Chapter 2
CALLUM
“Man, Coach was already on our case today.”
Callum puffs out a breath and nods as he wipes some sweat from his brow.
“And it was so hot. Isn’t it September? I thought the heat would be gone by now,” Callum says to Joel, his roommate and teammate.
Today’s practice was the most grueling yet, but he has to accept that this is how things are going to be now that he’s a sophomore. No more playing around.
Joel puts his key in the lock, and both boys fall into their well air-conditioned dorm room. A welcome reprieve from three hours spent in the blistering sun.
Joel flops onto his bed face first, splaying like a starfish on his stomach.
Callum sits on his bed and puts his weight on his hands as he leans back.
He can’t believe he spoke to Mason Fanning for the first time in years a couple of hours ago.
He’s not sure what made him want to say anything.
He was just there, going onto the field to practice, and all of a sudden, he sees Mason in the bleachers, doing his homework, and something just…
clicked in him. He had to say something, even just a “hi.”
He eyes the singular cardboard box at the end of his bed that he has yet to unpack. It’s been almost two weeks of being on campus, and he still hasn’t had it in him to look in it.
Joel gets up from his bed. “You still haven’t unpacked that box?”
Callum blinks as he realizes that Joel has been watching him. Not only that, but he’s noticed the fact that Callum hasn’t unpacked it.
It’s something he learned very quickly about Joel since he went to Northwood High with him. Joel is a grade younger than Callum, but he noticed very quickly that Joel notices things. Especially the things people want to hide.
Callum smiles sheepishly. “I’m not the best at it. Took me awhile to get to the rest of my stuff, remember?”
Callum knows it’s a lie. He’s just not as keen on being roommates with Joel this year.
Joel is a little more judgmental than the rest of his teammates, and Callum has some personal effects he doesn’t want Joel to see in that bag. He’s barely had any alone time since they started rooming together, but they surely won’t be together all the time once classes start.
Joel gets up and walks over to the unopened cardboard box at the end of Callum’s bed. “I’ll help you then.”
Callum shakes his head. “It’s okay, I’ll do it on my break between classes tomorrow.”
Joel laughs. “Come on, we could use the free space.”
Joel bends down, opens the box, and begins to take things out.
Callum purses his lips but starts to help Joel, careful to keep certain things from Joel’s prying eyes.
Callum takes out some framed photos of him on the Northwood High football team and him with Coach Meyers from his freshman year at Montgomery.
He smiles at him with his coach, but his happiness is short-lived as Joel pulls out another photo frame.
“I didn’t know you and Fanning were friends.”
Joel’s voice is like tires screeching on the road in his ears at the mention of his name. Just as arresting as a car crash or nearly missing an oncoming collision.
Callum whips his head to Joel, who is holding a framed picture of him and Mason from when they were kids at the swimming pool.
Callum coughs and rubs the back of his neck. “We aren’t.”
He takes the frame from Joel and puts it in his drawer, wanting the picture and the subject of Mason to be filed away and stay forevermore in Northwood without following him back to Montgomery.
Joel laughs, likely on the verge of teasing Callum, like he tries to at any opportunity he can. “Then why did you bring a photo of you both to Montgomery?”
Callum inhales sharply, shaking his head as Joel’s voice grates in his ears. It doesn’t matter that he still has the picture and brought it with him.
His mom is the one who took the picture, and that’s the only reason he still has it.
He and Mason just aren’t friends anymore.
They used to be. Now they aren’t.
They are on different paths, and that’s all there is to the story.
Why did everyone else think there is more?
“My mom took the picture,” Callum decides on saying, taking some of his football posters from the box and starts to tape them onto his side of the dorm.
Joel quirks an eyebrow at him. “Tammy took this?”
Tension runs through Callum’s hands as he tapes the posters.
“No. She didn’t,” he says, his voice surprisingly even.
“Oh,” is all Joel can muster out, which is a remarkably empathetic response from him.
“But why this picture? Why not bring one of you and your… real mom? Instead, you brought a picture of you and Fanning, who I haven’t seen you talk to… maybe ever.”
Callum sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Why does he keep bringing Mason up? Why can’t Joel leave anything alone? He knows Mason and Joel had some classes together at Northwood High, but he didn’t know Joel had Mason on his radar to this extent to be pestering him so much.
“Look, man. Mason and I used to be friends when we were kids. We grew apart, okay? Happy?”
Joel smirks. “Sort of. I just find it hard to think that you and that dweeb were ever close. You couldn’t be any more different.”
His jaw ticks at Joel’s choice of moniker for Mason but he doesn’t let it get to him. Any mention of Mason sets him on edge, and he doesn’t want to talk about him anymore. Saying hi to him at practice was enough.
Callum just wanted to show Mason that he was on campus and to be on his merry way. That’s all it was.
As far as he knew, Mason was still considered a high schooler. He was a sophomore at Montgomery, and the quarterback of The Montgomery Hornets now, so why would he care about some old childhood friend from his hometown anymore?
“Whatever, he’s probably off to Harvard doing physics problems on Friday nights or something,” Callum grumbles as he starts opening his dresser and rapidly throwing his clothing out of it.
But it’s a complete lie. He knows that Mason isn’t going to Harvard. He’s at Montgomery, and he just spoke with him not two hours ago.
Montgomery had been Mason’s dream school his entire childhood. He might have gotten offers from Harvard or any Ivy League; he wouldn’t be surprised, but Mason would have accepted Montgomery over any of them.
Joel was in Mason’s grade, and Callum only became friends with Joel after he got onto the football team. Callum set his eyes on Joel right away as someone to be friends with. Joel’s uncle had been in the big leagues, and it had been a topic within the first week of practices.
Going pro is all Callum wants, and all he’s important for, according to his dad, so he jumped at the opportunity to be Joel’s friend, despite him not being the nicest person to be around. Callum doesn’t have anything else going for him other than football. At least, that’s what everyone told him.
“God, that kid gets on my nerves. He just thinks he’s so much better than everyone cause he was a physics and math whizz.
He always used to give me this face like I was stupid or something,” Joel says with a grimace on his face, like Mason is standing in front of them himself, looking at Joel with his big-framed glasses balancing on the end of his nose.
“Well, you won’t have to deal with him anymore, yeah?” Callum says, his voice strangely annoyed.
“What climbed up your ass?” Joel asks.
Callum sighs, a longer, and wearier one than before. He should have actually started cleaning before Joel stepped into his room. Joel always has something to say. As shitty as he can be, he is observant, and he can tell the topic of Mason sets Callum on edge.
“I’m just tired of talking about high school. We go to Montgomery now, Whitlock,” Callum says, pointing at the maroon and gold flag on the wall behind his bed.
Joel rolls his eyes. “Obviously. I just know Fanning gets under your skin. It’s fun to watch you squirm.”
Callum scoffs. “No, he doesn’t. You just said yourself he pisses you off; stop projecting onto me,” Callum says.
Joel shakes his head and whips the bag open. “Whatever, man.”
Callum opens his bedside drawer and takes out another picture frame. He caresses it in his hand like it’s a delicate small animal that he can crush with his grip if he holds it too hard. Pain sears through his chest at the picture.
It’s of him and his mom on the first day of elementary school, hugging and smiling wide. She stands in the middle, with Mason on the left of her, hugging her like she’s his mother, too.
He’s wearing glasses much too big for his face and has a maroon baseball cap and a backpack that makes it seem like he’ll topple down from its weight at any second.
Life is so different now.
He wishes he could jump into that picture and be back to how things used to be.
His real mom is alive. He doesn’t have a stepmom.
He doesn’t have the pressure of being a star football player.
Having a best friend who truly cares about him.
But he knows he ruined everything. Saying “hi” won’t change what happened. He can’t go back now.
He sniffs and carefully puts the frame into his bedside table.
A knock comes at the door.
“Can you get that?” Callum says as he puts the frame away.
Joel gets up and opens the door. “Enter if you dare, Craig.”
Callum perks up and sees Craig’s clumsy and burly frame make it into their dorm.
“Yo, your guys’ room is so much bigger than mine!” Craig says, his usual dumb smile on his face and full of surprise.
Joel smacks Craig’s back. “Sorry, buddy, guess we lucked out.”
Craig nods. “I was hoping to room with Callum like last year, but I guess you lucked out with having him too,” Craig says to Joel.
Callum snorts. Craig wasn’t the perfect roommate. He was often messy and loud in the mornings, but he had a heart of gold, and Callum was lucky to have someone to confide in during his first year of college.
Craig never judged and didn’t snoop, much unlike Joel.
Joel goes back to unpacking Callum’s stuff, and Craig sits on his bed. “So, Cal, who was that guy you were talking to at practice?”
Joel whips his head up to look at Craig, glancing between Craig and Callum.
Callum silently curses Craig. He had spoken to Mason while Joel was still in the locker room. Joel wouldn’t have known.
“Oh, just someone from one of my classes last year.”
Craig snorts. “He seemed kinda standoff-ish with you, man. Are you guys good?”
Joel stares expectantly at Callum. Callum keeps his eyes focused on Craig.
Callum bats his hand with a smile. “There was just a misunderstanding. It’s fine.”
Callum goes back to putting the rest of his posters up.
“You think we have a good chance of winning the championship this year?” Joel asks.
Craig snorts. “With Callum as the QB, we’ll for sure have it in the bag.”
Callum smiles bashfully at Craig. “And with you as tight end.”
Craig bumps his chest twice with his fist.
Joel snorts and shakes his head.
Callum’s phone buzzes on his bedside table, and he goes to pick it up.
Tammy
How was your first week?
He immediately throws his phone back on the table.
He has to give it to his stepmom; she is adamant about being a good mom.
He just hates how quickly she’s tried to weasel her way into the position. Right when his dad started seeing her, she was already acting like she knew so much about him and that she was going to be a good mother figure.
He barely had a good father figure to begin with, so she had a tough bill to fill if she wanted to take on that role.
As Joel starts tinkering on his phone, Callum picks up his phone and opens up Instagram. He throws Joel a furtive glance as he types Mason’s name into the search bar. He’ll be damned if he'll let Joel get under his skin and pester him about Mason and see him look up Mason on social media.
His chest clenches as Mason’s profile pops up. He sees the familiar thick-rimmed glasses and dimpled face smiling at him in front of the Montgomery campus.
Mason taps the picture and looks at the caption.
masonjar13: Montgomery, here we come! :)
Mason’s arm in arm with Jenna Winston. Mason remembers how they were always together, giggling and with their noses in books together in the Northwood High halls, Mason’s dimples often lighting up the somber hallways.
“Are you going to let me do all the unpacking for you, or are you going to ogle your phone with puppy eyes?” Joel’s voice startles him from his reminiscence.
Callum coughs. “Yeah, sorry. Coach sent me an email,” Callum says instantly, closing his phone and throwing it on his bed.
“Wow, personal emails. He must really like you a lot more than the rest of us, man,” Craig says, jutting his lip out and nodding his head, his expression impressed.
Joel’s expression remains unchanged.
All he wants is to be alone right now, but he knows he can’t.
He looks around the room, at his posters and his teammates.
Sometimes he wonders how he even got here, like the past few years were all a blur, and his friends just materialized next to him, unable to determine why they were there other than being on the same football team.
“Whatever helps us Hornets beat the Ravens for the first game,” Joel says.
“Hey—do you think all hornets are boys and all bees are girls?” Craig asks Joel.
Callum lies on his bed and tunes Craig and Joel out as they start to bicker.
He thinks of the picture of Mason and his mom. How has everything gone so wrong? How does he seem to have everything but nothing at the same time?
He shouldn’t feel so upset about his life right now. He’s on the brink of stardom and everything he had been hoping for for years.
Recruiters are at every game. He could get drafted as soon as this year. He’s been told time and time again that he’s made of something different. His coach told him that he was the best player he’d ever seen in his years of coaching.
But why doesn’t he feel that way on the inside? How can everyone tell him how amazing he is and he still feels like the most insecure person?
Putting on a fake, winning smile in front of the crowd, and having them scream and cheer for him.
Why isn’t that ever enough?
What is he missing to make him feel like he actually deserves where he is and that he belongs?