This story might not be one of the ones I wrote in highschool but it is set in a high school. In my advanced fiction workshop I wrote this story trying to subvert expectations of high school cliches while the characters remain caricatures of their high school movie/show/book stereotype.
You couldn't take one turn down the hallways of North High without seeing the banners and the posters for The Big Game happening on Friday. The banners were white, decorated by the cheerleaders in blue and gold, our school's colors, proclaiming that The Big Game versus South High was taking place in the stadium. There was only one more day of the entire school acting like the second coming was happening with hyperfocus on this dumb game played by a bunch of meatheads. Speaking of meatheads, the biggest one, Chad, turned the corner into the section of the hallway I was in, his game buddies, the other meatheads, on one side, what he refers to as his “hot piece of ass” on the other.
It's like the sea of students parted whenever his group walked down the hallway. All of them decked in their blue and gold letterman jackets with a large gold “N” on the left side, patches among patches adorning their chests boasting past game wins, and their two-digit numbers on the back. Claps scattered and increased as the group continued down the hallway, devolving into whoops and shouts of admiration that made my ears bleed.
The other half of the group that participated in The Big Game is much more tolerable. The cheerleaders file into the hallway behind the players, the world slowing so their perfectly done hair can flow in the wind, and the too-short cheerleading uniforms they’ve been wearing for the two weeks leading up to The Big Game can swish against their thighs. All the men lining the halls stop their clapping, giving my ears a brief reprieve, to stare at the girls, the players confused as to why everyone in the hallways paused their worship of them.
Chad and his friends, Brad, or meathead #2, as I call him, and Thad, or meathead #3, all stomp their feet in annoyance because they aren't being treated like Egyptian pharaohs, and Chad's lover at his side attempts to lead them away to calm them and avoid a scene.
The cheer captain, Britney, now that the meatheads have vacated the hallway, takes her blue and gold bedazzled megaphone and shouts to the crowd, who listen with rapt attention. “North High, we have one day until The Big Game. Are you ready?” The hallway erupts into cheers as Bethany and Brynnleigh, the two other cheerleaders of Britney’s pack, do back handsprings down the hallway without looking past where Britney is standing, knowing the crowd will clear for them.
The one-minute warning bell rings for class, and the excitement surrounding The Big Game settles. The cheerleaders and the players file out of the main hallway, Brad’s arm looped over Britney’s shoulder, finally giving me a chance to breathe with the newfound emptiness.
I hang my messenger bag up in my locker and grab my books, hugging them tight to my chest with one arm as I push my large circular tortoise shell glasses up the bridge of my nose and pull the strap of my overalls back onto my shoulder. Mentally preparing myself for my next class with meatheads 1-3, I turn down the hallway that the players and the cheerleaders had just walked down, both groups' scents lingering.
Opening the door to my English class, I brace myself for the ruckus that I will be entering on the other side. Paper airplanes fly, and spitballs sail as I fight my way through the battlefield of seats to my favorite one in the front row, right next to the window that looks out onto the track outside.
Our teacher, Mr. Brown, waltzes into the room right as the late bell rings, his arrival causing everyone to sit down and pay attention raptly. All the girls, and even some of the guys, seemed to be in love with him, which I didn't get. He taught like we needed to learn life lessons instead of English and never took the barbs I lobbed at him seriously, laughing them off while looking around to the meatheads for approval.
“Alright, class. Everyone, hand your homework forward, and we can begin.” He started, standing at the front of the classroom expectantly while rows of desks began passing their crumpled notebook paper forward, complete with messy handwriting. The people behind me passed their notes up, and I handed them to Mr. Brown, his fingers brushing my hand as I handed the stack of papers to him. He began to shuffle through the papers, his brow raising as he continued.
“Chad, Brad, Thad, I don't have your homework. What's that about?”
“Sorry, teach,” Chad said, the spokesperson for the meathead group, “we couldn't do our homework…”
“We had to practice for The Big Game,” Chad’s disciples, Brad and Thad, join in, their choir of excuses sounding like nails scraping on a chalkboard.
“Understandable, boys, The Big Game is a big thing to prepare for, just try to give it to me tomorrow.” Mr. Brown responded, making brief eye contact with Chad and ignoring his strict late penalty to get started with the lesson.
It felt like deja vu the next morning when Mr. Brown ignored their lack of homework again. As I was packing up my stuff, Mr. Brown tapped on my desk with his pen and asked me to stay after class. Chad, Brad, Thad, and the rest of the class filed out, while I stayed seated at my desk with everything stacked neatly and my thumbs twiddling on top of the pile. He waited until everyone was gone and closed the door behind him, locking it with an audible click.
His body went thump onto the edge of his desk as he sat in front of me with his pen in his mouth, maybe trying to act seductive but miserably failing. After what seemed like an eternity, he spoke in a low voice, “I was hoping that you could do something for me and maybe I could do something for you in return.”
“Uhm, Mr. Brown, that seems very inappropriate, I’m your student,” I said, ignoring his movement towards me as I started gathering my stuff to flee this classroom.
He put his pen atop the books cradled in my hand and used all of his strength to pull them back down to the desk, “I know it might seem that way, but just hear me out. I think we could be good for each other.”
“There is nothing I want or need from you, Mr. Brown. Let me go.” My voice stood strong even as his attention made me uncomfortable, bad goosebumps flowing through my entire body and burning where he had placed his hand on my upper arm.
“Listen to my proposition first, ” he continues, trying to make this situation work in his favor in a way where I won’t tell the principal about his fucked up behavior.
“Oh my god, you’re even using the word ‘proposition,’ you are literally propositioning me.” I darted away from his grasp, making it all the way to the door before he started speaking.
“Propositioning you?” He exclaimed incredulously, “Where did you even get that idea? I’m shaking with disgust even thinking about it.” He finished, putting both of his hands up and shaking them furiously in front of his face.
“What the fuck else could you mean, you twisted pervert. Don’t try to backtrack now.” My inclination to escape is overcome by my inability to back down from a fight. Turning around to face him, my body practically plastered to the door as he feigns disgust, I’m still unconvinced that he's not trying to proposition me.
This seems to set him off, crowding me even more against the door while looking at me like I am dirt under his shoes, “I was hoping flattery would work on a loser like you. I was going to ask you to get me Chad's phone number. I want nothing to do with you, you unpopular social failure.”
“That doesn't make any fucking sense.”
“I figured a nobody like you would die for a chance to speak to Chad; I always see you looking at him.” He makes his attempt to reason, seemingly oblivious to why I would be totally weirded out by him locking me in his classroom alone, and then saying that he needs something for me and that the two of us could help each other.
“You misunderstood my look of disgust at their pure lack of taking anything seriously and the way you just let them get away with it!” I practically yell, throwing one hand in the air while the other keeps my books clutched close to the same overalls I wore yesterday. “Why do you even need me for this? Why don't you just ask him yourself?” I sneer through my disgust.
Now he looks at me like I have five heads and am speaking in tongues, “Ew, no! I could never be embarrassed in front of Chad, his friends, or the cheerleaders. Could you imagine the social ruin?”
Why a teacher, an adult, a childish adult, but still an adult, would be worried about social ruin from students is beyond me. The warning bells ring, signalling that I have one minute to sprint across the school to make it to the only class I actually like, my newspaper class.
“But you wanted me to do it?” I punctuate my sentence with an eye roll.
His audacity astounds me.
This question makes sense to him, apparently, standing back and looking at his nails as if they are the most important thing in the world, “Well, yes, you’re already at social rock bottom, you have nothing to lose by asking Chad for his phone number.”
The door handle jingles, and I welcome any exit to this horrific conversation, undoing the lock and swinging the door open, revealing Britney. She stands there, slack-jawed and almost falling into me, one of her hands still on the other side of the door handle and the other hand clutching her books that she spent time gluing pink sparkly covers onto.
“Mr Brown? What is this?”
“I can explain…” Mr Brown trails off, triggering Britney's face to glow an angry yet glowy shade of red.
“Seriously? After you lose your virginity to Bethany, you still step out on her, and when she’s in the classroom next door!” She barely spares me a glance as she digs into him. She has the idea wrong as to what was happening in here, but maybe Mr. Brown will be more susceptible to verbal lashing from someone he doesn't consider a social failure, so I am all for it.
“Ew, what. No!” He says again, causing me to roll my eyes again, "Don't tell Bethany, she wouldn't understand. I was just asking this nerd to give me Chad's phone number, I wasn't stepping out on Bethany.”
“Don’t call people names, it’s rude,” she glances at me softly before turning back to Mr. Brown with fury, “and I will not let you embarrass the cheer squad by embarrassing Bethany." Britney grabs my wrist, laying limply at my side, and pulls me out of the classroom, her furious eyes on Mr. Brown the entire time until the door closes.
“Thanks for getting me out of there,” I say sheepishly.
“No problem,” she replies, opening her mouth to continue.
She's about to keep speaking, but to save myself the embarrassment that she probably doesn't know my name, I use the late bell ringing as an escape, mumbling something about how I'm going to be late for newspaper class and I need to leave. If she didn't think I was a loser before, being excited for newspaper class would definitely knock me down there.
I don't think anybody at this school reads the newspaper articles that any of us in the class write; it's just me and two other social anomalies who don't speak. This school doesn't care about the arts in the slightest, but that's ok with me; there's no other way I would be able to write about The Big Game players in the manner I do without getting expelled or my column shut down.
It's finally lunchtime, and the start of another Egyptian pharaoh-esque devotion towards The Big Game players begins. But before the parade of fanfare can really get going, I spy another group of meatheads at the other end of the hallway, wearing their opposite red and silver letterman jackets with a large “S” on the right side of the jacket. The situation turns from ancient Egypt to a wild-west showdown, and I swear I hear cowboy stand-off music as the two groups go stone-faced and make their way toward each other.
“Chad,” shouts the leader of the South High meatheads as their sneakered feet assemble in front of me at the center of the hallway.
“Jack,” Chad retorts, “always awful to see you–you too, Jaxson and JJ.” He finishes, giving attention to Jack’s sidekicks, standing in the same triangle formation as Chad, Brad, and Thad.
“I see you’ve gone soft,” Jack motions his chin, pointing to Chad's boyfriend, who refuses to leave his side when they aren't in class, “your boyfriend is why I’m gonna win The Big Game.” Hearing a round of gasps sound through the hallway, Jack attempts to backpedal and adds, “not in a homophobic way, bro,” and reaches out his hand for a dap up.
“I get it, bro,” Chad replies, and Jack lets out a sigh of relief.
“I just mean that I've been blowing off my girlfriend to practice for The Big Game, and you’ve been slacking on training because you’ve been spending time with your boyfriend, I'm gonna win!” He punctuates his last laugh with a point towards the heavens, and Chad gets defensive.
He shouts, “Timothy will be the reason I win, love conquers all.”
My brain tunes out the rest of the altercation, as the idiocracy feels like it's actually causing me to lose brain cells.
In the time it takes to turn around and put my books in my locker, a fight breaks out. I hear chants of “FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!” from a circle of students surrounding the six meatheads, and I’m shoved against my locker from the sea of students trying to get closer to the action so they can record it and maybe make a quick buck. The fight stalls as the principal elbows his way through the circle until he's at the very front, standing with his arms crossed against his chest.
“Are you boys fighting?” He questions.
“Uh, no, sir,” Chad responds, and the principal places his fingers on his temple at the incredulity of the meatheads.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” the principal says as the crowd resumes their chant, “FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!”
With the first line of defense egging on to the fight instead of stopping it, I give up on this resolving maturely and turn to walk down the hallway. I'm almost to the end of the hallway, excited that I'll get a good seat in the cafeteria, one without chewing gum that sticks to my overalls, when the cheerleaders emerge.
The fight pauses again as the crowd parts for the cheerleaders make their way into the center of the fighting circle. Britney stands in front of Bethany and Brynnleigh with her hands on her hips. Despite the limited view I have of her from the end of the hallway, I can clearly see a bored and annoyed expression on her face.
“Boys,” she charitably starts, “you will have plenty of time to destroy each other in The Big Game tonight. Now, can you please stop fighting because all the neanderthal yelling is giving Brynnleigh a migraine, and we need to practice our routine for the pep rally.”
“Do we have to?” Chad whines, but Brad shuts him up with a punch in the stomach and a harsh whisper I can’t discern besides the words ‘listen’ and ‘Britney.’
The crowd dissipates, and our rival players head down the hallway towards me, their heads hanging low as they practically make a walk of shame out of our school. Everyone else in the crowd seems to remember what I knew before the whole fight interruption and rushes past me to the cafeteria, spinning me across the hallway in madness. I finally stop getting jostled when the hallway empties, and I imagine the students filling the gum-free seats. Banging my head against the wall closest to me, I think to myself, fuck my life, before turning in defeat towards the cafeteria.
I think I go to the only school with The Big Game being mandatory. They lock our stadium down tighter than Fort Knox, with beefy security guards who don’t smile blocking every entrance. One time, I tried to escape, and one of the security guards turned me around so fast that my glasses fell off. I couldn't even get out of this if I wanted to because they make you scan your student ID to get in. That logs us into some kind of database, and if you don’t go, the principal calls everyone out by name on the speaker system the next day, even the kids who were sick, on repeat.
The cheers become more deafening and annoying the closer I get to the stadium. The Big Game starts at 7 pm, and I just barely make it before the ball drops. The only thing worse than having to attend The Big Game would be arriving late, which would mean double duty: having to stay the whole time and getting called out on the loudspeaker tomorrow.
I find a seat in the back row behind hundreds of standing and screaming fans as Britney’s voice yells through the bedazzled megaphone, “North High! Are you ready for The Big Game!” Cheers and applause reach a level that I didn't think was possible, but she still acts like she hears nothing, “I can't hear you! I said, ‘Are you ready for the biggest and best game of Bossaball you have ever seen!?'”
I take back what I thought a second ago. There is no way that this level of sound is humanly possible.
The two teams rush out onto the inflatable, all the players getting into position as Chad sets up to do his first serve, doing a flip and lobbing the ball over the net. South High hits it back with a chest tap and volleys it back over the net back to our side. The volley keeps going until Chad narrowly misses the ball, and it thumps onto the inflatable, giving South High the first point of The Big Game.
The second volley happens with Jack, from South High, kicking his serve with his left foot to North High’s side, and Brad sending it to Thad with a head set before spiking it down to South High’s trampoline, earning us three points.
The first set continues with South High getting a trampoline spike, the meatheads getting an inflatable hit, and then a trampoline spike. Then, South High gets two trampoline spikes back to back, dropping North High behind during the first set. Although both teams keep scoring, North High is trailing South High by seven points towards the end of the first set. The meatheads manage to keep the ball volleying back and forth, but it's no use as JJ sends a shot over the net, and it lands on North High's inflatable, getting South High to 25 points.
The second set starts the same, trailing by seven points all the way up until South High has 24 points. You can feel the depression working through the crowd on this side of the bleachers. People aren’t shaking their pom poms and foam fingers as aggressively, sitting down instead of standing for every play, and even a few tears are welling up in the eyes of people next to me.
But then South High starts to make sloppy meathead moves, letting the ball hit their inflatable over and over again. Just when I think I am about to be released from this torture, Thad spikes the ball onto the other team's trampoline and gives us three points, finishing the second set with a score of 27-24, bringing us into an unnecessary third set. Of course, he does, because why would The Big Game be over in only two sets?
I only get one reprieve, and it's that the third set only goes to 15 instead of 25. The third set starts off with JJ from South High serving with his hands, and the two teams volley back and forth before it falls on the North High trampoline, sending South High into the lead for the final set. The meatheads get the next score in the same way, and the two teams trade trampoline hits back and forth until it's 12-12. With the way this game is going, this could be the last volley of The Big Game.
Brad serves with a kick, and the two teams volley back and forth for what seems like forever, my eyes tracking The Big Game from my seat out of pure boredom because my phone is dead and almost giving me whiplash. I’m growing old here waiting for one of the meatheads on either team to make a mistake or a bad pass just so The Big Game can be over. Right before I feel like my deathbed is near, Jaxon from the other team tries to make a risky foot save, and he misses, the ball bouncing quietly onto the trampoline on South High’s side.
Cheers erupt ten times more deafeningly than from before The Big Game, and I even cheer a little bit too, happy that it's over. An old man next to me sees me cheering and lifts me, throwing me on top of the crowd as a reluctant crowd surfer, making it impossible for me to escape the crowd that is growing in size and in energy.
Chad thrusts the trophy over his head in victory while the South High team stomps their feet like toddlers back to their bench. The crowd finally puts me down, ignoring me for a much more willing Brad to be hoisted up by them like a king. Mr. Brown walks up behind Chad and taps him on the shoulder, and I hear him asking Chad himself for his phone number. Chad places a hand on his chest, scandalized, and loudly rejects our teacher, professing his love for his boyfriend.
I let out a single laugh, happy that it's not me in Mr. Brown's position, like he wanted it to be, and turn my back, ready to get out of here. I feel a soft hand on my shoulder, causing me to turn. Brittney is in front of me for the second time today, and I don't know what to do.
“Hey,” she says, motioning to the Chad and Mr. Brown situation happening behind us, “I’m sorry for thinking that you were sleeping with Mr. Brown, he was–sorry, just men are so stupid.”
I laugh along with her, “I mean, they can't all be, aren’t you dating Brad?”
“Brad?” She asks incredulously, another person looking at me today, like I said the dumbest thing ever, “he’s my brother!”
“Oh my gosh, I am so sorry, I was just–” I word vomit, but she cuts me off with a loud laugh.
“You’re ok, that's just so funny, and I promise my type is not incest.” She says in between laughs, calming down with each word, “In fact, you’re pretty much my exact type, the loser bookworm, look, you have going on really does it for me, and I’ve read what you write about the players in the newspaper, it always makes me laugh.” She says with a shrug, like my world wasn't just turned on its side.
“You’ve actually read my articles? I didn't think anybody would read them, how else would I get away with the stuff I write?” I laugh awkwardly.
“I read them on my laptop at Britney or Brynnleigh’s, can't risk my brother seeing me read something that condemns him and the other, what do you call them,
“Meatheads.” I finish for her, nervous about my voice's ability to actually get the word out.
Meatheads, Yes! So funny!” She pauses, getting slightly more serious, “I hope you don't feel the same way about me as the players.”
“Definitely not.” I manage to get out, still in shock.
“Well, in that case,” she pauses, and Britney kisses me.
I don’t even care that it's on the ground right next to an inflatable Bossaball court.