Kick Started

"Dude, just pass the ball, please. You can't just dribble all the way down the field. I mean for God's sake, you play left back!" I screamed at one of the guys on my new team. I had just entered my junior year and had been gotten a starting spot on the Varsity soccer team, even though it was my first year in this particular high school. I was about 2 months into my first year of school in a new city also, so having soccer was something that made it easier for me. I didn't really have to make new friends, I just had to focus on being the best soccer player in the school.

"I can do whatever I want freshy, I've been on this team for 3 years. Shut your god dang mouth before I shut it for you!" Jason screamed back at me. And that was the extent of the conversation. I wasn't really looking to fight Jason, who was a senior, and looked like a guy that could definitely be on steroids.

God, why does everyone at this school have to be such a jerk, and I'm not even a freshman! I thought to myself as I walked off of the field towards the bench. I hated practice with this team. The only thing that kept me coming was the fact that it was soccer. If it was anything else, and I wouldn't have been back there tomorrow.

"Hey, freshy," I heard a familiar voice come from behind me, right as I was turning to sit down, and I immediately started to smile.

"I guess not everyone is a jerk here," I said as I sat down. "Hey Jake. Looked good today, bro." Jake was my only friend here, only real friend. I had quite a few 'friends,' but none of them were as close as Jake was. I met Jake two days after I moved here. He had been hitting on some girls at the city pool to no avail while I was laying there trying to enjoy not knowing anybody and not knowing where anything in the town was and things like that. Jake had walked right up to me and made himself known. 'Hey, you don't look familiar to me, and I know everybody. So, since you are obviously new here, why don't you introduce yourself to me?' And so I did, obviously. He was a really awesome guy, and we had turned into pretty close friends, and by pretty close I meant that we basically spent every other day at each others houses. In the four months since I had been here, we had become basically like brothers.

"Thanks, you too man. Although I will say, I have the utmost confidence that you, my man, would have 100 percent scored another goal, if only our fearless captain Jason actually knew how this glorious sport worked," he made sure to put an emphasis on the word fearless as he went into his terrible English accent and pretended like he was bowing as he said the name of Jason.

"I think that guy really just has no idea what's going on out here," as I said that, I started to get up and walk off of the field towards the locker room, motioning for Jake to follow me. He stood up from the bench and jogged a little bit until he caught up with me, and we walked into the locker room together.

~*~*~

I kicked my ball in front of me, and put in my ear buds as I started to walk off of the school campus towards my house that was about a 10 minute walk away. I had asked Jake to come over so that I would have something to do other than play video games, but he had told me he had to decline because tonight was family dinner night. While I told him I couldn't believe he was ditching me, he had grabbed his stuff and started to walk out of the locker room yelling, 'See you tomorrow in Chemistry!'

I turned on my music and started this small trek that I had in front of me. It was only about six o'clock, so I decided to make a pit stop at the park and take a couple penalty kicks on the open net. So I turned the corner at the Jr. High building of our school and made my way to the open goals.

I still had my ear buds in and was in my own little world when all of a sudden I heard a car honk, and I almost had a heart attack. I looked over to my right, the direction the obnoxious noise came from, and was surprised to see a girl, a pretty attractive girl actually, sitting in the front seat of a small car, waiting on me to move out from the middle of the road so that she could drive by.