Cole was walking across the Kinsky High football field when he noticed the familiar face of Isaac limping quickly by him, equipped with a new walkable cast. 

“Hey, you goin’ to the gym?” Cole asked. “Sure you should be doing that when your leg’s still bad?”

Isaac gave a dismissive wave. “I’ll just work my arms and chest.”

“I… don’t know if it works like that.”

The quarterback sighed. “I’ll be fine. Getting a bit too antsy now, it’s been a long time since I’ve lifted anything.”

As the two walked towards the other end of the field, they saw a peculiar sight: two others, Lukas and Russell, sitting up on the bleachers with their feet out. 

“You two are here early,” Cole called up to them. “What’s up?”

“Kat had trouble with starting her car this morning, and she had to be here for a choir meeting. So Rus and I helped her get it started. Now we’re just chillin’.”

Cole looked over at Russell, and smiled. “Guess you’re the go-to team mechanic now, huh?”

Russell got up from the seat and stretched, as both he and Lukas walked over to meet the other two on the field. “It’s no big deal. Would’ve spent my morning otherwise cleaning out the garage for Billy, but the call came in just in time for me to avoid it. I prefer it this way.”

When the four finally came together, Isaac kept a watchful glare on Lukas. The blonde boy looked up to meet his gaze, and he knew in those moments there was going to be trouble.

“I don’t think we’ve officially met before, Lukas,” Isaac spoke, keeping strict eye contact. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Lukas nodded his head. “Nice to meet you, too.”

“Kat told me a lot about you, you know,” the more athletic of the two continued. “How long you two had known each other. How close the two of you were. She talked about it with me a lot.”

“You going somewhere with this?” Lukas asked, rather impatiently.

Isaac took a few steps closer. “Listen. If you think you’re any better than me just because you got the girl in the end, you’re real mistaken. Nothing you got is gonna make me feel weaker than a guy like you.”

Lukas shrugged. “That all you wanted to say? Must be feeling pretty insecure about the whole thing. Maybe Kat just left you because you weren’t mature enough to handle her.”

“Lukas, hey-” Cole tried to intervene, but it was clear the situation had escalated beyond his control. Isaac looked Lukas dead in the eyes, then smiled. The smile turned into a laugh, and he began to walk away.

“Whatever, man. But the next time you look into her eyes, know this: I’ve fucked her plenty of times already. She’s used goods.”

This was the comment that set something off inside Lukas. His hands clenched up into fists, and he began to rush forward to meet Isaac. 

“You want to say that again, motherfucker?”

Isaac quickly heel-turned with full intention of meeting Lukas where he stood, only for their mutual six-foot-five friend to interject and push them away from each other.

“Hey, stop this shit!” Russell demanded, raising his voice. “Y’all acting like a bunch of fuckin’ kids!”

Lukas hesitated. He turned to look at Cole, who stood a few feet away. 

Cole nodded his head towards Russell. “Listen to the big guy.”

Lukas sighed, and began to take a few steps back. But he kept his eyes trained on Isaac as he did so. “If you talk about Kat like that again,” he spoke firmly, “you’re gonna have to worry about more than just a leg.”

With that, Lukas finally turned and walked away towards Cole. Cole didn’t try looking at Isaac, instead just nodding and following closely behind Lukas’ tail. Isaac watched the two walk off the field, until Russell eventually spoke up again.

“You gotta keep that ego of yours in check. One of these days it’s gonna get you into some real hot water, and I won’t be here to save your ass.”

Isaac scoffed, and muttered under his breath. “I can handle myself.” After this he began to walk in the opposite direction that Lukas and Cole had. Russell watched him.

“Where’re you going?” Russell asked.

“Gym. Going to work my arms and chest.”

“You’re still injured, man. You shouldn’t be doing that.”

“Then let me learn the hard way.”

Russell looked around the empty field, then sighed. “At least let me spot for you, then.”

Isaac opened the gym door, then turned back towards Russell and pointed inside. “You first.”

Russell walked forward, entering the gym. Isaac followed close behind.

…

Despite the conflict which occurred that morning, and the pursuing bad blood for the rest of the day, not much of note happened for the rest of school. Maria had already been home for a few hours at this point, and was just wrapping up solving the last homework assignment she had. She skimmed the last ten or so questions on the precalculus workbook, and decided that she could probably fit them in the morning after. 

Already in her pajamas – consisting of an old and used set of loose-fitting black sweats – she slid herself into bed and got on her phone. She opened up Instagram, where she scrolled through and liked the photos of friends and acquaintances until she saw one posted by Rodrigo a few days prior. It contained himself and Maurice, but included Aaron and Cole too. The four were at a skatepark, dressed to look cool, where they all had tried, and — with the exception of Rodrigo, who had actual experience — failed to skate. Maria smiled when she saw the photo, and liked it on her page. But she used the moment to click into Cole’s profile, and view his whole feed.

She had been following Cole almost since the day they had met, but it was the first time she actually checked his account’s photos in specific. There were quite a few of them, mostly with Lukas, Kat, or both. But a few others, particularly in recent times, just had Cole himself. 

Maria slumped down in her bed, as she saw one that caught her eye. It was posted just a few days after Thanksgiving, and had him posing with two thumbs up in front of a white brick wall at the high school. The photo was for the school magazine, and was relatively innocent — but there were a few things that caught Maria’s attention. For example, the shot was a near full-body image of the boy, going from his head to roughly his knees. He wore a tight-fitting t-shirt, and the definition of his muscles was beginning to show in his arms. His face was clean, and it was clear he neatly parted his hair to the side for the sake of the picture. He had a bright smile on his face, one that Maria always looked for, one that made her feel comforted and at home. But in this particular instance, the photo made her feel something else entirely.

With one hand keeping a firm grasp of the phone, her other hand slid down under the blankets and into her sweatpants. She gently rubbed the folds of her underwear as her breathing began to grow heavier. At first her eyes were glued to the picture on the screen, but as a more fascinating image began to develop in her mind she focused less on the phone and more on her own imagination. Her movements increased in speed, causing her to curl her toes and softly bite her lip as she stifled the light moans that came from inside her. 

Then, she heard the sounds of footsteps. And a door opening.

In one flash of movement she took her hand out of her pants and flipped herself under the covers, concealing her almost entirely from the doorway. But the door never opened, and Maria began to grow curious. Quietly she got up from the bed, and looked out into the hallway. When she did, she saw the door across from her — the door to Anita’s room — opened wide, and her mother sitting in the middle of the floor, looking at the photo album.

“Que tal, mama?” Maria asked.

Mrs. Cortez didn’t look up, but she smiled, and continued flipping through the album. “It’s been awhile since I’ve looked at this photo album,” she spoke in her native Spanish. 

Maria walked a bit closer, and took a seat on the ground next to her, looking over her shoulder at the photos.

“Here, you remember when we went to Hawaii with your father?” Mrs. Cortez showed Maria an image of the four of them dressed in luaus in front of a grassy hill. A bright smile came to the girl’s face when she saw it.

“Didn’t he get really sick on that trip?”

Her mother laughed softly. “Oh yeah he did. They had a big buffet in the lobby for dinner, and there were these shrimps… your father must have eaten, I don’t know, thirty or fourty of them. Then the morning later he got a case of food poisoning, and the hotel staff told us it was because the shrimp had gone bad. They offered to refund our entire trip, pretty much… but your father was furious. We ended up leaving a day or two earlier than we intended.”

Maria giggled, and the two continued flipping through the pages. “What about Anita’s third birthday?” Mrs. Cortez asked again. “You might have been too young to remember that one.”

Maria thought for a moment. “Was that the one with the clown?”

The older woman laughed again. “Yes, it was! We had gotten a clown, but you and Anita were both so upset about it that we had to ask him to leave early. I felt really bad for him — it wasn’t his fault, he was a really nice young man. The son of a family friend, too. Did you know that?”

“No, really?”

“Yeah, he was Jose Orbonentz’s son. Jose used to run a clown rental.”

Maria looked up to the ceiling, a fresh smile on her face, and she sighed. “Of course the Orbonentzes used to run a clown rental.”

The two continued to look at the album in silence, as Mrs. Cortez flipped the pages. Suddenly, however, she stopped.

“I’m sorry, Maria,” she spoke solemnly.

Maria turned to look at her. “What for, mama?”

The mother turned her head up from the pages of photographs. “For some reason… I thought there might be a chance she’d come back. That both of them would come back. It all felt so surreal, that I just assumed… that I assumed it was all some terrible joke made by God, and that she’d come back. But now I’ve realized that isn’t going to happen. It never will.”

Maria put a hand on her mothers shoulder, massaging it gently. Her mother continued.

“But, more importantly, I’ve realized… There was no accident. That was just a lie that I told myself to make me feel better about the whole thing, to make it more likely to just be that terrible joke. But in the process, I hurt you… because you knew the truth, and you tried to tell me, but I kept shutting you out. Well, now I know the truth. It was no accident. I’m sorry, Maria… I’m so sorry.”

The older woman began to break into tears, causing her daughter to wrap her arms around her in a hug. The two stayed like that for a large chunk of the night, with Maria trying her best to soothe and comfort Mrs. Cortez while she cried in Maria’s arms.