Page 3 of Footlights and Forever

“We are?” my voice squeaked. I craned my head up to see Auston nod his head once, almost imperceptibly to me. “I mean, we are,” I said with a little too much conviction.

I tilted my head high, trying for once to show some kind of backbone in the face of my bullies. The sneers and open looks of scorn quickly had my eyes trained to the floor. I kept my feet in tight and my arms down by my side, hoping if I didn’t take up too much of their territory they might permit me to pass unscathed, or well, less scathed than I already was at this point.

“Whatever man.” Garrett stared down at me with a little disdain mixed with confusion, like one might stare at some questionable old gum on the sole of their shoe. “Come on, let’s bounce.” He smirked at the rest of the team, gesturing over his shoulder to the door. They filed out the room, each of them looking down at me like a bug they could squish under the toes of their boots if they deemed me worthy of that level of attention.

The door slammed on the last vacating team member, leaving me alone in the locker room with the object of many of my moister dreams. I smiled briefly at him before pulling away from the absolute comfort of his arm and turning towards the door to follow the team out.

“Hey hold up.” Austin’s hand settled on my shoulder. I briefly considered the fact that this was the most amount of contact that had occurred between myself and Austin in all the years I’d known him. “Hang out for a few minutes.”

“Why?” The question escaped my mouth before I had a chance to stop it. He snorted out a laugh, equal amounts of confusion in his eyes as was probably reflected back at him from mine.

“Do we really need an excuse to hang out?” My mouth lolled open as I searched the archive of my brain for any valid reason for the captain of the football team to hang out with the likes of me. I prepared myself to blurt out some random words to stop myself looking like a stunned trout, when the locker room door burst open behind me.

“Fucker, are you coming?” Garrett looked between Austin and myself, just as confused as I was.

“I was just asking…” Austin started.

“I have to get going,” I interrupted him, thumbing over my shoulder, looking sheepishly between them before getting the hell out of there.

Fuck this day.

Chapter 2

“Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.” - Bill Gates.

Dylan

“What, so they just let you go?” my best friend Hailey whispered, her mouth hanging open as she stared at me in disbelief.

“Would you keep it down!” I hissed as I looked around the algebra lab. The other people in the class were either fiddling with their phones, taking selfies, or doodling on the books, on the table or directly onto their skin. Pretty much doing anything but looking at poor stuffy old Mrs. Henstridge as she droned on about linear and quadratic equations. The one thing that I did not want to do was let one of these mindless drones overhear some juicy locker room gossip and have it come back to bite me in the ass later.

“Not that I am not relieved,” she said, giving me a tight smile, “but every time those guys have had you in their sights, you normally end up stuffed in a locker or with food dumped over your head like they did that time at the lunch table.”

“I mean, let’s not forget I did spend some time in the bottom of a laundry hamper surrounded by mud, sweat, and god-knows-what stained jockstraps and football kits.” I narrowed my eyes at her.

“You’re right,” she smiled. “You’re a little trooper.” Her hand gently stroked my back, but suddenly came to a stop.

“What’s the matter?”

“You did shower all that funk off right?”

I shrugged noncommittally, chuckling as she gagged and wiped her palm on the thigh of her stonewash denim patched jeans.

Hailey Graham had approached me on the second day of first grade, after spending the first day watching me awkwardly try to talk to the other boys in my class before sidling away to rock gently on the swings, my fingers trailing along the bare metal chains on the bright yellow swing set.

I remembered a slow drizzle had started, the clouds thickening and moving quickly across the sky. A small breeze had picked up, moving and shifting the wood shards that served as the floor to the swing set in the playground.

“Hippo is the only cool animal cracker,” she’d stated matter-of-factly, as she plonked herself down on the swings next to me.

“Huh?” My seven-year-old brain had not yet become adept with the odd way her thoughts were formulated and the random questions or statements she tended to throw out into the universe randomly. That particular skill I would not develop for a few years.

“The hippo is the only cracker that has the most cracker.” She’d pulled out a familiar small red bag from her pocket and opened them. She’d emptied the crackers out onto her lap and organized them all facing up. “See, you would think it would be the elephant or the rhino or even the gorilla, but you would bewrong. The thin parts of the cracker take up a lot of space. The fat belly of the hippo actually means you get more cracker.”

She’d popped the hippo cracker in her mouth and munched happily away. “You want one?” she’d asked around a mouthful of crumbs. I’d nodded and held out my hand. “Now I can’t see another hippo, so I’m going to give you a rhino. I won’t even bother with the giraffe because well… you know.” I hadn’t known, and I still didn’t know to this day, but I’d nodded along with her reasoning.

“So, we are friends now, okay?” I’d gotten the impression it wasn’t so much a question as a statement of fact without the possibility of debate. Hailey was and has consistently been forward and forceful in her pursuits. That was one of the many reasons so many people loved her, and were very confused as to why I of all people was chosen as her best friend. Her relatively high social status and my connection to her did nothing to elevate my own or save me from anything that was coming my way, however.

Flashforward to us now, we were sat in Algebra class, and not much had changed. People turned in their seats to offer a head nod to Hailey and to give me a quizzical who the fuck is that again? look. There was something sobering about realizing you were an extra and not even a side character in someone else’s movie.

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