17: Shaken

Keion was running drills with his team. His coach had revved everyone up for being slow after winter break and this was the second week he’d been put to task, driving ball skills and sprints from the front. Physically, Keion could handle it but he knew he was stretching the weaker guys’ limits. Mentally, he was a little annoyed because whenever someone made a mistake, coach would jeer about how their captain had spent his time kissing girls instead of staying on course and everyone else thought they could do the same.

After an hour of that, Keion and everyone else had had enough. Coach Ferreira told them to take ten and he went outside to smoke behind the gym. The cheerleaders were practicing on the other side of the sports complex and Keion was aware that some of them were seniors who had been at the party.

Pushing that to the back of his mind, he apologized for the way coach was using his incident as a point of reference.

“Even if you hadn&rs