Chapter 2
Cooper
I strode across the locker room, shaking my fingers out. Bench pressing weights always made my hands stiff, and I’d done two hundred and seventy pounds today. Not bad. Sometimes I’m almost as good as people expect me to be.
When I first began playing football and the coach told us we had to take weight lifting, I didn’t think I’d like the class, but there’s something satisfying about moving heavy things.
I just wished the class was sixth period, like last year.
Less changing into and out of clothes. Coach scheduled it fifth this year to see if an hour of recovery time before practice improved our performance.
He was always searching for ways to give our team an added advantage.
Jasper walked beside me, talking about his girlfriend.
I got along with most of the guys on the football team—sort of a necessity when you need the defense to keep each game from turning into a series of concussions—but Jasper was my best friend.
I used to hang out with him back before I started working after practice and actually had time to hang out.
“Amelia knows Dahlia,” Jasper said. “We could get together sometime.” Since Jasper started dating Amelia last summer, he’d been trying to set me up with her friends.
Dahlia Lu moved to Silver Creek in the middle of last year, and it hadn’t taken me long to notice her.
All the guys had noticed her. She’d lived in LA before and people said she’d done modeling there.
If it wasn’t true, it could’ve been. She had a confident way of walking, her long black hair streaming down her shoulders, which made her look like she was strolling down a runway.
“Does Dahlia even know who I am?”
Jasper snorted. “Everyone knows who you are. The school isn’t that big.”
The school had less than a thousand students, so he was right about that.
What I’d meant was How much does Dahlia know about me?
I was a boundary exception from the poor side of town to play football here.
SCH had a top-notch program. In a school like this, I had to know that a girl would like me despite my family’s tax bracket.
I tried again. “Maybe Amelia should run that plan by Dahlia and see if she’s interested.”
I opened my locker and saw some weird red wig and huge white boat shoes inside. A multicolor jumpsuit hung on the hook.
“What the—” I sifted through them. There was no note or explanation as to why they were there.
And my clothes were gone.
Great. Someone had stolen my clothes. I gripped the jumpsuit and held it up for the room to see. “Okay, which one of you clowns did this?”
The group broke into laughter. It was only then that I realized what I held. A clown outfit.
“I don’t know,” Jasper said. “But whichever clown did it, he left his stuff behind. We should look for a streaking Bozo to blame.”
Very funny.
“Wasn’t me,” Keoni, the biggest guy on defense, said. “All of my clown clothes are extra large.”
“Hey, Cooper,” another guy said, “we don’t judge your fashion taste. You do you, man.”
Someone else chimed in with, “Wouldn’t want to walk a mile in those shoes, bro. Good luck with that.”
They all went back to the lockers and their clown commentaries while I stood there, fuming.
It didn’t take long for me to realize who was responsible. Madeline Seibold, the school’s leading drama chick. Her father donated big bucks to the school, and in return, the teachers gave her whatever she wanted, including the lead in every play.
I double-checked my locker to see if I’d overlooked anything. Maybe she’d written a note telling me where she stashed my stuff.
No such luck.
Henry, the team captain, shook his head like a parent overseeing a child who had clearly made a mistake. “I told you that you shouldn’t have plastic-wrapped her Miata. The girl has it out for you.”
Jasper strode over to get a better look at my locker. “Does she have it out for you or have it bad for you? I mean, she wants your clothes, dude. Probably going to make a shrine with them.”
“Definitely out for me.” I knew when a girl liked me. They got all chatty and smiled and complimented me. Halfway through junior year, for no good reason, Madeline made a compilation video of every bad throw, move, or tackle in my high school games. It went viral, at least at our school.
In return, I left raw chicken in her locker over Christmas break. After we returned to school, the stench was so awful that for days, students steered clear of the hallway where her locker was. Since then, it’s been one thing or another between us.
I shoved the clown outfit back into my locker. I’d find a use for it. On some dark night when she was alone, it would appear, stuffed and wearing a hockey mask, waiting in her stupid little convertible.
“I need my clothes back.” I didn’t have time to hunt for them after school. Henry always gave me a ride to my house after practice. I only had a few minutes to change into my work clothes and ride my bike to the drugstore for my shift.
I slammed my locker shut. “She better not even think about keeping them.”
Those jeans hadn’t been cheap. I’d bought them in one of my attempts to fit in at a school where everybody wore name brands.
That was the downside of getting a boundary exception.
I’d become the poor kid at the rich school, the one from a broken home.
People didn’t realize how tight things had gotten at my house.
I took a deep, calming breath. “So help me, Madeline better give me back my clothes before school ends.”
“And if she doesn’t?” Jasper asked.
I slammed the locker door shut. “She won’t find her car.”
Keoni pulled his shirt over his head. “Dude, you know how to hot-wire cars? Why didn’t you tell us this before?”
“I don’t need to hot-wire it,” I said, “because I have friends who can move a Miata.”