The boys on the field were from different buildings in the district. Two of the schools had such low turnout for the teams that the decision was made to simply create a district football team. Of course that meant that there was no opportunity to play one another, except for Peak. Peak Academy was not quite a charter school in the district, but their schedule and rules were different than the rest of the district, and they had a football team. So the District Football Team, comprised of the other four high schools, could play one other high school in the district: Peak. The coach shook his head at this thought, he still had no idea who they were going to play. But based on how the team was assembled, he knew that the "Who will they play?" question was low on the priority list. First, they had to get enough kids in attendance to run a practice. At the moment, they had managed to scrape together thirty four kids from four different buildings. He stood counting and checking the roster, and so far only twenty nine boys had arrived. Practice should have started fifteen minutes ago, but he was waiting for stragglers. They were all stragglers, the concept of arriving on time was Gone With Covid, which was the title of the ongoing novel in his head. He stood looking at them on the field, wondering how exactly any of this was going to work. What the uniforms would look like, and who would pay for them, was on the list right above "Who will they play?" and below "Find a coach."
The boys were scattered around the field, in varying warmups, clumped in twos and threes. The kids did not even know each other yet, and so were sticking to their established friend groups. He blew the whistle three times, which he had learned over the last year was how man times kids needed to be asked to do something before they heard the request. They may not do the thing being asked, but three times seemed to be the magic number to have the request heard by at least half of the kids. The boys began to move toward him. He yelled "C'mon, hustle, move like you have a purpose," and wondered not for the first time in the last twenty minutes, How The Hell Is This Going To Work? All high schoolers had begun to move at the speed of global warming, and there seemed to be no hustle in any one, any more.
The group gathered around him. He realized two boys still had cellphones on them, jammed into their pant pockets. "You're kidding me," he shook his head. "Put them in your bags, guys-" he was cut off by gun shots. He looked up after the first round, and saw no additional people on the field. "Inside, guys, now!" He herded them back toward the building as the second shot rang out. He realized it was not coming from anywhere near the field, but from the shopping center a block north of the school. There had been three shootings at that shopette since January, all of them involving district students. He noted the boys moved more quickly toward the building than they had when arriving to practice.
Once inside, the security guard informed him that they had to end practice due to the gun shots. He could hear the sirens blaring past the building. He watched the group as they were told the news, and could not read any of their faces. They were blank slates. That face was another new element of these Covid times. Facial expressions had Gone With Covid. One kid, a freshman, sighed deeply. "Coach, man, I just wanna play football."
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