Chapter Fifty-Nine: Marcus

I'm in big trouble with my parents and Coach Dell. We had our nine weeks test in history Monday, and I calculated that if I got an A on the test, it would bring me up to a low B for the year, and I could tell Mom and Dad that I had brought my grades up in everything and they would stay off my back over the summer. So I made this great cheat sheet organized by the time periods that were going to be on the test and took a picture of it with my phone, and I figured that I could hide the phone between my legs and look down there when I needed to during the test.

But Mr. Foster busted me right at the beginning of the test. Foster walked up to me and said "Stand up," and I said no, I needed to work on the test, and then he was really rude and angry and said "Get up, now!" and I started to reach down and sort of slide my phone into a pants pocket, and he got up all in my face again and told me to leave my hands where they were. I got up and the phone fell on the floor, and everybody in class looked at me and Mary even snickered. Did she snitch on me ...somebody must have...that's the first thing I thought. But then Foster said he had been watching me the past couple of tests and said I had been staring at my crotch area way too much. Then he picked up my phone and scrolled down the cheat sheet and said, "If you had spent as much time studying as you did making the cheat sheet, you wouldn't have needed the cheat sheet."

I can't stand it when a teacher gets sarcastic with me, and I started to say something right back to him, but then I realized I was in enough trouble as it was and why make things worse. Foster told me to follow him to his desk and he filled out a discipline referral form, and I didn't even have to look at it, I knew what he had written. It's the only time I've been written up all year. Coach Dell has told us over and over if we ever get written up that there will be "severe consequences" and Coach Henson has said pretty much the same thing. Foster wasn't content just to send me to the office...no, not him, the SOB has had in it for me since the first day of class. He told me he was going to call my parents during his planning period, that the test grade was one-third of my grade for the nine weeks, which meant that I would fail for the nine weeks and probably have a D for the year. So now I've gone from having a B for the year to probably having a D, all because of a jerk teacher.

And things just got worse from then on out. During lunch, Dad texted me and said he had had "an interesting conversation with your history teacher," and added that Mom and him would have "an interesting conversation" with me before dinner. His text was just nothing but pure sarcasm, he was acting like a child. Then during health seventh period, Coach Dell knocked on the door and said he wanted to speak to me, and he was all red in the face.

Dell told me as soon as we went out into the hall that my "conduct in history class was inexcusable" and that I was suspended from the football team for the first game this coming season. I told him that the suspension was unfair and that Foster had had it in for me all year, and before I even finished what I needed to say, Dell interrupted me and said that I was to address and refer to my history teacher as "Mr. Foster," that he had changed his mind and I was now suspended for the first two games and did I want "to keep running my mouth," and if so, then he could make the suspension three games long...that I had embarrassed the team and hurt the team's chances of winning with my actions...that all football players were representatives of the team in school and that he expected me to act like that in my grades and behavior. I started to say something right back to him, but I thought I had probably said enough already. He wasn't bluffing about suspending me for a third game, I could tell that.

Like two seconds after I got home, Mom and Dad got up in my face and told me that I was grounded for a month and that they were going to "rethink" their purchase of my new car. Then for the next ten minutes, they both took turns ranting at me. Mom was just as mad as Dad. I stopped listening after a while. Honestly, I was glad when they sent me to my room.

Joshua was waiting outside my door for me and then he lit into me, too. I told him to get out of my way and to shut up, that I had had enough crap from people today. He waited for me to pass him, then he took me by the arm and wrenched it around my back and slammed my face against the hall wall. I know Mom and Dad must have heard that noise, but they didn't do anything about it. Joshua had my left arm pinned against my back and with his other hand mashed my head against the wall and he told me I was to listen and to listen good!

He said Mom and Dad had worked really hard for us to have a really nice home and to live in an upper class neighborhood, that their parents had worked hard, too, and our great-grandparents had done the same, so all of us that came after them could have a better life. And that I "was disgracing their memory and disrespecting their sacrifices." I told him to shut up and he slammed me against the wall even harder, and, I swear, Mom and Dad must have known he was upstairs roughing me up and they didn't care.

Joshua was like seething with anger, and he told me to repeat after him every word he said, that I was "going to show more respect for Mom and Dad," and then he wrenched my arm and said repeat, and I said it, and then he said I was "going to show more respect for my teammates," and he yanked my arm again, and I begged him to stop, and he said, "stop begging and repeat after me," and I said it, and he said that I was "never going to cheat again," and I said yes, and he said did I need to be slammed up against the wall one more time just to make sure that I would remember all this, and I said no. And he slammed me up against the wall even harder and said "No what?" It took me a while to figure out that he meant for me to say no sir, and I didn't want to say it, but he was in such a rage that I was scared he was going to twist my arm off right there, so I said "No, sir."

"One last thing," he said. "All you are is one torn ACL from never playing high school football again or ever trying to play in college. You had better remember that and why your grades are so important."