Chapter 2: Airing It Out

The first thing you need to know about the Washington High School Band was that we were an extremely tight group. Membership fluctuated between eighty and one hundred year to year, and that number was comprised fairly equally of all high school grades, which in WHS consisted of sophomores, juniors and seniors. (Freshmen were still housed at the junior high.) Being that we were a close group, there was a natural hierarchy to the social scene, based on general grade level. That meant, with few exceptions, that seniors ran the show, and the juniors and sophs went along for the ride. While there were a few exceptions now and then, it usually worked fairly well.

Part of the reason it worked so well was that most elusive of high school goals: acceptance. As long as they were not too big of an asshole, the incoming sophomores were accepted into the high school social scene almost immediately. Granted, the scene in question was mainly comprised of band kids, but when there are almost a hundred of you, you don't really notice a lack of different people to hang out with.

Seniors on the other hand, gained a built in following. In exchange for leadership, they were deferred to in almost every regard. Probably the biggest area this affected was the dating scene. The members of the band dated almost exclusively other members of the band. We used to joke that it was almost kind of incestuous. Once in a while someone would have a boyfriend or girlfriend not in the band, but it was rare. There was usually a three week period during the opening of the school year when anyone not attached bounced from person to person trying to find a new match that worked for them. Seniors usually had first pick of the incoming sophomores, and the sophomores didn't seem to mind that one bit.

And then of course, there was the sex. Make no mistake ... if anyone in high school is having sex, and lots of it, it's the band kids. But we'll get to that later.

For today's game, as I was a senior and the top of my social group within the band, I was quarterbacking one of the teams. This was my third band flag football game, but the first time I would be calling the plays. I loved the game of football, but I was never a fan of participating in organized sports. My dad had played in his college days, but that had been a long time ago. When Mom died six years ago, he sort of checked out of the child development role in my upbringing, so I never had that fatherly push to get into playing that most kids get. Generally speaking, if you don't get in on the ground floor, you're never going to get accepted at the high school level, so that ship had pretty much sailed.

That's not to say I hated my dad, or that he was a bad father. Far from it. I just don't think he ever got over the death of my mother. He pretty much threw himself into his work as a way of coping, and for the last few years my development was seen to by my Aunt Rebecca ... my mom's sister. Nowadays I barely spoke to my father. Maybe only once a week. He was supportive of me in whatever I wanted to do ... he just wasn't there for me anymore.

Before the accident that took my mother's life, though, he was a very hands-on dad. Like I said, he'd played college ball years ago, and had taught me whatever he could about the sport. He'd been a quarterback at Stanford, where he'd met my mother. He was ok, and had spent a brief time as a first stringer, but playing professionally was never his calling. Mom had been an athlete also, and I'd inherited a good number of genes from both of them. By all appearances, the son was greater than their parts. Bottom line, things came easily to me, and football was no different. I could throw the pigskin a bit. Not playing any sports, though, and not really associating with anyone that did ... my supposed athletic abilities were something that wasn't all that well known, either to the rest of the band kids playing the game today or anyone else for that matter.

The sole exception to that was Scott. Before Scott had transferred to our school last year as a sophomore, he had been the starting wide receiver on his old school's junior varsity team. He'd inquired about getting on to varsity this year, but the team was already set at wideout, and Scott didn't want to waste his time if he couldn't play regularly. Like anywhere else ... high school football was very clique-ish; if you weren't one of the good-old boys, or a son of a good old boy, you were probably riding the pine. As an outsider, it was 'Thanks, but no thanks.'

When I'd first started to hang out with Scott, he'd told me about his past on the team. I offered to throw to him sometimes if he wanted to keep in shape. He thought that sounded perfectly reasonable. And so every now and then, we played catch. As it turned out, that would be one of the first ripples which in time would turn into a tidal wave.

Don Winston Field was the home of our Washington Wolves football team. It was your standard high school football field, at least in this part of the country. In Texas, they build huge stadiums that half the college teams in the country would be proud to call home, but up here, that's not the case. We had a grass, well, mostly grass field, surrounded by a track. There was a concrete concessions building out past one end zone that also served at as the entrance to the field. At the opposite end stood a big scoreboard, one of the older types that used configurations of actual light bulbs to display numbers instead of LCDs. At the east sidelines were the home team grandstands, big aluminum ones that got filled up on Friday nights. There was a much smaller set of wood ones for the visiting team fans on the other side.

We'd been at the game for about twenty minutes when Scott came up to me in the huddle.

"Hey. You got an audience." Scott said, gesturing with his head over towards the grandstands.

I looked over in that direction. Kara was sitting over there, watching us. I could tell it was her from the hair. She had two of her friends with her, but I couldn't tell exactly who it was. Not that it mattered that much. As far as I was concerned they were pretty much interchangeable. One was female and the other male, that much I could see.

"Ugh. No means no, for god's sake." I said, shaking my head.

"Yeah." Scott replied, with a laugh. "If only she was after your body and not your mind."

"Right." I laughed. The rest of the "offense" joined us in the huddle at that point.

"What's the call, fearless leader?" Rob, one of the other seniors asked. One of our closer friends, Rob was spending today as one of my offensive linemen. He always called me fearless leader. I looked back at the threesome on the grandstands, then over at Scott.

"Seeing as we have an audience, let's give 'em something to talk about."

"You sure you wanna let that particular cat out of the bag?" Scott said, reading my mind.

"You bet." I replied, the smile starting to creep onto my face. "We're gonna do a three receiver set, Scott on the left, uh..." I looked at my other teammates, "John, you and Barry set up wide right, and run slants. Everyone else just block, and give Scott some time to get deep. We're going to air it out a little." I smacked my hands together, and shouted, "Break!" We may have been band geeks, but we spent a lot of time on a football field, and we took our game pretty seriously.

The huddle disbanded, and headed for the line of scrimmage. We were on our own 25 yard line, looking at 1st and 10. As I approached my position, I made sure my flags were in the right spot, then wiped my hands on my pants to make sure they were dry. Once I got behind the center, I turned and looked at the grandstands, then at Scott to my left, at John and Barry to my right, then back to the front. I yelled out a snap count, followed by "Hike!" The center snapped the ball to me. I dropped back five steps, as my line moved forward to protect me.