It’s not Michael’s fault they made him the captain of the football team, even though he wasn’t the quarterback. They said he hit guys “like a Mack truck” and his coaches liked how fast he understood new plays. Eric, the quarterback, wasn’t too happy about it either, said so during halftime the last time they played their local rivals, the Hedton Hounds. Michael pointed out he never wanted to be captain in the first place. But if Michael was a Mack truck, Eric was a Volkswagen Beetle, and the other team members were a bunch of demolition derby cars.

Now everyone in his high school is campaigning and voting for him for homecoming king. He doesn’t even plan on attending the dance (he has to attend the pep rally, the coach won’t let him out of it). Michael has this theory that the knuckleheads he’s forced to call classmates think he’s rich because his mother drives him to school in a remodeled ’76 Stingray. But they don’t know his mother’s only love—barring her third ex-husband—is that Chevy Corvette and there aren’t many pennies put aside for things other than tire foam and glass wipes.

There’s this girl, too, who’s rumored to be the next homecoming queen, and she keeps making eyes at him. Her name is Chelsea, and she’s in his chemistry class, which is the worst, because that’s his favorite subject. She keeps trying to distract him by asking stupid questions he knows she knows the answer to. He hates the makeup that cakes around her eyes, her neon pink lipstick. One day she asked him what KCN was, and in that moment he wished he had some for her to chew on, so that the cyanide would shut her up and he wouldn’t have to listen to her babble on anymore.

His teammates keep trying to invite him to parties, to get drunk and laid, but he’s trying to study everything about the Bose–Einstein condensate and partying would only be a distraction. The only reason he plays football is so that he won’t go to jail when he wants to release his pent-up frustration by hitting people really hard. He knows there’s the risk of brain damage with football, but it’s his only option other than racking up assault charges.

The next few days, Michael imagines what it will be like to win homecoming king. Chelsea will win homecoming queen, of course, and she’ll expect him to man up and hold court. Some days he thinks he will do it—easier not to resist. Other days, he fantasizes about handing the ridiculous aluminum and felt crown to Eric, who’ll look like he is staring into the headlights of a Mack truck, but will take it. The pep rally attendees will go quiet: pin drop quiet, librarian’s dream quiet. Wishing they were this silent in study hall, he’ll walk out of the gymnasium, a little lighter without the weight of their expectations.

– L. N. Holmes