Home Coming

It is Homecoming week and the student body is celebrating. Everyone is asking everyone to the dance. It is Homecoming and there is confetti and everyone is celebrating and dancing. Coach Mann goes out of his way top talk about how unless Lincoln is familiar with the military strategies of Hannibal and Xerxes than they just cannot touch us on the field. When I come into class limping Aron Rothmann mimes me from behind then makes little thrusting sounds.

Coach has excused me from practice. He has diagnosed it as a shin-splint. Instead of running after school I go up into the pool and simulate running laps.

 

I then go home and ice my leg for ten hours straight.

 

Our next race is the Central Invite with 45 teams and over 300 runners this weekend.

 In the locker room Banners are festooned throughout the aquatic hallways of the school I was planning on going down to the talent show with Tin but my leg has just been hurting too bad.  The day before

 

There are signs draped everywhere for the football team.

 

There a no signs for soccer or for cross-country.

Toilet paper is funneled everywhere like glens.

Coach says that in Chicago some schools have Homecoming over their schools Cross-Country meet.

 

“Yeah, we just get shit in here.”

 

I walk up to the pool. I still cant move my leg.

 

Tomorrow is the central Invite.

 

Tomorrow Coach wants me to run

 

After the final homecoming send off there is a fight in the hallway. Patrick gets boxed into a corner while two kids flail each other.  He can’t move. The dean and the cop who looks like Michelin tire man break it off, groping the students and prying them apart. Patrick is cornered.

 

‘’You okay bro?”

 

“I fucking hate this place. I can’t wait to get the hell out. All people here ever do is fuck with you. That’s all they ever do.”