Fanfare (Country Roads #2) - Chapter 5

My newfound good mood lasted until two minutes into first period, when I received a note to see Vice Principal Keller right away. Sitting in the front office, waiting to be called into his office, I realized I was starting to become a fixture. The office personnel didn’t even bat an eye when I headed straight for the row of chairs outside the vice principal’s office. I didn’t think of myself as one of the trouble kids in school, but apparently, I’d become that way, since I think I spent more time in the principal’s office than even the worst kids in school.

“Charlie,” Vice Principal Keller said, opening his office door. “Come in and have a seat.”

I knew the drill by now and made my way to one of the two chairs in front of his desk while he circled around to sit back down in his chair, and waited quietly to find out what I’d done this time.

“I want to start off by saying I didn’t bring you in here to discipline you.”

“Then why am I here, sir?”

“I understand you had an altercation with Mr. Campbell just before Christmas, is that right?”

“Yes, sir, but it was outside of school.”

“I know, and you’re not here for fighting. We’ve received a notice from Aaron’s father this morning that they have received a restraining order for you requiring you to stay five hundred feet from Aaron at all times, which puts us in a bit of a bind.”

“They got a restraining order against me? He attacked me!”

“I think your mother was also served with notice of this today, and I’m sure she can take it up with the city if you have questions. I didn’t call you in here to place any kind of blame or accusation against you. The reason you’re here is that we are required to abide by this until you and your mother address it in court. Now, I’ve spoken to the district lawyers this morning, who have in turn spoken with Mr. Campbell’s lawyers. While they are demanding you be removed from school while the restraining order is in place, we believe this violates your right to obtain an education, especially as we are not set up to provide any kind of distance learning. Our attorneys have determined a workaround to this. Apparently, if maintaining an exact distance violates other laws for either party, then reasonable accommodations can be made as long as direct contact remains impossible. We’ve looked at both of your schedules and we are rearranging your schedule to keep you two as far apart as possible. The good news is that since you two don’t share activities, the changes should be minimal. We’ve petitioned the courts to allow an exception for inside the school itself, since you’re both supervised, so hopefully, this will be a temporary situation.”

“It’s not a very big school, I mean he’s in the conditioning class right before mine and everyone has the same lunch. What happens if I run across him accidentally?”

“You’re right, it’s not a big school, but our attorneys have assured us that as long as you promptly remove yourself from the area, then you won’t be in violation of the order. Just in case, you will have to be accompanied by a teacher or staff member between classes for now, until we get this sorted out. As for your conditioning class, we’ve removed you from the one you’re in. Coach Dean has agreed to work with you one on one during your last period instead and we’ve rearranged your schedule to accommodate that. Lunch is a problem since we’re not allowed to limit the areas Aaron would normally have access to. Come here at the beginning of lunch, by then we’ll have figured out a workaround.”

“So I’m not allowed to eat lunch?”

“You are, just not with the rest of the student body. We’ll have to figure out a place for you to eat, but you will be allowed lunch, don’t worry. One final thing. Because of the situation, the district has removed you from all extracurricular activities for the time being while we sort this out. Now, I know you just got on the baseball team. Because of some of the guarantees for access in Title Nine, we are erring on the side of caution and allowing you to continue participating as long as you are properly supervised, which Coach Dean has assured us you will be. Other than that, you are not allowed to participate in any school-sponsored activities until this is sorted out. This means any trips that are outside of normal school hours, such as competitions, as well as non-class related activities during school hours, like the tutoring program.”

“This is insane. I only defended myself and now I have to bend over backward! How does this make any sense?”

“I know it seems extreme, Charlie, but this is the situation we find ourselves in. Here’s your new schedule. Your first two periods are the same, so you have a little time to adjust. Remember to come here at the beginning of lunch and if you see Aaron you are to turn around and walk away.”

“This is bullshit,” I said standing up and snatching the schedule out of his hand.

“Charlie, I know you’re upset and this is a surprise, so I’m not going to hold your attitude against you for now, but remember that we are just following the law. You are still expected to compose yourself like a responsible adult while you’re inside this school.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

I guess he was right, it wasn’t his fault Aaron and his dad were massive assholes. They’d managed to keep me in school and make sure I stayed on the baseball team, so that was something. I was starting to do better in school, so losing the tutoring was going to suck and Kat wasn’t going to like me skipping lunch, but at least she could hang with Hanna. I looked down at my schedule as I waited for my now required escort to first period and had to physically restrain myself from cursing.

The switch to conditioning class had gotten me out of Coach Bryant’s history class, which had been amazing news. Now with the rearranged classes so I could do conditioning at sixth period, somehow I’d ended up back in Coach Bryant’s class.

Except at baseball, I’d managed to avoid him all semester and it was all but certain he was going to try and make me pay for what happened at the end of last semester. For whatever reason, Coach Bryant took it personally any time Aaron and I came into conflict.

Third period I was back in his class, dreading what he was going to do. I was surprised when he started the lesson without calling on me or otherwise embarrassing me in front of everyone else, which was one of his favorite methods of torture. I spent most of the class wondering if the principal had taken him aside and warned him to go easy, since at least Vice-Principal Keller knew about the problems between us.

The longer the class went, the more it seemed like I might have avoided whatever evil he had planned for me. That went out the window as the bell rang, however.

“Nelson, stay after.”

I sighed and stopped next to his desk as everyone else filed out, a few of the football players in class giving me evil grins as they left. They’d enjoyed my torture throughout the year and were no doubt trying to imagine how Coach Bryant was going to stick it to me this time.

Once the last kid left, the Coach shut the door behind him keeping the next class out for a few minutes.

“I don’t know how you fooled the administration into ignoring your restraining order, but you haven’t fooled me. Aaron told us what you did to him last month. That kind of attack on another student is unacceptable, I don’t care if it’s outside school or not.”

“Sir, they aren’t ignoring the restraining order. Vice Princ…”

“Shut up! I didn’t say you could talk. If there was any justice you would be expelled and they’d be done with it. You know Aaron might never get his full range of motion back? He’d already gotten an offer from Northwest Missouri State, whose now reviewing his condition before actually signing him. If you’ve ruined his future, I’ll make sure you pay for it and no one from the administration’s going to be able to stop it.”

I knew Coach Bryant well enough to know he wouldn’t listen to reason. Instead of saying anything else I just stood there quietly, waiting for him to finish, which actually seemed to enrage him more. He was probably hoping I would mouth off so he could stack on some other form of punishment or report me to the school administration.

“I’ve got my eye on you. Now get out of here,” he finally said, slamming his open palm on his desk.

I didn’t reply and just left the room, opening the door for the students waiting in the hall.

A confused teacher I didn’t know was standing there with the students said, “Charlie Nelson?”

“Yes.”

“Everything okay?” he asked, looking past me into the classroom.

The slap on the desk had been loud, as had the yelling, which he’d probably heard through the door. I could imagine that wasn’t normal behavior from a teacher, but they’d already proven they didn’t care how badly a teacher behaved as long as there weren’t major issues, so I didn’t see any benefit from saying anything. They knew Coach Bryant was a hothead and apparently didn’t care as long as he did what they wanted him to do on the field.

“It’s fine.”

“Okay, I’m supposed to escort you to English.”

“Sure. Lead on.”

Since the whole school did lunch at the same time, there wasn’t another class after English. That meant they could have my English teacher, Mrs. Rowe, escort me instead of some random teacher with a free period waiting outside for me. That wasn’t so bad, since I at least got along with Mrs. Rowe.

I was surprised to see Mr. French waiting in the office when we got there.

“Hey, Charlie. You’re going to be eating with me today. Did you bring your lunch, or did you need to pick it up?”

“I need to get it from the cafeteria.”

“Okay, I’ll walk you to get it then we can go to the choir room for your lunch, if that’s okay with you.”

“Sure,” I said, following him out of the office.

“I heard what happened and I offered Vice-Principal Keller to have you come eat lunch in the Choir room until this blows over.”

“Thanks, Mr. French. I was afraid I was going to have to sit in a class and just eat by myself.”

“No problem. You’re a good kid and I’m sure this will all blow over. Now, I’m not going to be able to work with you on your own music every day, since I do have my actual job to do, but after you eat feel free to sit at the piano if you want. You’ve started popping in here enough it shouldn’t even be that big of a change from when you could eat in the cafeteria.”

“Thanks, Mr. French. It is nice to have somewhere quiet to work.”

I saw Aaron at his usual table as we crossed the cafeteria, but refrained from staring. I’d already let him get the better of me too much and didn’t want to give him any more chances to make things suck.

Once we got to the choir room, Mr. French said, “Okay, I have some actual work to do. Will you be alright by yourself out here?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

He gave me a slight nod and went into his small office on one side of the choir room. It had a window so he could see me through it, but he didn’t seem to pay much attention, not that it mattered. I finished my lunch, cleaned up, and spent the rest of lunch working on music. I’d already spent two lunches in here before this doing pretty much the same thing, making it the most normal part of my day so far.

My new, special conditioning class was weird. I hadn’t attended that many classes, but in my experience the weight room was always crowded and loud the moment I pushed through the doors. It was strange to find it so empty and silent.

“Hello?” I called out to the empty room.

After a beat, Coach Dean came through the door behind me, followed by David Reid, to my surprise.

“Hey, Charlie, Sorry we’re late. Had to sort out Mr. Reid with the front office.”

“Are they making you switch to this class too?” I asked, still not sure what was happening.

“No, I have study hall right now and Coach had to convince Mrs. Orbach that I wasn’t just trying to ditch school.”

“I’m confused.”

“David was assigned as your partner, remember. I mentioned that you had a schedule change that made it impossible for you to attend the normal class and that you’d be doing conditioning in the afternoons. He volunteered to still be your partner if I could get him out of study hall.”

“Don’t you want the time to work on homework or whatever in study hall?”

“Nah. I only took it because I didn’t have an elective I wanted to take. Plus I can usually sneak a nap. But now you and I get one on one work with Coach. Who’d pass that up?”

“Okay, enough chit-chat, let’s get started.”

The coach ran us through the full circuit again. Normally, we focused on one area of the body in a class, doing a range of exercises to target individual muscle groups in that area. The only other time we’d done the full circuit had been the couple of days when the coaches moved us through stations quickly so we could learn how to properly do each exercise.

Coach said that since we had the class all to ourselves, he wanted to spend the next few days doing it again, but better. While conditioning wasn’t packed, it still had a fair number of students and only two coaches to work with us, which meant there wasn’t a lot of time to focus on any one exercise. Coach wanted to have us go through each one more in-depth and make sure we really understood what we were doing and why we were doing it. It made sense. Chef had made it clear to me early on in my training that I needed to pay attention to what I was doing when working out, since doing something wrong could end in a serious injury. That went doubly with weight work, where not varying up your weights and reps could have a negative impact on joints and other soft tissue. Apparently, if you worked out wrong you could overtrain an area and actually decrease your ability to build muscle.

We also didn’t spend the whole class lifting. During the normal class, there was a lot of downtime, since you had to wait for other students to finish. Since that wasn’t an issue here, he instead changed it up. Half the class was for weight work and the other half for cardio. I made the mistake of asking if we were going to go out and run, since there weren’t any treadmills in the weight room.

Most of the cardio I’d done with Chef had either been repeatedly going through forms or running laps around the open area behind the Blue Ridge. Coach Dean showed us there were a lot of cardio exercises we could go through that didn’t need much room which could still kick our ass. I thought I’d been getting into good shape with Chef, a notion Coach Dean seemed determined to prove wrong. Rotating combinations of burpees, mountain climbers, squat jumps, plank walks and more I didn’t know had names made me a sack of limp noodles by the end, barely able to push myself off the floor!

It was the last class of the day and we had practice afterward, so Coach magnanimously said we could take a ten-minute break before joining the team. I was certain that wasn’t going to be enough, but I knew better than to complain about the workouts I was assigned. Chef had made sure to work that habit out of me months ago.

“Jesus, I can barely move,” David said. “We’re supposed to go out and do an hour of practice after this.”

“Not so loud. He could always come back and make us work out until practice starts. You can always be more tired.”

“I’m not sure I believe that. God I’m wiped.”

“So,” I said, lying flat on the ground, feeling the air from the fan in the corner blow across me. “You’re a pitcher, right?”

“Trying to be. They have me slotted as a closer right now, but Coach Davis said I could make it to starter, if I could get my power up.”

“I’ve never pitched so I’m not sure what that means. You need to get your fastballs faster?”

“Yeah, that’s part of it. I’m about five miles slower than the rest of the team, but it’s also needed for finesse pitches too. He says that a good fastball is important, but it’s over-relied on in high school, since most players our age don’t have enough control to really make a lot of other pitches work. He said I’m pretty close on the control, but even those have to have enough speed to work, especially the change-up and slider. It’s what kept me off Varsity.”

“So you’re going to be doing mostly arm work?”

“Nah, you need your legs too. We use a lot of lower body during the stride and the pivot, which is where a lot of the explosive power in a pitch comes from. That’s one of my problems. I rely on my arms too much and I haven’t ever been much for stuff that builds up the legs, so I’m weakest there. Coach Dean said I’d work on both.”

“Are you doing both conditioning classes?”

“Yeah, but he won’t let me work out in the first one. Coach said he didn’t want me to overtrain. I think it also helps him out, us not being there, since it gives the other guys more reps.”

“So you get to just hang out and relax? It’s not a bad deal.”

“Nah, he put me to work as his assistant. It’s actually not a bad deal. I’m learning a lot. I get to hear all the answers he gives to questions, and he explains things like tracking performance and how they judge who needs what kind of focus. One of the reasons I agreed to do this class with you was to get one-on-one time with the coach. I don’t think I’ll ever be good enough to be recruited for the pros, but I could make a second-tier college team and maybe get into the minors somewhere or play in exhibition ball somewhere. You know, Coach Dean did that, before becoming a high school Coach. If I get some one-on-one time with him, I might be able to ask him questions about how he did it and what to expect.”

“So you want to play ball for a living?”

“That’d be the dream. I’m never gonna go far in college. Hell, I can barely pull C’s in high school. Even if I get into an okay school on some kind of scholarship, I’m not going to get into anything but a phys-ed degree. If baseball doesn’t work out, maybe I could be a coach somewhere. I don’t know, I haven’t really thought it through much. I just know I need to start thinking about what’s next, ya know?”

“Yeah, my Mom is always telling me I need to think ahead to college. You know, if you’re having trouble in classes, they have a tutoring program here that might help.”

“Nah, I’ve tried to get help before and it didn’t go great.”

“I have a friend who’s a tutor in the program. I was way behind, especially in math, and she really helped me get back up to speed in not that much time. She’s a great teacher and really patient.”

“I don’t know how to get into tutoring.”

“I’ll talk to my friend and see if she can get you signed up.”

“That’d be great man, I really appreciate it. Dad doesn’t care so much as long as I’m around to help on the farm, but my Mom is all over my ass for my grades.”

“Now you just have to be able to bench more than my last girlfriend, and you might have a shot.”

“Fuck you, Nelson,” he said, laughing.

We lay there for ten more minutes trading insults and laughing like idiots before we had to get up and get out to the field. I found I really liked David. It was nice being dumb guys for a bit. Hanging out with Hanna and Kat, and even Cameron honestly, the dynamic was different. If I hadn’t had many friends growing up, what with the moving all the time, I really hadn’t had any guy friends close to my own age.

It was a good change of pace.