Finally here it is Chapter 9 of Guilty as Charged
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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.