Happy Birthday to Me (Birthday Trilogy, Book 1) by Brian Rowe

Author:Brian Rowe [Rowe, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2011-04-04T16:00:00+00:00

12. Thirty-Eight

“What are you doing in here, Martin? I thought I made myself perfectly clear last week.”

“I know you did.”

“And you look even older,” Coach Welch said, sitting with a far more relaxed demeanor than the wild one he displayed on Friday night. “Seriously, Martin. You need to see a doctor or something.”

He wasn’t lying. Over the weekend my face continued to change in subtle ways, with little bags forming under my eyes, and hair starting to thin at the top of my head. My mom didn’t say much to me over the weekend, and my coward father barely showed his face around the house. I had been doing research all weekend trying to find some sort of drugs, herbs, or vitamins that might help; I had come up with nothing.

“You’re right,” I said with sarcasm. “Maybe I should see a doctor.”

“What do you want? Make it quick.”

“It’s simple, Coach. I’m here because I want you to put me back on the team.”

He laughed and started perusing the local newspaper. “That’s never gonna happen. I made myself perfectly clear on Friday, Martin. Nothing you say to me will get me to change my mind.”

“Really? There’s nothing I can do, Coach? I mean, if you just gave me one more chance—”

“My decision is final!” Welch shouted, bringing his right fist down against his cluttered desk. “I can’t make it any clearer for you, Martin! Get out of my office! NOW!”

I didn’t budge. Instead, I smiled. “All right, Coach. I wanted to ask you nicely.”

He laughed. “What are you gonna do? Run to the principal crying? I have final say on who stays and who goes when it comes to this team.”

I tossed six enlarged digital photos on his desk. I had uploaded the best of the twenty-six photos I took Friday night to my Mac computer, photo-shopping them and enhancing the brightness and clarity so that the male slime ball front and center could be easily identified.

“What are these?” he asked.

“Oh, just some pictures I took of you the other night,” I said. “What was the girl’s name? Ginger? Candy? Destiny?”

Welch analyzed each picture one by one, gross little beads of sweat starting to roll down his gargantuan forehead.

“Now I have two sets of copies of these photos in two different places,” I continued. “The digital files are on my computer at home, and they’re also on the phone I took the pictures with. I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but something tells me you wouldn’t want these photos to be distributed to every student and teacher and school administrator at CRHS, now would you?”

He cracked his knuckles and rearranged himself in his chair. I awaited a brutal punch to the face.

But he just sat there and started tapping his fingers against the desk. “You’re good, Martin.” He smiled maliciously, as if he thought I had just won the battle but had yet to win the war. “You know I’m never gonna let you play. You’re gonna be sitting on the sidelines in every game.

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