Ninth Grade Blues Read online

  Anyway at halftime, Paige got this text, and it was from Allen, and he'd asked her out for Homecoming! The first thing I thought was finally...the second was that texting isn't a very romantic way to ask somebody out for a first date. But at least that crisis was out of the way. When I got home, I told Mom that Paige was going to Homecoming with Allen ... just sort of seeing what would be her reaction and maybe she would ask if some guy had asked me out. But, no, all she said was that Daddy and she had decided that I was too young to date this year. Actually, I was relieved at that...nobody would want to go out with me anyway. The way I look. I've got to lose some weight and figure out how to deal with my hair, maybe a really short cut?

  Chapter Fifteen: Marcus

  The game started out just awesome. First possession, Caleb hooked up with me on a post pattern, then a stop and go...I gained 35 yards in just two plays. Then for some stupid reason, Coach Dell called three straight running plays...what's up with that foolishness. We barely got a first down off of those running plays. I mean, like two minutes into the game, and I'm dominant and I've got the other team already on the ropes.

  Then Coach Dell wised up and called for me to run a route across the middle, but Caleb threw the ball behind me and it was almost intercepted. A draw play came next, for like four yards...just another wasted play. It was third and six, and Coach Dell finally got smart and called an end around for me. The other team was in their prevent defense, the linebackers bit on that it's a pass play when Caleb dropped back...he handed it to me...and all of a sudden I zoomed around the left side and it was hello end zone for me from 52 yards out! The crowd just went wild. I looked for Kylee up in the stands to see if I could find her. I reminded myself to tell her all about my moves when we double date with Joshua and Jordan after the game. Yep, it's going to be an awesome first date with the hottest girl in the freshman class.

  The other team ground out a touchdown on their first possession; it was like an eight-minute drive and our defense couldn't stop a single third down play. But when we got the ball back, I dominated again. First play, Coach Dell called for a fade pattern, and, man, I made that cornerback look silly.23 yards worth of silly in fact. Then Joshua got his number called for the first time all night, and he went across the middle for a 12-yard catch and run. Two more wasted running plays picked up all of six yards, and then Caleb hit Joshua for five yards across the middle again...first down.

  We're on around the midfield marker, and Coach Dell came to his senses and called for the bomb. Caleb threw it too short, the cornerback and me both go up for the ball...like you know who's going to come up with the football in a jump ball situation. We got our feet all tangled up, the corner fell, I caught the ball and righted myself and boom, I was gone. Like, the second quarter had barely started and I'd already scored two TDs.

  The other team made a field goal their next possession, and nobody scored again before halftime. Caleb kept messing up with his passes. By then, the other team had put a corner and a safety on me every pass play...well, duh...and Caleb kept throwing it too long or too short. And for some reason, Coach Dell forgot all about that I can't be stopped on an end around, and he hadn't called it again. At halftime, I told Coach Dell that I needed the ball more, and he gave me this long, angry stare and told me to go hydrate. I swear, we should have been ahead of this team by three touchdowns by halftime...they've got no game, especially their defense.

  The second half didn't start off well. Caleb got sacked on third down three straight possessions...our offensive line sucks...and by the end of the third quarter Caleb was screaming at them. I mean those guys are juniors and seniors...haven't they learned how to block yet. It was still 14-10 at the end of the third quarter, and Caleb really let Paul, our junior center, have it on the sideline, telling him that if he couldn't block any better than that, he was going to tell Coach Dell to put somebody else in. Then Paul got up in Caleb's face and shoved him, and some of the guys had to get in between them. Our defense, which hadn't done much all night, then intercepted the ball and one of the corners went in for a score. We're up 21-10, but the other team went right in for a score on the next possession and then, to everybody's surprise, went for a two-point conversion to make it 21-18. Then Caleb tried to hook up with me across the middle, and, man, he threw it behind me again, and they intercepted it and ended up kicking a field goal and the score was tied.

  Okay, tied score and we're down to two minutes left in the game and we take over just short of midfield. Like, who do you think needs to get the ball. We got into our two-minute drill and Caleb hit Joshua on two straight dump offs, and we were down to the 35. A draw play to the halfback got us five yards closer to pay dirt, and it was my time to shine. Coach Dell called for a hitch play to me, I grabbed the football at the 20, slanted away from the safety and outran the corner to the end zone and that was that. My first three touchdown game, and I send the crowd home happy.

  After the game, Joshua and Jordan and Kylee and me went out for pizza, and I could tell the girls were impressed with their menfolk. Joshua and me were way too tired to do much more than chow down on pizza, and by then, it was nearly 11 anyway and Kylee has a curfew. After we dropped off the girls, Joshua lit into me about my trying to tell Coach Dell his business during halftime. And that I had better tell my good buddy Caleb that he needs an attitude adjustment or Joshua was going to do it for me...and it won't be pretty. Man, we won the game because of Caleb and me. Big brother, lay off.

  Chapter Sixteen: Mia

  I had so much to do after school Friday. First, it was time to put the garden to bed for the fall because we've already had two light frosts, and the next one was going to finish off our tomato plants which were already looking thin and droopy. so I picked all the tomatoes that were left and most of them were green. Mama and I are going to make some chili with them, and they're great fried, too. Then, I had to gather eggs and clean out the henhouse. The manure just piles up if I don't clean the coop every week, and the poop sometimes gets into the nest boxes...the hens just track it in there...and then I have to clean off the eggs before I put them in the refrigerator. Poppa just loves some kind of egg dish and spicy sausage several times a week for breakfast.

  Then it was time for me to help Mama with dinner. We made this great baked fish meal with yellow onions, peppers, and garlic from the garden with roasted chili peppers and the last of the ripe tomatoes. I barely had time to help Mama clean up the kitchen, before I had to walk to go babysit a neighbor's kids. I try to make money babysitting every Friday and saturday nights. I have four or five families that know I'm reliable and will take good care of their kids. I've saved every dollar I've made for college. I know the money I make from my babysitting and whatever my other jobs are in high school won't be enough to pay for my tuition freshman year. But it will be a start.

  Friday night, I babysat the two Harmon girls; they're four and six and are pretty well behaved. I put them to bed by 8, which meant I finally had some time to myself for the first time all day. All week, Camila and Hannah, all they could talk about was Homecoming and would anybody ask them out. I know Poppa won't let me date this year, but I wouldn't have gone if someone had asked me out. I've just got to save my money for college and I'm not going to waste it on a dress for just one night. some of the girls are going to go to Homecoming in a group, which is probably what Camila and Hannah will end up doing. But I don't want to go sit in a group of girls and hope some boy will pick me out to dance with. It would be so humiliating to not be chosen all night.

  When Camila and Hannah weren't talking about Homecoming, they were teasing me about Luke. Luke and I sort of have his math tutoring schedule all worked out now. After eating a quick lunch with Camia and Hannah on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I go to the library to meet him at a table. We go over his homework for the night, and I try to help him get prepared for his weekly Friday math test or quiz. since I've started working with him, his grade has gone from an F to a middle D and his parents haven't gotten him a tu
tor so far, which he says means he can still go off into the woods and outdoors on saturdays and sundays. I would love for him to ask me to come along, but I can't ask him to...maybe he will ask me sometime.

  On Fridays, I skip lunch and go straight from third period to the library and meet up with Luke. That's our day for just sitting at side-by-side computers and reading about whatever one of us suggests. That's my favorite time of the week, in or out of school. A lot of the time we read about something that went on in honors history class, which we have together; sometimes we read about something about the outdoors. Luke always suggests that, of course. I was amazed at first about how much he knew about biology stuff. He knows all about trees, and birds and fish and what wild foods you can eat. Yet he has a D in science class fourth period. I bet he knows more about those types of things than Mrs. Burkhead does, and she's really smart. He says all she wants to teach about is amoebas and one-celled creatures and how boring is that. And then I tell him that she's got to teach the boring stuff because of the state testing and before we can get to the interesting lessons. But he's right, though, science class is pretty boring most every day, but I still have an A in it. I'm trying to convince Luke that he and I should form a two-person book club, that on Fridays we could select a book to read over the next week...that one week I could select a book for the two of us, then the next week he could. But he's been resistant to that idea.

  I think a lot about Luke and wonder if he thinks of me. That's mostly what I did Friday night when I finally had some time to myself. I hope he thinks of me sometimes. But I do see him changing some. He's not as nervous in some of the classes, like English and history, as he was when the year first started. But I can imagine that he's just an all-out mess in math, and I can tell without him telling me that he can't stand Mrs. Burkhead.

  I finally put Luke out of mind for a while and started reading ahead on the history chapters. sooner or later school is going to get really busy, and I want to be prepared. Around 10:30, the Harmons got back and since they were late, they gave me an extra few dollars, plus a $5 tip. It took me 10 minutes to walk home, and I went straight to bed. I was exhausted.

  End of First

  Nine Weeks

  Chapter Seventeen: Luke

  Well, the first nine weeks ended and I had a low Β in both English and history, a middle D in both honors science and remedial math and a C in everything else. My grades were better than usual in English but worse in science...one of the reasons was I got in trouble on the science field trip and in class before that. Mrs. Burkhead and I have issues.

  Several weeks ago, I got really excited when she said we were going on a Friday field trip to the river and take water samples and other stuff. I actually raised my hand in class and told her I could take my fishing rod if she wanted and catch fish and identify them for the other students and then we could seine up some minnows, crayfish, and hellgrammites and other creatures, and I could tell the class about the river's food chain. That sort of stuff, well, it's freaking awesome...I told her that. she said no, that we wouldn't be studying the aquatic unit until second semester in January. But I said it would be too cold to fish and seine stuff in January, and everybody could wear old clothes and tennis shoes, and we could all make seines, and I could identify everything we seined up, and I could help her with the identifications, too, if she didn't know something.

  As soon as I said that, I knew I had made a mistake and started to apologize but it was too late. Mrs. Burkhead got really mad and went to her desk drawer and got out the yellow discipline referral slips...told me to come here like I was a dog or something. I looked down at the yellow slip and checked off were "disrupting class" and "socially rude interactions." She then sent me to Mr. Caldwell, the assistant principal, and he said something like young man, why are you in here, and I told him that I was "too enthusiastic about learning." Well, that was also the wrong thing to say, and then he got mad at me, told me not to get smart with him, and tell him exactly what had gone on in class.

  So I did...the whole thing. And I told Mr. Caldwell that I didn't mean to show up Mrs. Burkhead about the identification of the fish and vertebrates and invertebrates, but I knew all about those kinds of animals and it was really fascinating and then I started telling him that another great idea for a field trip would be going up into the mountains and identifying all the songbirds and trees and shrubs and did he know that the hawks were migrating now and that we could maybe even see peregrine falcons and that I knew where some old American chestnut stumps were and how they once grew everywhere but were now endangered.. That there was just so much to see and do, that science and biology were absolutely awesome but amoebas and one-celled junk were not.

  When I started talking, Mr. Caldwell had this mad stare on his face, but, by the end of my rambling on and on, he was smiling and nodding his head and he chuckled, I mean the man actually chuckled, when I complained about amoebas. He then told me that he wasn't going to send me to in-school suspension, he wasn't going to call home (thank goodness for that, if he had called home and Mom wasn't home and if Dad had answered because he had been woken up, Mr. Caldwell would have gotten an earful), and that I was to choose my words more carefully in class. So he checked off "conference held" and sent me back to class.

  Mrs. Burkhead got this shocked look on her face when I came back, and I could tell she was not happy that I hadn't gotten at least kicked out of class for the rest of the period. I decided the best thing to do was keep my mouth shut the rest of the class. I should never have raised my hand in the first place.

  A week later we were on the field trip and the boring lecture had just barely got started (she was freaking lecturing to us on a field trip and we were having to take notes when we were outside on the river...can you believe that crap) and, I swear, all I said to Mrs. Burkhead was that I had just heard the call notes of some ruby crowned kinglets, and they were coming through the area now and would she like for me to point them out to her and the class. And she got all red in the face and yelled at me to go sit in the back of the bus until we got back to school...that I was in big trouble. I started to make a smart remark, saying something like did she have problems with ruby crowned kinglets or something, but I realized I had said too much already.

  When we got back to school, Mrs. Burkhead's first order of business was to write me up (she marked the same two categories on the yellow form), and I made a return visit to Mr. Caldwell's office. He told me that I needed to choose my words more carefully when I answered in class, and I told him I had decided not to raise my hand in science class anymore and that I was pretty sure Mrs. Burkhead wouldn't be calling on me anymore. Mr. Caldwell called home, meanwhile putting the phone on speaker, and sure enough, he woke up Dad and Dad let out some choice four-letter words about him, me, and the school. I spent the rest of the day sitting in the in-school suspension room and had time to read this fantastic book (which I had in my book bag) on how to fish for black bass, so being suspended wasn't too bad except that I missed my weekly Friday library time with Mia when we read and talk about neat things. She's been really nice to me and really she's the only reason I passed math because of how she's been tutoring me.

  Chapter Eighteen: Elly

  I made an A in every subject for the nine weeks, except for a B in health and P.E. I saw the B coming because I got a C- on the P.E. part. I couldn't run the entire mile when we did that, couldn't hit the softball when we played ball, and couldn't find my golf ball when I hit it into the overgrown ditch that runs along the sports field. Really, if Ms. Edwards had given me a D for the gym and outside stuff, I wouldn't have complained. But my parents were pleased with my grades and Mom understood about the P.E. grade. She said she wasn't an athlete in high school and I'm not either.

  English has become my favorite class. Right now, we're studying The Odyssey, and last week Ms. Hawk said she had come up with a game to help us have fun and learn our vocabulary words easier, plus get extra credit points. Well, everybody was tuned
in when she said that, and then she said the game was called Bonus Points and we would compete in teams to spell, define, and use in sentences the vocabulary words from The Odyssey. She next said that Paige, Kylee, Caleb, and Luke would be the captains, and they had five minutes to go out into the hall and have a "sports-style draft" to choose who was on the teams. Meanwhile, the rest of us were to put four or five chairs in circles and wait to see which team we were on.

  When the captains came back in, Luke walked over to Mia and me and said he had picked us, then motioned to Jayla to join us in his circle. I've never seen Luke so in to anything relating to school and so talkative about it. He has been talking more in class lately, especially in English and World History, but he has totally shut down in science. He's still really shy but not "painfully shy" like he used to be, if you know what I mean. Anyway, he told us three girls that he had made a deal with the other three captains that they could each pick the person that they wanted the most, before he picked anyone. But that when his turn came, he wanted to have three picks in a row. The other captains agreed to that, and Luke said that Paige picked Allen just like he thought she would, that, of course, Kylee picked her boyfriend Marcus, and Caleb picked a JV cheerleader, Leigh (who has really long blonde hair and wears really short skirts—I can't stand her, she's so stuck-up), which was predictable too, Luke said. I was really impressed about how he understood how the other captains would choose their teammates and I've got to confess that I was glad he chose me, though I wouldn't have minded one bit being on Caleb's team—he's the hottest boy in the freshman class. Luke then gave us this big pep talk and said he had picked the three smartest girls in the room, and that we were going to win this game "big time." He said that we were to shoot up our hands immediately when Ms. Hawk called out a vocabulary word..."be aggressive," he added.