Team Captain

His sad eyes are overshadowed by the jacket with “Team Captain” splashed on the back, the only distinguishing title in an otherwise army of eleven faceless warriors all pumped up with adrenaline and steroids. With his tribe dominating the entire aisle of the classroom, the professor does not try to pass through, for fear of getting her skirt hiked up to her waist and her white panties exposed once more. She leafs through the pile of sheets and calls out his name, “Spencer Walters.”

Josh, the offensive guard, grabs the exam paper and yells, “An A? How the hell did you get that, Spence?”

To which he only shrugs and says, “Luck, I guess.”

Those dark, tired eyes go back to the girl sitting in the front row, a girl who’s curtain of hair hides her from the world, as she buries herself in her book. The girl who always has her car’s battery disconnected by half of the football team every lunch period. The one who always travels with a pack of pimply high school kids of the Mathematics team, a calculator in one hand, and a geometry textbook in the other. The one girl who is unreachable, withstanding his nasty remarks about her mismatched clothes that drown her figure, or those red spectacles that cover half of her face.

He looks back at his paper – the A being the fruit of discreetly missing out three practice sessions – smiles, and thinks to himself, “Just three more months until college.”