Just What I Needed

Just What I Needed (13)

Keely strolled past the suitcases she had piled beside the door the night before. It was six in the morning, and Maureen would be coming to pick her up at seven to go the airport. And she would be moving to New York.

Silently Keely slipped from the house, careful not to wake her father, and slid into the car that she barely used. It had been her father's when he had turned seventeen, and he had restored it so Keely could drive it when she'd turned seventeen. Yet she'd never bothered to drive it even then, Joe had always been there to drive her around, and he'd always been more than willing, but that didn't seem like an option anymore.

Thankfully, the doors to her school were open, some teacher's car was parked in the lot explaining the open locks.

She had forgotten to clean out her locker on Friday, and now Keely would have about a half an hour to clear it out before she had to get back home.

But it wasn't as if Keely had to be there to say her goodbyes to anyone. She had a feeling that her father wasn't even going to bother to get up, Haley, Tony and Sadie had said their farewells the night before. And Joe, well Joe pretty much hated her.

Sighing, Keely found her locker in the dark.

Grabbing a garbage can handle, she parked it right beside her locker before she started clearing it out.

There was the flier for the car wash that was supporting the cheerleaders getting new uniforms. Smiling, Keely flattened it out perfectly and slid it into her bad. She may not have liked being a cheerleader as would have been preferable for a captain, but there were too many memories to be throwing them away.

Along with the flier, Keely slid in a picture of her and Haley at the beach having a water fight. A picture of Haley and Keely having a piggy back war on the same day in the ocean, Keely was on Tony's shoulders and Haley was on her boyfriend of the time shoulders, his name might have been Lucas. A picture of Keely cheering at a football game, one of Tony hugging her as they got into the playoffs for the first time in seventeen years, she and Joe riding the horses down the road and the last of where you could see the horses in the background, but Joe had Keely over his shoulder and was about to throw her into the river.

As for her binders, Keely shoved them in her backpack along with the loose papers. She kept things like a necklace Tony had given her, a cartoon of a horse chasing a carrot that Sadie had drawn, a shirt that Haley had made from scratch and the seven of the CD's Joe had given her that had been sitting on the top shelf.

"What are you doing here so early Staub?"

Glancing up from where she was squatting as she tried to make everything fit in her back pack, Keely saw the football coach Mike Croft. "I could ask you the same thing Coach," she answered casually, standing up.

"I thought you were leaving today, shouldn't you be home with your family?" he asked, leaning against the locker beside Keely's.

"I forgot to clean out my locker, and actually," she said looking at her watch. "I've got to be going because I'm getting picked up from my house at seven."

"Once again, shouldn't you be home with your family?"

Looking up into Coach's wrinkled weathered wise face, Keely found herself becoming defensive. "I would think so to, but my father doesn't want anything to do with me and my best friend hates me. So, yes, I really should be home with my family, but they don't want me to be home with them." Without a thought she blurted everything out, and almost clapped her hands to her mouth afterwards in shame.

"Or could it be they want you to," he said philosophically.

"I'm not backing out on my dreams now," Keely narrowed her eyes at Coach Croft.