RICHARD SLAZENGER

CHAPTER 9

Did Dillan find out? Of course he did. As obvious as a circus parade. Or even if he wasn't going to find out for himself, I was very willing to help with that. The diversity of my options got me grinning in triumph. Who would have thought? That feeling of genuine contentment; it really had been a while. Dillan's facial expression that I could then read like a book, which was never usually the case, spoke a lot of what I was hoping for. He clearly felt disappointed and inferiorized, much to my delight. But at what cost was I dealing with? The timeline between the ceremonious acceptance of my proposal to the start of our last year in high school was serene, must have been the honeymoon stage. Meticulous, right? And Dillan might have allowed himself to be humanly generous enough to grace us with that 'honeymoon'. Lest we forget, he was usually the x factor. The longer this factor seemed to have been kept in check the more I was confident of the possibility that I had subdued the situation, of course. I honestly didn't see it coming, and frankly too, it took me a while to decipher what was actually happening. We humans are susceptible to being victims of short memory. Dillan may have acknowledged that and utilized it just as well as he could.

My reputation might have been on course to be mounted on the golden stage. I must say I deserved it from the very start hence this openness. But it was just an assumption and as long as there were reasons to give it some relevance, I endeared to it. School did seem more conducive with the passing of time, and with the addition of the Sacci spice, life felt refreshingly renewed. I never considered returning to soccer that is if my memory doesn't fail me. They didn't seem to need me either, and amazingly I was okay with that. I am assuming you're also amazed and in extension hopeful that you are keeping up with the storyline, makes it easier, especially for me. Dottlem Lospurs was beaming with promise and whenever that was put to test, more than enough was dispensed. And in as much Dillan was still playing hero, I subconsciously found very little to hate on. This might have been helped more by that sublime and very unlikely goal Insisha Marta scored to send us to the county level in a game that Dillan's match sharpness seemed strangely off. The spotlight had then switched to Marta for a long while, which eased my comfort even more.

A short story about Insisha and football; channeling back to my preface, I describe him, or rather he is described as an unfortunate bunch of average. But Insisha was a committed worker, even when the result didn't pan out as he felt they should, which was always the case. Whatever fuelled his hunger was inexhaustible. So when he went on at the front of the class and declared that he would earn the vacant spot I left at the football team, the laughter from the class didn't fall short from the familiar, and neither was his self-assuring face. Prevalent bench warming favours and a lot of kicking the ball where it shouldn't, his soccer journey peaked with that very lucky goal that he knew little about. If his out of position body hadn't squat to avoid that charging shot, the ball won't have deflected off his back and scurried the net that was being stared at by the helpless goalkeeper. The school principal even bought him the Brazilian Marta's shirt in honour of his very unlikely contribution to our team's particularly stale history. That one significant memory. The cheer, the shirt. You needed no telling to realize just how much it meant to him. That would be the only goal he would manage to score in his entire high school football career. It was an agreeably special one, nonetheless. The shirt was an XL ... still valid for wear for the foreseeable future.

Turns out that much drama wasn't enough for a school calendar year though. Like every drama, a catalyst was needed. The evening sun was attempting its dip, felt like it might have hesitated but went for it nonetheless, for normalcy's sake as should be expected. And with the dipping came the dripping of the Benorch football players on the alley that meanderingly stretched past the worn out fence of the Dottlem's children playground. The gentle wind scattered the dust effortlessly, perhaps in the might of the initiation of their presence, a reverent introduction. Well this had never happened before but the extent of how its supposed motive knit itself into our conscience felt necessarily shrilling of the imminent danger. 'Our conscience'...I reckon this might unsettle your flow. So for your sake..., I'll generously expound. But of course, it just had to be me and her. Back to the perpetrators who must have been around eight, I can't be sure. Their dark, gravel textured shadows that were closing in relatively faster than their physical bodies worked to volume their number. A horrible fate in writing. Sacci's freight is more evident which could be termed as obvious. She earnestly searches for my arm, feeding it the tension it does not need. Meanwhile, am I successful at masking my fear? I tried really, made my face steel solid, stood like a tyrant's statue, unshaken, despite the possibility of an eventual uproot in the face of protestors. I tried, till she could touch my courage. But when the heat got the steam rattling, I searched for assurance from wherever logical. And when that crafted a dead end, I sprang. And with so much caution not to leave any of my belongings behind, I strapped my grip around her wrist and towed her. Circumstantially roughly but necessarily caringly.