Young Writers Society

Chapter One: James

“And Mr. Hockey of Minnesota, James Mckenzie steals the puck and darts forward with the opposing team hot on his tail. He skates left, narrowly avoids getting checked by the defensive men. He shoots the puck and-“

I come to a stop, feeling the ice break underneath my skates. Looking up, I see Parker glaring at me from behind his camera.

“Come on! Can’t you play along for just a little bit? I had the perfect angle!”

“Mr. Hockey? Really?”

Parker’s glare is gone now and his goofy, lopsided grin is back. It’s hard to even consider taking him seriously with that face.

“Oh come on, James. We all know you’ll be nominated this year.”

Parker’s camera still has its green light flashing, making me feel self-conscious. I don’t know how someone could like the camera so much. I try to skate away from him, but he and his camera are still following me. Turning away from him, I try to refocus myself back onto the puck in front of me.

“Being nominated doesn’t mean you win, Parker.”

I get a chuckle in response as I slap shot the puck into the empty net. There’s a clang from my hockey stick meeting the ice, but it sounds like music to my ears. Parker, however, flinches slightly from the noise. The puck slides into the net with a sense of harshness that makes me feel at ease.

I glance around and see that Parker, our head coach, and I are the only people left on the ice. Everybody else has gone in the locker rooms to shower. School starts in less than an hour and I know I can’t be late for class again. I sigh. I don’t want to get off the ice. It’s my home away from home.

Parker shuts off his camera and we skate toward the benches. The second I take off my helmet, the cool rink air finally hits me and if it was any colder, the small beads of sweat on my face would freeze. The locker room is already full with my teammates, walking around half-naked drying their wet hair with towels. It’s a fairly basic room, with separate sections for both the lockers and showers. It smells awful though, like cold sweat and dirty laundry. Stripping down, Parker and a few other guys and I head into the showers. Somedays it still surprises me how much the nudity doesn’t bother me. When I first joined the varsity team my freshman year, I thought I’d never get used to it. Funny how much things can change in four years.

A voice suddenly belts out in song and I jump in surprise. Parker still manages to scare the living daylights out of me with his singing even though he does it at least once a week. Oh well; at least he actually has a decent voice, unlike me. I may sing in the shower at home, but I’d rather give up my right arm than sing in front of people. I’m god awful at singing.

“I know you want it.”

I shake my head under the shower and suppress a grin. He’d been humming this song all of practice and now it’d be stuck in my head the rest of the day.

“You’re a good girl.”

Someone from inside the locker area yells for Parker to shut up, but like always, Parker doesn’t listen and continues on like no one ever said a thing.

“Do it like it hurt, do it like it hurt, what you don’t like work?”

I turn off the water, grab a towel and hurry back toward my locker, not liking the sudden coldness or goose bumps now on my skin. Parker is still singing in the distance, but thankfully, he’s almost done with the song now. I comb out my incredibly messy, dirty blonde hair until it’s finally tame enough. Though, in actuality, it is way too thick to even be considered tame. It’s worse now, since hockey season has already started and it’s team tradition to grow out your hair. Normally I keep it short and clean to avoid the morning struggle like today. I really didn’t get how girls dealt with their hair every day. Mine is bad enough and it isn’t even a fourth of the length of most girls’ hair at school.

Just as I am grabbing my bag from my locker, my friend Colton Johnson came up to me and says, “McDick’s today? I’m starving.”

My stomach rumbled in response, clearly hungry, but instead I say, “Nah, I didn’t bring any money. I’ll just eat here.”

That wasn’t entirely the truth. I will eat here at school, but I do have money. Actually, just over sixty bucks is sitting in the front pocket of my backpack. Only I wasn’t able to spend it. That money has to go toward more important things than a egg McMuffin at McDonalds.

Colton gives me a knowing look, but nods his head and walks over toward a few of our other teammates that are probably heading over to McDonalds with him.

I throw my bag over my shoulder and grimace as the weight of the heavy books fall as a burden to my shoulders. There is soft swearing beside me and I look over to see Parker cursing at his reflection in the mirror. His hair is still dark and damp from the shower and some parts of his t-shirt have patches of water on them. Grinning, I find myself saying, “Give it up, Cullen. You’ll never be able to fix that mop of hair. We just have to suffer together.”

While my hair is thick and thankfully straight, Parker has an entire head of dark curls to take care of. I keep telling him that it would be easier to tame if he would just chop it off already, but Parker swears by ‘The Flow,’ aka, the traditional hockey hair.

Whatever, Parker chooses his own misery.

His camera is sitting on the bench nearby and I pick it up. Turning it on and in a much deeper and artificial voice, I say, “Ladies and gentlemen of Moorhead High, your one and only sweetheart, Parker Cullen is having a bad hair day. But fear not Parker, I’m sure girls will still play with your curls in math.”

Parker’s eyes go wide and he spins around to face me.

“Put down my baby, Mckenzie.”

I grin, but give him his camera regardless. I’m smart enough to know that messing with Parker’s camera will result in an injury to a certain part of my body that I’d rather be left untouched.

Parker checks for any signs of damage, which makes me scoff. I only had his blessed camera for a few seconds after all. He takes that thing way too seriously. After thoroughly reviewing his piece of equipment, seemingly satisfied, Parker’s lopsided grin is back.

As we walk out of the locker room, Parker looks over at me and says, “You coming to Jack’s tonight then?”

“Uh, I’m not sure yet.” I pause, trying to think of another excuse than the one that I’ve used the last couple times. When I come up with nothing, I say, “I’ve got things to do.”

He shoots another glare at me, but even when Parker tries to look angry, he still looks like a kid that’s up to no good. It’s hard to feel intimidated by his soft blue eyes and ridiculous grin.

“You always have things to do. You haven’t gone out with us in weeks! Mckenzie, it’s senior year. I would have thought by now that you’d have at least learned how to have fun on weekends!”

“We’ll see. I probably have to watch Cheyenne and Lizzy tonight.”

I hear Parker groan. “Dear God. You’re parents must love each other if they go out for dates every weekend.”

“Yeah, that’s it.” I manage not to make my voice sound bitter but I can’t hide the sarcasm. Parker doesn’t seem to notice though. We had just passed the pool where the girls swimming team was practicing, so it doesn’t surprise me that his attention was elsewhere.

By the time we get to the cafeteria, grab some mediocre breakfast food that is often a struggle to get down and find a spot to sit, Parker has completely forgotten about Jack’s party tonight. I pull out my phone and text my sister Lizzy, telling her to make plans for tonight. I’ve only just decided now that I deserve a little break to go out tonight.

Granted, I’ll be playing babysitter, but it’d probably be more entertaining than laying around at home.

“Christ, she’s so fucking hot.”

I glance up from my food to see who Parker’s talking about. His gaze matches up with a short blonde girl walking in through the school doors that I recognize as Sadie Stone.

“Guess I never really noticed.”

Which was entirely true. I had never really paid attention to her before, since we didn’t share the same friend groups. Watching her now, I could see what Parker was talking about. She holds the look of false innocence with her far too skinny body, freckled face and long blonde hair, but she seems to be smirking at something her friend, Finn Hart, says beside her. She’s completely Parker’s type.

Poor girl.

Parker’s mouth was hanging wide open, staring at me with disbelief. “How have you not noticed? Her boobs are as big as melons!”

Well Parker just nailed the main reason I hadn’t noticed Sadie before. The first thing I check out about a girl is not her chest size. Guess it just goes to show in Parker’s book how much I have never noticed her. I don’t look back over at Sadie to see if Parker was right though. I’m not that big of a pervert. I’ll just have to take his word for it.

“You sure they just don’t look big because she’s so little?”

A look of disappointment came across his face once I say this, but with another bite of his banana Parker replies, “Nah. There’s no way. Besides, I’ll figure it out tonight.”

I practically choke on my milk. Parker has never been one for subtlety.

“Sadie’s the girl you’ve been talking to?”

The boyish grin is back and his blue eyes flare up with pride. “Yup. I invited her to Jack’s tonight.”

“You are something else, man.”

Parker points a finger toward me with a disapproving look on his face. “I think you just need to get laid, Mckenzie. All the more reason why you should come out tonight!”

The attempt to tell Parker no is one that I know won’t work, but I try regardless. I give up several minutes later, while shaking my head in defeat, I say, “Fine. I’ll go to Jack’s tonight. You happy now?”

“Very!” Parker says grinning. I can already tell his imagination is going wild with all the fun he’s planning for us tonight. “I’m also thinking about you and Cassidy.”

He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. I want to roll my eyes at him but instead I keep quiet and take another bite out of my fruit. To make matters worse, Parker begins to hump the air. Laughing, I look away embarrassed to call this man my friend.

“Oh my God, Parker, stop. I’ll talk to Cassidy and see where things go tonight. I’m not making any promises though.”

Parker finally stops with a shrug and gets up from the table. “I would if I were you. She can’t stop talking about you in government. No regrets then.”

Luckily, my phone goes off, saving me from replying. Glancing down, I see it’s a text from Lizzy, saying she’s more than happy to stay over at her friends house tonight. One down, one to go. With that in mind, I text my next door neighbor and ask if she can watch Cheyenne tonight. My neighbor, Ann, has a girl in Cheyenne’s class and often when I don’t think it’s best for my sisters to be home, I send them over there and Ann, thankfully, is more than willing to help.

Looking back up, I see that Parker has disappeared from my side. After a few seconds, I see him talking with Sadie and I can’t help but grin. That guy knows what he wants. Next to him, though, is her best friend, Finn, who doesn’t look happy to see Parker. Not that that really surprised me. Sadie and Finn have been friends for as long as I could remember, so Finn was probably feeling a little jealous. After all, there was a huge contrast between Parker and Finn. Where Parker was tall and built, Finn was just tall and lanky. I know Finn a little bit better than I do Sadie, and I remember him being snarky and sarcastic, again the complete opposite of Parker. Not to mention, Finn’s got the whole, geeky guy with glasses look. And Parker probably doesn’t even feel the least bit threatened by him.

Cocky bastard.

I’m just about to my locker when I hear, “Hey, James.” I whip around to see Cassidy passing by my locker with two of her friends. She’s got a flirty grin on her cute face that makes me smile back. There’s a brief moment of hesitation before she walks away from me.

As I grab my books, I realize that Parker does actually have a point. Though he isn’t aware of the real reasons why I never go out on weekends, he is still right by the fact that I need to have some fun and live a little. I could probably manage to take a leaf out of his book, at least for tonight.

With that mind set, I call out, “Hey Cassidy! What are you doing tonight?”

I hear her and her friends giggle as I catch up with them, and all I can think is: Parker better be right about tonight because this is going to be a long ass day.