Trevor's POV
My instinct had no choice but to work real quick.
I scanned the room in about two seconds flat and moved. The lockers along the far wall were arranged in a staggered layout, some pushed forward, some set back, leaving a narrow gap between two of the taller ones that was just wide enough for a person to press into if they weren't thinking too hard about comfort. I slipped in sideways, flattened my back against the wall, and pulled myself as far into the gap as I could go.
I made it just in time.
The door swung open and the noise of them filled the room immediately; which includes cleats on the floor, their bags dropping. It was all the kind of easy loud energy that a group of people carried when they owned whatever space they walked into. I held my breath and stayed completely still right there.
"The gay kid has got a crush on Trevor." That was Max's voice, as I didn't need to see his face to know. He had a specific pitch he used when he was running with something and thought it was funnier than it actually was.
Then, there was a beat of silence.
"Guys, let's just focus on the game for now, okay?" Sean's voice came flat and unbothered.
I almost laughed. You know, if I didn't know better, I would have taken that as Sean trying to defend me or something. But I did know better for a fact that; when it came to Sean and his passion for football, everything else got filed under 'deal with it later' including me, including Max's running commentary, including anything that wasn't directly related to the match they had in approximately - I checked the time in my head - less than ten minutes.
'Obsessed' was probably the word for it. But that was his thing to worry about, not mine.
What I was worried about was the paint. Specifically, the four colours of paint currently soaked into every single one of their match uniforms sitting in that basket not twelve feet from where I was hiding. You know, I had been so focused on getting in and getting out that I hadn't fully thought through the part where they would walk in directly after.
My heart was doing things that were medically concerning.
I pressed further into the gap and watched the narrow slice of the room I could see from the angle I was at. A few of them crossed into view, dropping their bags onto benches, and opening lockers. It was just the normal routine though. And then one of them got close to the basket.
The pause that followed wasn't normal and I noticed that at once.
It was the specific kind of pause that happened when someone's brain was processing something their eyes weren't ready to confirm yet. It all felt short, sharp, and then at the same time, very loud.
I think my heart skipped up to five hundred beats in that space of time. And trust me, that was no exaggeration or anything close to that.
*****
Sean's POV
We got back to the changing room to suit up for tonight's game and Max was already running his mouth about Trevor before we even got through the door. I let it go in one ear and kept moving. What we needed right now was focus. It was the first game of the season, and I needed every person in this room locked in and not distracted by whatever Trevor Matai had or hadn't done in AP Literature this morning.
I crossed to the basket where the uniforms were kept and stopped.
I stood there for a second and just looked at it.
All I could see was yellow, red, purple and blue colors, all over every single jersey in that basket like someone had gone at them with full cans of poster colors and zero hesitation. I could bet this wasn't accidental and there was nothing accidental about this. Whoever did it had come in here deliberately, with multiple colours, and taken their time to get this done.
I didn't say anything immediately, besides there was absolutely nothing to say as I was really thinking of what to do because as the captain, this was indeed my responsibility to sort this out.
I just looked and right there, something caught my eye on top of one of the jerseys, though it was small. Sitting right there in plain sight like it had been dropped without the person realising. It was a keychain and so, I picked it up and then turned it over in my hand. My brain made the connection before I had even fully processed what I was looking at - I had seen that keychain on Trevor's school bag, earlier today. In the classroom, when I had grabbed it off him and tossed it to the side of the classroom.
It must have come off then and landed in his bag, and then fallen out here when he...
I closed my fingers around it.
"Oh! What the hell?" Max's voice cut through the room as he reached into the basket and lifted one of the jerseys up by the shoulder, holding it out like some evidence. The rest of the team gathered around the basket and the noise level went from normal to loud in about three seconds.
I slipped the keychain into my back pocket before anyone looked my way.
"Someone sabotaged our uniform!" Max said it like he was announcing a national emergency.
"What do we do now?" Josh's head snapped toward me. "Kickoff is in 5 minutes."
I looked at the jersey in Max's hand, then at the basket, then back at the rest of them standing around waiting for me to either panic or fix it. But then, neither was going to happen.
"Guys." I reached in and picked up one of the jerseys, holding it up and turning it. "It's just paint." I kept my voice level and even. The way I kept it on the field when a play broke down and I needed everyone to stop spiralling and start moving. "Quit being a pussy and suit up." I handed the jersey across to Josh, who took it with the expression of someone who had more to say and knew better than to say it right now.
The room went still. All of them just stood there looking at me like I had suggested we play the game in our socks.
"Suit up! Let's go!" I said it louder this time, already moving toward my own locker. "The game is in five minutes and we need to head out right away."
That got them moving. Although not happily, but moving. The grumbling was background noise at this point but then, I had already mentally moved past the uniforms and was back on the game where my head needed to be. We grabbed our kits and split off to change and I did the same, pulling the jersey over my head and not thinking too hard about the blue streak running across the left side of it.
Abruptly, my mind went into thinking about the keychain in my back pocket.
I pressed my fingers against it once through the fabric, just to confirm it was still there.
Trevor had been in here. That wasn't a theory, but that was a fact I was now holding in my hand. He had come into our changing room before the first game of our season and gone at our uniforms with paint cans because of what had happened in that classroom. I guess, probably because I had cornered and pushed him with regards to the budget. And so I think this was his version of pushing back.
I almost wanted to respect it. I mean, almost.
But letting the team know what I had figured out wasn't going to do anything useful. Max would turn it into a whole thing before we even got to the field, and the last thing I needed was the team going into their first game of the season distracted and riled up about Trevor Matai when they should be thinking about their plays.
So the keychain stayed in my pocket and the team didn't need to know about it yet.
Trevor, on the other hand, had something coming. I just hadn't decided what shape it was going to take yet.
I would figure that out later after the match and he would regret in his lifetime ever having to think about this.
