Connor
Tweeet!
Coach Reno’s whistle pierces the air seconds before his booming voice. “Defense! Five burmas! I don't care if you're puking your guts out, everybody finishes.”
The huge defensive linemen, faces already purple from exertion, groan collectively as they all head to the imaginary trail leading all around the school campus that has been dubbed a ‘burma’.
“Conditioning.” Coach’s voice carries to the defense, as they run, heads hanging low. “You guys look like you haven’t left your mama’s couch all summer. Offense! To the line!” This new proclamation is met with no less groaning from my teammates on offense. “One hundred yard suicides!”
Lining up in the end zone, I crouch into my stance, deciding for the thousandth time I hate our head coach.
Tweeet!
I’m just as frustrated with my team. It’s my senior year, my last chance to get the attention of the scouts from State. I really want a scholarship. I’ve worked my ass off all summer conditioning, doing drills, and studying film. If these dipshits don’t get their act together, there’s no way we’re winning the State Championship this year. And I need to win.
Glancing at the water table, I see Allie. Just the sight of her sympathetic smile as she catches my eye, makes me run harder. Faster. That is until she turns that bright smile of hers toward Jared Maxwell, the water boy and the only guy on the team I haven’t yet threatened with bodily harm if he messes with Allie.
Of course, Jared is a freshman and weighs one fifteen soaking wet. I swear, the guy’s voice still hasn’t changed. I could probably forgo my usual speech, the one that kept Allie safe from asshole jocks like my teammates. I really don’t think Jared is a threat.
“Dude, this sucks.” My best friend on the team, JJ Coleman grimaces as he heads back to the end zone from the twenty-five yard line. I am already at the thirty-five, a sure sign that all my hard work this summer has paid off at least a little bit. JJ, on the other hand, spent the summer drinking and partying and he's paying for it now. I just can’t afford to lose focus like that.
“Suck it up, man.” I harass JJ when I pass him again.
“Enough small talk, Sanders!” Coach Reno shouts, reinforcing my earlier conclusion that he is not my favorite person, not because he's a tough coach, I don't mind hard work. No, I don't like him because he's an ass.
I look toward Allie again. She’s facing the field, the corners of her mouth lift in a smirk when our eyes meet again. She knows exactly how I feel about the coach.
Jared catches my attention again, looking a little too enthusiastic when Allie laughs at something he’s saying and suddenly I’m trying to remember when it was exactly that I became so damn protective of the girl next door.
It’s nothing new, I guess. I’ve been helping Allie out of scrapes since we were kids. Like that time I knocked out Billy Prescott’s front tooth for locking Allie in the shed during a game of hide and seek. I still get pissed off just thinking about it. It helped that I was bigger than most of the other kids around our age (thanks to genetics and a virus I’d gotten traveling in South America which made me miss most of first grade so I had to repeat it, putting me one grade above Allie rather than two).
I guess it was her freshman year, though, when I realized just how much Allie was going to need looking after. She decided to sign up to be the student athletic trainer for football. At first, I thought it would be awesome, right? My best friend hanging out at football. It wasn’t long, however, before I realized just how wrong I was.
The first week of summer practice, Allie was the hottest topic in the locker room. It was the first time I’d been exposed to how other guys looked at my best friend and it was not cool. Everything came to a head one day when I went to find Allie to give her a ride home only to find Travis Jacobs, a senior and the school’s biggest douche giving Allie a hard time.
I will never forget the look of relief on her face when she saw me walk in that room or the sudden, explosive rage that had me yanking Travis around by his collar, slamming him into the wall and threatening his future childbearing opportunities if I ever saw him messing with Allie again.
I probably could have handled that situation better. Typically, sophomores threatening seniors never ended well for the little guy, but I wasn’t that little (it was even better when I stole the starting quarterback position from Travis). After that no one messed with Allie in the training room or anywhere else. Rumors started that Allie was my girlfriend. But I squelched those too, by asking out Danielle Masters, a junior and one of the most popular girls in school. It didn't take long for everyone to believe I wasn't interested in Allie and some of them even forgot we were friends. What a bunch of idiots.
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“You ready to go?” I ask, poking my head into the training room after practice. Allie looks up from slicing off Bruce Beckett’s ankle tape. He’s a sophomore and plays JV and he’s looking at the top of Allie’s head like she’s an angel sent straight from heaven- until he catches me scowling at him.
“Thanks, Allie!” Bruce jumps off the table and practically runs out of the training room. Smart kid. “See ya, Connor.” I barely nod at him.
“Good grief, Connor. Stop scaring the underclassman.”
What? Ugh. Let me tell you something about Allie, she is completely clueless. This is a good thing for the most part. She is sweet and unspoiled and completely unaffected by her own beauty. In fact, I’m pretty sure she has this crazy idea that she isn’t pretty. Wrong. She is gorgeous. Not flashy, but in a girl-next-door kind of way with a blonde ponytail swinging down her back, wide hazel eyes, and a few cute freckles across the bridge of her nose.
“What are you talking about?”
She turns to me, her brow furrowing in that cute way it does when she’s trying to figure me out.
“Bruce. You just scared the crap out of him.”
“Oh. You know how it is with the JV guys.” And usually I’m above all that. I remember what it was like being a freshman and sophomore (remember Travis Jacobs?). I make a point to not be a jerk to the younger guys and get after anyone who does. Except when it comes to Allie, who is still staring at me like she’s wondering what is going through my head.
“You done?” Seriously, she's gonna make me squirm with that penetrating glare of hers.
“Yeah.” She tosses the wadded-up tape from Bruce's ankle in the trash can and grabs her backpack off the chair by the door and we walk together to my truck.
I open the door for her just like I always do and she shakes her head like it’s completely unnecessary just like she always does. My mom may not have taught me manners, but hers had.
“You got a lot of homework?” I ask, sliding into the driver’s seat.
“Nope.”
“Wanna play?” I don’t know how much time we’ll have once this year really takes off. I want to hang out as much as possible and that usually means kicking zombie ass.
“Sure. But only if you promise to behave yourself,” she threatens, her finger pointing in my face.
Right.
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Haha! Yes! There she is. I use my controller to back my character out of the darkened room showing on my half of the television screen and run him down the hall. I glance down at Allie’s portion of the screen. Her character will hit the room in three, two, one-
“Allie, in there! Go in that room!”
Allie’s character races into the room, full tilt- and wakes up the witch hiding in the corner.
“Hahahaha!” I lean over until our shoulders touch, laughing in her ear as the witch comes after her and her character dies. “You fall for it every time.”
Scowling, she smacks me on the back of the head. “You suck. You know that, right?” Allie drops her controller on the blanket in front of us as we lay on our stomachs, side-by-side, at the end of her double bed.
Just for that I kick her foot off mine.
“Hey!” she screeches.
You see, Allie has this foot thing. She’s always messing with my feet when we play video games. She’s even instituted a no sock rule because footsie with socks on is apparently a travesty.
Looking injured, she attacks my feet again. “You owe me after tricking me...again.”
“You shouldn’t be playing footsie with me all the time. I have a girlfriend.” Allie scowls at the mention of my girlfriend, Kayla. I’m just teasing her, though, because she’s been doing that foot thing since we were kids taking naps on mats in her mom’s daycare. “Besides, I can’t help myself. You’re just so damn gullible.” I laugh and she kicks me this time.
“I am not gullible. We’ve been best friends all our lives. Heaven forbid, I actually trust you.” She nudges my shoulder, trying to make me feel guilty for getting her fake killed.
“Nah-uh. I cannot be manipulated by you anymore. I’m immune.” Allie rolls her eyes and then rolls off the bed, taking my controller with her.
“Fine, then I am done killing zombies for today.” Allie sets our controllers on top of the console under her television. It’s actually my console, but we never hang out at my house, so all of my games and shit are in her room.
“Awe, come on, Alberta.” She hates it when I call her that, but of all my favorite things, riling Allie up is my absolute favorite. Her eyes shoot daggers at me and her lips flatten. See? It’s hilarious.
“Jerk.” She punches my arm, then shakes out her hand, making me laugh.
“Good grief, Allie, you think you’d learn.” I flex my bicep, obnoxiously patting it with my hand.
“Arrogant jerk.” She sticks her tongue out at me and starts putting away laundry from a basket on her floor.
“You know you love me, Al. Don’t try to deny it.” I mean the words playfully but the smile slips from her lips, making me feel bad. She tries to hide from me by carrying a stack of folded jeans into her walk-in closet. But I know her, something I said made her sad.
It’s been like this all summer. Of course, we hung out every day. Playing video games, working out, helping her mom with her daycare kids. After all day together, we usually ended up sort of flirting. Nothing serious, you know, I never meant anything by it (not much, anyway). Most of the time I was just trying to get her to blush or I’d say something to make her eyes widen and say ‘Co-nnor’ the way she does when she can’t really believe I’d just said what I did.
But sometimes, she gets this look in her eyes, and I know I’ve gone too far. But I can never guess what’s gonna put that look on her face until after it’s already out. All I know, it makes me feel horrible. Allie is my best friend. Seriously, the most important person in my life. I don’t even know what I’d do without her. Probably die.
We tested it out one time when we were little, but not on purpose. My jerk parents thought it would be fun for me to go to this sleepaway camp the summer I was nine and Allie was seven. I made it one week without her before the camp people called my parents and they had to come pick me up. After that, I threw the hugest fit whenever they even mentioned doing anything that would take me away from Allie for more than a day or so. See? Death.
Rolling onto my back in the middle of her bed, I stare at the poster of N’SYNC tacked to the ceiling. And I know I’ve got to say something to make her laugh again.
“You know, Al. The school printed these posters of all the senior football players. Full size.” I point to her boy band poster. “I’d be happy to give you one to put up right there. I’ll even help you hang it.”
“Sacrilege! How dare you?” She pokes her head out of her closet, her face a mask of feigned outrage. “How would I ever fall asleep without J.T. and his boys right by me?”
I grin at her, trying to hide the fact that her comment kinda made me feel hot all over. Allie’s always saying things like that, stuff that I could totally take the wrong way. Allie’s mind may never be in the gutter, but mine usually is and now I seriously want to put my poster up there so Allie can fall asleep every night looking at me and not some boy band from fifteen years ago.
Not that our relationship is like that. At all. No, Allie and me- purely platonic. I mean, sure I’ve thought about it. Ever since Mrs. B pulled me aside when I was thirteen and told me she wasn’t stupid and let me know it wasn’t appropriate for me to sneak into Allie’s room through her window anymore and have secret sleepovers, I haven’t been able to think of Allie as just my friend. Since then, I think of her as my friend and a girl. It sucks.
Plus, I used to love our secret sleepovers. See, there's this treehouse outside Allie’s second story window that allows easy and secret access to her room. We used to have so much platonic fun, playing video games with the sound down or watching scary movies and no one ever knew. Or at least we thought they didn't.
I wonder if Mrs. B knows I didn’t actually stop coming over until I was sixteen and it had become damn near impossible to hide my reaction to Allie and I sleeping in the same bed. Seriously, I can’t even tell you how tempted I am sometimes to take advantage of that stupid treehouse.
But I don’t. Everything is ‘just friends’ (well, mostly) because you see, I can’t lose Allie (please see the aforementioned sleepaway camp story). What if I try to take things to the next level? Or even mention it and Allie runs screaming from the room?
Connor loses Allie forever.
Not. Going. To. Happen. I just couldn’t survive that kind of world. So instead, I keep up a steady stream of girlfriends that don’t really mean anything and spend every spare minute outside of school, football, and stupid social obligations to the popular crowd- with Allie.
And, for now, I don’t let on that my mind has gone down completely inappropriate paths, because she is smiling at me again. Instead I ask, “How do you feel about physics after your first day?”
And all is right with the world as she launches into a detailed description of the huge homework assignment Richardson laid on her class the first day (but isn’t due until next week, she reassured me, since we’ve been playing video games for three hours). See? That’s what happens when I keep my non-platonic thoughts to myself- Connor still has Allie.