Fantasy Football Read online

  How did my father do it? Being in construction he was out the door at five in the morning. He was home by dinnertime and asleep before dessert. I barely saw my father. With his seven-day work schedule, I lost any hope of any father-daughter time. We all did. If I stopped to think about that, it saddened me that I truly didn’t know my own father. And I never would.

  Nikki honked the horn at seven-thirty. I shoved the photos in plastic sleeves and placed them in my brown briefcase. Taking the stairs two steps at a time, I rushed into the kitchen and shoved a sausage link in my mouth.

  “Bye, Mom.”

  I didn’t wait for a response. I was out the door without thought of Mariah. Was she up? Was she already out the door? My questions were answered when I didn’t see her black Escort in the driveway.

  “How did the photos turn out?” Nikki asked, circling out of the driveway.

  “I have no clue.” I finally swallowed my sausage. “I fell behind schedule thanks to the non-cooperation of my hair.”

  Nikki peeked over at my head. “The headband works just fine.” She laughed, pointing to her head. We were both wearing the same brown headband.

  When I’m rushed I become absent-minded. I knew the mornings were nippy, yet I forgot to grab my jacket. I was wearing a short-sleeved knit sweater and my bare arms were forming goose bumps.

  “I’ll pay you twenty bucks if all winter you have the car toasty warm for me in the morning,” I said to Nikki.

  “Forgot your jacket again? There’s a sweater in the back seat.”

  I peered over my shoulder to see a baggy white crocheted sweater, adorned with about a half dozen pink and green flowers the size of baseballs. “I’d rather freeze than wear your grandmother’s sweater.”

  Nikki shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said.

  There was a sinking feeling developing low in my belly. I gnawed at my lower lip as I thought about my photos. Casey would bask in all her glory at any imperfections. I had to peek at my pictures before first period. Why did Newspaper have to be my first class?

  I’d have time to conjure up a story, or a plan B if I took a few extra minutes at my locker to scrutinize the photos. If there were any watermarks or chemical spots I could just tell Casey I forgot my briefcase at home. Nah, that wouldn’t work; especially if someone from class saw me walking in the building with my briefcase.

  I needed to take a peek at the prints right now. I bent over to grab my briefcase when Nikki said, “Holy crap! The parking lot is full.”

  The lot was jammed pack. There was only parking in the way back near the football field. Lovely, just lovely, I thought to myself. Of all days to be stuck in the back, it had to be on a day I forgot my jacket. And with our long distant trot across the student parking lot, I wouldn’t have any extra time to examine my photos.

  By the time Nikki and I reached the school’s entrance, we were allotted three minutes to get to our lockers, ditch our backpack, and dart off to our first class.

  As an added bonus, Nikki’s locker was right next to mine. It was refreshing to see her between classes, especially since the only two classes we shared were gym and lunch.

  We were panting by the time we hit our lockers. We had one minute to get to class.

  “Good luck with Casey. Give her heck.”

  “Thanks.” I laughed, which was a wonderful tension release. I wasn’t sure if I was laughing from nerves, or the awkwardness of Nikki saying heck instead of hell.

  The hallways were quickly thinning of students as they found their proper homes. I silently prayed to the photo gods for my pictures to be clean and perfect. What if they weren’t? Oh no, was that my sausage link inching its way up my esophagus? I was beginning to perspire from every sweat gland. Jeez, how many sweat glands did I have?

  A fire, I thought. How could I accidentally set my photos on fire? Stolen! Yes, that might work. I could ditch the briefcase in the bathroom behind the toilet and say a couple of bullies tripped me up and ran off with my photos. Of course that would never work. I’d be asked to give descriptions of the thugs. Then what?

  I hated Monday’s with a passion and thought it should be banned from the calendar. Nothing remotely good came out of a Monday. In fact, back in the late seventies a group called, Boomtown Rats made a song about hating Monday’s.

  Of course, I wouldn’t feel the need to freak out at all if Mr. Morrison would move out of Bedrock and the Stone Age, and into the world of high-tech of digital photos and computers. He enjoyed the smell of fresh ink and the sound of the paper running through the machines. But I couldn’t fault him for that. After all, I enjoyed being in my darkroom to develop photos.

  The bell sounded two seconds after I entered the classroom. I barely had a chance to breathe a sigh of relief, when Casey yanked the briefcase right out of my hands. That little bitch. I so needed to introduce her to five of my knuckled friends.

  Calming breaths, Parker, I told myself. Fighting would only compound my troubles. Casey was an instigator. No doubt she calculated her movements and statements knowing my reputation as a hot head. Okay, so I bitch-slapped Whitney Bell last year in gym class when she called me Bozo the Clown. She teased me in front of Trent and the rest of our classmates. I thought it was well deserved.

  Whitney was another member of the Barbie Doll Bitch Society. She excelled in gymnastics and had a few state titles under her belt. And yes, she was a show-off in gym class, especially when we had gymnastics for four weeks.

  When it came to sports I didn’t consider myself an athlete. However, as a kid, I played softball and I had actually taken gymnastics. I was eight, but quit when I was twelve because my coach wanted me to compete at Regionals. I just wanted to learn how to do back handsprings and hurdle my legs over the uneven bars. Performing in front of judges wasn’t my cup of tea.

  Last year in gym class when practicing my floor routine for a grade, I mentally blocked out my surroundings. I hummed a tune in my head as I tumbled across the floor. I worked in a couple of round-offs into back handsprings, twirling handstands, and some hip-hop dance moves.

  I was oblivious to the outer world and clueless I had a captivated audience, including a fuming Whitney after she lost her respected fans while performing on the balance beam. And that’s when the raging bull huffed her way over at the end of my practice routine.

  “Look, it’s Bozo the Clown gracing our floor mat,” Whitney mocked. Classmates laughed with her.

  At first I was confused. Was she bantering me? I peered over my shoulder but saw no one. I spotted Nikki and shrugged my shoulders at her. She then pointed to her hair and stretched her arms out. It was my hair. I never secured it in a ponytail. With all the somersaults and flipping, my hair had poofed out in to a ratted mess.

  Whitney had her arms folded across her flat chest. I stared back into her conniving brown eyes. We were the exact height at five foot three, so my retaliation wouldn’t be at an unfair advantage, I thought to myself. I formed a fist and jabbed her across her left cheek.

  The poor girl never saw my fist coming. Whitney spun on her feet and hit the mat face first. With her long brown hair tightly woven in a high ponytail and her face smashed into the mat, I thought I was staring down at a horse’s ass.

  “Don’t mess with me, Barbie,” I roared.

  Without a shadow of a doubt, Whitney didn’t deserve my fist in her face. A quick-witted comeback would have sufficed, but I didn’t have one prepared. Plus, her teasing was ill timed with the recent passing of my father.

  During my seven-day suspension, I had to complete an anger management course for teens. That’s where I developed my smart-ass attitude.

  I tagged closely behind Casey to a long table in the corner of the classroom. She extracted my photos from their sleeves and spread them across the table. She and I were viewing the black and white photos for the first time, each with a different dissecting eye, I was sure. I silently sighed a relief at my perfection.

  Casey nearly bowled me over when she said, “
Not bad.” She pointed to the picture I snapped of Trent’s quarterback sneak. “This will be the headlining photo.”

  What the heck just happened? Did I step through an invisible vortex, jumping from Casey’s universe into an alternate one where I actually agreed with her? Doubtful. I was sure devil spawn was conjuring up something to bring down my defense shield. She may have been book smart, but I was street smart.

  “How was your weekend?” Casey asked, eyeballing the photo of Devin snapping the football.

  “You’re not seriously asking me that,” I said laughing, unable to determine if I asked a question or mocked her.

  “I’m just making conversation, Parker.”

  Uh huh. She definitely had me confused with an imbecile. I wasn’t born yesterday, and I’ve known Casey since the second grade. Even as a seven year old, Casey was a snot-nosed spoiled brat who expected everyone in the universe to revolve around her and her demands. She was up to no good, but I thought to play along…sort of.

  “I developed my pictures. Did some homework; nothing news worthy.”

  “So, you didn’t order a pizza from Pete’s Pizza?”

  And there it was. The serpent reared its ugly little head sooner than I’d expected. “No. I ate pizza, I didn’t order it.”

  “Nikki doesn’t have a chance in hell with Boyd,” she sneered, her hands wrapping around her hips. “So, do your friend a favor and tell her Boyd has no interest in her fat ass and she shouldn’t dress like a slut to get his attention. She’s only embarrassing herself.”

  Heat rushed to my face and the fingers on my right hand coiled into a tight fist. Casey’s face no longer sported two eyes, a nose and a mouth. Instead, I saw a target with the black bull’s eye in the center of her face. Hitting her wouldn’t be satisfying enough. I’d rather snap her spine like the twig she was.

  My therapist diagnosed my temper as a means of releasing the anger and resentment I had towards my father, for dying before I had the chance to tell him I loved him. She was moron. My temper stemmed from the cruelty and ignorance from my fellow classmates. They all needed a reality check - from my fist.

  How the hell did Casey know about the pizza? Did Boyd poke fun of Nikki to his football buddies, and someone in the group leaked it to the BDBS? I honestly didn’t think Boyd was the type. Plus, he had a certain twinkle in his eyes when he gazed at Nikki. It was almost one of admiration.

  A devious smirk appeared on Casey’s face when I stepped into her space. She was waiting for me to slip and make a mistake. One that would get me suspended or expelled.

  “Whatever diabolical plan you have swirling in that brainless head of yours, you can forget about it,” I growled in a soft whisper.

  “Casey, Parker. Looks like you picked out the headlining photo,” Mr. Morrison said, observing the picture of Trent. “Have you agreed on the captioning?”

  Mr. Morrison was dressed in jeans with a dark blue polo shirt to clash with his brown eyes. He was, hands down, a cool teacher. He even classified himself as, hip; despite the fact that he was probably in his mid to late thirties. His dark brown wavy hair was short and spiky. His oval face always sported a five o’clock shadow, which I always found odd. How does one consistently keep facial stubble dormant?

  “We were just in the middle of discussing that, Mr. Morrison,” Casey said.

  “You have fifteen minutes,” he warned.

  I watched him saunter over to Kelley Silvers to approve her reply letters for her Dear Miss Kelley column. I averted my attention back to Casey, and without missing a beat said, “Cummins dives into first win.” I wrote down my headline and placed the slip of paper above the photo.

  In my personal opinion, I thought the captioning was perfect. Trent was diving over a sea of players to grab Mason’s first win. It made sense and depict the action portrayed in the photo.

  “Trent Cummins leads Mason to first win,” Casey countered, placing her headline above mine.

  “It wasn’t a single-handed win by Trent. It was a team effort. You’ll have the entire football team degrading our journalistic abilities.”

  “You make no sense,” Casey sneered. “You’re a photographer, not a journalist.”

  “I may not be a writer, but I’m still a contributor to our school’s newspaper. And I think your headline will have other players resenting Trent.”

  Some of the students were starting to stare. Casey and I were being a bit too vocal in our discussion. I stepped in closer to her and lowered my voice an octave. “It’s no secret that you’re still crushing on Trent. But your headline will not score you brownie points with him.”

  “You’re one disillusioned soul, Parker.”

  Once again Mr. Morrison interrupted us. He glanced at our two choices and pondered for about ten seconds, although it more felt like ten minutes.

  “This one is perfect,” he said, pointing to my headline. “We’re ready to go to press tonight, people.”

  His choice was a ‘stick the tongue out’ moment. Instead, I grinned and playfully winked at Casey knowing her blood would boil in twice the speed. Maybe Monday’s were worth keeping on the calendar after all.

  The bell sounded and I bounded out the door unscathed. I spotted Trent and Boyd up in the distance walking in my direction. Girls cooed in their passing. They giggled and blushed…I gagged.

  I stepped directly in front of the dynamic duo to stop them. Trent again had an annoyed glare that penetrated deep into my eyes. His light brown bangs hung low near his left eye. His full lips tightened and his jaw clenched. Dang, he was so yummy. Too bad I despised yummy.

  Boyd actually smiled down at me. My heart raced at the thought of having to burst that bright grin, but he deserved it. “You’re an ass,” I said to him, but my gaze wondered back to Trent.

  “Who, me or Trent?”

  “There’s no contest here.” My voice quivered a tiny bit. I’d probably regret my answer later, but all I could think about at the moment was how both of them crushed two people I cared about. “Both of you are!”

  It was over. I said my peace and moved out of their way. My heart raced uncontrollably, and I could feel my cold blood pumping in double time through all my veins. I had to take deep calming breaths before I passed out in front of half the school.

  Homework should be banned. Teachers gave too much of it. They don’t seem to realize we have other classes besides theirs. We’re already there for seven hours a day. And now we have to come home and solve math problems, answer questionnaires, write out extended responses on the Civil War, and map out the anatomy of the human body. How was one to participate in after school activities or simply relax and watch television when you’re enslaved to another three hours of schoolwork…at home?

  It was difficult to concentrate on my trig formulas. All I could think about was Nikki. I didn’t dare tell her what happened today with Casey calling her a fat ass. Or crush her dreams about Boyd. How could he do that to her?

  And the expression on Boyd’s face would forever stay etched in my mind. He had a wounded puppy look that made you want to squeeze him and kiss his boo-boo until he felt better. What a jerk. Even in trig class I ignored him when he strolled past me. Usually I’d smile and say hello. He didn’t even deserve my death glare in his passing.

  My cell phone went off and I reached across my bed to grab it off the nightstand. I glanced at the LED screen expecting to see Nikki’s name. It wasn’t a number I recognized, but the area code told me the call was local.

  I reluctantly answered after the fifth ring. “Hello?”

  “Parker?” a male voice inquired.

  “This is Parker, who’s this?”

  “It’s Boyd.”

  My pencil dropped out of my hand and the hot dog I snacked on earlier lodged into my airways, causing a hearty belch to escape from my already gaped mouth. Holy crap! That wasn’t too embarrassing. Damn acid reflux.

  “Excuse me.”

  “It’s Boyd…Boyd Canton.”

  Whew,
he didn’t hear the gas rudely escape. That was of a relief. Knowing the yapping puppy he’d probably spread rumors of my manners being equivalent to that of a truck driver.

  “How did you get my number?”

  “In all honesty, I don’t think you’d want to know.”

  An answer like that only made me more curious. It’s like placing a pretty package in front of a child and telling them not to open it. You know damn well they’re going to. I decided to leave it be. Perhaps he was right.

  “Okay, I’ll take your word for it.” I didn’t know what else to say. I waited for him to continue the conversation and the purpose of his call.

  “You took me off my guard this morning. I can understand why you’d call Trent an ass, but what did I do?”

  “You really don’t know?”

  Boyd either sighed or grunted. It was difficult to tell which one through my crappy cell phone. “Parker, if there’s one thing I know about you is you’re not a needy girl.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean. Really.”

  “Don’t play the, ‘you should know what you did wrong’, game. Just tell me.”

  His voice meant business. Boyd was a jokester and the tone of his voice was the most serious I’ve ever heard. And since I did call him an ass, I guess he deserved an explanation.

  “Casey told me today that you poked fun at Nikki for flirting with you the other night. And also something about her fat ass.”

  There was silence on the other end. Obviously Boyd was searching for words after getting his hand caught in the cookie jar. “That’s not even close to the truth, Parker,” he said sternly.

  “No?” It was a lame comeback, but the tone of my voice was low and firm. I still meant business.

  “No,” he barked back. “Oh, man. You didn’t tell Nikki any of this did you?”

  What? Why would he care about her feelings now? “Of course not! She’s my friend and I wouldn’t dare crush her like that.”