Free Winger by Andrew Smith

back. But it wasn’t a threatening or intimidating “messing with”—it was always meant to show that we could take a joke, and joke back, too.
    Casey started it with his “nice shorts” comment at the start of practice, and now he had to endure being the object of our serenading. When we finished the first verse and one chorus, we jogged down to the locker room.
    The day had finally ended, and as I sat down on the bench and took off my cleats, the horrible day I’d had came back to me, and I thought again about what a loser I was already turning out to be on the first day of my eleventh-grade year.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
     
    I THREW MY CLOTHES ON without showering. I could do that back at O-Hall, even though the showers here in the locker room were so much cleaner and more private. But all I wanted to do was get away from school and deposit myself into bed. So I just wadded up my gear and stuffed it into my locker. I put my sweater inside my backpack and sloppily hung my tie over my shoulders without even buttoning or tucking in my shirt. The day was over, and now it didn’t matter if we were dressed properly or not.
    I didn’t even wait for Seanie and JP to get out of the showers. I shook hands with a few of the guys as I left the locker room.
    I guess it was about four thirty when I made my way down the hill on the path toward the lake. I could see some people walking around the campus below, but most kids at that time of day were either back in their dorms or finishing up whatever team sports were being practiced in September.
    I noticed Joey walking on the path, maybe about a hundred yards ahead of me, obviously heading back to O-Hall too. But when he got down to the football field, I saw Casey and Nick step out of a crowd of players who were standing around doing nothing (which is what most football players do all practice) and run over to Joey. And I could tell just by the way they were moving that they were looking to startshit with Joey, so I turned around, but no one else from the rugby team was walking down from the locker room yet.
    Great.
    Me and Joey versus the entire steroid-crazed-dumbass football team.
    I started walking faster. Casey and Nick didn’t even notice I was coming. They looked up the hill toward the locker room as Joey got closer, but who would notice my skinny-bitch-ass body coming down that way? Or, if they did notice me, what would it matter to them, anyway?
    Then I saw Casey, puffing his chest out, walk right up to Joey and push him hard, knocking Joey back. And Casey said, “You think you’re funny with your song, queer?”
    I threw my backpack down and ran as fast as I could.
    I knew Joey would fight. He wasn’t afraid of anyone. You had to be like that to be a fly half, and I’m sure that Joey had been hit square against his unpadded body at least a thousand times more than Casey ever had. But I wasn’t going to let him get gang-jumped by those assholes.
    So I ran faster than I did in practice. I had to. And just as Joey was making a fist, Nick was circling behind him, and Casey was in the process of throwing the first punch, I launched myself, head up and shoulder down, right into Casey’s knees and wrapped my arms around his legs, driving him, crashing, to the ground.
    I sprang up off Casey.
    Casey said, “What the fuck?” and he punched me in the face just as I got to my feet, knocking me down into Joey.
    And just then, one of the football coaches saw what was happening and yelled at us to cut it out. The coach just stood there, down the field, holding a clipboard and spitting tobacco, watching us like he was too lazy to come over and see if this was really a fight or not.
    All I can say is that if Coach M had seen what I did, my ass would be done. Over. Off the team. Kicked out of school.
    “What the fuck you think you’re doing, you little piece of shit?”
    I could only assume Casey Palmer was talking to me.
    Then I noticed my chest was covered in blood and my