Troy High

by Shana Norris

  Perry’s nostrils flared as he stared back at our brother. “Don’t you try to blame all this on me. Lucas Mennon started this war just because he can’t deal with the fact that his girlfriend didn’t want him anymore. I didn’t start this war, but if you’re so sick of leading us to victory, I’ll do it myself.”

  The students standing in a circle around my brothers were completely silent, their gazes moving back and forth between Hunter and Perry. I spotted Elena on the other side of the circle across from me. Her face had paled and her eyes had grown huge.

  Everyone probably expected my brothers to get into a fistfight right there in the hall. The tension rising between them certainly felt like someone was about to throw a punch.

  But they didn’t know Hunter as well as I did. Physical fights weren’t his style, unless someone attacked him first. Hunter and Perry argued a lot, but Hunter preferred to fight with words and strategy rather than fists.

  So I was probably the least surprised of everyone when Hunter took a step back and said, “No. I will settle this once and for all. Go sit with your girlfriend and look pretty, like you always do.”

  Hunter turned and walked away.

  HUNTER AND PERRY’S FIGHT HAD SHAKEN ME more than I’d realized. All day it was the only thing I could think about. I didn’t talk much to anyone and I snapped at Elena when she kept going on and on about how worried she’d been that Hunter was going to punch Perry in the nose.

  When I got home that afternoon, I sat down at my computer and opened my e-mail.

  No messages, other than spam. I didn’t expect there would be. Greg was the only person who ever e-mailed me, and I seriously doubted that he would send me anything now.

  I clicked on New Message and poised my fingers over the keyboard. After a few minutes, I started typing.

  No, that was too formal.

  Of course he knew it was me. He would know my e-mail address.

  Oh, yeah, that would really make things better between us. I started again.

  The screen became fuzzy and my eyes burned with tears. I wiped them away, but more came in their place.

  I lay on my bed later, still sobbing, when I heard my bedroom door open.

  “Cassie?”

  “Go away,” I said, burying my face in my pillow.

  I felt the mattress sink down under my brother’s weight. A warm hand rubbed over my head.

  “Cassie,” Hunter said, “why are you crying?”

  “I’m not,” I said. “Now, go away.”

  But Hunter didn’t make any movement. “I’m not going away until you tell me what’s wrong,” he said. “Do I have to play the big brother card and beat someone up for you?”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s not your style.”

  Hunter let out a long sigh. “Yeah, but I’ve done a lot of things lately that aren’t exactly my style.”

  I rolled over and looked at him. “Then why do them? Why can’t you just end this?”

  “I know you don’t understand,” Hunter said, reaching over to wipe tears from my cheek. “But I am doing this to make things better for you. Next year, I won’t be at Troy anymore. If I back down, things between Troy and Lacede could get worse. I’m trying to end this rivalry once and for all so you won’t have to deal with it after I’m gone.”

  “But things are worse now than they’ve ever been before,” I said. “If you all will just stop this stupid fighting, we can get back to normal.”

  Hunter didn’t say anything for a long time. Then finally he said, “I want it to end just as much as you do. But until one side proves that they are stronger, smarter, and better than the other, it will go on and on. I need to end this for you and Perry.”

  I turned around so that my back was to him. “Then go away and leave me alone.”

  “Cassie,” Hunter said, sounding a little annoyed. “I know you’re upset because of what happened between Perry and me this morning—”

  I sat up suddenly, whipping around to face him. “Not everything is about you and Perry! If you two would stop being so … so pigheaded, you might notice that people have lives outside of you. Not everyone at school worships the ground you walk on. And some of us wish you all would go away and let us live our lives in peace because we were a hundred times happier before you started this fighting. Now, get out!”

  I screamed the last words at my brother, startling him. I had never yelled at Hunter like that. He had always been the brother who looked out for me, who kept Perry from tormenting me, the one who carried me home crying in his arms when I fell off my bike.

  But all I wanted now was for both of my brothers to disappear. I wanted all of this to end. My brothers had already cost me the best friend I’d ever had. Couldn’t they leave me alone to cry in peace?

  Hunter’s jaw twitched, but he stood up and walked toward the door. “I’m sorry, Cassie,” he said. “I’m sorry you don’t understand.”

  “Come on, Cassie!”

  I shielded my eyes from the sun with one hand and looked across the sand toward the blue-green water. Elena, Mallory, and Kelsey had waded knee deep and shrieked as the waves crashed toward them.

  “Too cold!” I shouted in response to Elena’s call. While they pranced around in bikini tops and shorts on the warm mid-October day, I stayed in my T-shirt and capris.

  I hadn’t wanted to go to the beach, but Elena had insisted that it was just the thing to cheer me up. I thought I’d been hiding my mood from everyone ever since my outburst at Hunter four days earlier. My brother hadn’t spoken to me since then, and he hadn’t even bothered to keep Perry from teasing me.

  Not that Perry paid much attention to me lately, especially not if Elena was around. I looked toward where he and some of the other guys from the football team were throwing a football across the sand. Perry kept looking at Elena, checking her out while she played in the water with Mallory and Kelsey.

  I wished I could see things as simply as Elena did and cheer myself up with a day of sun and sand. But I just didn’t have the energy to put that much effort into pretending to be okay.

  Looking away from the water, I spotted Hunter on the rock jetty he’d been sitting on for half an hour. At first, some of the other guys had gone out there to try to talk to him, but then they’d all come back to shore, leaving Hunter still sitting there alone.

  A shadow fell over me and I turned back around as Elena sat down on the blanket.

  “Are you just going to sit here all day feeling sorry for yourself?” she asked.

  “I’m not feeling sorry for myself. I just don’t want to get in the water.”

  Elena rolled her eyes. “You’re moping, Cassie. What has gotten into you lately?”

  I picked up a handful of sand and let the golden grains fall between my fingers. “Nothing. I just wish this stupid thing with Lacede would hurry up and end.”

  “Me too,” Elena said. “It’s all anyone can talk about.”

  “Thanks to you,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  I scowled at her. “I’ve been blaming everything on my brothers, but it’s really all your fault. You started this entire thing by dumping Lucas for Perry.”

  Elena looked stunned, as if I had slapped her. “If I recall correctly, you helped me win over Perry. If you didn’t want me going out with him, you should have said something two months ago!”

  “Yeah, like it would have done any good. Girls like you always get whatever they want, no matter who gets hurt.”

  Elena’s mouth fell open. She looked at me, her eyes glassy with tears. “I can’t believe you would say that, Cassie. I thought we were friends.”

  “You used me to get close to my brother and you stole my picture of Greg from my room,” I said. “We were never friends.”

  “That’s not true,” Elena snapped. “Well, okay, part of it is. I did steal the picture. I’m sorry, but I had to, just like you had to hang that banner to prove something to your brothers. But I never used you to get close to anyone. I liked
you for you, because I thought you were nice and caring. Guess I was mistaken.”

  Elena leaped to her feet, but she didn’t walk away just yet. “You know, Cassie,” she said, “you’re right about one thing. Girls like me do get whatever they want. You know why? Because I’m willing to go for it. You won’t see me sitting around crying about how everything is so unfair and doing nothing to change it.”

  She spun around and marched back toward the water, kicking up sand behind her.

  I WAS ENTIRELY, COMPLETELY, UTTERLY ALONE.

  It was worse than it had ever been before. I should have been used to everyone ignoring me, but this time it felt terrible. I would walk through the halls like a ghost, no one even taking a second look at me. Elena made sure to stay busy talking to Perry or Kelsey or Mallory, and in English class she kept her eyes on her textbook and pretended she didn’t see me.

  This time, I didn’t even have Greg to talk to outside of school.

  And since homecoming was only a week away, things at Troy had become even crazier than they already were. Students cheered for the football players as they walked down the hall and people randomly yelled out, “Trojans! Trojans!” to get everyone around them wound up. The former Lacede students who now attended Troy had to deal with constant harassment from a few of the Trojans. Kids were getting shoved sideways into the walls, tripped, and their books knocked out of their arms. No amount of discipline from the teachers would stop it.

  On the following Friday night, I sat with the band at Cresswell High, where we were playing an away game. But although the other members of the band surrounded me, I had never felt more alone.

  I tried to smile at the two fellow flautists sitting next to me, but I guess my smile came out looking weird because they just stared blankly at me for a moment. Then one turned to the other and said, loud enough for me to hear, “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She thinks she’s something now that she’s hanging out with cheerleaders and football players,” the other girl said. “Just ignore her.”

  I had come full circle back to where I’d been three months ago. The popular crowd thought I was below them and the unpopular crowd thought I was too good for them.

  The sound of music startled me from my thoughts and I dropped my flute on my toe. The Trojans had apparently scored a touchdown. Ms. Holloway stood in front of us, leading us through the music. She glared at me and motioned for me to pick my flute up. I did, but by the time I’d gotten it to my lips, the rest of the band had finished the song.

  “Hunter is on fire tonight,” someone behind me said. “Look at him fly across the field.”

  I found my brother among the uniformed guys and watched him for a few moments. He was on fire, playing like he never had before. He threw perfect passes and avoided being sacked. The entire team worked as one cohesive unit, moving elegantly through their plays. Troy managed to get nearly all the way down the field toward their end goal before Cresswell stopped them.

  The guys lined up again and Hunter called out the play. The ball snapped and the guys swarmed across the field.

  But something was wrong this time. The guy Hunter looked for wasn’t where he should have been. Hunter held the ball back, his arm poised to throw, but he was unable to find anyone open to pass to.

  Hunter didn’t see the huge Cresswell linebacker headed toward him from the left. I wanted to call out to him, to warn him, but I was frozen in place, my flute gripped tightly in my hands.

  Hunter threw the ball in the last second before the Cresswell player made impact with him. The ball tumbled through the air, heading toward no one. Hunter slammed into the ground under the linebacker’s weight, falling hard on his right arm.

  “Cassie! Sit down!” Ms. Holloway called to me as I pushed through the crowd toward the field. The referee had blown the whistle to stop the clock and a small crowd headed toward where Hunter lay on the grass.

  I pushed myself to the front of the group of football players all standing in a circle around my brother. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe as I looked at him. He lay so still, his eyes closed, his left hand gripping his right arm tight.

  Just like in the dream I’d had a few weeks ago.

  Coach Wellens kneeled and pulled the helmet from Hunter’s head. “You okay, Prince?” he asked.

  Hunter opened his eyes, and I let out a breath of relief. He was still alive. He didn’t scream in pain and none of his limbs seemed to be stuck out at weird angles.

  Everyone took a step back as Hunter sat up, still gripping his right arm to his chest. “I landed on my shoulder,” he said.

  The game medic took over and Hunter flinched only slightly as the medic turned his arm this way and that.

  “Nothing’s broken,” the medic announced. “But you should let a doctor check you out.”

  “I’ll call your parents,” Coach Wellens said.

  “No,” Hunter told him. “I’ll stay and watch the rest of the game.”

  Coach Wellens scowled. “Don’t try to be a hero, Prince—”

  “I want to stay,” Hunter said. He looked up at the coach with a look in his eye that let us all know he wouldn’t be persuaded to do otherwise.

  “I’m still calling your parents,” Coach Wellens said. “If they say it’s okay, you can do whatever you want. Since you’re going to anyway,” he muttered.

  Perry helped Hunter to his feet and the other players headed back to the sidelines to regroup before continuing the game. For a moment, I was the only one not moving, just watching my brothers as they walked side by side toward the Troy benches. The other guys on the team clapped Hunter on the back as he joined them, and the cheerleaders cheered. The spectators had applauded when Hunter stood. Even the Cresswell crowd joined in to offer him support.

  I stood alone, in the middle of everything but part of nothing. No one would notice if I stood there all night—

  “Miss, you’ll need to get off the field.”

  I looked up into the eyes of the referee, who was motioning for me to get off the grass so they could restart the game.

  “How’s Hunter?” I asked Mom the next day.

  Mom dropped the two bags of groceries she had carried in from the car on the kitchen counter and sighed. “I just got off the phone with your dad,” she told me. “They’re still at the doctor’s office, but the good news is that nothing is broken. It’s just a mild sprain. The doctor says Hunter will need to take it easy for a few days, but he should heal up just fine.”

  “That’s good,” I said, stirring the vegetable soup in my bowl. Then I thought about something. “Our homecoming game is next Friday. Will Hunter get to play?”

  “I don’t know,” Mom said as she put away the groceries. “I guess it depends on how easy he is on his arm over the next few days. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  Without Hunter in the game, did we have a chance of winning against Lacede? It was the biggest game of the season, the Spartans versus the Trojans. There was no way Hunter would want to miss playing that night.

  But maybe it would be for the best if he did miss out. A chill spread up my spine as I remembered my brother lying on the grass the night before, his eyes closed. His injury could have been worse. My dream about him lying there, pale and unmoving, still flashed through my mind.

  Against Lacede, it was very likely that he could be hurt much worse.

  “So,” Mom said, “speaking of homecoming, are you excited about the dance?”

  Ugh. Why did she have to remind me about the dance? I’d been trying to ignore it. I had no friends, no date, and no reason at all to go to the dance anymore.

  “Not exactly,” I answered. “I think I’ve decided I’m just going to stay home.”

  Mom turned away from the cabinet, a box of stuffing mix in one hand. “What? You can’t stay home on homecoming!”

  “Well, I’ll go to the game,” I said. “I have to since I’m in the band and we’re doing this stupid halftime show. I still can’t keep in step, you know.
I’m going to make an idiot of myself. But anyway, once the game’s over, I’ll just ride home with you and Dad.”

  Mom put the box of stuffing in the cabinet and shut the door firmly before turning back to stare hard at me. “Cassandra Prince, you will do no such thing. You already made plans to go. Elena is expecting you to be there. You bought that great dress. And you can’t let Greg down.”

  I couldn’t look at my mom as I scooped up the last bit of vegetables in my bowl and said, “Greg isn’t my date anymore.”

  Mom crossed the room in two huge steps and sat down next to me. “Oh, Cassie, what happened?”

  I shook my head, blinking back tears. “Nothing. We’re just not friends anymore.”

  “But you’ve been best friends for two years. How can you stop being friends for no reason?”

  “Because he’s a Spartan and I’m a Trojan,” I said. “We should never have tried to be friends. Perry warned me after I came back from band camp two years ago that befriending a Spartan was asking for trouble.” I snorted. “Guess he was right.”

  Mom put her hand over mine. “You don’t really believe that. You and Greg shouldn’t throw your friendship away just because of some silly pranks going on between your schools.”

  “It’s not just silly pranks anymore,” I said. “Maybe it was all fun and games when you were in school, but things are a lot more serious now.”

  Mom leaned back in her seat. “You think it was all fun and games when I was your age? Well, I attempted to pull a prank against the Spartan cheerleaders when I was a sophomore. But the cheerleaders somehow found out what I was up to and surprised me just as I was climbing into the tiny window of the girls’ locker room. I fell eight feet, busted my lip, and broke my arm.” She crossed her arms over her chest and gave me a smug look.

  How did I not know this about my own mother?

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Well, I healed just fine,” Mom said. “But I was grounded for three months for sneaking out of the house and attempting to damage someone else’s property. Which was totally unfair, because the only thing I had planned to do was fill the cheerleaders’ lockers with shaving cream.”