Chapter 24

I wasn’t surprised when I got to school the next day and Mr. Keller intercepted me and asked me to come to his office. I will say it was a different experience knowing what I was being called into his office for and knowing that I wasn’t actually in trouble. I’d been in here several times since the start of the school year, but this was the first time I hadn’t actually been nervous doing it.

“I’m assuming your attorney talked to you already about the restraining order?”

“Yep,” I said, smiling. “The case and the restraining order were both dismissed. He said he talked to the district attorney yesterday.”

“Yes, he did. I know we already lifted most of the restrictions on you, so all that’s really left is to allow you to take part in the tutoring program again.”

“What about my schedule? It was changed to keep me away from Aaron when this all started.”

“Yes. We looked at it. Since the original moves had happened within a few days of classes starting before everyone was already settled in their schedule, it hadn’t been that much of a burden. Now, considering it’s been two months already, we decided it would cause issues both for your teachers, who’ve already adjusted their classes to this current schedule, and your own opportunities for this year to switch your schedule back. I’ve spoken to Coach Dean and he is fine having you continue your conditioning class separate from the rest of the team for the remainder of the year. I know that’s probably not what you wanted to hear, but we think it’s for the best.”

He was right, that wasn’t what I wanted to hear, mostly because it left me in Coach Bryant’s class. Although he hadn’t been as big of a pain this semester as he had last semester, mostly just ignoring me, I had a suspicion he might have been on his best behavior while we waited to see what was going to happen with Aaron’s lawsuit. Now that it was over, I was a little worried he might get back up to his old tricks.

That being said, I didn’t blame Mr. Keller. He’d played things pretty decently with me so far this year and I was sure that he had come to this decision because he thought it was the best option. I would just have rather dropped Coach Bryant’s class if at all possible.

“I understand,” was all I said though.

“Since she set it up originally, just talk to Ms. Seidel about starting with your tutor again, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, although I wasn’t sure I was going to do that.

As he ushered me out of his office, I decided that for now, I wouldn’t talk to Ms. Seidel about tutoring. The only person I wanted to be my tutor was Kat, and as of right now she wasn’t even a student in this school. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to get another one, especially if she was going to come back. While I had a lot to work on to get caught up on algebra, I’d said I’d give Kat a week to call so we could figure out what was going on. I knew she’d be crushed if she did come back and I had another tutor, since she’d already invested so much effort in getting me this far. By the end of the week, either she would have called or I would be talking to Chef about the abuse, but one way or another I’d know better if she was going to be coming back to school or even around anymore.

Besides, my being off all restrictions wasn’t the only exciting thing that happened that day. I’d swung by the choir room to hand a copy of some of the recent changes we’d made to my songs and a copy of Seth’s song that I’d written out on after Mr. Eaves had left the night before. Mr. French was interested in what we were doing and had asked me to keep him up to date on what we were doing, so every time we changed something, I went home and wrote those changes down. I actually found I liked the practice, since besides having a copy for Mr. French to look over and make notes on for us, the act of writing it down gave me a second chance to look at everything after a little separation from our practice.

Because of the stop, I was one of the last people to make it to the lunch table, which was already buzzing with excitement.

“Did you hear?” Megan asked when I sat down.

“Assume no,” I said, looking around for a clue.

“Can we not talk about this,” Jordan said, annoyed.

“By that, I assume something, happened with Rhonda,” I said in as uninterested a voice as I could manage.

I’d meant it when I said I was writing her off. She’d made her own bed and whatever bad thing that happened to her was her own fault at this point.

“Harry told everyone on the football team about sleeping with her over the weekend. He and Aaron were sharing details about her and laughing. One of their genius friends started spreading the details in their class this morning,” Jordan said.

“I warned her this was going to happen,” I said.

I wasn’t gloating. If anything, I was sad that she’d ended up facing the consequences of her choices.

“Thing is, she’s come out on top,” Megan said. “She’s put the word out to all of the cheerleaders to avoid Harry like the plague.”

“And that worked?” I asked.

“If it were Aaron, who actually puts up numbers and has some cred, probably not, but Harry’s always been a hanger-on. Since Aaron’s done at the end of this year, he’s trying to position himself as the next big man on campus, but it isn’t taking. He’s never put up real numbers in football and he had one somewhat okay game this year on baseball. Plus, he tries to copy Aaron’s style and sense of humor and falls flat.”

“Aaron has a sense of humor?” Hanna asked.

“For assholes,” I said. “I noticed Harry trying hard. He’s been at me since baseball season started. So the cheerleaders are listening to Rhonda?”

“Yep, he’s toast, basically. He’s going to have to start going pretty far away from his normal hunting grounds for dates now,” Jordan said.

“I’d say I feel sorry for him, but I’d be lying. I guess Rhonda got what she wanted. Why didn’t they go after Aaron too, since he was talking it up also?”

“Aaron’s still got too much pull, probably,” Megan said. “I bet she figured if she tried to include him, they wouldn’t have backed her. Camille might be dating him for now, but that won’t last long. He’ll be on to someone else by the end of the month, and they’re probably all hoping it’s one of them.”

“Rhonda’s always been smart, if a manipulative little bitch,” Jordan said.

I was surprised by how quickly Jordan had turned on her sister. They’d never been close, but before Christmas, they’d been spending more time together and I thought they might repair their relationship. While my ego would like to think maybe Jordan had my back after my breakup with her sister, I was pretty sure it was related to Rhonda’s new push to be queen bee. She’d started adopting a lot of Karen Brooks’ personality traits, and not the better ones. I’d written her off after two conversations, so I could just imagine what living with her was like.

“I wouldn’t have put it like that, but yeah. She’s always had an eye for what’s going to get her to that next level she’s aiming for.”

“What are the odds Harry learns from his lesson?” Fatima asked.

“Zero to none. He makes Aaron look like a Mensa candidate. I’m just hoping he doesn’t decide I’m to blame for it,” I said.

“Look on the bright side, at least she won’t be yelling at you when you finally end up having to kick his ass.”

“There’s that,” I said.

Jordan awkwardly changed the subject and we all went along with it. Bad relationship or no, it must not be great to hear your sister being talked about like some kind of Barbie Machiavelli, and especially having to hear details of her sex life. It was fine with me, since the less I had to hear about her, the better.

The rest of the week rolled by still without a word from Kat. Although my Saturday was busy, I was now more dead set than ever that Sunday night I was going to talk with Chef about what was going on.

I had to make it through Saturday first, though. I was up and at the school by nine a.m. to catch the team bus that was taking us to Murphy, which was a slightly larger town up state highway twenty-five, which broke off from I-26 just south of town.

It was actually a full day of games, with teams from around the region converging on Murphy. We had two games, both pretty early. Our first game was against Murphy High itself and was the first game of the day. We then had to wait while two other teams played, and then we played Canton High, which was yet another small-town high school, this time east of Asheville instead of north of it.

Canton was pretty low ranked and they’d lost every game so far this year, but Murphy High was supposed to be pretty good, or at least their varsity was. I wasn’t sure how much scouting we’d actually done for junior varsity, since everything I heard always seemed to apply to varsity.

We pulled up to Murphy high school and parked next to their baseball field. Their school was both larger and looked to be newer than Carr, so I was surprised by how much smaller and less impressive their baseball field was. I guess I’d grown used to our field, with its dedicated batting cage, covered players benches, and stands both along the baselines and by the outfield. This was a lot smaller and looked closer to the fields I’d played on at RV parks. This was our first away trip, so I didn’t know if theirs was exceptional for being Spartan or ours was particularly fancy, but they definitely weren’t the same.

I was just climbing off the bus behind David when Coach Bryant grabbed me by the arm and said, “Come with me.”

I pulled out of his grip but continued following him when he turned to glare at me. He was still a coach and could get me kicked off the team, but I’d be damn if I was going to let him manhandle me.

He stopped near the back of the bus and turned around, confronting me.

“We’ve received reports of you threatening and even attacking other players after practice. This kind of behavior is unacceptable. Between this and the attack on a student at the end of the year, you’ve shown you aren’t the kind of person we want on our team. As of right now, you’re benched and I expect once we speak to the administration on Monday morning, you will find yourself off the team entirely.”

There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that the ‘other player’ was Harry and he was probably talking about when Harry attacked me in the parking lot the other day and the ‘student’ who I supposedly attacked at the end of the year was Aaron. It had been a few weeks since the Harry incident and it seemed unlikely that Harry had waited until the bus ride here to try and get me in trouble for it, which meant this was about something else.

If I had to guess, Aaron had been in his ear about the case against me getting thrown out, and Coach Bryant, true to form, had decided to do something about it. Harry knew I had video of it and that video would show I hadn’t done anything wrong, but it’s possible Harry reported the incident to Coach Bryant to try and get me in trouble without mentioning the video. Harry was incapable of thinking ahead and it wouldn’t occur to him that at best anything that happened to me would get reversed and at worst he’d get in trouble for lying about me attacking him. Of course, maybe Harry mentioned it and Coach Bryant hadn’t cared. He’d also shown a breathtaking lack of forethought in his petty games before.

“I think you might have gotten bad information, Coach,” I asked calmly. “Is there anything I can do to change this and still play today?”

“No. I don’t care what you do right now, but I don’t want to see you on the bench during the games. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, Coach,” I said, again remaining calm.