Friday, September 2
Whenever anyone rhapsodizes about "Friday Night Lights" in relation to high school football, you can rest assured that the person in question is well into their adulthood. The actual players are well aware that, in order to get to the Friday Night Lights, you have to suffer through the Friday Afternoon Bus Ride. If you're lucky, the team you're playing is close by and your endurance gets no test. But, instead, for his first gameday experience, Darius got to take the hour ride from Calabasas to Santa Clarita in the middle of a California rush hour.
He sat in the back seat, alone, which he didn't mind. The first few rows were occupied by the cheerleaders, and naturally he kept his eye on Templynn.
It was somewhere around the turn from the 101 to the 405 northbound that he saw her get up from her seat and head toward the back. Wouldn't that be something if she sat by me?, he thought, silently chuckling to his self.
"Is this seat taken?"
If he was 21, he'd take off to Vegas to see if this amazing streak of good fortune he'd been having could pay off.
"You don't want to sit with the cheer squad?" he asked Templynn, aware that every single eye on the bus was looking in his direction.
"Naah," she shook her head. "I just always wanted to see what it looked like to ride back here. We always sit in the front, and it's just so boring."
"Better not let your boyfriend know you're sitting by me," Darius quipped nervously as she sat down.
"Well, he's not here, is he? And I'm sure not gonna tell him. So, you nervous?"
"Not really nervous," he told her. "Just sort of wondering why I'm here."
"So am I."
He couldn't believe it. Here was the most self-possessed, confident, in-control...the most herself girl he'd ever met, expressing doubts about her identity. But he was also supremely intrigued. "You are?"
"Yeah. I mean, I've been doing cheer since I was six. I guess I'm good at it, but it was my mom's idea. She was a cheerleader when she was in school. Sometimes I wonder if she's just trying to turn me into a mini-version of herself, you know?"
He silently nodded his understanding.
"I mean, if I'm not doing cheer on a Friday night, she's off dragging me to a store opening or a charity thing, or to Hawai'i or something. It would be nice to just go home on a Friday and just do nothing, you know, like a normal kid."
###
"The family you gave all your extra items to, how are they doing?"
If you somehow had a reason to be allowed inside the gates of Cloud Vista as the Friday sunshine started dimming, you might assume that the Quarles family was moving as you went past their house, since the parents and the two daughters were hauling load after load of cardboard boxes out to their SUV.
"Oh, they're overjoyed," Colinda told her father. "We've really bonded over the whole experience."
"What time are we taking this all to the thrift store in the morning?" Geneva asked him for clarification.
"Eleven-thirty is when they said they'd meet us."
"Hey, dad?"
Brad turned around after Monique got his attention. "Yes, dear?"
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