Redefining Beautiful

Chapter Twenty-One: One of the Boys

My life after school became devoted to football. I was at the field from three o'clock to almost eight in the evening everyday. I smelled like grass and sweat when I came home from practice. No matter how hard I scrubbed and scrubbed, the grass wouldn’t come out of my practice jersey. After a couple days of practicing with all the boys, I started not caring about how dirty I got in practice or if I showed up to practice dirty.

I was no longer called Charlie or Chub Lee by anyone. It was almost as if those two people never existed. On the field, I was Bates. During school, to the football players, I was Bates. No matter the grade, and no matter whether it was Freshman, JV, or Varsity, I was Bates.

At first, of course, I got made fun of. My first day, Eli and J.C. were my only friends, and even they poked fun at me. Rustin was the worst. In fact, he spit his sunflower seeds at me when Roebuck’s back was turned. Nobody stood up for me. Not Eli. Not J.C. I figured out that this is a team, and you roll with the team. If you fight the team, you get shunned from the team. So I didn’t snitch on Rustin to Roebuck even though I wanted to so badly.

Destiny Drew Thompson, my alleged best friend (she calls me her best friend even though we don’t hang out outside of school or have lunch together anymore. She only talks to me in P.E. somedays. When she’s not trying to convince me Trevor is bad news or one of my friends is a freak, we actually laugh and converse like we used to before she ditched me for prettier friends), wasn’t exactly that supportive.

I had been trying to avoid Destiny ever since I called her a slut in the locker rooms. I felt bad about it, and I assumed she hated me, but she kept talking to me and looking at me as if nothing was really wrong with what I said. I still didn’t want her to see me in my football pads because I would have to see her in her cheerleading uniform and be reminded that I’m a loser who could never be like her.

After the fourth game of the season, everyone pretty much knew I was on the football team. So, Destiny approached me at my locker after school before I could slip out in my pads and before she would notice.

“So...football...” She rocked back and forth on her feet, arms crossed in front of her chest, and I couldn’t tell where she was trying to go with this.

“Happy for me, or do you disapprove?” I tied the laces on my cleats.

“I think it’s cool. You know, what you’re doing and all for your boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend?” I almost choked.

“Yeah, you and Trevor? Everyone knows you guys are together,” Destiny said matter-of-factly.

“But we’re not-”

“It doesn’t matter.” Destiny waved. “The thing is that people might say stuff and start rumors because you’re a girl with a bunch of guys a lot of the time.” She was hinting to me that people might think I am a slut. She was hinting to me that I would care.

“You know what, Destiny?” I said, the anger welling up in my throat. “I may have once gave a flying fuck on what you had to say, but I don’t anymore. You can stop with your ‘warnings’, okay? I can take care of myself now.” I was once so reliant on Destiny, but that was before I geared up for the football team and learned that I need to start relying on myself.

In football, you are a team, you have to work as a team. But each of the players play a different role. We’re like gears keeping a clock alive. If one gear is uncooperative, then the whole clock is thrown off. I had to make sure my position was well-oiled and smooth in order to bring the team up instead of down. I was myself’s biggest critique. I couldn’t lean on anyone else to help me improve. It was up to me how well my gear was going to run.