Students of the Game (4 page)

CHAPTER TEN

BRYCE (Freshman Year)

Alcohol is fucking gross. I don’t like to curse, but sometimes it’s necessary to get your point across. I spend the entire Saturday following Bobby’s party trying to get the jack hammer in my head to stop drilling into my skull. I’m pretty sure I was drunk, and I don’t ever want to be again, ever. The only thing I remember is being able to smell the sourness of beer seeping out of my pores as Carver and I walked home.
Carver.
I still need to set that guy straight. I’ll admit, I did have somewhat of a good time, between meeting a bunch of new people and all the harmless flirting with girls. Yet, if we’re going to be friends, he definitely needs to respect my personal decisions.

Monday morning comes and I scan the crowded hall of students, huddled up in cliques, gossiping about the weekend. Finally I see him, head down, digging through his locker. I make my way over and lean into the metal door next to Carver’s, a little too forcefully. He startles and steps back, almost defensively. “Damn, Colton! You scared me. I’m still half asleep.”

“Sorry,” I say, even though I’m not entirely apologetic. “Look man, that whole thing that happened Friday night? Forget about it, OK? It’s not going to happen again, ever.”

Carver looks bemused as he stares at my face for a moment, then his eyes slide
over my shoulder. “That her?” he nods his head.

“Who?” I turn and ask, confused as to why he’s talking about a girl instead of keg stands. My eyes wander and habitually fall on Joy, who’s standing with a few of her friends. Her long
brown hair is worn down for a change and I wonder if it still smells flowery, like when we were kids.

“Joy Anderson?”

It’s when he actually says her name my entire body suddenly goes into defense mode. I feel a prickle in my finger tips and reflexively squeeze them together, before balling them into fists. Why does he want to know about Joy? What exactly happened at the party? I try to remember what we talked about. I’ve never told anyone about our past or how I feel about her. I’m so taken aback, I can’t even respond, nor do I have the chance to, because someone calls Carver’s name. We both turn to find Missy Flemings swaying her hips in our direction.

“What going on? How was your first weekend as an official North Tide freshman?” she asks him. Hailey shoots me a smile but doesn’t say anything directly to me.

“It was good, but I’m sure it could have been better,” he says confidently, looking her up and down.

    
Missy giggles and they proceed to blatantly flirt with each other in front of me for the next five minutes, before the homeroom bell rings. Missy leaves, but I don’t pay too much attention because I’m still thinking about Joy.

As if reading my thoughts, Carver looks at me, and slaps me on the b
ack with a smile. “Don’t worry your secret is safe with me.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

JOY

It
has to be considered somewhat masochistic to sit through a two hour discussion on a dance that you have no desire to attend, with Missy Flemings in charge of the whole thing. The Harvest Dance was originally called something football related because it’s always held in November, around the time of the playoffs. Back when our school actually had a record of winning. Until Bryce led the team to victory last year, we had about a fifteen year dry spell, and somewhere along the way, they decided to change the name.

As I leave the classroom, I’m still thinking about the dance, and not paying attention I slam straight on into the chest of none other than Bryce Colton.

“Oh, sorry, Joy. You alright?” he asks, eyes offering a twinge of sympathy. I haven’t spoken to him since our blow out on Tuesday, but then why would I anyway.

His hai
r is damp and messy from a post-practice shower, and he smells faintly of some kind of fresh scented body wash. Bryce is wearing a black Sea Hounds hoodie with cranberry and gold lettering, gray sweats, and flip flops. Despite the flatness of the sandals he still towers over me.

“Um, yeah I’m fine,” I say rubbing my shoulder. “Missy should be right out.”

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you…about the other day…” he starts, but as if on cue, Missy comes bouncing through the door and interrupts him. She squeals and jumps up, wrapping her arms around Bryce’s neck, giving him no choice but to pick her up. He swings her around once then places her back on the ground.

“Oh my God,
Bryce! The Harvest Dance is going to be amazing this year!” Missy looks up at him, but when she realizes that his gaze is focused on me, she stops and quickly loses all excitement. Missy gives me a funny look and I look right back, taking in her perfect face and flawless make-up. Her highlighted hair cascades in waves down her shoulders. I try to ignore her and focus back on Bryce. “Look, I’ve got to go. We can talk about it at tutoring on Sunday, alright? Around two o’clock?”

Glancing at Missy’s dumbfound
ed expression, my assumption is right. Bryce hasn’t told her about meeting me afterschool. 

“Sure…OK…See you Sunday.” Bryce’s face is a mixture of confusion and perplexity. He runs his fingers through his hair making it messier than it was before.

I smile sweetly at Missy, giving her a slight wave, and make my way down the hall. I can already hear her drilling Bryce about our ‘run-in’, (so to speak.) I smirk just a little, and realize that it’s fine to be pleased with myself. Missy deserves a taste of her own medicine once in a while. But the feeling is short lived, knowing I will now have to attempt another tutoring session with Bryce, this weekend.

As I walk to my car, I’m startled by the ringing of my cell phone. By the time I locate it in the darkest pit of my shoulder bag, I answer without looking at the caller ID so I don’t miss the call.

“Hello?” I answer cordially.

“Hello, Jo
y…” says a voice, a male voice, one that I don’t seem to recognize.

“Who is this?” I question, and pull the phone away to check the number.

“It’s Seth! Who did you think it was?” he replies, as if shocked that I would believe it could be anyone else. “Has it been so long, you’ve forgotten who I am?”

Seth Rosenberg, my other best friend, whom I have unintentionally been neglecting. Farah and I both met him freshman year. He’s witty, and not afraid to speak his mind. Tall and slim, with a grown out black Mohawk, he has dark brown eyes set upon a slender face. Seth has a huge toothy grin which helps to contribute to his goofy persona. Both of his ears are stretched with hollow lobe spacers, and his lower lip is pierced. Seth gets average grades in most subjects aside from math, in which he’s a natural. The time that he could spend studying is usually burned skateboarding around the town center, specifically the railings outside of the library.

“Oh! Sorry, Seth. I was just…I couldn’t find my phone,” I tell him.

“Listen,” he says, getting right to the point. “I was calling to see if you wanted to go with me to catch t
hat new Matt Damon movie, Saturday night? Strictly platonic of course,” he throws in notably.

“Is Farah going too?”

“Um…no. I asked her, but you know she’s not big on action movies.”

Huh.
Usually she’s up for almost anything, as long as she’s out and able to be seen.

“I think she’s going to visit her siste
r anyway,” he adds.

That explains it. Farah’s older sister Charlotte attends an art school in Providence, Rhode Island and I take the word ‘‘visit
’ to mean party. “Alright, Seth, I’d love too.”

“Sweet,
I’ll pick you up and we can grab some food beforehand. Oh, and sorry about dilapidating the shrubs in front of the library. I totally bailed into them trying to 50/50 the railing,” he admits.

“Sure, no problem,
” I tell him, imagining the librarian Bernice, looking as unhappy as the shrubs if I were to tell her this bit of information.

We say our goodbyes and as I unlock my car door, I wonder why Farah didn’t mention her plans to go to see Charlotte. Maybe she didn’t want to hurt my feelings about not inviting me along? I honestly wouldn’t have cared. She knows I’m not a big part person anyway. I make a note to ask her about it, toss my phone on the passenger seat, and head home.

           The topic of the evening at the dinner table is more like a game of twenty questions. My mom is asking about my pile of college applications that still need to be filled out. The most important being, “When the deadline for Brown?”

I know she is only hounding because she understands how much I want to go there. The deadline is the end November and I know I’ve been procrastinating on filling out my application. I’m just scared I’m not good enough for them to want me. I promise my mom that I’ll get on it soon and spend the rest of the meal twirling my linguine around my fork. To
o stressed to finish my food, I end up scraping my pasta and salad remnants into the garbage disposal, then head up to my room.

I grab my laptop and flop down on my stomach with a whoosh of my feather bed. Turning on the computer, it hums to life and as it’s booting up, I’m hoping Farah is online so I can vent out some my stress. After it’s loaded, I start to move the mouse towards the messaging icon, but instead my hand floats the cursor over to the search engine. I double click on it, thinking about what happened after school today. I find myself typing,
‘Bryce Colton, North Tide Football
’ then hit Enter.

Within seconds there are images at the top of Bryce posing with a ball, action shots taken during games, and some of the whole team in uniform. There are also numerous links to articles
from North Tide’s newspaper.

I click back and redo the search, excluding the word ‘football.’ It brings up Bryce’s Facebook page, and a few more articles. Scrolling down further I click on a link that reads, ‘
Son of Former College Star Learns How to Play The Game
.’

There is a snapshot of Bryce in a Pee-Wee football uniform. His lanky body is supporting a head, clad in a mammoth sized helmet, giving him a bobble-head like appearance. Mr. Colton is on one knee, with his right arm on Bryce’s shoulder and he is looking down into his son’s eyes.  I suppose the viewer is meant to speculate the reasoning behind this tender interaction. Is he offering the wisdom from his own success at the sport? Could he be telling him to toughen up, sometimes you lose and it’s just not fair? Yeah well, ther
e’s a big difference between losing a game and losing your father.

I click back, and out of curiosity, I open the link to his Facebook page. When I see throw-up worthy postings from Missy, proclaiming her undying love,  I quickly click on the photos section. There are party
pics of him with team mates holding plastic cups, most likely filled with beer, though Bryce is always just holding a can of diet soda. I’ve heard rumors that he has a pretty weird diet to stay in shape. There are a bunch of candid snapshots of him smiling, with Missy hanging on him like a wet shirt on a clothesline, and a whole album of what looks like the same angle (give or take a few degrees) of his Jeep Wrangler, causes me to roll my eyes.

I click on an album entitled ‘
Family
’, and scroll through shots of Bryce holding different awards and various trophies, his smiling dad standing next to him. A few polite poses with an older couple which I assume must be his grandparents. Random shots from Christmas and various holidays with people I don’t recognize. I’m just about to close the window when I notice the very last photo. My heart yo-yo’s for a split second as I realize that it’s a shot of the two of us together. I squint and lean in closer to the screen, as it was taken from a distance and is just slightly out of focus. Bryce has blunt bangs hanging down in his eyes. He’s wearing a faded black Batman t-shirt, with fraying jean shorts, and hands stiff at his side.

My long brown hair is down and appears to need a good brushing. I’m wearing a crisp pale yellow sundress, my hands clasped together in front. We must have been about five. Any age after that, my mom could no longer get away with controlling my wardrobe. The picture was taken on my front porch and there are two plastic sand pails set on the first step. I remember that we used them every year to collect candy, thrown from the floats in the town’s the Fourth of July Parade. There is a single comment posted for the picture and
it’s from Missy;  

Who’s this, your first girlfriend? She’s hot! LMAO. I might have to kick some ass.

Bryce never responded, at least not publicly anyway. I look at the date, and see that he posted the picture about three years ago. Was this supposed to be a joke? Feeling aggravated for wasting time on Bryce in the first place, I shut down my computer, completely forgetting the whole reason I signed on was to message Farah. I turn over onto my back and stare at the scattering of glow-in-the-dark stars, currently a milky yellow due to the lack of darkness in the room. I silently vow to try my best to make amends this Sunday, and attempt the tutoring again. Though, it’s hard when all I can think is,
I needed Bryce and he wasn’t there, so why should I help him when he needs me now?