Football Tragedy

“You know man, you should really stop using that stuff.”

I laughed and mocked him. “You know man, you should really stop using that stuff.”

“Man I’m serious. At least don’t use it before practice.”

“It helps me focus.”

“It helps you focus my ass. You were all over the place.”

“Yah, whatever.”

I didn’t want to hear anymore. The guy was ruining my mood, so I left.

Thomas was always like that, telling me what I should and shouldn’t be doing. I, of course, never listened. He nagged me more than my mother. In fact, my mother never nagged me at all so I guess somebody had to do it and it was him. Ever since we’d met, he’d carried me everywhere on his back. To other people it always seemed that he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. That was because of me. I never worked hard and I was on some substance all the time. You name it, I’ve had it, twice.

This morning it was Oxycontin™. My mom just had a hysterectomy, two years ago. Somehow she’s managed to keep getting refills. She’s either screwing her pharmacist or her gynecologist. I can’t tell which, and frankly I don’t care. It’s not the first time she’s fucked someone to get what she wants. She only yells at me when I swipe her pills, so I do it just to piss her off.

Dad never yells at me much either unless it concerns football and despite what Thomas said this morning I am always the bomb at football. Even when I’m high I outshine everybody else on the team. Thomas just gets pissed cause he’s always in second place. He practices 2 hrs a day outside of football practice. He runs six miles a day, does sprints, and lifts weights. He's also on a strict dietary regimen and has memorized so many game plays that I bet he knows more than our coach. He does all this crap and I do whatever I feel like and never try hard in practice and I’m still better than him. It’s kinda sad cause I know he’ll never surpass me. I have something that he doesn’t. He knows it and I know it. Natural talent trumps hard work any day is what my father says. He would know. He says he used to be just like Thomas, always trying too hard to win a losing battle.

During the spring of our senior year, Thomas and I were playing around at my house and he said something that just pissed me off. I actually don’t remember what it was, now that I think about it, but he was probably nagging me about some shit that I hadn’t done, like he always does. I simply couldn’t take it and I threw whatever was closest to me at the time. It just so happens that I had been playing darts. He didn’t have a chance. As soon as the projectile left my hand I heard him scream in pain. I smiled for a bit because I thought I had just stuck him in the arm or something, but when I looked over I saw that his left eye, was streaming blood.

He allowed me to drive him to the hospital. When we got to the emergency room he was taken in pretty quickly. I had to use my insurance because he said he didn’t have his card with him. I doubted highly that he even had health insurance, but I didn’t really care. It wasn’t my money.

I saw him the next day. He actually didn’t want to see me, but I kept bothering the nurse and she got fed up and asked him to allow me to visit him because I was bugging the heck out of her. When I saw him, he had lots of white gauze over his eye.

“How’s your eye doing?”

“It’s gone,” he said and then proceeded to start sobbing like a little girl. I tried to ignore it.

“Why didn’t you want me to see you?”

“I hate you.”

“You hate me?”

“Jesus! Stop acting like you’re dense! Guess what Orel. You can’t go through life convincing yourself that everything that goes wrong is someone else's fault. I lost my fucking eye because of you and now my life is ruined. I can’t be eligible for a football scholarship if I can’t play football.”

“I bet you could get financial aid.”

“Financial aid my ass. My dad makes enough money to send me to college easily, but between the alcoholism and his gambling problem there’s not much left for anything else.”

“Oh well, then I guess you’re screwed.”

“Are you fucking serious?! Leave! Leave me alone! Don’t ever speak to me again!” I moved to leave, but before I passed through the doorway, I paused.

“Hey Thomas...”

“What!”

“I can hear your heart beeping.” Then, I left.

So here we are. He’s a postgraduate trying to prolong his time doing what he loves and I’m repeating a year because of my lack of effort. The only reason the administration let him back in is because they felt sorry for him. Thomas was never one to accept charity, but I guess when you have one eye you take all the help you can get.