Page 2 of Escape Velocity
A breeze sweeps through the trees above him. Flickers and streams of light dance across his textbook.
Mason looks up into the tree. He smiles and inhales. The breeze is a welcome reprieve from the beating sun.
He looks down at his spread on the bench as his heart swells.
He made it into Montgomery in physics. He was really here, pursuing his dream.
The breeze blows harder, weaving its way through his hair. It’s a fresh reminder that fall is coming. He just wishes it would haul ass already.
His phone buzzes, and he rolls his eyes, fishing it out of his pocket to see who is bothering him before he can get lost in his homework.
Mom
Did you get into the paper yet?
He throws his phone across the bench.
He really doesn’t need this right now. He doesn’t need to be reminded that he’s lying to his parents.
If only they knew he was doing physics problems instead of writing articles.
He tries to file his mom’s text away, wrangles his headphones dangling from his neck, and puts them over his ears; the birdsong, chatter of other students, and hopefully his mother’s nagging being drowned out.
He prefers it this way. Earbuds don’t block out enough noise. Screeching laughs or the raucous noise of football players always manages to squeeze their way into his eardrums. He needs complete and utter quiet right now, and his bulky headphones do the trick.
He puts his pencil to paper and gets to work, quicklyscribbling down the problems in his notebook, sticking his tongue out and tapping his paper with his pencil as he thinks of how to solve each problem.
Movement catches his eye across the field, and Mason lifts his head from his paper to see the football team making their way out to the field, sporting maroon shorts and t-shirts.
He adjusts his glasses, that have fallen down onto the bridge of his nose, to get a better look at them. He’s not sure why he’s staring. He’s looking for someone he doesn’t want to find.
His stomach twists at the idea of who might be in the crowd of players, buthe’s too far away to be noticed, most likely. The football team has much more important things to think about and notice than some guy doing relativity problems on the bleachers.
Metallic clangs vibrate along the benches, and he looks up again to notice a few girls scooting onto the benches, giggling and whispering to each other as they glance at the field, their hair in high ponytails and skin aglow in the sun.
A few of the players wave at them, and Mason swears the girls almost fall over from their swooning. He bites back the need to roll his eyes and shake his head and focuses back on his problem set.
He’s already blown through most of his relativity problem sets quicker than he anticipated, his iced latte turning into a watery-brown mess by the time he’s done. He’s about ready to wrap up, just in time for Jenna’s class to end and for football practice to start.
He takes his headphones off, hangs them back on his neck, and starts packing his things.
“Hey!” a deep voice calls from the field. Mason keeps his eye on his paper, likely one of the players trying to getthe girls’ attention, as if they weren’t completely enamored already.
“Hey!” the same voice calls louder, and Mason finally rips his eyes off his things and looks to the field.
He’s met with one of the players staring at him with their helmet on.
The player lifts a hand and waves at him.
Mason points at himself and looks around to see if the player might be waving at someone else. The girls below nearly break their necks to look back and sneer at him as if he’s crazy.
The player nods emphatically. Mason does a little wave back and shoots the player a bewildered look.
Whoever that footballer is, he must be confusing Mason for someone else.
There’s a small—no—aninfinitesimallysmall chance that it’shim, but it surely isn’t.Hewouldn’t decide to finally acknowledge Mason’s existence now, all of a sudden.
He decides he can finish up the last of his problem sets elsewhere. He definitely doesn’t want any more attention on him than the football team, and certainly not if it means getting attention from one of the players he shall not name.
