Caesar rubbed at his eyes as he stepped out onto the football field, fresh off an impromptu nap in his art class. Curses were hurled at him from the students jogging around the track in P.E. as he walked across their paths.
He spotted Coach McCoy leaning against the near goalpost with a tablet in hand. He swiped a stylus across the screen, occasionally looking up at the class as they continued their circuit around the field. Caesar walked over to him.
“Mrs. Verdin emailed something for you to sign for me,” he said. He cleared his throat feeling that his voice was scratchy.
The coach looked up. “Remind me who Mrs. Verdin is again?”
“One of the counselors. You need to sign the shit to say that you know I’m playing football so that I can swap art for fourth hour weights.”
McCoy swiped his hand across the screen of his tablet to dismiss the window he was working on and pulled up his email app. “You aren’t interested in furthering your artistic pursuits? Colleges like when they have well-rounded students.”
“No one’s recruiting me to draw apples.”
“I s’pose that’s fair enough.” He turned the screen to Caesar. “Is this the form I need to sign to say that you’re going out for the team?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. You have to put on there that I need weights fourth hour next year, too, so they don’t try to schedule me in something else.”
“I don’t know if you’re going to be on the team yet so that’d be lying.”
Caesar raised an eyebrow. “I’m going to be on the team.”
Coach McCoy laughed and pointed at the front of the queue of students running the track. “You see that tall, lanky kid up there? New kid from Germany. Parents work at Stennis or something. I think I’m pretty close to convincing him to drop soccer for football. Won’t need you if I have him.”
“Isn’t that your runningback and star corner walking at the back?” Caesar said, nodding to Devin and Hasan.
“They’re alright. Who’s going to replace them?”
“You said that kid’s from Germany? You want him on the team?”
The coach nodded. “If I can figure out how to get him to think there’s more of a future in football.”
Caesar dropped his backpack, crouched down and tightened the strings on his shoes. He then stretched his legs.
“What are you doing?”
“Germans don’t like losing. The guy’s running in P.E. class when everyone else is jogging. He wants to be first. I’m going to burn him.”
“In boat shoes? You might be a little too full of yourself, kid.”
Caesar shook his head and jogged to the side of the track. He jogged in place in the grass while everyone passed him, giving him weird looks. The German kid rounded the corner and headed toward him at a brisk pace. Caesar let him get to the next curve before taking off after him.
He chewed up the gap quickly, boat shoes and all. When he sprinted by the kid, he turned around and jogged backward for a few steps. The German broke into a full sprint and ran by him so Caesar flipped his hips and followed.
When they rounded the next bend, Caesar kicked it up a gear and blew by again. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the gap growing quickly despite the guy’s attempt to catch up and he eventually gave up.
Caesar slowed to a stop and waited for him to catch up. The German stopped next to him and hunched over.
“Do you like winning?” Caesar asked.
“Who doesn’t like winning?”
“Then you don’t want to play soccer here,” Caesar said, starting to walk away. “I’ll see you out there, bro.”
Caesar walked back over to Coach McCoy to pick up his backpack and started toward the field house. He cringed at the bit of sweat on his uniform shirt and instead turned toward the gate that led to the parking lot.
“Where are you going?” Coach McCoy called. “Don’t you have class to get back to?”
He shook his head. “I just got your guy to tryout for the team. I’m not going back to class smelling like this. I’m going home.”
“Caesar, stop playing and get your ass back to class.”
“Alright, coach. Make me run stadiums in a couple weeks for skipping,” Caesar threw over his shoulder as he walked out of the gate.
He looked across the street and saw Emma cutting through the nearby church’s parking lot to get to the student parking lot. She glanced over her shoulder back toward a few times.
“Hey! You skipping?!” Caesar shouted.
She froze, deer in the headlights, and looked around. Her expression hardened when she saw it was Caesar who had yelled at her and not a teacher.
“Fuck you, Caesar,” she said before starting to walk again.
Caesar jogged across the street and fell into step next to her. “Where are you going, though?”
“It’s none of your business. We broke up remember.”
“Soooo… where are you going?”
Emma smiled. “I’m going to Jace Bascle’s house. He fucks better than you.”
Caesar laughed, slapping his thigh. “You’re fucking lying. Word on the street is that Jace suffers from finishing too fast so if you’re trying to make me jealous, you could at least find someone who doesn’t bust when a girl touches his dick.”
“Well, he’s nice to me! That’s enough for me.”
He stepped in front of her to stop her from walking. “You want someone to be nice to you or you want someone to make you cum? You’re fucked up like me, Emma. You don’t want nice. C’mon, I’m skipping, too. You wanna fuck?”
She scoffed, waved her hand and walked around him toward her car. Caesar watched her for a moment before shaking his head and walking to his own car.
He tossed his bag in the trunk and get in, pressing the ignition and waiting for the air conditioner to knock some of the heat off before putting the car in drive. He pulled out of the spot and left the parking lot.
At the red light, Emma pulled up alongside him and waved for him to roll down the window. He did so.
“I need to be home to get a package. Follow me?” she shouted over the sounds of the road.
Caesar smiled and nodded before pulling behind her when the light turned green.
Hasan, holding a scrubbing brush and leaning against the wall, looked up from his phone. “At least, we gettin’ paid by the hour. His ass on salary. He ain’t makin’ shit extra for keepin’ us here. And I don’t think they get overtime.”
“You know those white boys look out for each other. If they aren’t paying him overtime, then they are giving him money under the table,” Michael said.
“Hey, man. No one’s giving me shit under any tables,” Will said.
“That’s ‘cause you’re a light skin brother,” Hasan laughed. “You be around us so much that they forget you ain’t black.”
“Thanks, I guess?” Will said, confused. He held his hand out to Devin. “Can you hand me the cleaning shit?”
Devin looked to his right and grabbed a smaller hose off the wall to drop in Will’s hand. He yawned, wishing there was a way to speed along the process of filling the machine and they would have to do it another two times to clean the entire store.
“Devin, you see who they got us playin’ in our first game?” Hasan asked.
Devin shook his head. “I didn’t even know the schedules had come out already. It seems early as fuck for that. We haven’t even had spring camp yet.”
“I don’t know, man. You been here longer than me. It’s just the one game. These news motherfuckers say we’ll play eleven games next season and this one the first one.”
“This is the part where you say who the team is.”
“I was gettin' there, nigga. It’s Euless Trinity from Dallas. We playin’ them in Shreveport.”
“Terrebonne that major that y’all are playing teams from Texas and shit? I thought y’all fucking sucked,” Michael said, laughing.
Devin ignored the insult but asked the question it implied. “Why are we playing a team from Texas?”
“It’s some showcase shit. Six teams from Louisiana playin’ six teams from Texas a week before the season actually starts. Them niggas stacked, bruh, and apparently they be out there head huntin’ on defense.”
Hasan flipped his phone in his hand so Devin could see the screen. A highlight reel of the school’s games was playing. Most of the plays were jarring hits. Most of those hits were by one player. What looked like a defensive back flying around the field like a missile, seeking and destroying.
“Glad I’m not on offense then,” Devin said.
“Isn’t that illegal?” Will asked. “Concussions and shit?”
“Nah, those are clean hits,” Devin said, watching the end of the clip. “Guy must be a safety. That’s old school ball, though. Zero regard for his own body.”
“I expect that from crazy linebackers, not you punk ass DBs,” Hasan said.
Devin laughed. “Better let the crazy ass linebackers hit you instead of that punk ass DB. I’m going piss.”
The other three started a new conversation as Devin walked down the hallway to the employees’ bathroom. He heard arguing coming from the sales floor and made a detour to boot any straggling customers out of the store as they’d closed 20 minutes ago.
Instead, he found it was Ralph and Gina arguing.
Ralph looked at Devin and turned to Gina. “That’s it. I’m not going to keep going around in circles with you. I don’t care what it’s for. You want more hours, get a second job.”
He walked off, chugging an energy drink, before she could say anything else to him.
“What’s that all about?” Devin asked.
Gina sighed and ran her hand through her hair before turning to Devin. “You ever made a decision that you regret and wish you could go back and change?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“You want to know what mine is? Not getting knocked up when I was 15. When I was dating Caesar. He was kinda scared to fuck, but I feel like I could’ve gotten him to slip up once or twice. That was a dumb decision. Should’ve just rolled the dice.”
Devin opened his mouth to speak but paused trying to process all that she’d said. Eventually, he spoke. “Why would you want to get pregnant at 15?”
Gina ignored that question. “Ralph’s a dickhead. Surely, fucking him a few times would entitle me to be able to pull a favor and get some extra hours to get some more cash flowing in but you know how men are, they don’t remember that type of shit.”
“Can’t say I know anything about that. Not really how I roll,” Devin said, getting more confused as the conversation continued.
“How would you feel about Carla selling pictures of her feet in a few months when she turns 18?”
“What?”
Gina waved her hand at him. “Nevermind, I’ll see you around.”
Devin scratched his head as she walked away. He turned to head back to the warehouse area of the store but was almost run over by Hasan driving the floor machine onto the sales floor.
“Thought you was goin’ piss?” Hasan asked.
“Got sidetracked.”
Michael pressed a scrub brush into Devin’s hand as he walked out of the warehouse. “No time for it now. Worst case scenario, go piss in a corner somewhere and we’ll just run the machine over it a few times.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“How do you think Will finishes the bakery so fast? He just pisses in the coolers and runs the machine through there a couple more times.”
“He’s lying, bro,” Will said. “I’m not the one who puts my dick in the dough for the French bread to ‘get back at the man.’”
“Thanks for letting me know to never eat the French bread in mornings after Michael has worked,” Devin said as he set the brush aside and headed to the bathroom.