Page 18 of My High School Rebel Boyfriend
“NO WAY!” I SAID TOTitan, “Just no.” We were walking out to my car after I’d shot about 1001 hoops while he’d been talking to Ebony Christopher. He’d just asked me to double date with Ebony’s twin, Shavaun.
“Come on,” Titan pleaded. “For me.”
Oh yeah, he was good at tearing at my heart, but I wasn’t going to budge. “Look, I’m not interested. For starters I can’t even tell the difference between them, and aren’t they on the student council?”
“Yeah, Ebony has two earrings in each ear, and Shavaun only has one. And yeah, they’re on student council. Mitch, they’re smart!”
“Yeah, precisely why I’m not going on your double date. And you think I’m going to stare at their ears?”
“Senior year Mitch!” Titan’s hands were gesturing all over the place. “This is supposed to be our year, man, we can have it all, parties, girls...”
“Basketball,” I ended the sentence for him. “It’s our year for basketball.” That was all that mattered to me. The team, a scholarship, a ticket out of this town, simple. I didn’t need distractions, especially not dating, and not with someone I had nothing in common with.
“Mitch!” He sighed in exasperation. “You’re killing me. A little fun won’t change the game plan. After Thanksgiving it’s all basketball, I promise. Just do it for me, bro.”
I shook my head vehemently. “No way. Not happening.” I had no idea in what parallel universe Titan thought Shavaun would be caught talking to me.
Titan’s voice lowered. “Hey, I just thought you’d wanna chill a bit. Y’know.” He was staring directly into my right eye, which was close to healed now. “I know things have been tough lately...” He trailed off, like he knew he was pushing the boundary. An unspoken rule of our friendship was that we didn’t mention my step-father, not ever.
“You wanna ride home or not?” I snapped and then wished I hadn’t. I valued Titan’s friendship, appreciated that he didn’t intrude into my home life, but the whole day had thrown me for a loop.
First, Harper Dent had been atourbasketball training session, where Titan and I would practice our shooting and rebounds. He’d never told me he was helping her out so it had been a shock to see her. It seemed she wanted to get better at vertical jumps, yet she hadn’t lifted a dumbbell in her life by the look of it. Did she think you could just magically leap in the air without putting in some hard work? When I’d asked her about her training she’d nearly burst into tears.
Sensitive much? And the next thing, Titan hasmeas the personal trainer. Okay, I’ll say it, for someone as thin as a rake and with no muscle definition Harper did have a good work ethic. She gave it everything.
In fact, she probably gave it too much. Because oddly at volleyball training she was subdued, like she totally wasn’t into it. She pushed through and did ten full pushups which is more than most of the others could do, but I wondered if I’d been too hard on her in the morning. Coach Barber put her on the bench when we had our game, and she disappeared as soon as it ended.
And for some reason that made me all tetchy, and then Titan got the brunt of it. Fortunately he ignored my bad mood and said, “Yeah, I wanna ride home, I’m not walking in this wind.” And he slapped me on the back which meant he forgave me for being a jerk. “Hey, you got your learner’s permit yet?” he jibed.
I shoved him back; he knew I didn’t. Wade had never enrolled me in a driver education course, saying it was a waste of time and moneyand that he would teach me how to drive. Of course he never did. It was Mom who had taught me and I’d been driving for over a year now, permit less. I no longer needed to do a driver ed course because I was over the age of seventeen, but I had yet to apply for one. It was on my to-do list.
“You wanna come in? Taco night,” Titan said, as I pulled up alongside his house. I thought about it, the nice warm fireplace, the smell of his Mama’s home cooking, the lively chaos that was the Dell household, but it was Thursday and Wade was working late shift which meant Mom would be on her own, safe to go home.
I had slept in my car last night, parked down by the bridge at the far end of town. It had been bone-marrow cold, but cold bones are better than broken ones and I feared Wade had been in an implacable mood. And not because of anything I’d done. No, one of his co-workers hadn’t turned up meaning he’d had to pull a double shift. Yep, that was my fault. I would bear his wrath. He’d clipped me about the head but Mom was sitting in the living room watching tv, so that was the extent of it. I said I needed to go to Titan’s to do a homework assignment...and never went back home.
Coach Cairns had spoken to me about the black eye. Yeah, the story about the fight with the Stripers came back to bite me. If I was going to be involved in fights I’d be kicked off of the team, my scholarship hopes would go down the drain and my future in jeopardy. Just like that.
I’d end up working at Whittakers Ice Cream factory for the rest of my life, never escaping this town.
“It wasn’t a fight,” I told Coach Cairns in complete confidence, checking that the door to his office was firmly closed. “Don’t tell anyone, but I hit my head on the cupboard door in the kitchen. Please don’t say anything. My Mom will vouch for it.”
Coach Cairns had squinted with suspicion.
“I have a reputation!” I asserted. “Kids can’t know that I stumbled my way around my own kitchen.” I knew how to pout the lower lip just a fraction, to look slightly wounded, a look I’d perfected over the years. The older female teachers undoubtedly fell for it; Coach Cairns was a harder nut to crack. “My Mom’s not been feeling so good the last week,” I added, needing all of his sympathy.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. Mom had been a regular at my junior varsity games, not so much in recent years as her mobility declined. “But I can’t have my star players involved in fights and brawls,” Coach Cairns reverted to serious coach mode. “Representing River Valley High is an honor and I can’t have players disrespecting that.”
“Yes sir, it is an honor, sir.”
“A clean slate, Mitch, that’s what I’m counting on from you. I don’t want your name uttered by any of the teachers unless it’s mentioned in conjunction with basketball.”
“Promise, sir,” I said. “I handed in my English Lit assignment a day early, sir.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” he said with a smile. Grades had never been an issue for me, though admittedly I wasn’t taking those tough calculus or physics classes.
Mom was sitting at the dining table eating her meal. “Hey, honey,” she said, “I texted you, but you didn’t answer.”
“I’ve been training,” I said, too harshly. I knew my resentment shouldn’t be aimed at her, but sometimes I couldn’t help it.
