09-08-2022, 03:20 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-08-2022, 05:45 PM by dude_man. Edited 1 time in total.)
Chapter 1
As the bears danced a tender foxtrot across the interstate, I was forced to slow down my tractor to avoid the scene. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. I looked over to the passenger seat to see if my cousin’s ex-girlfriend’s aunt, Cindy, was also captivated by the quick-stepping black bears on the freeway. But when I turned to face her, she suddenly became my strength coach, and instead of staring at the bears, he was glaring at me with his angry-looking eyebrows. My mom always told me, “Calvin, if you keep making that face, it’s going to get stuck like that.” I never believed her, of course; but when I looked at Coach Stevens, I wondered curiously if she might have been right. Coach Stevens had the kind of face that some have lovingly abbreviated to “RBF.” It wasn’t all his fault. His weathered, cracked cheeks weighed down the corners of his mouth into an unbreakable scowl. Even his laughs never made the corners of his mouth cross the plane of expression into something resembling a smile. With his ever-present frown being heard in his voice, he yelled at me “You’re late!” then reached across the tractor and struck me in the face.
I woke up with a start and a dull pain on my left temple. The alarm on my phone had vibrated long enough to slowly inch over the edge of the shelf above my headboard and fall onto my face. When I turned my phone over to turn off the alarm, the screen brightness caused me to shut my eyes and turn away from the sudden light. After a moment, I was finally able to tolerate the light enough to see what my phone was yelling about. “WORKOUTS” flashed angrily at my on the screen. The alarm had been blaring for 12 minutes now, but had somehow not pulled me from my dream. All of a sudden, the realization set in: I am late. Workouts start at 5:30 and it was now 5:13. The walk from my dorm room to the weight room was only about a 10 minute walk, but I could make it in 3 if I sprinted. This morning I was going to have to skip my normal morning routine of coffee and reading the news and head straight there.
I leapt out of bed, got dressed, and grabbed a protein bar on my way out the door so I wouldn’t have to lift on an empty stomach. When I was at the bottom of the stairwell in my dorm building, I realized that I had forgotten my phone. I raced back up the stairs to the 4th floor and barreled into the room recklessly, knocking over the standing lamp by my bed. I simply didn’t have time to pick it up. If I was even one minute late, Coach Stevens assigned a cruel amount of extra sprints to do after workouts were finished. I grabbed my phone that was lying on the bed. “5:24.” I can still make it. With no regard to how much noise I was making this early on a Thursday morning, I flew out of my room like a bat out of hell and quickly made my way down the hall, down the stairs, and into the lobby. There was only one other student awake; a frantic-looking freshman who had seemingly been up all night studying for an exam. Seeing the student reminded me that I, too, had an exam today: ENG 305 - a study of William Shakespeare. An exam was the least of my worries this morning. If I didn’t make it to workouts on time, I wouldn’t be able to study for it later.
Forcing the impending exam to the back of my mind, I burst out of the front doors and hit a full-fledged sprint to the weightroom. All I could think while I ran was “Now this is not how I planned to start senior year.”
As the bears danced a tender foxtrot across the interstate, I was forced to slow down my tractor to avoid the scene. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. I looked over to the passenger seat to see if my cousin’s ex-girlfriend’s aunt, Cindy, was also captivated by the quick-stepping black bears on the freeway. But when I turned to face her, she suddenly became my strength coach, and instead of staring at the bears, he was glaring at me with his angry-looking eyebrows. My mom always told me, “Calvin, if you keep making that face, it’s going to get stuck like that.” I never believed her, of course; but when I looked at Coach Stevens, I wondered curiously if she might have been right. Coach Stevens had the kind of face that some have lovingly abbreviated to “RBF.” It wasn’t all his fault. His weathered, cracked cheeks weighed down the corners of his mouth into an unbreakable scowl. Even his laughs never made the corners of his mouth cross the plane of expression into something resembling a smile. With his ever-present frown being heard in his voice, he yelled at me “You’re late!” then reached across the tractor and struck me in the face.
I woke up with a start and a dull pain on my left temple. The alarm on my phone had vibrated long enough to slowly inch over the edge of the shelf above my headboard and fall onto my face. When I turned my phone over to turn off the alarm, the screen brightness caused me to shut my eyes and turn away from the sudden light. After a moment, I was finally able to tolerate the light enough to see what my phone was yelling about. “WORKOUTS” flashed angrily at my on the screen. The alarm had been blaring for 12 minutes now, but had somehow not pulled me from my dream. All of a sudden, the realization set in: I am late. Workouts start at 5:30 and it was now 5:13. The walk from my dorm room to the weight room was only about a 10 minute walk, but I could make it in 3 if I sprinted. This morning I was going to have to skip my normal morning routine of coffee and reading the news and head straight there.
I leapt out of bed, got dressed, and grabbed a protein bar on my way out the door so I wouldn’t have to lift on an empty stomach. When I was at the bottom of the stairwell in my dorm building, I realized that I had forgotten my phone. I raced back up the stairs to the 4th floor and barreled into the room recklessly, knocking over the standing lamp by my bed. I simply didn’t have time to pick it up. If I was even one minute late, Coach Stevens assigned a cruel amount of extra sprints to do after workouts were finished. I grabbed my phone that was lying on the bed. “5:24.” I can still make it. With no regard to how much noise I was making this early on a Thursday morning, I flew out of my room like a bat out of hell and quickly made my way down the hall, down the stairs, and into the lobby. There was only one other student awake; a frantic-looking freshman who had seemingly been up all night studying for an exam. Seeing the student reminded me that I, too, had an exam today: ENG 305 - a study of William Shakespeare. An exam was the least of my worries this morning. If I didn’t make it to workouts on time, I wouldn’t be able to study for it later.
Forcing the impending exam to the back of my mind, I burst out of the front doors and hit a full-fledged sprint to the weightroom. All I could think while I ran was “Now this is not how I planned to start senior year.”