Take Me Home

Last Straw

Martins came back later in the day, more around three'o clock in the afternoon. That was plenty of time to get ready for the game. Although it didn't take much for me to get ready. All I did was take my bag with my uniform in it, and I was off. I just changed when I got to the game, which was usually at our home field, which was our school.

  Our team was called the Redview Red Wolves, nothing too original. But it stuck. I was a quarterback. I was pretty good apparently as well, since that scout wanted to give me a scholarship. I didn't think I was overly good, but he disagreed. I still hadn't told Martins about that scholarship, but there was no point. I wouldn't be able to go anyways. By the time I was done high school, if I even finished, I wouldn't be attending that school any longer most likely, considering Martins was talking about moving sometime soon, but I had no idea when that would be.

As the day turned to night at a rather slow pace like most days, it was around 6:20pm and so I grabbed my bag full of my football belongings as I headed towards the door. Usually coach liked us there twenty minutes earlier, so we could practice for a little bit. Along with doing our warm ups.

  Normally I told Martins I was only going to hang out with my friends when I had a game, because I knew usually he would want to go, but I didn't want him there of course. I put my freshly washed jersey first in my bag, along with my knee pads, shoulder pads, thigh pads, my cleats and then I carried my helmet. Most days I would just leave my helmet in my locker at school, but it had gotten a bit dirty from our last game, considering it rained and the whole field was mucky. So I just took it home and sponged it out a bit. So this time, I couldn't get away with saying I was going to hang out with some friends, because then he would question the helmet.

  As I then slung my bag over my shoulder, I headed towards the front door, where I saw Joey sitting on the couch out there and Martins was at the table. He lifted his head up a bit as he looked over at me when I entered the room, and then went back to the paper he was working on.

"Where you going?" He asked as he didn't look me in the eyes again, and only continued to write. I stuttered for a minute, hoping he wouldn't care about my game anyways.

"I-I got a game tonight. I'll be back later," I spoke as I walked slowly over to the front door, and waited for some type of response. However the response I got was not at all what I was expecting.

"Alright. See you later," was all he spouted at me as he licked the tip of his pen a bit, and then went back writing. I stood there taken aback for a moment or two only staring at him, until I just opened the door and headed through. I didn't complain one bit.

I was one of the last ones to show up to our warm up, however coach wasn't all that worried about it. He thought I was one of the best players on the team. I mean, I wouldn't say that, but I would say I was pretty motivated and determined at times, when it came to football or sports that was. A few weeks ago, at one of our games I had the flu, and it was real bad. However I didn't want to stay back at the cabin with Martins, so I just sucked it up and went to that damn game, and I did pretty good. Not my best of course, but it wasn't an awful game on my part considering I felt like shit.

As I got there, I saw our team in the distance as they had already done their stretches, and were now running drills. I quickly began to run up as I could begin to see the other team showing up. A few guys from our team looked over to me as I ran up the field toward our side line, and quickly got over to coach.

"Hey sorry I'm late. I just gotta get changed and I'm ready to go," I shouted at coach as I got a bit closer, and I saw him place his clip board under his arm as he squinted his eyes at me good. Coach was a big, large guy who looked as if he lifted three of me a day. He wore his usual track suit as he had his cap on backwards, and he towered over all of us.