Daily life back to normal

Once the campus removed their current lockdown restrictions, there was a sense of relief from all the students who now felt like they had a bit of their freedom back.

Another thing that returned was football.

Sitting inside the locker rooms after an afternoon training session, the boys all listened to team captain Bryce Walker who demanded everyone’s silence when he spoke.

“We’ve got two games left boys… that’s it!”

Everyone kept their eyes on the muscly senior blonde who continued to pace up and down the front of the locker rooms as he spoke.

“No we aren’t going to be playing finals, technically these games mean nothing… but it’s my last two fucking games I’ll ever play here and it’ll be the last two fucking games that Marotta will play it T-Bow or Lankers or any of the other senior boys in this room.”

The speech was clearly just a last ditch attempt to hype everyone up into performing well in the last two games of the season.

“I don’t care what it takes, we’re ending this season on a high! Two games!! Two wins!!” he shouted.

The rest of the guys in the locker rooms got up and about, waving towels, screaming and hollering. They were pumped up, just like Bryce wanted them to be.

Mark stood up out at the back as Bryce finished his speech, allowing them to head back to their dorms. He looked around the room as Bryce began slapping hands with other teammates. There was an uneasy feel around these rooms after what had happened in the last game before the season interruption.

There were guys in these room that were willing to deliberately hurt Mark and his cousin, just to protect their ‘leader’. Before they left, he caught Justin Martin staring back at him, in a menacing way. They locked eyes, Mark waiting for Justin to be the one to break his stare.

He didn’t however, he never stopped staring.

Mark would have held his gaze too but Jackson slapped his shoulder, telling him that they should get out of here. He felt like it was giving Justin a little win but what else could he really do here.

As Mark and Jackson walked out of the rooms together, on their way to grab some dinner before heading home, they spoke about how pleased they both were to be out of lockdown.

“Man I couldn’t have done another day being trapped in my room all day,” Jackson complained.

Mark nodded along, “We’re free now.”

“Thank heavens for that.”

“Hey, what do you think about getting the group together this weekend for a catch up considering we’ve all been trapped inside for so long,” Mark explained to Jackson.

Jackson didn’t look convinced, especially since he and Miranda were still on bad terms, “What do you mean by getting the group together?”

“I mean, what do you think about having a weekend away, we could go camping? I don’t know, something like that,” he explained.

“We have football anyways, not a great time for it,” Jackson argued.

Mark shook his head, “Football Friday Night, we can go away Saturday morning and come back Monday morning, two nights away, easy as you like!”

“Ahh whatever, I dunno… you just sort out the details, I’m definitely not organising anything,” he then said.

***

The Library

Z walked inside the library, seeing a short blonde girl at a table, copying some notes down from a nearby textbook.

“Can I help you?” she asked, looking up at the tall Asian.

He stood there unable to speak at first, thinking carefully about what he was about to say.

She raised her eyebrows further, waiting for a response.

“Uh sorry, it’s Maple isn’t it?” he asked her.

Maple nodded, even more confused now, she didn’t know who he was or why he was here.

“I was told by Professor Caufield to speak to you about getting some help with studying for the exams.”

“Oh? Um uh, sure, he didn’t give me a heads up for it but sure, yeah, take a seat,” she said, pulling a chair out next to her for him.

For the next hour, Maple guided him through the main topics of the subject and what he needed to focus on ahead of the exam. While she spoke, Z’s mind was elsewhere, images running through his mind about what happened on that infamous night.

A shade of embarrassment and humiliation began to sink over him. As he had done for the last few months, Z began to question who he was as a person and why he had been so **** to protect his childhood friend for his monstrous acts.

“Guess that’s all for now anyway, hopefully that helped.”

He nodded, despite not understanding a single word of what she had said about the subject.

“Hang on,” Maple suddenly asked, “I haven’t seen you in any of his classes or the lectures, when did Caufield tell you to ask me for help?”

Z didn’t reply, he didn’t know what to tell her, he had been caught out. There was a guilty look in his face that gave it all away.

“Wait a minute, what’s going on here?” Maple asked again.

He cleared his throat, looked around the quiet library before facing Maple again, “I know what happened to you that night.”