Janet watched Gary as he paused and grew quiet. She had been turned to face him and she leaned closer to him. She reached out and took his hand in hers, patiently waiting before she softly spoke to him, “Hey, it’s all right . You don’t have to go on.”
“It’s okay,” Gary whispered to her. “I don’t know why that bothered me so much. That day.”
“That day?” she whispered back.
“Yeah, that was the day I began to think that it didn’t matter what I did, it wasn’t going to be enough for him. He was making it difficult to have fun. At least at the time, in my teenage mind, it seemed a big deal,” he explained to Janet. “Hey, do you need another drink?”
“Are you kidding me? I am too into the story,” she laughed quietly with her hand still on his arm with her eyes still looking at him.
Gary smiled at her and shook his head.
“So tell me about Thursday,” she prodded him.
“Okay,” he leaned closer to her. “Thursday…”
***
Gary cut across the hill at the front of the house avoiding the three steps to get to the street before the screen door closed at the entrance to his house. It was still dark but as he walked onto Burgos toward the bus stop. He walked in the middle of the street with head bent down looking at the road in front of him. He was carrying the gym bag that held the two books he had brought home and the clean practice uniform his mother dutifully had washed last night after he had disappeared to his room. Burgos joined Barcelona Avenue and Valencia Avenue as they merged together, and Burgos ended. He turned right onto Valencia and followed it to his destination at Larimore Road. He wasn’t the first one at the bus stop on the corner beneath the street sign, Janet was there. She was sitting on the ground, Indian style with a blue stocking cap pulled down over her ears and her jacket was wrapped tightly around her.
“You cold?” Gary asked as he stopped next to her and dropped his bag on the ground at his feet.
She looked up at him with a stern look on her face, revealing a string of long curls that fell alongside her face.
Gary had always liked her. He met her when his family moved into this neighborhood at Sunfish Pond. Sunfish was a small pond that was attached to Spanish Lake. The pond was located in the woods behind the neighborhood. It was the place to go to fish and swim in the summer and to ice skate on in the winter. He met her that first time at a summer swim party. Calvin Black, his next-door neighbor, introduced him to Sunfish Pond and, that summer day, the two of them decided to go for a swim. As they broke through the woods, he saw her swimming in the water. Calvin knew her right away and called out her name. She swam toward the two of them and the first words out of her mouth were “Who’s this?”
At the bus stop Gary smiled at her before he answered her question. “I guess so,” he final said to her.
She buried her head back into her coat.
Gary carried on anyway, “Hey, are you going to the homecoming dance?”
Her head emerged from her coat and she looked up at him with a curious look on her face. “Why? Are you asking?”
He shuffled his feet and looked down the street before he answered her. “I guess I am.”
Janet rose from her seat and stepped closer to him, crossed her arms in front of her, and asked him, “Why?”
“Well,” he took a step back from her. “I have to go so I thought I might as well have fun if I asked you instead of not having fun going with the football team.”
“Really?” she smiled at him. “I’m more fun than football?”
***
Thursday football was simply called Scrimmage. The offense and defense played football against each other. It was Gary’s favorite day of the football week because he played nearly every play, never leaving the field. The team ran a Super Lap, did calisthenics and stretching, and got right into playing football. Gary to have fun and to release his frustrations of his everyday grind of living. Sometimes he focused on school or people who made him mad and with every tackle he made, he felt a little better. Today he was tackling his father. He didn’t understand why his dad was making such a big deal about him starting Saturday’s game. Gary knew he wasn’t ever going to be good enough to play college football. He was simply too short and a lightweight at five foot seven, one hundred and forty pounds.
Stan Bennett, the wide receiver, was walking out of the school onto the practice field with Gary. Steve wore the number 13 on his jersey. He wasn’t at all superstitious.
“How’s it going, Jackson?” he asked him.
“Oh. It’s going,” Gary replied as the two of them walked side-by-side, holding their helmets at their side. “I am looking forward to today. I have a lot of frustration to get out of me.”
“Really? You do that, too?” Steve asked him.
“You do that, too, huh? You always seem so cool,” Gary replied in surprise.
“Why do you think I am so cool?” Steve laughed. “You know what I find the most challenging thing to do at football practice? Getting by you. I can get by the other DB Backs and our opponents’ defensive teams pretty easily but not you. I believe you have made me better. I am going to help you out today. Get ready for it!”
Gary stopped walking as Steve turned to walk backwards and pointed at him. Gary pointed back at him indicating that the challenge was accepted.
The way the scrimmage was run is for the first team offense would practice their plays against the defensive team pretending to be the opponents’ team. Halfway through practice, the first team defense would go against offensive simulating the opponents’ offense of the week.
Gary was playing the free safety of the Comets’ defense, the defensive back that was positioned in the middle of the field. The first play was a running play, the quarterback, Dan, faked to the fullback who pretended to have the ball and run up the middle, but then he tossed the ball to Paul Baker, the star, who was running to Gary’s right. Gary’s eyes were focused on Paul and started running toward him when – Wham! – he was hit in the chest and he went down to the ground. Steve got off of the top of him when the whistle blew, and he offered his hand to help Gary up off the ground. He took it and when he was standing upright, Steve said, “You weren’t ready.”
On the next play, Dan took the ball from the center, turned and tossed it to the already running Paul, who again was running to Gary’s right but this time Gary saw the right tackle pull out and run back to his left so he started running toward him. He looked at Paul and saw Steve run from his position on the right behind Paul and catch the ball being tossed at him. Gary now knows what it was happening. The play was called a reverse because the play began going one way and was coming back toward where it started.
“Reverse!” he yelled and his defensive teammates reacted and began to go after Steve. Gary side-stepped someone who tried to block him and jumped in front of the tackle who had been his cue by running back to his left. He put his head across the bigger player’s body and reached for Steve’s hips in order to tackle him. The tackle ran into him, but it wasn’t enough to stop Gary from wrapping his arms around Steve and spinning him to the ground. The whistle blew and it was Gary helping Steve up off the ground.
“Oh, I am ready,” he said to Steve as they both returned to their respective huddles. He heard Steve laugh as he entered his huddle.
“Way to go, Jackson!” Coach Simon yelled at him as he arrived at his huddle. “Let’s line up the same, boys. Ready!”
“Break!” the eleven players yelled and clapped in response to the coach and left the huddle to line up at the line of scrimmage in the same positions as the play before. The offense responded the same way, clapping in unison, as they broke from their huddle and hustled to the line. This time they lined up in their familiar “I” position, with the fullback, halfback, and flanker, Paul, behind Dan, the quarterback.
“Down!” Dan called out and the linemen placed their forearms on their knees.
“Set!” Dan called out again and the linemen planted their right hands forward on the ground in front of their right legs. Gary and the defense tensed and readied themselves for the play to begin.
“Hut one!“ Dan called and the halfback, the player in the middle of the “I” formation, started running toward Gary’s right. Gary took one step in that direction.
“Hut two!” the air around Gary grew quiet and still.
“Hut three!”
The center snapped the ball back into Dan’s outstretched palms and sprung forward. Dan started striding back as his linemen stood up from their position to protect him from the onrushing defensive players. Gary saw this and immediately started to run backwards and began to look around to see who was running where and, at the same time, watched Dan’s head and his eyes.
Out of the corner of his eyes, to his right, Gary saw Steve run straight up the field and then suddenly turn and run toward him. Dan’s head started to follow Steve as he stopped and drew his arm back getting ready to throw the ball. Gary knew then what was about to happen, so he placed his left foot firmly on the ground and pushed himself to start running toward Steve. After he had taken two steps, Dan had released the ball and it was arcing toward Steve. Gary pumped his legs harder and just before the ball reached Steve, he cut in front of him and caught the ball. Interception! The whistle blew immediately, and everyone stopped running except Gary, who ran with the ball toward the end zone before he finally stopped.
“Touchdown!” Gary called out as he raised his arms in mock celebration as he jogged back to the huddle. He tossed the ball back to Coach Simon who simply smiled at him and said, “That’s what I am talking about!”
***
Gary stepped onto the activity bus as the sky was beginning to darken. Inside were a few of his teammates who were stretched out on their seats.
“Nice practice Gary/”
Gary looked down to see that it was Jim Thompson, the team’s fullback who complimented him. He lived on a street at the back of his neighborhood and he usually was a quiet person.
“Thanks, Jim.” Gary replied. “I hope it gets me into the game on Saturday.”
“Oh, I think you will be in the game,” Jim responded to him. “I will go out on a limb and predict that you will get two interceptions.”
“Two, huh? That would be fun,” Gary said as he continued deeper into the bus.
A few seats beyond Jim, he paused to stare at the person sitting there. It was Janet staring back with a smile on her face.
“What are you doing here?” he said as he sat in the seat across from her.
“Riding the bus home,” she answered him. “Aren’t you doing the same?”
“I meant why are you on the bus?” he asked her in a different way.
“I decided to finish my homework at school and ride home with you,” she said as she leaned back against the wall of the bus and lifted her feet to the seat.
“Ride home with me?” he did the same, so they were facing each other with their feet on their seats.
“I need to know something from you, Gary. Are you asking me to be your girlfriend when you asked me to homecoming?’
Gary thought about the question she had asked him before he responded. “Do you want me to be your boyfriend?”
“I don’t know,” she squinted at him for a few quiet moments. “Let me think about it. We have been friends for a long time, and I don’t know if I want to risk that.”
“What about homecoming? Are you still going with me?”
“I said I would,” she smiled at him.
***
His father avoided talking to Gary that night.
The only thing on Gary’s mind was the disappointment he would be to his father because he knew he wasn’t going to start the game on Saturday. He finally decided to go to bed to stop thinking about it, so he trudged into the main bathroom to perform his nightly ritual. He opened the medicine cabinet door to retrieve the toothpaste tube. The tube was on the top shelf of three and on the bottom two, several bottles of prescription medication. He reached for the toothpaste, pulled it out, and closed the door.
To be continued…
My First Stories 