Chapter 4: Avoidance

The flight back home was one of the most miserable flights I have ever had. One of the assistant coaches sat next to me on the flight.

"Chris, you should just go to coach and apologize."

"Why should I? I meant what I said. I don't understand how he could question my loyalty in any of this."

"Well you shouldn't have stayed in your hotel room on Saturday."

"You know what. I don't care anymore. I just don't care. If that's the attitude that is going to be taken by you guys, then it's really not worth it for me to continue on the team."

"All I'm saying is..."

"No, forget it. I just don't want to talk about it anymore."

And with that, I just turned my head towards the window and tried to sleep. Or at least, pretended to be asleep. I really was tired of it. I didn't want to deal with any of this anymore. I was tired of everything.

We got off the plane and as had been earlier, everyone had distanced themselves away from me. They all knew that coach was pissed at me. And although they weren't doing it to be malicious to me, I knew that none of them wanted to incur coach's wrath. So I just accepted it. What else could I do? If I were in their shoes I would probably do the same thing. Right? Well, if that's right, then why do I feel so shitty? Why do I feel like they were all betraying me? Dammit I hurt everywhere. Physically I was still in pain, even with the Vicodin. Emotionally I was devastated with what had happened. And this was on top of the shit I was dealing with already. Mentally I was hurting from having to think so much this weekend about everything.

Everything from that point on was a blur. I don't remember anything about the bus trip from the airport back to school. Hell, I don't even know how I got home from school. I'm just glad that I had an automatic. It would've been a hell of a thing to try to shift and drive with one arm especially, since I was still a fairly new driver. But I didn't remember any of it. All I remember was finally getting home and just plopping into my bed. My parents welcomed me home worried about my arm, but I really didn't pay much attention to them. I mumbled some quick hellos and grumbled something about being really tired and that I would talk to them about it all later. They finally left my room and I quickly fell into a deep sleep.

I think I was so tired that I didn't even dream. Because next thing I knew it was Monday morning and my alarm was angrily waking me from my slumber. It was actually the first good night's rest that I had for a couple of days now. Last night's sleep felt TOO good. I didn't want to get up this morning. I especially didn't want to go to school and face Rick nor Cynthia. But my parents had unknowingly betrayed me and let Rick in.

"Man, you still in bed. Come on, you gotta get ready. We're gonna be late for 1st period. Danny and Dyl are gonna be here soon."

"Why are you here so early? It's only 7:10. You're usually not here until almost 7:30."

"Well... I wanted to get here early to... talk to you about something."

And in that one phrase, the nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach emerged. Here we go. We were going to have to talk about Cynthia. Dammit. I was hoping that I could get by without dealing with this. So I finally got up under my covers and that's when Rick noticed that my shoulder was bandaged up in an ace wrap.

"Shit, what happened to your shoulder?"

"My opponent tried to rip off my arm and succeed. He dislocated my shoulder. It popped out and the doctors had to pop; it back in."

I could see the sympathetic grimace clearly in his face. "Damn, that must've hurt like a mofo."

"Yeah. That's why they got me hopped up on Vicodin."

"Yeah? Hey, if you don't finish all your pills, we could sell them. I know a couple of guys on the team that would pay five bucks a pill for 'em."

"I know. I know. We'll see how much I have left. Anyway, before you say anything else. I need to wake up. I gotta take a quick shower."

"Alright, but hurry up."

I took a quick shower. Well as quickly as I could with one arm. I usually showered in 3 minutes or less. This morning it took me 5 minutes. I hate staying too long in the shower. I hate that pruney feeling you get in your hands and feet. Besides, I didn't have that much hair as I had most of it shaved off to a really short fade. So washing my hair was really easy. I got dried as best I could and threw on my jeans. I needed help with re-wrapping my shoulder so I went back in my room and asked Rick to help me while we talked.

"So how's the basketball season coming along?" I asked him this to try to keep the mood light. I really didn't want to talk to him about Cynthia. And I think he knew that I was trying to keep him off of the subject he came here to talk to me about.

"Well, it's going alright. We're going to the La Salle Tournament in a couple of days. So we'll see how we do there. Luckily league play hasn't started yet because we lost to some teams early on which we shouldn't have. But we're picking it up."

Rick was the starting point guard for the varsity basketball team. He was a decent player. Nothing too flashy or glamorous. He was just a typical point guard in the likes of John Stockton. You know the kind of guard that was effective, crafty and seemed to always be at the right place at the right time.

After a couple of seconds of silence, he looked at me as if he wanted to start talking. I knew what was coming. But luckily by that time Danny and Dyl came. So we never did get to have that talk. I was really relieved.