South 3

The first thing I did when I woke up was call Jace, and to my heart-plummeting relief he answered.
"Where the f**k were you last night?" I whispered as I stepped into the warm backyard, lowering my voice so that my mom wouldn't hear.
"I had something to do," he sounded exhausted, drained even. "Why is this so urgent?"
"I wanted to..." I struggled with saying it out loud still. It's tough to go from hiding something to casually accepting it in such a short span of time. "I wanted to be with you. I had big news."
"What news?" Maybe it was my flickering anger filtering his voice, but he sounded uninterested.
"I quit the team," I said. "I'm done with football completely. Isn't that great?"
"Yeah," he moaned, I heard him stretching or something. "Yeah man, that's awesome. Why'd you quit?"
"It was a waste of time." I waved my hand at the fence as a dismissal of the old ways. "Now we can be together pretty much every day, after school I mean." Talking about this made me excited, like I was planning some big vacation with the man over the phone. "God, I can't wait to actually live my high school life instead of being stuck on that damn field all day. I did the math, and I wasted, like, 50 days total on that f*****g team, and that's just practices. Are you still there?"
"Hm-oh yeah, I'm here, you were just talking so I.....goddamn, 50 days? You sure, man?"
"I know, right?" I felt proud of his disbelief. I wanted him to be dumbfounded by the s**t that I had to go through before now, it heightened my feeling of bliss that came with the end of drudgery.
"Well, congrats on quitting, man. If you're happy without it, then you do you." His tone didn't fluctuate at all, as if he was reading it off of an insurance card.
"Yeah, we should do something to celebrate," I suggested upbeat. I wanted to see him, but his attitude said he wasn't in the mood. I had to see him, whether he felt like it or not.
"Maybe not tonight," he said with a false voice that was as thin as the gap between the teeth through which he was lying. "I'm really behind on homework, how 'bout another time?" Disappointment fell like thunder in my heart. I had no idea what his deal was, but I knew I could straighten him out of it, whatever it was. I was going to his house tonight.
"Yeah, sure, that works," I pretended to be fine with his antisocial agenda. "Someday this weekend maybe?"
"Maybe," he answered too quickly. "See ya later man." He hung up before I could say goodbye.