chapter 1 - Rune
1: the pack leader
“Focus!” Coach yelled out from the edge of the field.
If I heard him say that one more time, I’m sure I’d lose all focus for real now.
The late afternoon sun beat down relentlessly, sweat soaking through our jerseys. I sprint past a knot of players, my eyes fixed on the football.
“Come on,” I said, my voice carrying over the grunts of the other players. “Close the gap.”
Coach stood on the sidelines, observing, and never once interrupting. With his gaze sharp and assessing, he watched our every formation, keeping a check on the players’ intensity; the weight of the scrutiny putting me in a tighter spot. As captain, the team’s performance was a direct reflection on me.
The practice match continued back and forth. I was everywhere, intercepting passes, driving forward with the ball, constantly yelling and communicating with my teammates.
“Focus. Keep that damn focus!” Coach began again.
I jogged along the edge of the field, watching my members push further.
And yes, while Coach droned on about focus, until it lost all it’s meaning, I seconded it. Completely. Focus was everything.
But tell me, how was a man supposed to focus when they wouldn’t stop staring at me? Two pairs of eyes, all fixed, sweeping over my body as if I were some breathing statue straight out of Michelangelo’s collection. It was flattering, sure. Annoying? Absolutely. And one hell of a distraction when I was just trying to get into my zone.
Coach called for a break, and I excused myself for a minute and headed off the field toward the neat row of bikes lining the edge. I rummaged through my bag for my water bottle and emptied the water over my head, shaking my hair out as the cold seeped into my jersey and down my shorts. Then, I snagged my friend’s bag and pulled out his water bottle and chugged down the entirety of it. No way was I going all the way over to the water tap. The heat had cooked up my legs.
“I see what you did there.” I turned to see him glaring at me from the middle of the field.
I stuck out my tongue. “That was the point, headass.”
As I leaned against the bike, and observed the players fool around with the football, a group of girls slid in my peripheral, followed by a guy.
One of the girls standing in the middle fiddled the ring on her finger, and looked up at me. I straightened up, looked to my right, at the field, then back at her.
The pack leader and her subordinates stood rooted to their spot, either looking at me, or whispering among themselves, as if deciding who should step up to speak to me.
And if they wanted to say something at all, they had to do it now before it got more awkward for all of us. I was doing them a favour by not making a quick exit.
Finally, the pack leader took a step forward and smiled at me, and I did not miss the way her eyes blinked and landed on my jersey instead.
Here we go.
“Um, hi. Are you free right now?”
I shifted my weight, and cleared my throat. “Yes? Do you need any help?”
The girl smiled wider, and the other one joined in, going as far as batting her eyelashes at me. My eyelids fluttered in response, and I steered away, pretending to not have noticed it.
“Um, we actually need you for something,” the leader said, and looked at her pack. “We’re film majors, and we need an actor for our film. And you seem like the perfect fit.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “How so?”
The other one piped in, “Well, you have the face of an actor. It’s the definition of perfect.”
“Oh, is it?” I wanted to scoff.
She nodded her head in response.
And just to butter up things further, she added, “Have you tried modeling? You could totally be a supermodel.”
“No. I have a lot on my plate as it is.” I gestured at my football jersey, and the girls lowered their gazes toward it, their eyes unwilling to look up. A big mistake.
My eyes are up here, I wanted to say, but thought better of it.
They just stood there, massive grins fixed on their faces. It was the unwavering nature of it all that made them look so uncanny. Their eyes glistened with expectation, but I had nothing to say.
“I’m sure you girls could find someone else, yeah?” I began, and pretended to prepare my bag so they’d leave. “I can’t act at all, and I’m sure you’ll find a Tom Cruise if you look hard enough.”
When their smiles didn’t falter, and they didn’t take the hint and turn around to leave, I continued, “Plus, I only get weekends off which are reserved for—”
“That’s awesome!”
“. . . Sleep.”
“That’s good, right? We were actually thinking it’d be best if we shot our film on weekends.”
I let out an exasperated sigh, and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Did you hear what I even said? I’m a busy athlete, and I function on barely four hours of sleep. Weekends are for me. So I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to pass.”
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a flicker of relief when their smiles faltered and the corners of their mouths drooped. Something pricked at my heart, but I was helpless. With all sheer genuineness, I was a busy man, and I intended to keep it that way.
Moreover, I didn’t even know how to act! I was the camera conscious type who’d keep a straight face the entire time. And with the way people told me I had a terrible case of resting bitch face, I’d only be hampering their precious time which they could utilise on other things. I’d been part of one too many school plays to know it was the absolute last thing I’d ever want to do.
“You don’t need to know how to act. There aren’t many emotions included in the script.” A voice pulled me back from my thoughts. Someone behind the guy standing next to the leader.
The guy shifted to the side, and I couldn’t wrap my head around how I hadn’t noticed her presence before. Even with her height; standing behind the guy a few inches shorter than her. The warmest brown eyes I’d ever seen, on top of that.
She’d just erased herself from this situation.
I leaned forward and craned my neck to get a better look, but pulled back and stood upright. The last thing I wanted was to be branded the campus creep.
When I didn’t say anything, the new girl continued, “The character is pretty much expressionless, but he shows feelings of sadness and hopelessness.”
No, hell no. What was I doing here, listening to them speak when I wanted nothing more right now than to just ignore them and leave?
“Well?” The sidekick said, drawing out the word like it was a rubberband waiting to snap. “What do you say? What’s your final verdict, sir?”
Final verdict, sir? They sure were trying too hard. Commendable, if nothing else.
But what was I supposed to say? I had already spelled it out.
I dragged a hand across my forehead, resisting the urge to let out a groan that would probably make the ground tremble.
I was done.
“Look, I really don’t understand the persistence. Either you’re too lazy to find someone else, or you’re just trying to purposely annoy me and keep me from going to my practice. If you put this much effort into badgering someone else, I’m sure you’ll find your actor in no time.”
The pack leader’s jaw dropped to the floor, and her eyebrows knitted into a furrow. Her subordinates huffed and puffed, looking like they would pounce on me any time.
The tall girl remained unexpressive, though, her gaze locked somewhere in the middle, not on me, not on her mates’ theatrics. It made me wonder if she were a part of this circus act at all. Intriguing.
I gathered my bag, mouthed later to them, and went on my merry way. I had ten minutes of break left, leaving me just enough time to shove some food down my throat.
Was I really the only Tom Cruise in the university? Did I have it in me to become a supermodel?
The moment they slipped out of my sight, I dropped my bag on the field, and jogged toward my team members.
“What was that, mami?” My friend, Joaquin, said as he pulled his jersey over his head and twisted the sweat out of it.
“Nah, nothing. Just a couple of people asking me to act in their student film.”
Joaquin raised his eyebrow at me, and laughed. “You? Acting?”
“I know. That’s what I told them. They just didn’t want to hear it.”
With that said, we began our warm up session, with the occasional flashes of brown eyes circling around in my head.
My focus had really been fucked for the day.
