everything back in my backpack, then finished my lunch.

We sat and chatted about how practice was going until the bell rang. With a chaste hug, I bade Morgan farewell and headed off to take my test.

Mr. Henderson took pity on us and gave us problems pretty much straight out of the book, but with different numbers. I basically replayed Morgan’s instruction in my head as I worked my way through the sheet.

I finished in time to go through my work and was satisfied I hadn’t screwed up too badly. Mr. Henderson called for the last few still working to turn their tests in just before the bell and wished us a good weekend.

Chemistry followed the same pattern as Economics — grade the homework and take a pop quiz covering the material we’d gone over during the week.

In Creative Writing, Mrs. Cohen had us write 500 words on the most significant event of our first week of school. I went with my first experience with serving detention. I left out just why I’d served it.

The good news was none of my teachers assigned homework for the weekend. I needed to make a note of that. I was sure the number of weekends with homework would vastly exceed those without over the course of the year.

When the bell rang, I headed to my locker to dump all my books. I was trying to decide if it would be faster to exit to the northwest and circle back to the east or head south through the inner walkways of the courtyard when Jed and Luke Riley grabbed me and dragged me west.

“You’re with us,” Jed said as they carried me along.

Once outside, they continued toward the ballparks. Foot traffic seemed a little lighter than it had on Monday, which surprised me. I guess people all over campus had figured out the best ways to leave school at the end of the day.

When we reached the walkway between the ballparks, my escorts made a hard left through the little alley. Someone had set up a line of orange traffic cones and Jed made sure to stay on the side away from the softball field. The softball coach who’d denied me access on Monday glared at us, but said nothing.

“What is her deal?” I asked once we were far enough away.

“Keri said she had a girl a few years ago get pregnant in the fall and miss the season,” Jed said. “Apparently, the girl was the only reliable pitcher in the program and the team hardly won any games that year. Kept getting run-ruled because no one could get anybody out. Even the bad teams kicked their ass.

“She doesn’t want her players being ‘distracted’ by boys and does everything she can to keep guys away from the girls. She won’t even have a male assistant coach now.”

“We’ve got some fucked-up people running things at this school,” I said.

Jed and Luke agreed wholeheartedly.

“What does she think about Keri having a boyfriend?” I asked Jed.

“I’m not sure she knows and I’m not tellin’ her,” he said.

We reached the fieldhouse and quickly changed and got in line to get taped. Practice was a repeat of Thursday. I did a better job of eluding the defensive backs in our one-on-one drill in that I didn’t do any faceplants in the turf.

I did not do a better job of throwing the ball when we worked on fake field goals. I couldn’t see how quarterbacks could send the ball 40 or 50 yards in the air while wearing shoulder pads. Of course, I could barely throw it 20 yards without them. I reminded myself again to avoid situations where the fate of our season rested on my shoulders.

We finished up with 20 gassers, double the normal total. Coach Tucker said we needed a little more conditioning. I was just happy to make it through without cramping or puking.

Coach seemed pleased, or at least not completely displeased, with us as we wrapped up our first week.

“I’ve seen some significant progress since Monday morning,” he said as we huddled up at the end of practice, “but there’s going to have to be more as we go along. We’ll start finding out who the real football players are Monday morning.

“You’ve shown good retention running plays so far. It’ll be different when we put on the pads. I expect you to improve on your level of execution and that won’t be easy when we start hitting. And we will be hitting. You’ve got to get used to the contact and still be able to carry out your assignments.”

We were reminded to be at the fieldhouse by 8 a.m. Saturday to get taped and dressed for media day. We’d start taking pictures at 9 a.m. with photographers from a local studio and the newspaper. There would be a couple of TV stations present, as well, to get footage of our brief practice, which would allegedly be noncontact even though we’d be in full uniform.

After shouting “TEAM!” on three, we were released for the evening and hit the showers.

“I’m impressed,” Marshawn said in a tone that led me to believe he really wasn’t. “You survived the first week of practice. It’ll be a different world Monday when the hittin’ starts. Get ready for the pain!”

“I can’t wait,” I said. “But I expect to spend most of my time just holding for extra points. That shouldn’t involve too much pain. I hope.”

That drew a cackle from the linebacker. I hoped the offensive linemen who’d be blocking on kicks remembered that I’d bought breakfast for them a couple of times.

Morgan was waiting on me as I exited the locker room. She had her little bag with her new shirts and cap.

“Hey, Pretty Girl,” I said, earning a quick kiss as a reward.

“Just for that, I’ll let you drive me home,” she smiled as she hooked an arm through mine. “I talked to both our moms. I can come over tonight as long as we stay in your family room. All our folks are having dinner at the club, but don’t plan on staying very late. It sounds like they’re giving us just enough time to have a little fun, but your mom said you’re still grounded.”