High School Diaries: Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Matt

As I walked through the gym doors, I saw the cute new girl from earlier today. The color of her hair reminded me of a peach, almost like a pinkish color, but it was more like just a light red. Haha, I’m not very good at english or anything, so I’m not very good at describing people in a good way. Her eyes were also really, really pretty. I couldn’t really tell if they were blue or green but it doesn’t matter. To be honest, I kind of wanted to talk to her more, but knowing that it's gym class, we’re probably going to do an activity and I’m willing to be that Anna (Was that her name? I don’t really remember.) wasn’t good at sports at all.

Being who I am, I have a certain image to uphold. I’m the high school football team, not only that, but I’m usually in charge of one of these two things. One of those things is occasionally, I will be the team’s Running Back or the Halfback (RB for short). Usually, I do that when Aaron’s not around, but if Aaron’s around, chances are pretty good that I’m not gonna be the RB. Instead, what I usually do is defense, specifically, I’m the Cornerback (CB for short). That basically means this: I’m good at being fast. I’m far from being the strongest on my team, but where I lack strength, I make up for my absolute speed and accuracy. Despite maybe not being the strongest on my team, they can count on me to pull off a pretty good tackle. Sometimes, it sucks, because I’m not really the star player. Usually everyone’s eyes are on Liam, the quarterback, not me. And he’s my best friend, I also admit that. But sometimes, I want to be the star. I want to be the one who everyone has their eyes on. There are times when I really feel like I carry my entire team on my back, and I really love my team, but yeah, it can kind of suck to feel that way. I’m really passionate about what I do and I really love football. I know people don’t always realize how much strategy really goes into the game and that’s fine by me.

“Don’t worry about changing into your uniforms or anything, but today we’re gonna play some pickleball!” a male teacher said, interrupting my train of thought.I totally called it.

“You might be wondering why we aren’t picking out lockers yet, well that’s okay. We’ll do that tomorrow. Don’t worry, nothing serious, haha,” the teacher continued, laughing nervously. Oh boy.

“Okay, I’m going to level with you, my wife susan is filing for divorce and I just found out right now…” the teacher said, “There aren’t any other male teachers in this period and I don’t really feel like dealing with the whole locker situation right now, so you’re all going to play pickleball in your street clothes, the other gym teachers are going to monitor it, and I’m going to cry in the teacher’s lounge.”

None of the students made a sound, except for one person who coughed.

He sighed, “Okay, great plan everyone!”

He ran from the gymnasium, tears falling from his face. That was weird.

Another teacher went out to the front of everyone, “Okay, everyone pick a partner and we’ll make our way to the nets outside.”

I looked around at everyone there. In this class the first person I was able to recognize was the genius kid, Arthur Burkowicks. He was an intelligent man to be sure, I held respect for him quite genuinely, I once considered him a friend even, but he was a total weakling and partnering with him would be an awful social move. I knew personally, from being his former friend, that he was sporting a surprising package, about six inches, which for such a small guy was surprising. I also knew, at least up until freshman year, he slept with a shitty plush doll of a pony. I had the pictures to prove it too, ever there was the need to. Definitely not someone who would make a good partner.

Another person I noticed was Vivian, someone I considered an acquaintance to be sure. She was at just about every party and was always welcome at Victoria’s table. Unlike Arthur, not a loser or a brainiac, but definitely still pretty useless when it came to sports. She was probably the most popular girl that wasn’t on the cheer squad or any other sport. Well, other than Amber Joyce, I suppose but I don’t much care for Amber to be honest. Her and Amber were both completely exposed by Victoria to me for being massive sluts, although coming from Victoria, who knew if there was any truth to that. I still wrote it in my notes, however, but if I needed to expose either of them, I didn’t really have the evidence to back that. I’m still looking into it. I haven’t actually found any guys to confirm if they had sex with Vivian Vasquez. At any rate, I don’t think I’ll have her as my gym partner either.

Then there was, of course, Elizabeth Patel! Admittedly, Elizabeth was a total babe and pretty popular all things considered, but me and her hung around completely different circles. She was considered one of the preps and very intelligent and I was one of the most popular boys in this school. I remember hearing from Meghan that she used to have a really bad lisp. She was absolutely terrible at sports though and I don’t think I want her as a partner either.

There were others I recognized too, like Penelope Farrell(Pretty popular and beautiful, but totally weak), Amanda Laurens (Attractive and talented, no talent with sports), Eugene Evanson (Okay, but not popular enough), Andrew Young (Again, not popular enough), Betty Sheldon (Great at sports, but a total loser)... And then others who I didn’t recognize as much, but either way, no one seemed like they would make a good partner. Damn… Out of everyone, it seemed the most interesting decision was to approach the new girl. So I guess that’s what I’ll do.

I shouted towards Anna(?), “Hey, new girl!”

She turned towards me, now I have her attention.

“Oh, hey dude!” she said, “Are you gonna ask me to be your partner?”

“Actually no, I wasn’t. Do you want me to?” I asked her, I figured it would be better if I made this less desperate.

“Oh no, not if you don’t want to,” she said. Damn, I thought she had totally fallen for me.

“Of course I could be your partner, I would want a cutie like you to be without one!” Nailed it.

“Oh, sure then!” she replied, smiling. I could tell that she was blushing a little bit as well, which made me happy.

“Awesome, alright!” I started to say, “So, are you familiar with pickleball?”

“I think so? It’s like Tennis kind of, right?” she asked.

“So, okay, have you not played it before?”

“I think I have? But I don’t really remember.”

“Oh, okay, I see,” I wonder, hopefully I don’t regret this. I mean, admittedly she probably fucking sucks, but she’s cute and being with the new person is never a bad thing, unless they’re blatantly unattractive.

“Alright, now that everyone’s got their partner, find someone to face off against,” the teacher said.

Okay, now who to face? I could maybe completely humiliate someone, like perhaps someone who’s a complete loser. But, to be honest, I would prefer to face off against someone who would make for a good challenge. Which made me wonder who Betty Sheldon was with. She was definitely someone who would put up a good match, I think. She was extremely talented at sports, specifically she was a talented soccer player and a member of the swim team, but I’ve seen her also be good at badminton. She was on the badminton team back in middle school and was a member here as well until it got disbanded due to its lack of members. The biggest thing that held her back from being in was her depressingly desperate attitude. She and her two friends (don’t remember their names, I think they were like Karlie and Claudia or something, I don’t have a clue) absolutely worshiped the ground Victoria and her crew walked on. Which was honestly pretty pathetic. If you actually knew Victoria the way I did, you would realize she’s not all that. I mean, I still consider her a friend and everything, but like, yeah she’s not as cool as everyone in the school thinks she is. I have no idea how she’s this popular. I mean, we dated in the past, but everything ended on good terms and we don’t hold any ill will towards each other (I think, at least). But knowing everything I know about her now, I don’t really get what people see in her anymore.

“Hey, who should we go up against do you think?” Anya asked.

‘Oh!” I was brought back from my thoughts, “I think…”

I pointed towards Betty Sheldon and her partner that she chose.

“Her.”

I looked at her partner, trying my best to recognize her. I was usually pretty good at recognizing the students here. I mean, I didn’t recognize everyone who goes to this school at a glance, especially not usually the freshman, but I could pick up on it pretty quick. I have everyone’s names as well as generally descriptions of them listed in a notebook I keep at home. It’s important to me to keep tabs on everyone here, just in case I need to expose someone or bring someone down. So, yeah, I can pretty much narrow it down usually.

Betty’s partner had red hair worn half up, half down. She was sporting two twin buns while the rest of her hair was down. She was kind of tall and tough looking. I feel like she was probably one of the “drifters” as I would say. I think that’s Izzy, Izzy Heckler. I’ve heard numerous stories about how Izzy was the leader of a biker gang outside of school and was a massive bad bitch. She used to get into so many fights. I even heard she beat some poor guy with a bat one time and never got arrested. She was in the badminton team back in Junior High as well, but currently wasn’t a member of any of the clubs here. Um, I don’t really remember much about her, but she was kind of tough and intimidating, so people usually didn’t really bother her I guess. That’s how most of the “drifters” were to be honest.

So okay then, I definitely wanted to face off against Izzy and Betty then. They easily seemed like the superior choice. I was getting kind of pumped up to be honest. I wasn’t sure if the new girl would be able to manage.

“Hey! Betty! Izzy!” I shouted, “Do you two want to go up against me and new girl?”

“Um, n-” Izzy started to say, but then was interrupted by Betty, who seemed so excited that she was just about ready to pee her pants.

“Yes!! Of course we do!!!” she was immediately fawning over me like an idiot. Excellent.

“Alright, do you want to serve first or should we?” Anya asked.

“Matt’s team can go first, right?” Betty said longingly, she was all over me.

“Okay!” I said, excitedly, “And, go!”

In case you weren’t aware, by the way, pickleball is a racquet sport that kind of combines elements of badminton, tennis and table tennis. It usually involves two to four players (in our case, two a team). The paddles are usually made out of wood and the ball, I believe, is usually made from polymer? I take my sports very seriously, as I’m sure you can tell, and let me tell you, what happened next very much surprised me.

You see, Anya, was actually kind of good? More than kind of actually, she was pretty impressive actually. And that wasn’t any small feat. We were facing off against two seasoned racquet sport players and she more than held her own against them. In fact, she completely and utterly kicked their asses. Admittedly, I wasn’t all that amazing with a racquet. I mean, I was confident I could annihilate these two losers, quite simply, because I was much better than them.

However, that being said, the possibility I could have lost against the two of them would have been high if my partner was unable to pull their own. Anya was more than plenty competent in that way, it was spectacular. We won without much of a fight at all. To say the least, Anya had caught my interest.

After the game, I approached the charming new girl with intrigue.

“Hey? How did you learn to play like that?”

“Oh, um, I don’t really know,” she spoke, I could tell that she wasn’t really being completely honest by the way her eyes shifted. Interesting.

“You’re really good, have you thought about joining the tennis team here?” I asked her, curiously.

“Not really, I probably wasn’t planning on joining any clubs to be honest,” she said frankly.

“Oh, maybe you should think about it, I think you would make a really good addition to the team. Or maybe even the volleyball team.”

“I’ll think about it, but I don’t really know.”

“Yeah…” I started, “You know, there’s a beginning of the year party coming up next weekend at my friend Tiffany’s house. Do you want to go?”

“I don’t really know…” she trailed off.

“I’m going to level with you, every popular person within this school is going to be there, it would be really good for your social stance here,” I told her quite honestly, “I know, I’ve already got a read on you, you don’t want to call much attention to yourself, yeah? You want to fad to the background. But that’s no guarantee that you won’t be picked on mercilessly. You seem pretty calm and you’re decently attractive. But I know the people who go here and they can be pretty mean. This might be your best shot at being safe, you know?”

“Hmm…”

The bell rang, signalling the end of the period.

“If you change your mind, here…” I wrote down my number for her on a piece of paper, “This is my number, feel free to shoot a message my way and I’ll send you the address and make sure you get in.”

“I’ll think about it,” she replied, looking deep in thought.

Excellent, looking forward to seeing you there, new girl!” I said, winking at her as I left the gymnasium and headed towards my locker to get my stuff and head home.