Free Learning by Karen Kingsbury

the one belonging to Marcos Brown. His most recent status update said only: “Working on the farm. Again.” Marcos lived with his cousin’s family on a farm at the outskirts of town. Three years ago, his mother died of the flu, and his father was a lifer at the state penitentiary, convicted of killing his boss in an argument over a pay raise, according to the school principal, Ms. Baker.
    As it turned out, the boy’s uncle demanded hard work and lots of it — and he didn’t believe much in sports. The man also thought doing homework was a sign of weakness, which meant Marcos was pulling an
F
in two classes and a
D
in another. If he didn’t pick up his grades, he wouldn’t be able to play next year— and he was easily their biggest lineman. Cody made a mental note to talk to Marcos tomorrow.
    He checked a few other players’ pages and caught what looked like beer in the background of a couple photos. The more Cody looked through the profiles of his players, the more he became convinced he needed a meeting. He wasn’t taking a group of noncommitted kids into football summer camp this year. Not when so much was riding on the coming season. The whole town expected them to fail. If Coach Oliver couldn’t do anything with the Lyle Buckaroos — then Cody couldn’t possibly be better. He was too young. That was the mind-set.
    “You’ve heard of a rebuilding year,” one of the old men told him after practice last week. “Well, we’re looking for this to be a five-year rebuilding project.” He gave Cody a sharp but friendly slap in the shoulder. “It’ll take that long for you to look a day older than them boys out there on the field.”
    Cody was aware of the doubts around Lyle. He could live with that. What he couldn’t live with — absolutely not — was standing by and watching his players throw away their chances. Whether for a girl or for grades or because they’d gotten sucked into the same partying that had nearly destroyed Cody. He wasn’t there just to teach them how to win football games. It was his job to teach them about life. The way his coach, Jim Flanigan, had taught him.
    He was about to turn in when he saw that Cheyenne had posted something a few minutes ago. She was doing so much better than any of them had expected. Her situation was very serious for a few weeks after the accident. But once she began talking, it became evident that her personality was intact, her ability to reason and remember and feel — exactly as it had been before her injuries. But her physical body had been a mess of broken bones and nerve damage.
    After two weeks in the hospital, she’d been moved to aninpatient rehab facility in Indianapolis, where Cody stopped in to see her at least once a day. She was making tremendous strides — and once already he’d visited with a group of his players. They all knew about the accident, since it had happened during practice. Cody felt it important to keep them up on her recovery. Especially since he and the team had been praying for her every day.
    He clicked her name and went to her Facebook page. Her status read:
Thank You, God, for Cody … he’s been there for me every step along the way. Literally … I couldn’t have done this without him.
    A smile tugged on his lips and he looked for a long time at her picture. It was a snapshot of Cheyenne and Kassie — the little girl Chey had visited so often, who had died of leukemia. The girl’s loss was still hard for Cheyenne, and the photo was a way of keeping her memory alive. But tonight Cody couldn’t take his eyes off Cheyenne, the love in her eyes, the peace on her face. She was a very special person, and no matter what happened between them in the months to come, Cody definitely had feelings for her.
    Cody clicked the
like
button on Chey’s status and then went to his own:
Football meeting tomorrow after school … Oh, and Cheyenne is walking twice as fast now as she did when she arrived at the rehab center. Keep