"That's not true!" My voice rose a bit higher than I intended it to. Just because someone says 'no offense' doesn't mean that it isn't offensive.
It wasn't true. The only people I didn't like were Justin, Diane, my aunt, some of my teachers, a lot of my classmates, and the randoms who didn't like me. Oh, plus Javier. Though, I was starting to dislike him less than I disliked the others.
Okay, so maybe that was a lot of people.
"I think that you should try to be friendlier," Ricky suggested. "Sometimes you can be a little…what’s the word?”
He was waiting on me to fill in the blank, but I stayed silent.
“Never mind,” he said with a cautious chuckle. “You’re a cool person to be around, Eli. You should show other people that, including Justin."
I was about to break the news to him that it wouldn't happen anytime soon when a football collided with my head. The ball was one of the super soft ones that children play with so it didn’t hurt, but it did catch me off guard. There was a group of kids playing in a patch of grass under the bleachers and one of them accidentally threw the ball too far.
Despite there being no pain, I rubbed my forehead with one hand as I picked up the ball with the other. The group of kids looked to be between ten and twelve years old. One of them raised his hand up for me to throw the ball back at them while the others stared idly.
Apparently none of the kids thought that it would be best to apologize to the stranger they hit in the head. If I had wanted to, I could have been petty and took the ball for myself. To the kids’ benefit I was in a decent mood.
I had a couple of beers before coming to the game. It took a lot more than what I drank for me to feel anywhere near drunk, so no one could tell that I had drunk anything in the first place. I was acting normal for the most part and I could think straight. It wasn’t like I was doing anything wrong. Plenty of people pre-gamed for football games.
I threw the ball to the kid with his hands raised, but because I couldn’t aim for shit, the ball went straight past him. The child gave me a nasty look. In my defense, I had never been good at throwing balls.
"Your aim is ass!" Justin shouted with a chuckle. Him, Bella, and Kailey were making their way over to. They hadn’t realized we had stopped walking and had gotten away from us.
"Aw, don’t be mean," Diane cooed as she came our way. When did she show up?
Diane waved eagerly at Justin and he returned it. Odd, I didn’t know that they knew each other. Just as I thought, Javier and his friend Paxton were following right behind Diane.
Justin and Diane started to chat about stuff. I didn't know what they were talking about because I didn't care. The rest of us stood awkwardly as we waited for Diane and Justin to finish their conversation.
Paxton was tired of it, though. He cleared his throat obnoxiously. "Are we going to stand here and stare at each other, or...?"
Everyone laughed while Paxton raised a brow. He wasn't joking, but everyone thought he was funny.
"I didn't know Diane and Justin were friends," Bella mentioned to the group, but she was more so speaking to Javier. "I've never seen them hang out."
Javier humphed. "It's a newfound friendship."
Screams of excitement erupted from the stands again. Our team must have scored another point. While I wasn't paying attention to the game, other people were. My friends, Javier, and Paxton were trying to see what had the crowd so hyped.
Bella stood on her tiptoes, trying to see above the people standing in her way. "Someone scored a touchdown?"
"I think so," Ricky said as he tried to get a better view.
"Someone did,” Javier added. "Number twenty-four. That's Easton, right?"
I nodded since his question was clearly directed to me.
Another reason why I didn't care for going to the games was that I had to hear about how great Easton was doing and how many points he scored. Or, I had to hear about how pretty Emerson looked as she cheered and flipped with the cheerleading squad for everyone. Not from the people I knew, but from random adults in the stands. It shouldn’t have bothered me as much as it did, but I was tired of constantly living in their shadow.
"Are you all going trick or treating this year?" Paxton changed the subject.
"Trick or treating?" Justin asked, him and Diane having finished their side conversation. "How old are we?”
"Never too old for trick or treating," Paxton said cheerfully, his teeth shining as he smiled. "Going to look for costumes, getting dressed up, getting free candy from strangers and then eating yourself into a coma, it's dope! How could you possibly put an age limit on that?"
Obviously Paxton was very passionate about trick or treating. I personally enjoyed it. Something about free candy had always made me happy.
Plus, dressing up let me not bemefor one night. Instead of Elias Richardson, I was a superhero who saved all sorts of people and got praised for it. I was someone that everyone loved. Just for that night.
