Chubby Chaser (12 page)

“I’m ready,” he said, coming down the stairs, a duffle bag hanging from each shoulder. Jason was going to Los Angeles for an official-visit weekend at SCU. The school had provided round-trip first-class airfare and two suites at the Hollywood Grand Hotel for Jason and his parents, but his parents, true to form, had decided to opt out, so Jason was on his own. Fine by him. His dad was on his case again about getting a job (
Jason
,
you should start looking for a job now
,
so when football season is over
,
you
’
ll have one all lined up
), and he did not want to hear it. He had never been to Los Angeles before, and he wanted to have fun, not be bitched at the entire time.

“Let me get my coat. Then we can go.” His mother flitted into the mudroom to get her coat from the closet.

Flying first class was awesome: he had the privilege of getting on and off the plane before the people in business and coach; he had a seat that was like a nice little cabin unto itself, with dividers on each side giving him a private sanctuary in which to enjoy the flight; he had beer served to him without anyone bothering to card him; he had a thirteen-inch screen in the panel in front of his seat that allowed him to stream music, movies, and television shows; and he had his choice of several different entrees for dinner. (He watched
Nosferatu
and ate a wet burrito for dinner.) The only bad part about his flight was he wouldn’t get a chance to join the mile-high club (he was the only hot passenger on his flight, and he had a male flight attendant).

Jason arrived at LAX around eleven that Friday evening to find a Hispanic male driver holding a sign with Jason’s name written on it and standing by a Lincoln town car in the taxi stand.

“Hey, I’m Jason Pruitt,” Jason said, walking up to his chauffeur.

“Hello, Mr. Pruitt. My name is Frederico. I’ll be your driver for the weekend.” He opened the door to the backseat of the Lincoln. “May I take your bags, sir?”

“Sure, man.” Jason handed him the duffel bags and then climbed in the back seat while Frederico put his stuff in the trunk.

During the drive to the hotel, Jason rolled down the window to take in the sights, and he was immediately taken aback by how huge and busy the city was. He had been to Philadelphia and Pittsburgh on many occasions, but they were nothing when compared with the razzle-dazzle of the city of angels. He even saw a few celebrities at various red lights. None of the ones he liked though. Jason really lost it when he saw the Hollywood sign, permitting himself to smile and allowing himself to become excited—not the cool, casual way he did when he was with his friends or people he was trying to impress but the carefree way he did when he was a child and when he knew he was alone with no one watching him.

The Hollywood Grand Hotel was a tribute to its namesake: Pictures of every celebrity, from Michael Jackson to James Dean, hung on the walls in the lobby. Posters of every iconic film, from
Star Wars
to
Pulp Fiction
, adorned the hallways of every floor. And the interior of every room resembled a set from a film or television show.

Jason’s suite looked like Monica’s apartment from
Friends
: there was a small blue kitchen, minus stove, to the left of the door, with a small dining area, and there was a living room with a white couch, a beige chair, a brown chair with a green ottoman, a wooden coffee table, and a thirty-two inch flat-screen television. They had even managed to replicate the window and balcony from the
Friends
set. Jason pulled his phone out, took pictures of the entire suite, and sent them to Eric and Andy. They were going to flip once they saw where he was staying. He also posted the pictures on his Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts.

Jason’s phone rang. Had Eric and Andy gotten the pictures that quickly? Or maybe it was his mom calling to see how he was doing. It actually turned out to be Emily. Ugh! Why was she calling him? He had been dodging her since homecoming. Couldn’t she take a hint? He ignored the call and deleted what was probably a long-as-hell voicemail ten minutes later.

Jason looked at the time on his phone: it was ten past midnight. He had better get to bed. Frederico would be picking him up at eight to take him to SCU’s campus, and that was one of the very few things in this world he cared about being late for. He undressed and hopped into the shower. After he was finished, he entered the bedroom, and there was a flat-screen television in there too. He turned it on and ordered
The Ejaculators
to rub one out to before falling asleep.

The official SCU visit kicked off with breakfast at Oasis, a campus restaurant that was situated in a large rotunda overlooking the quad. A cute, perky, little blond named Jamie had escorted Jason and several other recruits there from the campus center. She was a sophomore at SCU and worked as a hostess for the school to help pay some of her tuition.

The smell of pancakes, waffles, bacon, sausage, and eggs made Jason’s stomach grumble. When it came time to eat, he filled his plate with pumpkin waffles, which had pumpkin seeds, sour cream, honey, and raisins baked into them; pork-apple sausage links, which had a sweet-tangy taste to them; and applewood-smoked bacon, which tasted strongly of apples and brown sugar. He washed it all down with a glass of orange juice. God, the food was so good here. The food in Tallis’s cafeteria didn’t have shit on SCU’s. Hell, the food he ate at home didn’t have shit on SCU’s. He hoped this was the way they ate every day at the school and wasn’t just a special meal prepared to ensnare recruits.

There were a dozen other guys visiting besides Jason, all of them with at least one parent. He wondered how many of them were quarterbacks and a threat to him if they came to SCU next year.

“Hey, man, what school are you from?” Jason asked the guy next to him. His nametag said that his name was Greg. He was big and beefy, so he was probably a tackle or a guard.

“I’m from Trinity Heights. It’s in Washington,” Greg responded. “I’m a nose tackle. You?”

“From Tallis. It’s—”

Before Jason could introduce himself, a man at the head of the table stood up to speak. “Hello, everyone. I’m Tim Borley, the athletic director for Southern California University. I hope all of you from out of town had a safe and pleasant flight.”

“Yeah, first class rocks!” one of the recruits yelled, causing most of the people at the table to chuckle.

“I’m glad to hear that,” said Tim. “You know what else rocks? Our athletic department. As some of you may already know, SCU has the distinction of winning both the most NCAA team championships and the most NCAA individual championships in the entire country. That’s thanks in large part to our football team, our most distinguished sports team. They have won the most Rose Bowls, the most Rose Bowl player-of-the-game awards, and the second most BCS National Championship games in the country. We’ve invited you and your families here because we want all of you to become a part of our family and to help us continue to grow and prosper as we help you grow and prosper into the fine, upstanding young men that we know you’ll all be. We’ve got an action-packed schedule planned for today to show you guys everything our school has to offer, starting with a tour of our campus. You already met your tour guides when you arrived this morning. Follow them, and they will expose you to all of the wonderful things here at SCU that you wouldn’t get to experience from a brochure.”

The tour started at the front of the school, where the school’s name was written into the low cement wall of a garden bed filled with both red and blue flowers (the school’s colors). Beyond that were several large arches to walk through, leading to a wide red-and-blue cement promenade. A ten-minute walk later, and Jason’s group was at a large circular fountain that had a dragon (the school’s mascot) made out of black tourmaline in the center, with water coming out of its mouth.

The quad, littered with people playing guts, touch football, and hacky sack, was a little farther back.

The first building they came across was the administration building: a large red-and-blue brick tower that housed the offices of the school’s senior administrators. Statues of the school’s founding fathers sat in front of the administration building. Jamie went into detail about the founding fathers’ and the school’s histories, but Jason wasn’t interested in hearing that boring shit, so he tuned her out and focused on the front of her sweater instead, trying to see whether he could make out the shape of her nipples through the thick material.

Next they revisited the campus center for a more in-depth look: It consisted of three large square-shaped stone buildings, connected via breezeways. The campus bookstore, financial aid, registration, student government, campus groups, campus activities, and several restaurants resided in these buildings.

The student health center was located in a three-story, triangular-shaped stone building fifteen minutes (and another fountain) away from the campus center.

Jason’s tour group also explored some of the schools within the university, the most impressive being the school of communications, with its state-of-the-art equipment and screening rooms for watching films (professional and student-made). They even had a major for video games in the school, and Jason was lucky enough to sit in on a group of students making a video game for their thesis project.

The last stop on the tour was student housing. Jason had heard horror stories about how bad freshmen housing was, and the videos he had checked out on YouTube had done nothing to extinguish his fears. Seeing the dorms in person didn’t help either: The single-occupancy rooms weren’t that bad, but the double-occupancy rooms, which Jamie said most freshmen were likely to get, were so tiny and cramped that he might as well live in a cardboard box next year; it would be about the same size and a hell of a lot cheaper. (SCU also had triple-occupancy rooms, but there was no way in hell Jason would even consider living in one of those.) All the beds were twin-size, and some rooms even had bunk beds (
yuck
!). To make matters worse, there was no privacy or way to protect his stuff. What if he got stuck with a poor person for a roommate? Or a kleptomaniac? Or, oh shit, what if he got stuck with a fag? If girls couldn’t live on the same floor as guys, then fags shouldn’t be able to, either. He didn’t want to be stuck in a shoebox with some pillow biter, who would try to do stuff to him while he was sleeping. That settled it. If he couldn’t get a single dorm, he was going to have his parents find a loophole in the rule that says freshmen can’t have off-campus housing. He knew them being lawyers would come in handy one day.

Jason and the other recruits returned to Oasis for lunch after the campus tour, and then it was time to meet the academic advisors. The advisor Jason met with was Sheryl Anderson. She was a middle-aged, overweight woman, who wore glasses (seriously, why would someone wear glasses when they could wear contacts?) and a floral-print dress that was so loose fitting that in it she resembled a pole holding up a big top. It was so stupid. If fat people weren’t going to get off their lazy asses and lose some weight, then why try to hide it? It’s not as though other people wouldn’t still be able to see that they were fat. The only fat person he knew that didn’t try that shit was Sara.

“You can have a seat right there, Mr. Pruitt,” Sheryl said, pointing at the chair across from her desk.

“Thank you, ma’am.” Jason pulled the chair out and sat.

“How’s your visit to SCU been so far?” she asked, trying to make conversation as she looked over Jason’s file.

“It’s been good.”

“Bet you like our weather more than the weather out in Pennsylvania, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s nice. Don’t even need a jacket.” He hoped this chitchat wasn’t going to go on much longer. He hated making small talk with people he had no interest in.

“Wow, your grades are beautiful,” she said, her eyes still on his file.

“Yup, I’m on the National Honor Society and everything,” he crowed, although technically he shouldn’t be on the National Honor Society, given that he had never attended any of the meetings, had never paid any of the dues, and had never done any of the required community service, but being the top player of a winning football team had its perks.

“I see that. I also see that you got a twenty-two hundred on your SATs, awesome. Looks like you should be a good fit academically. Here at SCU, we require that our student-athletes maintain at least a 2.5 GPA to remain eligible to play and to remain on scholarship, if one is provided to them. Some of our schools may require higher GPAs. It all depends on your major. Speaking of your major, have you picked one yet?”

“Well, I was planning on going pro after I graduate from SCU.”

Sheryl chuckled. “Dare to dream, Mr. Pruitt, but a professional sports career doesn’t happen for everyone. You need to have a backup in case it doesn’t happen for you. What interests you?”

She had caught Jason unawares. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life if he didn’t become a professional football player. He had never put much thought into it, because he had always presumed that he would become a professional football player, preferably playing for either the Dallas Cowboys, the New England Patriots, the Philadelphia Eagles, or the Pittsburgh Steelers. His parents had often gotten on his case about not having a backup plan, and he had convinced himself not to take their complaints seriously, dismissing them as cavils of absentee parents, who didn’t get him, and didn’t get how special he was and how great he would become. He had thought the SCU campus visit would vindicate his side of the argument, but now he appeared to be the one who didn’t get it. His parents were lawyers, and they wanted him to become one, but they always seemed so stressed out and as though they didn’t have time to enjoy life, especially his dad. Jason wanted something fun and laid back, something he’d actually enjoy doing for the rest of his life. He thought SCU’s film and video-game majors were pretty cool, but he had never done any of that stuff before, and he wasn’t sure whether he had the aptitude for it. He didn’t want to take one of them up and fail. There was nothing worse than failing.

“I . . . I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Well, that’s all right, honey. You have until the end of your sophomore year to declare your major, but make sure you keep your grades up, so you don’t run the risk of being excluded from a particular major.”

Jason’s doubts about his future continued to plague him—he tried to disregard what the academic advisor had said (
she was just a fat bitch and a glorified middle
-
management hack
who didn
’
t know shit about him or football
), but he couldn’t get himself to do it the way he had always done it whenever his parents had knocked him.
Dare to dream
,
Mr
.
Pruitt
,
but a professional sports career doesn
’
t happen for everyone
kept replaying in his mind, as though he were continuously rewinding his favorite highlight reel—as he and the other recruits traveled to the James O’Connor Center for a tour and meetings with the coaches. Borley ushered them into the glass building via the revolving doors. They passed by a bronze statue of the building’s namesake: a former SCU coach who had successfully led the football team throughout the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Borley went to the receptionist and said something—Jason was out of earshot—then whisked them all to a set of elevators to the left.

“Okay, guys, first, we’re gonna head downstairs to meet Coach Taylor, the strength-and-conditioning coach, and tour the weight and the physical-therapy rooms,” Borley informed them once they were inside the elevator.

The weight room was spacious and outfitted with black rubber floors, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, several flat-screen televisions, and every piece of strength-training equipment known to man.

Coach Taylor was leaning on a squat machine. He was a muscular man with a gut, and he had salt-and-pepper hair with a beard to match. Borley introduced him, and then Coach Taylor explained to the recruits how he would work in tandem with the other coaches to create an individualized strength-training program for them, should they decide to attend SCU next fall, to help them perform to the best of their abilities out on the field.

He took them into the next room: the physical-therapy room. It comprised treadmills, recumbent exercise bikes, foam rollers, exercise bands, and exercise balls; and some weird contortionist devices called Pilates Reformers. Coach Taylor told the recruits that he would have them using the equipment in this room when they’re injured, as well as during their normal strength routines, to help prevent injuries.

The indoor training arena was the recruits’ next stop. It was a large indoor field with artificial turf. The football team used it when they couldn’t practice outside.

They funneled back into the elevator and headed up to the second floor, where they kept the players’ lounge (a room with a large flat-screen television, well-stocked refrigerator, and black leather chairs and couches). It was a hangout for the players before and after practices and workouts. The players’ locker room was also on this floor. It was furnished with a steam room, hot tub (why would a bunch of guys want to get into a hot tub together? Maybe they could sneak girls in), communal showers, and, of course, lockers (tall, and featuring combination locks and alternating between red and blue in color).

On the third floor were meeting rooms for each of the team’s positions and a players’ auditorium for when all of the players came together for meetings. The coaches’ offices occupied the fourth and final floor. Jason and the other players waited in the lobby to meet with their respective coaches, one by one.

Jason was up first. Coach Hoates led him to Head Coach Petrelli’s office: a shrine to Petrelli’s monumental victories, not only as a coach at SCU but also as a former SCU running back. He had played professional ball, too, for a spell (in the eighties with the San Francisco Forty-niners) but had left the game after blowing out his knees only three years into his career
.

“Ben showed me a tape of your homecoming game against City,” Coach Petrelli said, reclining in his chair behind his desk. “Sent it over on one of these.” He held a smartphone up.

No wonder Coach Hoates had been on his phone the whole game. Jason used his phone to record videos all the time, so he felt especially stupid for not realizing that’s what Hoates had been doing.

“I don’t even know how to work this thing,” Coach Petrelli said, waving the phone around, a perplexed expression on his face, “but the school requires that I have it, so what are you gonna do? But enough about this doohickey.” He set his phone down on the desk. “Let’s talk about that game. That was some mighty-fine playing, son. The way you pulled off a win at the last second”—he whistled—“impressive.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Your stats are fucking amazing too.” He opened a file that was on his desk. “Let’s see here. Last year you had forty touchdowns with only four interceptions, passed for thirty-five hundred yards, and rushed for seventeen hundred yards.”

“Well, I have a really good coach at Tallis. Coach Logan—he deserves a lot of the praise for how good I am.”

Coach Petrelli smiled at him. “You have a great deal of respect for your coach. I like that. A team is only as good as its coach. Play your cards right, and you could be starting quarterback as early as your sophomore year.”

“Really?”

“Really. I mean, you are one of the best quarterbacks in the country. Wouldn’t you say so, Ben?”

“Yeah, definitely one of the best.”

“You could even go pro one day.”

Jason was more confused than ever: Coach Hoates and Coach Petrelli were telling him he had what it took to make it, and a part of him wanted to believe every single thing they were saying, but another part of him couldn’t shake what his parents and the academic advisor had said, and he couldn’t understand why. The coaches’ opinions should matter more. They actually knew the game, and they’d actually seen Jason play. But even then, Coach Petrelli had only said that he could become a professional football player, not that he would. A lot of players didn’t make it, and the ones that did didn’t always last. Hell, Coach Petrelli was living proof of that. In Jason’s mind, what had happened to him was worse than not making it at all. Petrelli had been in the NFL, he had been living the dream, and then he had lost it as quickly as he had gotten it. He’d had the potential to be one of the finest running backs in NFL history, but his career had ended before it had even begun. Sure, Coach Petrelli had received a nice consolation prize, being a successful college coach, but that wasn’t shit when compared with being a pro baller. Jason wondered, if he proceeded with football, would Petrelli’s fate be his fate in another twenty, thirty years? Is coaching even something he wanted to do? He imagined himself becoming a coach, guiding young players toward their dreams, and then growing envious and bitter as they achieved what he had failed to. Well, that settled it: coaching was out of the question.

The last place Borley took the recruits was Howard James Field, so they could see where the football team practiced under good weather conditions, but Jason was so lost in thought over his now-uncertain future that he took no note of it.