The Grateful Boys

by Françoise DuMaurier

  Hailey was particularly thoughtful about what she’d wear to class, She knew she would keep the same outfit on to attend the Friday Night Lights football extravaganza later that day. Jean jacket, matching pants, a sequin top, perhaps.

  Friday’s school day came and went. To be sure, this was due in part to the fact that Friday before game night was always a half-day of class. The last few hours were devoted to a pep rally complete with marching band, cheerleaders, and varsity jacket-wearing football players. They were the smoldering type of boys that girls liked just as much for looks as their ability to catch and pass a football.

  It was at the pep rally that Hailey noticed the five pale-skinned, black-clad mysterious boys from earlier in the week. This was the first time she’d seen them since the hallway wink.

  The crowd was loud. The mystery boys were seated in the bleachers located on the other side of the gym, directly across from Hailey.

  “I’ve gotta join the cheer squad, Hails,” Madison said, seated next to her.

  “Sure you do,” Hailey said sarcastically. She was more focused on one of the mystery boys than she was on either the cheerleaders or Madison.

  The boy with the mohawk stood and was approached by one of the school’s vice principals, Dr Graham. The vice principal began pointing, possibly shouting, as if he were demanding the boy with the mohawk and his friends to leave. His aggression didn’t last long. Within moments, Dr Graham lowered his arm, slowly nodded his head up and down, and left.

  From what Hailey could see, nothing had occurred to warrant such a change in attitude. But why had the vice principal been so upset in the first place? Hailey thought perhaps she was too focused on these boys – too focused on this particular moment.

  Until she looked two seats across from the mohawked boy and spotted the most handsome one – at least in an unconventional ‘James Dean clad entirely in black’ sort of way. She was only caught by surprised when this mystery boy looked up, directly met her eye line, and smiled.

  Hailey immediately looked away. She tried her hardest not to look in their direction for as long as the pep rally continued.

  “That’s the second time. Should I introduce myself?” she asked aloud.

  When the pep rally was over and the crowds began to move, the five boys in black were the first out the door. Introducing herself now would be an impossibility.

  “Did you see them? Do you know where they went?” Hailey asked Madison.

  “You can’t be serious,” her friend answered. “I’m not on the lookout for a set of goths when we’ve got a whole team of fit football players right here on the court.”

  “Oh, ah… yeah,” Hailey said, feeling slightly embarrassed. “Right.”

  “Forget those boys,” Madison told her as they left the gym. “Tonight I promise you’ll do better at the football game.”

  ***

  It was Friday evening. The big night had finally arrived. The football field was located behind the school. If the town spent money anywhere, it was here. The bright lights, the brand-new scoreboard – the shiny bleachers that looked as if there were enough of them to seat every citizen of Corpus – plus a few more. The pre-game field was littered with cheerleaders, mascots, football players, referees, coaches and assistant coaches dressed in their Sunday finest (for Friday night, no less). An out-of-town spectator would have thought the NFL had come to town. Well, almost.

  Then there was the commentator’s box. The average person might ask why a live high school football game that wasn’t broadcast on television would require color commentators. But football in Corpus was different from football anywhere else. For the select few who couldn’t make the game in-person, the town made sure they were able to listen. The local station WKP-26 teamed up with the school to provide radio coverage of every event.

  The commentator’s box consisted of ol’ DJ Jazz along with two of the high school’s most rabid football fans. To be sure, the school contained numerous football fanatics but the commentator’s box consisted of two who were good on the ears.

  The team was called the Corpus Cheetahs. The mascot was – what else – a cheetah. The school colors were yellow and blue. The costumed mascot wore a yellow headpiece along with a blue varsity jacket. The overall look made him appear closer to a yellow version of the werewolf from Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ than an actual cheetah. When Mason saw this mascot, he assumed the massive school budget must have went elsewhere.

  The field was pristine. The bright green grass was so perfectly manicured and so perfectly green that it had to have been AstroTurf.

  Mason arrived, not on a bike with Alex, but by car. His mom offered to drive him since she would be in attendance as well. Hailey, however, chose to ride with Madison.

  With a half hour before the game would begin, Mason and his mom headed to the crowded bleachers.

  “Hi!” Mel called out when she spotted the sheriff. In fact, she had only barely recognized him out of uniform.

  Occasions in which Sheriff Zeddman didn’t wear his badge and uniform were rare. Cops were definitely in attendance at the game, but each of them were spectators who turned a blind eye to what they knew was wild high school partying.

  “Kids will be kids. Game night’s their time to have fun,” was the consensus among, well, everyone. Unless things got out of hand. And in the years since Zeddman had been sheriff, only once had things gotten so out of hand that he had to take on the duties of sheriff during a football game.

  One year a couple of teenage boys had been drinking too heavily. Things got out of hand in the nearby woods and, well, Sheriff Zeddman wasn’t having that kind of foolishness.

  “Well hello Mel,” Sheriff Zeddman said as he approached her and Mason at the ground level of the bleachers.

  “Sheriff this is my son, Mason.”

  “Hi there, young guy,” the sheriff said.

  “Hey Sheriff. I’ve heard you on the radio,” Mason told him.

  “Yes, sir. And there’s the DJ right up there in the commentator’s box. But the radio could use a fresh set of lips if you ask me,” the Sheriff said.

  “Go find our seats, honey,” Mel told Mason. And off he went with their tickets.

  “You look nice outside of your work uniform,” Zeddman told Mel.

  “I was going to say the same to you,” she beamed. “So, are you here with your wife or kids?”

  “No, no,” he corrected her. “My only daughter’s off to college in Tennessee. She couldn’t wait to leave, I tell ya. And I’ve been divorced for several years.”

  Sheriff Zeddman decided to ask her if she was married. Now he did this for two reasons. The first is that he saw her arrive only with Mason – which insinuated she had no husband. But the second reason is that he noticed a wedding ring on her finger – which insinuated she did have a husband. Asking was the only way to clarify. She informed the sheriff that her husband died three years ago.

  “So sorry for your loss. But I’m glad you made your way back to Corpus,” he told her. “I promise it’s worth it just for the football games. If you haven’t been to a game since you graduated… then you are gonna be in for quite the show.”

  Mel laughed and they exchanged a few more words as vendors walked through the stands selling hot dogs, sodas, cotton candy, glow sticks, and an assortment of other memorabilia or paraphernalia you’d find at a big sporting event.

  Meanwhile Mason found his spot, waved to his mom to let her know where it was, then took off to find his friends. First he found Alex in the stands. Then Sebastian. By the time the three of them got to Ben, they’d made it to the other side of the stadium.

  “The school really does go all out for the football games,” Mason said.

  “Imagine if they lost,” Ben laughed, chomping on a hot dog, “You ain’t seen nothing. Wait ’til the game begins.”

  “Rioting if we lose,” Mason’s eyes lit up.

  “No, no, no,” Sebastian interjected. “Dude, teenagers don’t actually watch t
he game. The adults watch the game. Students watch a little bit of the game then we head out to the woods.”

  “Tell me more,” Mason asked, now curious.

  “Well we mostly just watch from the sidelines,” Sebastian admitted. “But the high school kids get drunk. Sometimes they fight. Or we just watch the guys make out with the hot chicks.”

  “Hmm,” Mason said, unsure if that should be thrilling or uneventful. “Fascinating. Very fascinating.”

  “Anyone seen any good horror movies lately?” Alex asked, changing the topic.

  “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” Ben said.

  “How great would it be if Leatherface just popped out the woods and started killing people?” Sebastian laughed.

  “No, dude,” Alex answered. “That actually would not be very funny at all. What world do you live in where that’s a great thing?”

  Alex gave him the strangest look – a suggestion that Sebastian was a total weirdo.

  “I’m just joking. Damn, Alex. Stop looking at me like that,” Sebastian spouted.

  “Nah, we know you, Seb,” Ben said. “You really are a weirdo.”

  “Screw you too, Pillsbury,” Sebastian said as he grabbed Ben and put him in a headlock.

  Ben promptly shoved him away. “Stop trying to fight me!”

  Mason looked towards the woods beyond the bleachers and saw a faint light.

  “What’s that?” Mason asked.

  The others turned. Their eyes laying upon the same light. Alex told him this was the light emanating from the bonfire. The one the older high school students hung out around, got drunk, and made out under the trees.

  “Where’s Matthew?” Ben asked.

  “You can’t expect him to hang out with us all the time,” Sebastian answered. “I mean he’s probably out at the bonfire, already half drunk.”

  The thought of Matthew drinking with other high schoolers left them in hysterics.

  “No way,” Mason said.

  “You never know,” Ben shrugged.

  “We could sneak around and find out,” Sebastian suggested.

  “What if we find something crazy?” Alex asked.

  “Like what?” Sebastian scoffed.

  “Well, there’s this old horror movie called Camp Sleepaway. And well, it’s crazy.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sebastian said incredulously.

  “It means crazy shit can happen at any moment,” Alex answered with an air of paranoia in his voice. “I mean, it’s pretty dark out.”

  “We’d be at Mason’s place tonight if this game weren’t on,” Ben reminded them.

  “Nothing wrong with trying something different,” Mason said. “And I’m expecting an easy-going night.”

  “Yeah,” Alex nodded. “Everything’s always pretty easy going in Corpus.”

  “Now,” Sebastian jumped in. “Let’s have some fun.”

  ***

  When Hailey arrived at the school with Madison, the football was to begin in a matter of minutes. Madison parked her car in the dirt lot on the side of the school.

  The parking lot was still made of hard dirt – to be sure. But otherwise it was unrecognizable. The parking lot was filled not only with cars but with teenagers. Boys were shirtless, girls were raving, and kegs filled with alcohol were being rolled around the lot by the barrel.

  A chant of “Chug, Chug, Chug!” broke out as soon as Madison and Hailey exited their car.

  Hailey’s eyes practically grew two sizes bigger. “This is, uh, not what I expected to see.”

  “Ain’t it great,” Madison beamed.

  The chants continued and the drinks flowed. With the ability to see the massive digital scoreboard from the parking lot, the participants would take a shot each time the Cheetahs advanced on the leaderboard.

  “So we’re not gonna watch the game?” Hailey asked.

  “Heck no!” Madison said as she twirled around a table. “Nobody comes for the games. Not when there’s a tailgate party!”

  Far off in the distance, Hailey thought she saw that same mysterious handsome boy in black, the one who’d winked or smiled or gazed into her eyes on two separate occasions now. She almost felt compelled to move in the direction she thought she saw him. Until a boy with a yellow ‘C’ painted on his chest grabbed her.

  She yelped as the guy put a shot glass in her hand.

  “First shot?” he asked.

  “First shot,” she confirmed.

  Hailey downed her first shot of tequila – or maybe whiskey. She wasn’t a drinker and had no way of telling what it was. When she looked around, she noticed kegs and bottles of every variety. She only knew she was gulping down shots of brown liquor that scratched her throat. It burned going down. But she quickly learned this brown stuff was the elixir of invincibility.

  “Why haven’t I tried this sooner?” Hailey slurred.

  A half hour passed. She looked around and found Madison making out on the bed of a truck with a boy she definitely didn’t know.

  Another shot or two later, Hailey found herself dancing with a few other girls and swinging a set of beaded necklaces around her neck.

  “Mardi Gras beads!” she laughed.

  “Hey, Hailey,” a voice called out. Then a finger tapped her on the shoulder.

  She turned around and spotted Charlie Ray. He had a beer in his hand. It inevitably gave him more courage than the day he stood by her locker and tried his hardest to ask her out.

  “Hey Charlie Ray,” Hailey said in a tone that was less awkward than their last meeting.

  “Hailey, I feel like we had, y’know, um, like… a bad start,” he told her.

  “Yeah,” Hailey nodded, her head swimming in not-so-clear thoughts.

  Charlie Ray reached over a cooler, grabbed another beer, and began drinking. His speech slurred further.

  “But it… y’know… um… yeah…”

  “What?” Hailey asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “I’m tryin’… well.. yeah… I’m tryin’ to say… something… lemme think… um, yeah. I’m tryin’ to say… ugh… it doesn’t… y’know… didn’t have to be that way,” he stammered and stumbled.

  “Doesn’t have to be what way?” Hailey asked – her eyes now wide open.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, now without slurring. It was the kind of way a person talks when they’re drunk but pretending they’re not.

  The game raged on. Considering how alcohol consumption impairs vision, the imbibed teenagers were unable to tell the score from the digital leaderboard located all the way on the field. This made it varying degrees of difficult to take an additional shot of alcohol when your team scored a point. Therefore the quickest fix to an imbibed teenage mind was to simply take a shot every time you heard the buzzer.

  So here they were, taking shots regardless of what team scored a touchdown. When asked how they intended to drive home, one teenage told another, “very… very slowly.”

  Hailey wasn’t quite sure how Madison was going to drive them home. The very same Madison who was now sitting on a truck bed staring into space as if she were trying to make sense of the stars.

  “I’m drunk but at least I’m not doing that,” Hailey told herself.

  “This your… first time?” Charlie Ray asked her.

  “First time… what?” she raised a solitary eyebrow.

  “Drinking,” he asked.

  “To be honest… yeah,” she admitted.

  “How about a, uh, a little more?” he asked.

  “No, I think… I think… I should quit while I’m ahead,” she fumbled. “No… no more.”

  “Follow me,” he said. “There’s something I want to show you.”

  Had Hailey been in a state of sobriety, she knew there was no way in hellfire she would follow Charlie Ray anyway. But not being in her usual state of mind – that is, being this imbibed for the first time in her life with lowered inhibitions, she allowed herself to follow him along what could only be described as a metaphorical rabbit ho
le.

  Charlie Ray grabbed her by the hand. He led her through the parking lot, off into the woods. They ducked under branches and hopped over dirt piles until they reached the glowing embers within the forest.

  Hailey ran faster and faster, unaware of her surroundings. Cold winds brushed against her face until she stopped in her tracks.

  Charlie Ray’s palm was sweating. Finally he let go of her hand once they reached the center of the woods. A massive bonfire was roaring. Teenagers with war paint across their chests and face danced around the fire and threw branches into the burning center.

  “This almost looks like some crazy kinda ritual,” Hailey laughed.

  “Not in a town like this,” Charlie Ray laughed. “Just kids having fun.”

  There were couples making out on the ground – the surrounding fire warming their bodies against the cool night air.

  A girl sprinted her way toward Hailey as if she were floating. She handed Hailey a piece of garlic.

  “What’s this for?” Hailey asked.

  “You’re a child of the earth now,” the girl told her. “This is to ward away the evil.”

  “That’s kinda weird,” Hailey said, her vision still blurry as she peered at the pulp of garlic in her hand.

  “I’m just bullshitting!” the girl laughed. “I mean, some people are serious about it. But I’m not. Y’know, kids are crazy. Some are more superstitious than others. But look over there.”

  The girl ran in the direction she pointed – towards a boy carrying a large assemblage of fireworks.

  “We’re gonna set ’em off!” the boy shouted.

  The crowd of debauched teenagers roared.

  “Hailey, let’s get back a bit. This could be dangerous,” Charlie Ray told her.

  “But I wonna see,” Hailey groaned as he pulled her away from the crowd and off toward a tree.

  “You can see just fine from here,” he said.

  “But I wonna be closer,” Hailey said.

  As she took a step toward the bonfire, Charlie Ray grabbed her by the arm.

  “Let go of me!” Hailey said nervously.