Chapter 18

As winter slowly turned to spring, things perked up. Practice for track had gotten under way, if mostly in the gym due to the cold weather. Due to the weather the spring sports season was short and tended to be pretty intensive. The season only lasted two months, and like most spring sports, the seniors on the varsity track teams were starting to look beyond high school sports anyway.

Even though the meets had yet to get under way, the discussion of track gave the four who normally inhabited the corner table in the lunchroom something different to talk about, not that they didn’t already have plenty to discuss. They still held their study sessions, sometimes weekly, sometimes twice a week, and everybody, including Bree, had seen improvement in their grades, not that Bree had needed much improvement – she’d been an all-A student already, although she’d had to struggle in some of her classes to do it.

Even though Howie and Autumn had agreed they weren’t really boyfriend and girlfriend, they went on with trying to present to the world that they were, just as Jared and Bree did. They were all just friends, with no particular favoritism, but united in the belief that they didn’t want to get involved in any high school dramas. The façade they presented pretty well allowed them to float above the storm.

Howie’s hassles with Misty were only rarely a topic of discussion, mostly because there hadn’t been any major ones since back in December, when she’d made a move on him right in front of Autumn and gotten seriously shot down in the process. However, Howie felt the story wasn’t over with yet, and that she’d still like to take a run on him, if only to prove that she could be successful. It was totally speculation based on what he’d heard from Shay Archer, but Howie thought that her mother might have been pushing her to take another shot at him.

Right at the moment, it didn’t seem very likely. For whatever reason, Misty had taken up with Matt Wadsworth and was very blatant about it, especially if Howie happened to be in sight. From what Howie could tell she had Matt about as firmly under her thumb as she’d had him, but why she’d want to bother with the obnoxious oaf was beyond him. Howie knew she hadn’t cared much for Matt back in the fall, and he doubted she cared much for him now.

Howie sometimes wondered – and he’d discussed it with his friends, although not in the lunchroom – if maybe sometime he ought to get together with Matt and give him the straight scoop on what Misty was up to. But, in the end, he didn’t; he figured the two deserved each other, and so long as they were playing that game Misty was more or less out of his hair. But Howie kept his guard up; he knew things could change suddenly in the turbulent world of high school romance and given an opening Misty would be on him in a second.

In point of fact, Misty hadn’t given up on getting Howie back under her thumb. He represented unfinished business to her, a failure that couldn’t be allowed to let stand. But at the same time it was clear to her that nothing was going to be settled soon.

Howie seemed to be pretty close to the Trevetheck bitch; it sure appeared to Misty that she’d been lying in wait for her first opportunity to steal him out from under her nose, and she hadn’t wasted any time catching him. Misty hadn’t been expecting Howie to buck her wishes back last fall; she’d thought she had a pretty good hold on him. When he left, Misty thoroughly expected him to be crawling back to her in days – but it hadn’t happened.

What was worse, Misty’s mother saw it as a failure, too. It was hard to say where the failure was, but her mother figured it must have been Misty’s somehow, for not having her hooks into Howie as deeply as she thought. Men! Sometimes you just couldn’t figure them out . . .

Misty had tried a number of different times to get Howie back where he belonged, from a direct approach, to trying to get him jealous by hanging out with Wadsworth. She had him about as under control as she could ask for – it had been easy. But why bother? It was no challenge, and he was no fun to be with, no fun to think she was controlling him. Even though Misty’s long-range plan had involved dropping Howie for a real prospect when the time was right, just like Bethany had dumped Shay for Derrick, it still rankled both Misty and her mother that things had gone wrong so badly. If she’d just cut Howie a little slack back there last fall she wouldn’t have to put up with all the crap she had to endure since.

Somehow, some way, she had to get Howie back, even though it ultimately meant nothing. Even having to hang around Wadsworth in the lunchroom with all of his obnoxious friends was getting to be a real downer. Matt was both dumb and crude, hardly worth her attention except as a holding position. Worse, it was getting a little too serious; there had been several times she’d had to let him paw her just to keep his attention, and while it had worked there was a limit to how far she wanted to go down that road with him. Worse, it couldn’t last much longer; it was pointless to waste her virginity on a guy who wasn’t even a decent practice boyfriend. Now, if it could be used on Howie . . . well, that was a different story, but how could she get to him?

One thing was clear: it was getting to the point where she’d have to dump Wadsworth as soon as she found a halfway decent excuse, but it would be nice if she could figure some way to do it and get Howie’s attention in the process.

One day she was sitting in the lunchroom, just about bored to tears with the bullshit Matt was laying on his loser buddies. It was another damn story about how great he was and how much of an asshole everybody else was, and he was waving his hands all over the place in the process. Something inside Misty snapped; she realized she’d had enough of him, and was looking like an asshole herself just from associating with him.

It was getting toward the end of the lunch hour, and when she saw Howie and the people he’d had lunch with getting up, an idea crossed her mind. It might not be a good idea, she thought, but would at least solve one of her problems. She held up an almost full box of chocolate milk, and sure enough it took only seconds before Matt jiggled her arm. She fumbled with the milk trying to make it look real, then managed to lose it, spreading the milk all over the table, and on her jeans. “Matt, you asshole!” she yelled. “Why the fuck don’t you watch what you’re doing?”

“What?” he said, not acting very happy about being interrupted in his story.

“You made me get my chocolate milk all over myself! Jesus, can’t you be at least a little bit careful?”

“Huh?” he replied, “I didn’t do anything!”

“The hell you didn’t,” she snarled. “Either you did it deliberately or you’re so damn clumsy it’s no wonder they wouldn’t let you near a football all season long. That’s it, Matt! I’m done! I’m not going to be your punching bag any longer.”

She got up from the table and stormed away in the direction Howie and his friends had been going. Matt got up and stormed after her, grabbed her by the arm and spun her around. “Look, Misty, I didn’t do anything to you!”

“The hell you didn’t, you asshole!” she shouted. “And get your goddamn clumsy hands off me.”

“I didn’t do anything, and I didn’t do anything to make you talk to me like that,” he said, raising his hand. She looked around to see where Howie and his friends had gone, but there was no sign of any of them.

“Get your hands off me!” she yelled at the top of her lungs.

“Matt, leave it alone,” she heard a guy’s voice say. “It ain’t worth it. It really ain’t worth it.”

“This is none of your damn business Lethbridge,” Matt snarled.

“It is if I make it my business,” the guy snarled. Misty looked out of the corner of her eye to see it was Walt Lethbridge, a junior, one of the guys who had been tossed off the football team after the beer party the previous summer. “Now, get lost and leave the lady alone.”

“You’re full of shit, Lethbridge,” Matt replied, “Just as full of shit as this bitch is.”

Matt looked around, to see two or three of Lethbridge’s buddies, juniors and seniors who had also been tossed off the football team. Wherever Matt’s buddies had gotten to, they weren’t backing him up, that was for sure. “Fine,” Matt growled. “You can have the bitch then. She ain’t worth the trouble either. She’ll tease you to hell and back before you get any off her.”

Misty watched as Matt turned and walked away. She didn’t have any plans to try and get him back, that was for sure! She knew Lethbridge was no winner, but he’d done what she’d hoped Howie would do. Oh, well . . . “Thanks, Walt,” she said. “I didn’t think he’d hurt me but he’s so damn dumb I couldn’t put it past him.”

“You OK?” he said.

“Yeah, but my clothes are a mess. I guess I’d better go down to the office and see what I can do about getting a ride home to change.”

“I’ll go with you,” he offered. “Maybe I could give you a ride or something.”

Misty wasn’t sure how much she wanted to accept a ride, or anything else, from Walt. On the other hand . . . he did have something of a reputation as a badass, and maybe she could have a little fun seeing just how bad he was, and if she could wrap him around her little finger like she had Matt – and Howie, for a while. “Thanks, Walt,” she smiled. “That’s sweet of you.”

Howie, Jared, and their girls hadn’t missed all the excitement, but they’d been going up the hall out of sight of the lunchroom when the yelling broke out and kids began to gather around and watch, so they had only the most limited view of it. “The drama queen strikes again,” Autumn said in a low voice, a grin breaking across her face.

“Yeah,” Howie laughed, but kept his voice low. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

Over the next few days the four of them had some fun over the lunch hour watching a little of the drama that was playing out. They kept their distance, mostly from not wanting to be involved, but it was still entertaining to watch Matt try to be apologetic to Misty, and mostly getting growled at by Walt and his buddies for his efforts. “Maybe we ought to take pity on him,” Jared suggested one time. “I mean, let him know what the game really is.”

“We’d probably better not,” Howie smiled. “If we told him, he probably wouldn’t believe us anyway. And he’s too likely to run off at the mouth and give away why we know what we know. If Misty wants to hang around with people like Lethbridge, she’s bound to get what she deserves.”

“Yeah, could be,” Jared replied thoughtfully. “I’ll never figure out why good girls want to hang around with assholes like him.”

“That’s making the assumption she’s a good girl,” Autumn replied cattily. “You know better than that.”

“Yeah, well,” Jared agreed, “I was talking in general, not about her. I don’t know of any sophomore girls who were at the beer bust last summer, but there were several juniors and seniors who are considered to be pretty popular girls.”

“Beats me,” Autumn said. “All I can say is ‘no taste,’ maybe? Hey, I wouldn’t have made it to varsity cheer last fall if some of those girls hadn’t gotten suspended. I can see we’re going to have a whole lot of fun next fall when some of those juniors who got kicked off the team last year come back as seniors and expect to be treated like goddesses.”

“Yeah,” Bree shook her head. “I’m sure glad I don’t have to go through that stuff. I’ll probably be running cross again next fall. But I don’t think I’d ever want to touch any of those guys. I’ve got other things to do.”

“That’s probably part of the difference,” Jared replied thoughtfully. “You don’t measure success in terms of your social status in high school. For some of those girls, being a social success in high school will be the high point of their lives. You’ve got your sights set a lot higher.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Howie said. “I really have mixed feelings about the juniors who got kicked off the team last summer coming back when football practice starts. I haven’t talked that much with many of them, but I wonder how much they’ll think things haven’t changed from what they were two years ago. We went a long way last fall and they weren’t a part of it.”

“Yeah, things could get interesting,” Jared said. “I’ve hardly seen any of those bozos around the weight room. They’re just going to love that first practice, especially if it’s hotter than hell.”

“Yep,” Howie grinned. “And just between you and me, I don’t think I’m going to bother pointing out the difference. After all, those guys will be seniors and we’re just going to be juniors, so what do we know?”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and those jokers will have a pre-practice beer party and it’ll get busted,” Jared grinned. “And they can invite Wadsworth and a couple others, for all I care.”

“We might get lucky at that,” Howie smiled. “Some of those guys still haven’t gotten the message. But that’s still months off, and we’ve got a lot to do between now and then. But that’s neither here nor there. The good news is that Lethbridge might keep Misty tied up for a few months, or the other way around.”

“If she can keep it going till football practice starts, maybe he won’t be an issue at all,” Jared grinned. “I mean, if he can’t get himself in shape he could get left so far in the dust he’ll quit, and that’ll be the end of that.”

“Could happen,” Howie agreed. “Of course, a lot of it depends on how much Misty wants a football player for a boyfriend next fall. Either way, she’s not going to be an issue for me for a while. And, like I said, we’ve got other things to do first, like track. Bree, do you expect to have the glider going again soon?”

“Not for a month at a minimum,” she shook her head. “There’s still a lot of snow on the runway, and then it’ll be mud for a while. Probably by the time it dries out enough I’ll be up to my neck in track, so I may not get to use it much till school’s out. I’ll tell you what, though, it’s been since November and I can hardly wait.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Jared shook his head. “I’m going to be happy to see things warm up and dry out. I really want to get started practicing kicking. I got just enough practice with Lyle last fall to make me think I might be able to do something with it though I doubt I’ll ever have his power and distance.”

“It would be nice if you could get good enough to replace him, at least some,” Howie nodded.

“Yeah, but it’s going to involve practice, and lots of it,” Jared agreed. “And it would be handy if it was more than just you and me, especially when we’re doing holder kick practice.”

“I don’t know how much help Autumn and I could be,” Bree said, “but if there’s something we could do, I’m willing to help.”

“I am, too,” Autumn agreed.

“I don’t think we’re going to be lacking for things to do this summer,” Howie said. “I mean, I can see going out to Bree’s place, launching her, and then passing or kicking a football around while we wait for her to come down.”

“You might get some practice in that way,” Bree laughed. “I want to get some hours in this summer, especially some cross-country hours. Anything I can get done now is something I won’t have to do later.”

“It might work,” Jared said. “I can see there’s going to be some times we have to figure out some way to kill two birds with one stone.”

The weather warmed up noticeably in the next few weeks, but it was still cold at times, and occasionally sloppy and rainy. The track season got under way, but three of the first four meets had to be cancelled on account of weather, and some of the ones that followed were less than totally comfortable. Because of the limited amount of time between the approach of decent weather and the end of school, what there was of the spring track season was very compressed, especially with a couple make-up meets thrown in to make life interesting.

Bree turned out to be fairly good at track. She wasn’t much on sprints, and not much better on hurdles and field events, but running at longer distances she was competitive. Mr. Emerson didn’t have to get cute to make sure she medaled once; she managed that at the first meet, in the 880, and put points on the board in a couple other events. In the next meet, she flat-out won the 880, and was a member of the four-girl team that won the 1600 relay. Autumn wasn’t quite as good, but she managed to medal a couple times on her own. “You know,” she told her friends at lunch one day, “if it weren’t for the fact that I want to cheer for my boyfriend as a cheerleader, I’d be half tempted to run cross in the fall.”

The boys did well, too. Jared was trying to concentrate on sprints and hurdles, more with the thought of evading tacklers and getting downfield to catch passes, but he picked up several medals in the process. Howie did well at hurdles as well, with much the same thought in mind.

Howie and Jared weren’t the only football team members to go out for track, with the upcoming fall in mind, and it was no secret what they were up to; several other sophomores and freshmen joined them, but not Wadsworth; there was no sign of Lethbridge, either. Apparently getting ready for fall was the furthest thing from his mind – or maybe Misty was keeping him from thinking about it, which amounted to the same thing.

When they could find the time – which wasn’t often – Jared and Lyle Angarrack got out on the football practice field, with Howie holding when needed, and the girls chasing balls. Apparently Lyle called Coach Kulwicki, because he dropped by on a couple occasions to see what was happening. “I hate to tell you, Jared,” he said, “but kicking is something I can’t help you with very much. I’ll see if I can’t get Coach Reardon over to help you out a little sometime, but he doesn’t know a lot about it, either. Maybe I can call around a bit and find someone who knows something, but don’t hold your breath. It looks like you’re coming along, but being able to do it in practice and being able to do it under fire are two different things. About all I can do is to tell you to get comfortable enough with it that you can still be calm when there’s a bunch of blockers coming at you.”

“You know,” Jared said, thinking of Mr. Evachevski down at the dojo, “I’ve heard that before. I guess about all I can do is to work on it.”

“Keep at it,” Coach Kulwicki smiled. “Losing Lyle is going to make for a big hole in our offense, but if you can fill even part of it, it’ll be to the good. I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen this fall, because I think we can still surprise a few people.”

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