The Agreement
16 Teammates
I DIDN’T HAVE any dates for the next couple weeks. We played away games in Akron and Rochester and a home game against Warsaw. We were coming up to the end of term and winter break and I had a ton of homework for Geometry and Advanced Chem. I had a long English paper of five pages to prepare and a paper for World History. About the only classes I didn’t have homework for were Phys Ed and Drafting.
“I wish I could just hole up somewhere and study this stupid Geometry homework,” Brenda complained. She was the only one in our group that was at the same level in math I was.
“Why don’t you come over Saturday afternoon and we’ll work through the problems together. I can’t believe Nolan assigned us fifty problems. He knew we had a game Friday night.”
“Hey, can I hang out and go over that World History chapter?” Lionel asked.
“Me, too,” Liz said. “We don’t have the same period history class, but Mr. Hancock is giving us all the same homework.”
When we all got together Saturday afternoon, there were six of us studying up in my attic bedroom. Hannah and Whitney came over to work on our Comp papers. That was the beginning. The next week, ten of us met to study together. And we really studied. It was almost like having a study hall in my bedroom. Mom was really nice. She always had a snack for us in the middle of the afternoon. We studied until about six when parents came to retrieve their kids, but we were all too tired to go out afterward.
Betts got home from college on the seventeenth and our winter break started the nineteenth—the day before our JV Holiday Tournament in Warsaw.
Four teams, two games each. We played Plymouth at noon. At two, Warsaw played Bremen. At six, the losers played the consolation game. At eight, the winners played for the holiday championship. Since varsity was playing at Harrison, Ms. Abernathy and our cheerleaders were on our bus. Coach Hancock and Ms. Abernathy weren’t fussy about keeping the players and cheerleaders separate, but they walked down the aisle every few minutes to talk to someone. It wasn’t that long a bus ride and we were sent to our locker rooms.
It was hardest on Whitney, of course. She didn’t have a locker room. She wore her uniform under sweats and didn’t have a place to shower between games. When everyone had left the arena, the cheerleaders all blocked the girls’ locker room, which had been used for two of the boys’ teams, and Whitney got a shower before we all went to an early dinner. We lost the first game and faced Bremen at six. Win or lose, we were staying through the last game and wouldn’t get out of town until after ten. We ate at the Holiday Inn and Coach warned us not to eat too heavy a meal. I wondered how we managed to have the school pick up the tab for our meal when we were at a tournament. There must have been a budget somewhere. We sure didn’t get meals paid for at home.
“This is such a drag,” Whitney complained. “Look. I’m in street clothes. If we don’t get back by five, I won’t have a place to change.”
“It’s okay, honey,” Rose said. “You don’t need a shower before the game. We’ll find a girls’ restroom you can change in and make sure no one comes in while you’re getting ready.” I thought it was really sweet that Rose called Whitney ‘honey.’ It was more than our team. It was our family. I found out how much that had changed during the first half.
Whitney took an inbounds pass from Josh late in the second quarter and dribbled down court. She’d been hot so far this game and had racked up ten points already. As they approached the center line she flipped the ball back to Josh and set a pick for him to move into position for the play. He cut behind her and threw the ball across court to Derek. Some big dude from Bremen decided the best way to break up the play was to charge right through Whitney. She landed right in front of Josh. The whistle blew for a foul. I couldn’t hear what was said, but Josh threw a punch and the kid from Bremen went sailing across the court. Whistles all over everyplace and the coaches were on the floor pulling their teams back. Coach Hancock was kneeling beside Whitney to make sure she was all right and then helped her up. The Bremen kid was bleeding. Refs were consulting and both teams looked like they were ready for war. We all stood at the bench and were ready to charge onto the floor if a single Bremen player came off the bench.
Josh was thrown out of the game. The kid from Bremen was lying on the floor next to the bench with his head tilted back and another player holding an ice pack against his nose. Whitney sank two shots on the intentional foul. The Bremen center shot the technical foul for his team and missed one of two. Both teams got warnings that the game would be called if there was any more rough stuff. I went in for Josh.
We won the consolation game by fifteen points.
“Listen up. We had a player thrown out of the game.” Coach Hancock had waited for everyone to get showered and out of the locker room. Then he’d held us in the hallway until Whitney went in and showered. The cheerleaders and Ms. Abernathy went into the locker room with her. As soon as she was dressed, Coach led us back into the locker room for a lecture. The championship game was already in the second quarter. He had the cheerleaders stay with us. “We were lucky to pull out that win. We do NOT throw punches on the court. Ever. Josh, you’re suspended from the first two games after the break. There’s no tolerance for that behavior.” Shit. No matter how much we didn’t get along, Josh was really a good player and the team depended on him. “Before we leave this room, though, we’re all going to know what really happened out there. You first, Whitney. What happened?”
“I tossed the ball to Josh and set a pick. Josh went around the side and I turned to take my position and got blindsided by the asshole from Bremen.”
“You’ll be benched a game as well if you can’t control your language,” Coach said sternly. “Josh. What happened?”
“He plowed into her and knocked her on her butt. I hit him.”
“All of it.” Josh was silent. “I want to know why you hit a player from the other team.”
“He said, ‘Girls are made for fucking, not basketball.’ He was talking about my teammate and I hit him,” Josh said.
Holy fucking shit!
We loaded on the bus and left.
Whitney sat next to Doug and across the aisle from Josh. Sora, one of the JV cheerleaders was next to Josh. Carl and Brenda sat behind them. Rose and I sat behind Whitney and Doug.
“Thanks, teammate,” Whitney said, turning to Josh. She held out her fist and he bumped it with his. Doug, Carl, and I reached in and bumped fists, too.
“Teammates,” we said.
Rose cuddled up next to me for the rest of the ride home.
“You’re still coming over tomorrow, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Of course. It’s your fifteenth birthday,” I said. “It’s really nice of your parents to invite me. I wanted to take you someplace, but I can’t expect them not to want you home for your birthday.”
“We talked about it,” Rose said. “They said that birthdays were family affairs, but that they understood if I’d like my boyfriend to come over. It was funny. As soon as he said it, Dad stopped and said, ‘One of them.’ He knew darn good and well you promised to take me out. He was just digging at me.”
“Your parents sound pretty cool. Things have been so crazy with basketball that I’ve fallen behind in inviting my girlfriends and their parents for dinner. Hopefully after the break it will get back to normal.”
“Are you kidding? Two more months of what we’ve been going through and then the state tournament. Things won’t be normal till spring break.”
We weren’t allowed any displays of affection, but the coaches didn’t mind if we were holding hands, just if we were kissing. I squeezed Rose’s hand and we just leaned against each other the rest of the way back to school.
One of our group’s ‘unwritten rules’ was that we don’t give birthday presents and Christmas presents to each other. Might sound strange, but I had fourteen girlfriends and four boyfriends. I’d go broke giving each of them two presents a year. It just wasn’t practical. That didn’t mean that we didn’t recognize each event. Like Hannah, Courtney, Samantha, and Jennifer going to the dude ranch for my birthday. We even had a cake at our lunch table the last day before break for Rose’s birthday, the twenty-first, and for Sugar’s, the day after New Year’s. Rose’s family was really nice, except her older sister, Roxie. But what can you say about older sisters? I found out her little brother Ross was in seventh grade and was one of Judy’s friends.
With the general family obligations completed, Roxie left on a date. Rose led me to their basement family room. Ross went with us. Boy, this is going to be interesting. They had a real home movie theater set up in their basement family room. There were big chairs and a huge TV with a video player.
“I’m going to watch that new Race Against Time movie we got,” Ross announced. “Hope you two don’t mind the noise.” He scooted one chair forward and fit the video into the slot. In a few seconds, the music was filling the room through huge speakers. Rose led me to a chair on the left side of the room and pulled it back toward the stairs. We were behind Ross and he was quickly absorbed in his movie. I noticed that if anyone came to the top of the stairs, we weren’t in the direct line of sight. Rose pushed me down in the chair and crawled into my lap.
“How’d you get your little brother to watch a video and not us?” I whispered. I know for a fact that if Betts had ever tried that, I’d have been looking over my shoulder at her the whole evening.
“I promised him a good long look at my bare fifteen-year-old boobs before he went to bed tonight.”
“Rose!”
“He’s twelve years old and just started masturbating. He’ll go to his room and not even know whose boobs he was looking at,” she said. I chuckled.
“I don’t know. Doug is still pretty fond of his sister.”
“She didn’t! No wonder he seems so… confident.”
“Yeah. He told Carl and me just about everything we knew about sex before we started dating. Um… I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”
“I saw his sister holding his hand at the Halloween party,” Rose said. “I just never thought… did they, like, do it with each other?”
“God no. Doreen is really cool, but she’s not perverted. It was all show and tell.”
“I might do that with Ross when he’s older. We really get along well and even if I hadn’t offered that, he probably would have agreed to help us.”
“May I kiss you, Rose?”
“I was hoping you would, but… Brian? Can I give you permission to make out with me as passionately as you want without actually touching my breasts or between my legs?”
“Of course you can. You know I’d never push you to do something you don’t want to.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s… I feel like I’m going through life too fast. I haven’t let any other boy touch my breasts at all, let alone uncover them and… lick my nipples like you did. Brian, it was so exciting that I crave that all the time.” I was puzzled, but okay.
“If that’s what you want…”
“I don’t think you understand. Brian, I think I’m falling in love with you. And if I fall in love with you, I’m afraid I’ll start acting stupid and either do something with you that I don’t really want to or do something with someone else just to prove that I’m not in love with you. I know it sounds stupid, but… Brian, I don’t want to grow up this fast.” All of a sudden, I had a crying girl in my arms. A girl that not only turned me on, but that I really cared a lot about. What could I do but hold her and pet her hair and cry with her.
Apparently, we were too noisy and even though Ross had promised not to look, he turned and saw us crying.
“Did you hurt my sister,” he said, standing as if he was going to tear me apart.
“It’s okay, Ross,” Rose said. “Brian didn’t hurt me. You won’t understand this for a while, but sometimes a girl just needs to cry. I felt safe crying with Brian.”
“Oh. Hormones. Okay. I’m sorry. I…”
“Little brother, thank you for trying to protect me. Don’t worry. This doesn’t affect our agreement. But please go back to your movie and let me make out with my boyfriend.” He blushed and turned back to the TV, even turning his back more firmly toward us.
“May I kiss you, Rose?” I asked.
“Yes, Brian. Please kiss me.”
I don’t know how she managed it, but Hannah got permission to host a New Year’s Eve party. I’d pretty much decided that her dad was the coolest minister that ever lived. In fact, I found out that the kids in his church called him Brighty because he was so bald light reflected off his head. Our dating group wasn’t the only party, though. We met downstairs in the basement of the parsonage. It was pretty much a big open space and there was a ping pong table at one end. There were a bunch of shelves with kids’ toys that were too young for Hannah or her sister.
“The kindergarten meets down here,” Hannah explained to all of us. “We have to leave their stuff alone.” The little chairs that none of us could have sat in anyway were all stacked in one corner. The whole rest of the basement was covered with throw rugs and carpet remnants. It was such a mishmash of colors and patterns that it boggled the eye. Of course, there was the old sofa and a chair, but we just pushed those out to the side so we could have the space completely open.
The coolest thing was that the Gordons were holding a New Year’s Eve party upstairs that included every single one of our parents. We all had extended curfew because our parents would take us home when their party ended. Even Jennifer and Courtney’s parents were there. Well, I didn’t realize that Jennifer only lived with her mom. Courtney’s parents were staying the night with the Gordons as were Courtney and Jennifer. Betts was spending New Year’s Eve at Doreen’s house. I was a little envious that Hannah would be with Jennifer and Courtney for the night and I’d be going home to my big empty room after the party.
I spent the entire day with Hannah and Sarah preparing food. We cooked for both parties and Sarah said that several parents had contributed money to buy food for the parties. You couldn’t expect the preacher to have enough money to feed all fifty or so of us. But the three of us mostly got everything prepared while Mrs. Gordon ran around cleaning things Hannah said she’d cleaned a dozen times already. Courtney and Jennifer and their parents arrived about four o’clock and they helped finish things up. The rest of the guests started arriving at six.
This is going to be the best party since Halloween!
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
