Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 22:00:09 -0700
From: tarantau tarantau <tarantau@hotmail.com>
Subject: Guilty as Charged Chapter 9

Finally here it is Chapter 9 of Guilty as Charged

I would like to thank everyone who has been reading my story, and also
Comicality and Bill for posting a link to my website on their sites,
generating me more hits.

If you have read the story, please e-mail me and let me know what you
think.

My website is at http://tdog505.tripod.com

CHAPTER NINE

In most Texas towns on a Friday night, High School football was somewhat
like a religion.  Belway Texas wasn't any, different the entire town was
dressed in the school colors, red and white, downtown store windows were
painted with "Go Tiger's", "Beat the Trojans", "This is Tiger Country",
and other things proclaiming the communities support of their high school
team.
At kickoff time on a Friday night of a home game, it was next to
impossible to find an open store anywhere in the town, most stores had
signs in their front windows saying they were closed for the game. The
papers had said this was going to be a good year for the tigers, and the
entire town was anticipating the upcoming season.  They had picked them
to win their district, stating that with eight starters on the defensive
line returning, including all-state Linebacker Rob Warren, and the
districts leading quarterback in Mitch Vogel, the Tiger's were a sure
shot to repeat as district champions, and quite possibly State Champions.

None of this was on Keith Mitchell's mind as he jumped into his car,
popped a Cd into the Cd player and drove towards Todd's house.  It hadn't
been as hard as he had thought to hide his feelings for Todd at school,
he just acted like he had always done, and Carrie was big help holding
his hand and playing her part as his girlfriend.  He had the sweatshirt
and hat they had bought for him sitting on the seat next to him.  They
saw each other at school everyday, usually having lunch together, along
with Carrie, Rob, Wendy, and on occasions Dale.  With all the school
activities they were both involved with, their afternoons had been pretty
hectic all week.  First couple of weeks were always nerve racking. When
he turned into the driveway of Todd's house, he noticed a Chevy pick-up,
he had never seen before.  The thing that made it stand out from the
other vehicles in the drive-way wasn't that it was the only pickup in the
whole lot, since Todd also drove a pickup, but the fact that it looked
old and worn.  He pulled into the back of the house, and pulled in front
of Todd's private entrance.

Keith figured it was probably some construction worker, or someone doing
some work on the house, so it was the farthest thing from his mind when
he finally knocked on the door to Todd's private entrance.  When Todd
finally opened the door, wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around his
waist, Keith threw him the sweatshirt and told him to put it on, that
everybody had to wear the school colors.  Todd looked at the shirt,
leaned over and gave Keith a big kiss.

"Thanks babe," he said.

Keith sat down on the edge of Todd's bed, "so are you all having some
work done to the house?"

"No," Todd said, "why do you ask that?"

"Well I saw that old truck parked out in front of your house, and I
figured it was probably some construction worker."

Todd started laughing, "That isn't a construction worker, that's my
dad...yea, yea, I know with all the money that we have, what is my dad
doing driving a beat-up old truck, well my dad is the prototype of the
Jeff Foxworthy redneck jokes.  He likes to hunt, fish, hates most
everything and what surprises me most is how him and my mom ever got
married."

Keith leaned over and kissed Todd, "come on babe, we don't want to be
late for the game.  By the way have you talked to Wendy lately, it seems
like she's been avoiding us lately, or maybe it's not really us, but just
Rob, you know the two of them kinda had a falling out."

"Nah," Todd said, "It's just they were getting to close to fast and just
decided they needed to slow it down a little bit, they'll probably be at
the victory party together and things will be back to normal."

"Yeah your probably right, well we better get going don't want to miss
the kickoff."

* * * * * * *

The stadium was already awash with a sea of red and white, when Keith,
Todd, Carrie, and Dale walked into the stadium.  They had stopped by to
pickup Wendy, but her mother had informed them that she had already left
to the game with someother friends.  None of the four of them had any
idea who Wendy's other friends were, or why she would have went with
someone else instead of them.  They had all been going to all the home
games together since their freshmen year, and even though most of them
knew that Wendy was having trouble dealing with Keith, Rob and Todd's
homophobia, they still figured she would hang out with them.  Dale
spotted her first, sitting between Megan Turner and Sammy John.

"Look there's Wendy," he said, "man she must really be pissed off at us,
to be hanging around assholes like that."  Dale had no idea what had
happened between them, but figured it was probably just a slight
misunderstanding as most arguments usually are.  Dale had his run in with
Sammy John before and knew just what kind of an asshole he was.  Sammy
for no good reason other then the fact Dale figured he was bored started
picking on him.  He would call him names, knock him down in the hallway,
knock his books out of his hands and anything else he could think of to
get Dale pissed off, hoping Dale would throw the first punch, that way
when he beat the crap out of him, he could just claim he was defending
himself.  When it finally got to the point where Dale decided he had had
enough and was finally gonna defend  himself, help came from the most
unlikely source.  Rob Warren and Keith Mitchell stood right next to him
and dared Sammy to pick on him cause they were ready to kick his ass.
From that day forward the three of them had become best friends, and Dale
had went to someone who was just passed in the halls to one of the
popular kids, invited to every party.  Everytime Sammy John passed him,
he would stare him down, but he never attempted to pick on him again.
Dale knew it was nothing but jealousy, he had got what Sammy John had
always wanted, a place at the Table.

"What number is Rob?" Todd asked, as they took their familiar seats.

"Number 42," Dale said, "He's an inside-linebacker, last year he lead the
team in tackles and quarterback sacks.  Made first team all-district,
first team all-state, and second team all-american.  I think this year
he'll make first team all-american."
Todd knew the difference between hero worship and love, and from the way
Dale talked about Rob, he knew it was nothing more then hero-worship,
there just wasn't that spark in his eyes, like there was when he talked
about Keith.  He wondered if anybody else ever noticed the look they
shared or it was so subtle that nobody even paid attention to it.

Belway ended up winning the game by a landslide, with Rob sacking the
oposite teams quarterback at least four or five times, picking off two
interceptions and generally just having a hey-day.  Keith knew Rob enough
to know that he was trying to impress Wendy, but whenever Keith looked
over towards Wendy's direction, she really didn't seem to be that
interested.

"Man, whatever Rob did to Wendy, she's sure pissed off about it," Keith
said, "Carrie why don't you talk to Wendy and find out what's wrong,
maybe it's really nothing."

"I already told you why she's pissed off," Carrie said, "or don't you
remember what we talked about when we went to get my mom her Christmas
present."

"You mean about being gay," Keith said.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned around to see Dale looking at
him.

"Who's gay," he said.