The Ongoing Reformation of Micah Johnson (10 page)

“But seriously, you guys, thanks for coming.”

“I want you to do brilliantly,” Simon said, “if only so you can beat this guy’s records and take away his bragging rights.” He shouldered Dec affectionately, and Micah was reminded yet again of the affection he craved so much himself.

But he shook it off. “That’s my plan.”

“Rather than being jealous if Micah surpasses my own career,” Dec said, “I’ll be proud, because I’ll also know I’ve done a good job in mentoring him.”

“So you’re just going to take the credit no matter what happens?” Simon asked.

“Yes.”

The look between them happened again, and Micah felt like he was intruding on a moment he had no right to be a part of. “I’ll do my best.”

“For you, not for me,” Dec reminded him.

“Got it, boss.”

He could tell Dec wanted to hug him, like a proud parent, but didn’t want to embarrass him in front of the other guys. Instead he held out his hand. Micah fist-bumped him instead. Only special people got his fist bump, and they were rare. Declan smiled.

Simon held out his hand palm up. Micah went to slap it, and Simon pulled away. “Too slow, gotta go!”

“My eleven-year-old brother is more mature than you.”

Simon laughed. “Most eleven-year-olds are.”

“I didn’t even have to say it,” Dec muttered.

They moved off to say hello to Micah’s family, and Micah remained behind, not sure what to do.

“You know Declan Tyler?” a voice came from behind him.

Micah turned to see a guy who easily had half a foot on him. Micah was literally in his shadow. “Yeah.”

“Then you’re probably Micah Johnson.”

“Yeah.” Micah went in for a handshake.

The giant left him hanging. “I don’t let fags touch me.”

Micah was ready with an insult, but he could just imagine his family’s reaction if he was involved in a fight before the bus had even left the car park. And worse, Declan’s.

So he didn’t say anything, and hated himself for it.

The feeling that everything was getting back on track was completely wiped from existence.

MICAH MADE
sure to stay away from the giant for the remainder of their time in the “real” world, or what passed for it there in the car park. There would be plenty of opportunities to take him down later, especially on the field. Although the logistics of him taking down a taller and heavier guy escaped him at the moment. He’d probably have to take him by surprise.

It just… sucked. He had thought he was escaping the bullshit at school for a while, only to find out the camp was going to be the same old shit. Once again everybody was going to avoid him, and he would be the only gay in the village.

Well, the only
out
gay in the village.

It was probably too much to hope the giant was another repressed gayboy. He was most likely just your average run-of-the-mill homophobe. It wasn’t like Micah had never had to deal with
those
before. Not all bigots turned out to be repressed closet cases like Will. In fact, not many of them did at all.

“I see you’re already chatting to other kids,” Joanne said brightly. “That’s good.”

Micah gave her a thumbs-up. “It’s just like school. I feel like I’m part of the team already.”

Her smile faltered, and he wished he hadn’t said anything.

“It’s cool, really.”

Dec took him aside. “Really?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Not exactly filling me with confidence, kid.”

“It’s nothing more than what I expected.”

Declan looked at him worriedly.

“Look, it’s not like I wasn’t expecting this. And it’s not like I’m not going to have to deal with this in the professional league either. You of all people know that.”

“Yeah, but it’s different when it’s me,” Dec said. “I just don’t like seeing it happen to other people.”

“I know.”

“Just stay focused and stay calm. Remember what you’re here for. Remember the long-term goal, not the short-term shit.”

Micah nodded.

“Was that the last-minute rousing speech before sending him on for the winning play, Coach?” Simon asked, joining them.

Declan flushed. “You heard that?”

“It was great. Look, they’re getting the kids on the bus now. We better leave Micah with his family so they can cover him with kisses and shower him with roses.”

“Ugh, not the roses again,” Micah said. “It makes the other kids resentful.”

Good-byes were exchanged once again, and he watched them head for their car. He turned back to face his family, who all looked just as worried as his mentor had.

“Relax, guys, it’s just for a few days,” Micah told them.

“Just, if you need us, call us,” Rick said.

“You’ll be okay,” Joanne said.

“Don’t run away again,” Alex said.

Micah grinned as his parents told off his little brother, and accepted their hugs before leaving to get on the bus.

Here goes
, Micah thought.

He stepped onto the bus, and immediately all eyes were upon him. The boys who had seats to themselves had deliberately slouched across or placed their bags in the empty space next to them to try and ward him off. The problem was, it didn’t leave him anywhere to sit. What did they expect him to do, ride on the roof rack?

Wait, they probably
did
think that would be acceptable.

He stood there stupidly, hating himself for being so indecisive. It wasn’t like him.

So he did what he always did. Went on the offensive.

“Did your bag buy a ticket?” he asked the boy nearest to him.

“Huh?” was the enlightening response.

“I said, did your bag buy a ticket? If it didn’t, it will have to stand for a paying passenger.”

The guy continued to stare at him blankly. Micah reached down to remove the bag, and a scuffle would have broken out if another adult—not the bus driver, as he was doing what bus drivers often have to for the sake of their own sanity, which was pretending not to notice anything going on behind him—hadn’t stepped onto the bus.

“Johnson,” he barked, and Micah was surprised he knew his name already. “Are you going to stand all the way to camp?”

“I wasn’t planning to,” Micah said.

“You wasn’t planning to, what?”

“Weren’t,” Micah corrected him.

Now
he
looked confused.

“In that context, you’d say
weren’t
,” Micah told him, his heart sinking as he watched the expression on the coach’s face darken.

“Do I look like I’m here to teach you about grammar?” the coach yelled. “Do I? Do I look like I give a flying fuck about the way I speak, Johnson?”

Micah didn’t know what to say. Any response, he felt, would surely be wrong.

“Well?”

“I guess it’s not part of your job description.”

“Johnson.” By now the coach looked like he was ready to remove the lanyard from his neck and throttle Micah with it. “I guess you think you’re pretty hot shit, but you haven’t been drafted yet. So don’t push me. Are you going to push me?”

“No?” Micah suggested.

“No, what?”

He finally cottoned on and was more embarrassed by that than the dressing down he was getting in front of his fellow campgoers. At least they didn’t give a shit about him anyway.

“No, sir.”

The coach relaxed and actually smiled. “Now, was that so hard? Take a seat, Johnson. I see Bailey has one free next to him.”

Bailey was the guy he was about to tussle with before the coach made his appearance. Was it first or last name? As the coach was calling him Johnson, he had to assume Bailey was the surname.

Anyway, it didn’t matter. Bailey moved his bag, and Micah slunk into the seat, relieved he could finally sit down. While the coach was distracted talking to the bus driver, Micah decided to break the silence with his seatmate.

“Is this draft camp or boot camp we’ve signed up for?”

Bailey didn’t respond, but he did grin before hurriedly dropping it.

A smile! Well, a sort of smile?

Micah guessed it was a start, at least.

The driver started the bus, and with a huge rattle of the engine, they were finally on their way to camp.

BAILEY’S FIRST
name was Jack, and once he started talking, he didn’t shut up. Almost to the point where Micah wished for hostility between them again so he could take a nap before reaching camp. But sometimes wishes didn’t come true, and after a while, Micah was glad there was one person who wasn’t treating him with outright contempt, whether fellow campgoer or coach. Really, Micah was just glad someone was talking to him.

Jack came from the western suburbs but still seemed to know a lot about Micah himself. “People talk, you know?” he said. “About different players, their weaknesses, how they rank against you.”

“I’ve never really bothered with all that stuff,” Micah said. “I think it’d just get to me. I just have to focus on getting through and not worrying about anybody else.”

He really didn’t want to admit that his main conduit of player gossip, other boys, was one that was routinely closed off to him.

“Well, of course
you
don’t have to worry too much about the others,” Jack said. “They’re saying you’re going to be at least in the top ten of draft picks.”

“They are?” Micah had already heard such things intimated by the likes of Dec, but it was a surprise to hear it coming from other sources.

Jack snorted. “You don’t have to pretend to be modest.”

“I don’t pretend at being anything, honestly.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that too. About how you got outed.”

Micah flushed. “Seriously, is there some kind of newsletter that gets sent out about me that I don’t know exists?”

“Just a once a week e-mail,” Jack quipped and looked pleased with himself.

“Seriously, how?”

Jack shrugged. “You know how it is. Word gets around.”

“I don’t, actually. I mean, no offence, but I’ve never heard about you before.”

“Why would you?” Jack asked, and he sounded surprised rather than fishing for compliments.

“You ended up here in the top two hundred, so you must be good.”

Jack flushed, and Micah remembered that boys—well, straight boys—usually didn’t compliment each other in case it looked really faggy. Micah, being faggy, didn’t care about adhering to that social tradition. “Maybe. But top-two-hundred good, not top-ten good. There are always going to be those at the other end of the ladder, aren’t there?”

Micah didn’t know what to say to that. It was true. For every eighty kids that got drafted each year, there were thousands of disappointed kids across the country thinking their lives were over.

“And other than being good at footy, that’s all I have going for me.”

“Bullshit,” Micah said. “Footy isn’t everything.”

“They’ll chuck you off the bus for that, mate. But you know what I mean. I’m in the same boat as every other guy here. We’re all good at footy. But unless you’re distinctive in some way, you’re just like everybody else.”

“And I’m distinctive?”

Jack snorted. “You’re apparently the new Declan Tyler.”

“No, I’m not,” Micah said with all honesty.

“You are, in that you’re out and proud.”

“Oh.” Micah tried not to sound too disappointed. He actually liked being compared to Dec.
Everybody
, regardless of what team they barracked for, knew he was an exceptional player. Micah wanted to be an exceptional player too.

But apparently he was only like Dec in the fact they both liked dick. At least, according to all the guys here. His new friend included.

As if realising his inability to return a compliment, Jack said hurriedly, “Oh, but you’re a good player! They know that.”

Again, the elusive
they
. A shadowy cabal of armchair critics who judged the performance of teenage boys before they had even reached the peak physicality they needed to play football.

“But you’re going to have to really compete against Boyd Davies.”

“Who?”

Jack pointed him out, and Micah should have seen it coming.

His new nemesis from earlier in the car park, who had refused to shake the hand of a fag, now had a name.

BOYD DAVIES
made sure everybody on the bus knew Micah was gay before he even stepped on it. Boyd knew all about Micah, or at least what he thought he knew, as his cousin was on the team whose player had the tryst with Micah after one of their games.

From the way Jack described it, Boyd seemed to have an almost cultlike influence over the other boys. They all came from the same district as Jack and Boyd and had been playing together for years. Boyd’s word was God.

“So how come you didn’t listen?” Micah asked, tactfully avoiding the fact that Jack had tried until he was forced to be Micah’s seat buddy.

It made him like Jack a lot more that he admitted it. “I
did
try, remember? Fate intervened.”

“So? You could ignore me now. Nobody would hold it against you that Marks made me sit next to you.”

Jack squinted into the sun streaming uncomfortably through the window as the landscape drifted by. “Ah, the damage is done now, isn’t it?”

The lilt in his voice let Micah know he wasn’t being serious.

“Lucky for me, I guess. I’m not going to be entirely shunned.”

“So, do you have a boyfriend?” Jack wasn’t even shy about asking the question that would make a lot of other guys stammer and blush.

“Why, do you want one?”

“Just making conversation, dude.”

“No,” Micah said. “No man is lucky enough to have snagged me.”

“I have a girlfriend.”

“You don’t have to convince me.”

Now Jack sounded exasperated. “I told you, I’m just making conversation. Fuck, you’re not very good at it, are you?”

He sure had Micah pegged already. “I’m actually not. But thanks for making the effort.”

“Here’s the bit where you try as well.”

“Oh.” Micah had forgotten how to relate to, or actually be comfortable in the presence of, straight boys. It had been a long time since they had accepted him as one of them without question. It would have been right before the time he got caught blowing an opposing team member in the change rooms, funnily enough. “Um, what’s your girlfriend’s name?”