by Shane Morton
“Shit, I hope that’s not a union job. You could get me in trouble,” she huffs, holding back her laugh. “You two have a heavy day today. I’m glad you don’t have Monday classes. I have a meeting with the head of athletics today to go over the players that are struggling, so we will probably have a few new students within the week. I think that I might need to hire another person. All of you kids already have too much on your plate, as it is. I just wish everyone was as good at their job as you two are. Okay, that’s enough, Gina. If I look at any more of these reports today, I might snap. Have I told you guys how much I love you and how much I hate Dean Winston?”
Patricia and Dean Winston, the head of the athletic department, were always bickering back and forth. She was as tired as I was about the jocks skating by on their athletic prowess in the classroom. In the last year, she had cracked down pretty hard on them. Anyone athlete with a D or below was supposed to be put on suspension until they raised their grade. It rarely happened, of course. It pissed her off.
I loved her.
“So, did you and the boys go to the game over the weekend?” Gina asks as Patricia huffed off towards her office. “I decided to stay home and binge-watch Real Housewives again. I love how faux-reality has become the new normal of expectations. It’s amusing.”
“Yeah, we went. Lost, of course. But the boys played hard. I think, finally, after all these years of going to the games, I’m finally starting to understand it,” I laughed. The rules of football had always been mind-boggling to me. Basketball, baseball, hell, even tennis was easy to understand, but football tried to be complex in its barbarism. It’s the only spectator sport that requires a mathematician to understand.
“I dated a football player in high school. He was the big guy who hiked the ball to the quarterback, or whatever you call it.” Gina smirked. “I called him the big guy in the middle, cause he was.”
“It’s the offensive center. See! That I know, but I get lost in all the damn downs and first and tens… It’s maddening.” I walked over and sat on her desk. Gina liked large guys. She was tiny. If she weighed more than ninety pounds, I would be surprised, and most of that was her big curly hair. She was a whipper-snapper with a quick wit. She was one of the smartest people I had ever met, too.
“Okay, that, then…The offensive center…He was quite good at offense,” she teased. “Motherfucker could have my bra off in about two seconds. For someone with such big hands, he had very nimble fingers.” She grinned, sticking her tongue out at me. “So, the game sucked?”
“Nah, it was fine. We had a good time. Had a little heartburn from the hot dogs, though.” I got up and walked back over to my desk. The thought of the game right now was bringing up the memory of Mason. It wasn’t as pleasant as I had wished.
“You guys went to the Omega party after? Chad said you might,” she said coyly. Chad wasn’t big. Hell, he was about as think as you could get, but he was tall. Taller than me and I wasn’t a slouch in the height department myself. But he was hard as a rock. It came from all the sports he played and working out on his uncle’s farm. His parents had tried to get him to help with the diner, but he was too much of a redneck to ever wait tables or cook.
“Yeah, we went.” I sat down in my chair. “Damn, Gina… I don’t see how I’m gonna have any time to get through all of these cases. How can I tutor thirty people a week, go to my classes, and have any time for studying and doing the classwork? This scheduling is a fucking nightmare!” This was my half-hearted attempt to change the subject, but I meant every word I said. I was getting worried. My major was economics, and the classes as a junior were a hell of a lot harder than they were when I was a sophomore.
“Yeah, I’m struggling too. It helps, though, when you don’t have a social life, Calvin. You should stay home, like me, every night, and watch Bravo while you study.” She slapped the cubicle wall and walked around to my side. She crossed her arms as she looked at me.
“Dude, Chad told me. He thought you might want to talk about your feelings, and he knows that he and Mike would suck at it. So you met your forever crush, and he sucked?” She looked at me with such empathy that I decided maybe it would help to talk about it. I hated talking about my feelings as much as Chad or Mike. I may be gay, but I was still a country boy.
I rolled my eyes and threw my hands up in the air in supplication to whatever gods might be listening. “Yeah… It sucked. I mean, Chad was a bit of a dick, too. I will admit that.”
“Chad? Nooo…” Gina was also sarcastic as hell.
“Anyway, after one of the Instagram twins got between them,” I started, and she reached over and grabbed my arm.
“Which one? Holy shit…They are like the golden grail of Moray. So, fucking hot.” Her long nails were actually hurting as she grappled me in an orgasmic seizure at the mention of one of the golden gods.
They were hot and made me think very dirty and obscene things, just like everyone else in the world with a little twin desire.
“I’m not sure. They’re identical, and he didn’t like, introduce himself or anything,” I pulled my arm away out of her grasp. The dazed look left her face. “Then Mason was there and talking to me. His excuses were shit…He said, and I’m paraphrasing here because the whole thing is a blur to me… He said that it was okay that the jocks got perks on campus since they worked so hard. We were talking about classes and shit. I mean, they just hand these assholes a degree for being getting their asses knocked down out on the field. It’s not fair… And Mason, as hot as he is, is just a part of the problem. I bet he doesn’t give a shit and barely even goes to class anymore.”
“That sucks, hon…But sometimes people are so caught up in the life they are living, and you know how hard those boys do work through the year, that they have a hard time understanding someone else’s perspective. You had a hard time understanding his. Did you even try?” Gina was a psych major.
“Have I told you that I hate you today?” I sulked.
“No, honey, it’s the first time, but I bet I’ll hear it again,” she laughed as she walked back over to her cubicle.
“This is not reality TV,” I said.
“Maybe it is, honey. Maybe it is.”
This was just the start of a bad day. Mason McKendrick had really gotten in my head.
Four
Mason
When the head coach calls you into his office at eleven in the morning on a Monday, it’s probably not a good thing. But it might be. Maybe after Saturday’s football game, he has decided to start me. Maybe it’s finally my time, the way I had always assumed it would be this year until Hawkins came.
I throw some sweats on and pull a Moray Athletics hoodie over my t-shirt and grab a cap and pull it down over the hair that I really need to cut. I should go to the barber sometime soon, or I’m gonna start looking like some seventies porn star, sans the ‘stache of course.
I head over to the coach’s office and flirt a little with the secretary Tami that has been a staple of the department for a few decades. She’s hilarious, and all of us boys love her.
“Hey, handsome. You get called in today too?” She looked down at her notebook and nodded. “Yep. Here you are. He’ll be with you in a minute, and I’m gonna warn you, he’s been in a ripe mood today.”
“You see the game on Saturday?” I say sweetly, knowing the answer already.
“Hell no, McKendrick. I get enough of you pricks every day.” She cackled, and it was deafening. Tami found herself incredibly funny.
Her phone rang, and she picked it up. “Yeah… Okay… Fuck, No! I’m not your delivery person, Harry, go and get your own goddamned Subway, and while you're there, pick me up something too.” She hung up and smiled at me. “He’ll see you now.”
“Well, thanks for pissing him off, Tami,” I grimaced.
“That’s fucking flirtation, McKendrick.”
I knocked and waited.
“McKendrick, get in here!” Coach Darnell said gruffly, his voice gravelly fro
m all the screaming and cigarettes.
I opened the door, and a shiver ran down my spine when I say Dean Winston sitting in a chair beside the coach’s desk. This wasn’t good. Coach grimaced at me, something had definitely pissed in his Wheaties today.
“Hey, Coach. You wanted to see me? Good morning, Dean Winston,” I nodded as I took a few steps in towards his desk.
“Sit down, McKendrick.” He gestured to the chair sitting lonely in front of his desk. It had been put there for a purpose.
“McKendrick… You’re what a junior this year, correct?” Dean Winston asked seriously. I nodded. “You still have one more year with us, son. That’s good to hear. You really came through for us in that last quarter. But that’s not what you’re here for, is it?”
“I’m…I’m not really sure, sir.” I sat down and immediately felt shame as they stared at me. I don’t know what I did, but whatever it was, I was about to get an ass reaming. Coach Darnell’s face was about as red as I had ever seen.
“I see,” he looked over at the coach, who stared right back at him. “You are here, Mason because you are extremely close to being put on academic suspension. You're already failing Art Appreciation, and after the year we had last year with that lawsuit…Well, we have to take this much more seriously this year, right, Coach?” My heart sunk.
“It’s a fucking elective, Jon. I can’t believe this shit!” Coach bellowed, slamming his hand down on the wooden desk. “You’re not gonna make me pull out the best fucking QB we have right now. Hawkins is gonna be great, but this is his learning year, and we need McKendrick out there pulling the last quarter or maybe the last half of the game to bring us home.”
“No, I’m not pulling him, yet. You have until midterms, Mason. I have scheduled you an appointment with the Lohry Tutoring Center so we can get you to scrape at least a C out of that class.” He reached out and handed me a small packet. I took it, my hand shaking about as much as it ever had before.
“Fucking baseball team,” Coach growled. “They had to push it too much, Jon, and now we are all paying the price for their fuck up.”
“This is an educational institution, Harry, and we want to see our boys and girls graduate and get the education they deserve while they are playing for this fine institution, even if we have to drag them kicking and screaming. But we won’t have to with you, will we, McKendrick? You’ve always been a smart boy and kept your nose clean,” Dean Winston said calmly, his voice tired from having this conversation. Coach was bull-headed.
“Hell, he’s our de facto captain this year. The goddamn heart of the team, they all look up to him as a leader, and if they find out he’s about to get benched on academic…fucking suspension, they’ll raise hell,” Coach’s stern voice carried a hint of a threat.
“I’ll get a C. Promise. I understand. Look, I don’t want to lose my scholarship or my place on the team. I can do this, Coach,” I nodded solemnly.
He stared me down for a second and nodded back. “Fine. But not a word of this, McKendrick, if you don’t mind. I don’t want the boys getting scared about this shit.”
“They should be scared, Harry. This is serious, and if I have to, I’ll bench whoever isn’t making the academic cut. It has to happen,” Dean Winston sighed tiredly, shaking a finger at Coach.
“That’s all, McKendrick. Go to that studying place today,” Coach dismissed me.
“You have an appointment, McKendrick. It’s in the packet and do not be late. We need you this season,” Dean Winston said, trying to show his support.
I stood up and walked out of the door, closing it behind me. Coach’s voice thundered as soon as I left.
Tami smiled as I exited. I felt like I had just been in the losing end of a fight. “It’s gonna be a long fucking day, handsome.”
It sure fucking was. How the fuck was I failing Art Appreciation, I showed up.
More importantly, how fucking stupid was I?
Pride.
Damn…I might be the only person in the history of this campus who had to get a tutor for looking at pictures. I somehow squeaked out B’s and C’s in math and science and A’s in my major, so I couldn’t understand how I was sucking at this class so bad. I turned in the work. I think.
A fucking tutor.
I glanced down and realized that my appointment was in a building I had walked past a few times on the other side of campus by the Fine Arts Building in two hours.
Coach didn’t need to worry. I would never tell a soul.
They would laugh at me.
Pride…It had always been my downfall.
Five
Calvin
Gina and I got through our first three tutoring sessions and decided to go grab a bite to eat over at the Campus Coffee Shop that was across the street from our office. I texted Chad and Mike, and they said they were on their way over too. We put away our files from the last sessions and grabbed our backpacks. I didn’t have a class until later in the day, so I needed something substantive in my belly.
We crossed the street, and Chad was already sitting at a table in the rear of the small diner. It smelled of fried onions and grease all the time, and I loved it. The Campus Coffee Shop was a town staple that usually had a ton of students in and out all day long, as well as townies who just wanted one of their juicy burgers. They even started serving alcohol after five in the afternoon. The campus asked them to stop serving during classes because students were imbibing and then going to classes.
Those asses aren’t taking their classes seriously. I never understood how someone can get stoned and go to class and then get all confused when they’re failing. Chris does it, and he gets by okay, but he would be doing better if he were sober in class. Whatever…Perhaps I take all of this too seriously. But I work hard to go here, so I think I take it the right amount of serious.
Chad scrunches up his face as we approach. He has that rubber face that can contort into the funniest expressions you can imagine. We called him Jim Carrey in middle school. Gina laughs girlishly as she slides into the booth. She totally has a crush on him, and Chad is clueless. He’s been that way his entire life. Mike and I find it hilarious.
“S’up, bitch,” Gina elbows Chad with her shoulder.
“Waiting for you motherfuckers. Mike is on the way and said to order him a double-double and some cheese fries,” Chad replied, a sullen look on his face.
“What’s wrong with you?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at him. “You look like you just ran over a small child on your way here.”
“No, I’m fine. Just hungry, as shit. I went out with some of Uncle Daniel’s farmhands last night and got fucked up on some moonshine at the lake. I’m getting too old for that shit, I guess. I feel like death.” He groaned loudly as he put his head in his hands. “I just wish someone would turn off the heavy metal music in my head. It’s killing me. I need to eat all the greasy shit I can right now.”
“That’s not real, by the way. Greasy food helps if you eat it before going drinking because of the way it coats your stomach. But it doesn’t help any afterward to cure a hangover. It’s the galanin that your brain releases when you drink. That enzyme is the reason you crave greasy food and why this fake cure started.” Gina grinned broadly. She was a walking Wikipedia page. I said she was the smartest person I know, right?
“Don’t science me, right now. Didn’t Jesus say something about greasy food curing hangovers? I think he did,” Chad tried to laugh and grabbed his temples. “Shit… I knew I shouldn’t eat with you guys. You always make me crack up.”
“Remember that time we got fucked up on moonshine when we were freshmen. It tasted like ass, and I thought I was dying about two hours later when I couldn’t stop puking my guts out. Chad, Mike, and me and a couple other guys were all in different parts of the field worshiping the… farm god. That was horrible. Never touched that shit again.” The memory still made me taste the bile in the back of my throat.
“Please stop… Not helping, at all,” Chad said, his fa
ce getting paler as the memory came across him.
“Yeah, stop. That’s fucking gross, and I’m gonna eat. That is not an image I want to think about, thank you very much!” Gina reached across the table and slapped my arm. “Oh, here comes the waiter, and Mike.” She nodded towards the door.
Mike slid into the booth beside me, and the waiter took our orders.
“Jesus. Sorry, I’m later than I thought. I ran into this girl from my Organizational Communications class. She uh… wanted to talk about the upcoming test,” Mike blushed.
“Really? Is that the same one from that study group you’ve been going to a lot?” Gina smirked knowingly.
“I’m really fucking hungry,” Mike grinned, pretending like he didn’t hear the question, which meant that it was the same girl.
“Mikey has a crush on a girl who studies,” Chad teased, a grimace still placed on his face. That made his teasing incredibly odd, almost mean.
Mike raised his eyebrows at Chad, completely flummoxed by his attitude.
“Moonshine,” I explained. Chad nodded very slowly.
“Shit. Didn’t you learn your lesson in high school? I swear I thought I was gonna…” Mike began but never got to finish. Gina reached over and covered his mouth with her hand.
“I heard all the gory details and don’t need to again. And good for you. Smart girls are hot,” she elbowed Chad in the ribs.
“Damn, Gina! I’m dying over here,” he leaned forward and put his head in his hands. “Sorry. Smart girls can be very hot.” This was as close to an apology that Chad could muster in his current state. Hell, it was as much of an apology as he would have given without the hangover.
“Whatever, bitch,” Gina elbowed him gentler. Chad groaned but smiled at her sweetly. Maybe he was more aware than he let on.
“Oh shit,” Chad laughed painfully. “Don’t look now, but your boy and some of the football mafia just walked in.”