*Know who your friends are and why they are your friends*
After my parent's divorce Mom and I moved around a good deal. I tried to get involved in school activities but all I was ever good at was computers and football, and football was how I normally got a foot in the door because I was more into weights and cross country running than being a geek.
At my new school I opted to try out for quarterback for my senior year. I was fast and accurate and had a powerful arm. Unfortunately I wasn't tall, blonde and the popular senior. The coach liked the guy and if the other back-up quarterback had been able to hit a guy at fifteen yards I would have ended up as a half-back.
I was a bit bitter. My mood wasn't improved by being assigned a tutor because the new school system didn't feel my old school's curriculum wasn't up to par for their Gifted Program. By day two, everyone at school knew about by need for a tutor too. My tutor turned out to be a lanky anti-social nerd with glasses and a perpetual slouch. She'd done some kind of infraction (I suspected smoking weed) at the end of last year so she got the duty.
Our first day together she was pleasantly surprised to see that I wasn't an idiot jock. We blew off the rest of our study period talking the merits of processor speeds and graphic cards. When she pulled her hair out of her eyes she was actually quite cute. When I told her so she blushed. Something told me she was a late bloomer.
"So," I asked, "what do people do in this town on Friday nights?"
"Oh, outside of football I guess they go to the movies or hang out at the Dairy Queen," she suggested.
"Do you want to go out Friday?" I inquired. She looked stunned and stammered without saying anything.
"Yes?" she got out.
"Fine; what is your address. I'll pick you up at six-thirty," I said in an off-handed manner. She remained speechless for some time after she told me where she lived.
So that was how Jamie Watts went out on her first date with me, Craig Dawkins. People made little snickering motions behind their hands at us so I countered them by putting my arm around Jamie. She didn't know how to take that. When she started to get upset by the attention we were getting I got her talking about her favorite Web comics. Ménage a 3 duked it out with Sluggy Freelance and I couldn't shut her up after that.
Saturday we went down by the lake and talked over blogs and who was who in the local geek community. We spent the rest of the afternoon going to the few electronics stores building our dream system in our heads. Jamie kissed me when I dropped her off. It turned out that when she stood up straight we were the same height (5'10"). She had really clear emerald green eyes. I don't think any guy had told her she was pretty before.
Monday at practice I was teased about dating the 'Lich' as Jamie was known. I took it good-naturedly. I'm not one to force my preferences on other guys, no matter how stupid they act. Teasing me was fine. During the scrimmage I tried not to show Blair Woods, the star QB of our team, up to much because I still harbored the hope that I might play in the last quarter of our first game.
Coach Ingersoll informed me that he would consider it since we were up against Hoover, the worst school in the league. The game was supposed to be a blowout, since we were considered one of the top three teams in the conference. I thought we had the talent, but I also thought we were sloppy. I had come from a much smaller school my sophomore and junior years where everyone had to play doubly hard to fulfill a roster.
I also got to meet Emily Parker, the head cheerleader who was so stereotypically blonde, smoking hot, and bubbly that I expected to find a made by Mattel label on her back. She was (drum roll please) Blair's girlfriend. They were the 'it' couple and they had every reason to believe that all of high school life revolved around them. The only thing more stunning than Emily was that Emily was talking to Jamie when practice ended.
What can I say; Emily was basically a nice person and now that Jamie was dating a football player, even a second string one, Emily was trying to bring Jamie into the football cliché. Jamie babbled incoherently all the way to her house where we worked on homework until her Dad finally showed up from work around seven.
It was clear he didn't know what to make of me either. I was a handsome man dating his daughter who he had resigned himself to being boy-free for all her high school years. When he found out my 'social status' at school he had to sit down. After making an excuse to get Jamie out of the room he leaned across the table in a conspiratorial way and said,
"Are you using protection?" I found that kind of sad. His daughter wasn't a skank.
"We haven't progressed that far," I nodded sagely, "but if we do I'll make sure to do the right thing." The father gave me this eager nod which was the first time I could even imagine a parent asking me to screw their offspring.
My week pretty much went downhill from there. The other jocks learned I wasn't missing their classes; I was actually taking advanced classes which meant I actually knew some of the people they regularly look down on. I wasn't much into hazing or using my position on the team to get things. To the majority of the kids at school though I was still a jock-asshole, but there was a small group that gave me credit for more than two brain cells to rub together. I was eighteen and not on the first string so I figured college would have to come from academic achievement.
Our game versus Hoover was nearly a disaster. We came to play the worst team in the conference. They came to destroy us and they damn near succeeded. The little bastards played their hearts out and had their running back been a second faster, they would have beaten us. As it was the game was seventeen to fourteen and wasn't decided until the last play of the game when Hoover failed to get the ball into the end zone.
Our celebration was muted. Jamie and I went with the team out to the lake, but everyone knew we'd screwed up. Jamie took my hand and led me down to the water's edge and put an arm around me.
"Don't be so angry," she told me. "Next time the coach will let you play."
"Ha," I growled. "The next game is versus Panther Hill and they are the team to beat this year, and they are going to clean our clocks. Even if we make only half the mistakes we made tonight, they are going to kill us. I'm not used to playing somewhere things are 'good enough'. That's why I want to build a computer with you. Any idiot can buy one off the shelf. I want one that's going to do what I want it to do spending whatever I can give it."
"Dad gave me a condom," Jamie whispered. "I'm a virgin."
"So am I," I responded.
"Really?" Jamie sounded perplexed.
