Chapter Three:

"Yo, Free, you ready for the game tonight?" Arron, the team captain to my basketball team, asked me in the hall.

"You know it," I told him, smiling as he high-fived me.

I heard a couple of the cheerleaders giggle at our exchange. I saw one of them smile and wink at me and I internally groaned when I realized who it was.

Meg Turney had had a crush on me since I first came to this school. I never had any interest in dating her, or dating in general but she was so persistent in her battle to win me over.

I smiled slightly back and walked away, hearing her squeal at the small amount of attention I gave her. I rolled my eyes once my back was fully turned and went to my locker, opening it up and gathering my things that I'd need for my last class.

The hallway was quickly emptying as people rushed off to their classes. I was in no rush since my last teacher was very easy going and didn't mind if a student was a couple minutes late. Plus, he was a huge basketball fan and always gave me a free pass saying 'We wouldn't know what to do without you on the team, Free'.

As I finally finished my stay at my locker, I suddenly became aware of Michael just about ten lockers down from me. He was in my last class since it was honors English and he happened to be quite a writer according to the teacher.

"Hey," I said gently, walking over to him.

His eyes quickly darted up to mine, sparkly with what looked like to be tears, and he shut his locker immediately, shoving something into his pocket. I raised my eyebrow at him worriedly, wondering what he was so jumpy about.

"What do you want?" He growled, his eyes filling with that signature anger.

"I just thought we could walk to English together?" I offered, smiling slightly.

"No," He scoffed, shoving past me and making his way to the classroom.

I sighed and watched him go, following slowly behind him. I began to think about what he could've possibly been looking at to make him teary eyed. He wasn't exactly somebody who'd show those types of emotions off in school.

When I walked into English, waving and smiling to the teacher (and noting that he was wearing a school basketball hoodie), I took my seat next to Ray. I looked behind me, noticing Michael sitting in the very back writing in a journal he always carried around. When he looked up at me, meeting my waiting gaze, I smiled and waved slightly. He, however, rolled his eyes and continued to write in his journal.

"Alright, I've decided that it's about time that you are given your third writing assignment," The teacher began. I heard a groan go around the room at those words.

"It'll be due after break. Now instead of making you read up about a topic and write about it, I want you to be creative and come up with your topic and write about it. However, I want you to get deep with it. Write about one of your fears or maybe a short story about a man slowly going insane. What I'm saying is be creative, but be heartfelt. You have the rest of class to start," He said, handing out a paper with the criteria on it.

"Oh bollocks, I don't even know what I'm gonna write about," I groaned.

"Dude, just write something about how video games are violent or something. But, don't actually do that cause that's what I'm doing," Ray told me. I rolled my eyes at him and looked around the room.

Suddenly, my eyes rested on Michael again. He had an almost insane excitement alight in his eyes. He was frantically writing something down on a page in his journal and smirking slightly whilst writing it.

And just like that, I had an idea for the writing assignment.

...

"What was the worst team you've ever been on, Jared?" Someone on my basketball team asked.

We were sitting in the middle of the gymnasium, eating our dinner (which consisted of a bunch of Taco Bell stuff our coach bought us), and discussing things that had little relevance to the game tonight.

"Um... Probably the basketball team in seventh grade, when Michael was the point guard and team captain," Jared said.

At the mention of Michael's name, my head shot up. Were they talking about Michael Jones or somebody else?

"Oh, totally man! Remember in the locker room, everyone was scared he was gonna rape us," Holden said, rolling back on his back and laughing, nearly choking on his food.

"You know, I don't know why coach chose him to be team captain and point guard. He wasn't even that good," Arron growled.

"Oh shut up, Arron. You're just jealous you didn't get to be team captain or the point guard in middle school," Coach suddenly said. Everyone looked up to him and greeted him.

"You know, Michael Jones was a very good  basketball player. Do I have to remind you he was the reason we got 1st place in the state finals?" Coach said.

So they were talking about Michael. I began feeling slightly uncomfortable as the conversations went on. Michael used to play basketball?

"Hey, um... I'm gonna go to the bathroom," I told the others.

"I hear you, bro. Those tacos go right through you," One of them said. The others laughed and I chuckled along with them as I walked away.

Once I was out of the gym I instantly went downstairs to the lobby. Once there, I walked to the middle of the lobby and looked up at the trophy case that held all the schools awards. In the center of the middle case sat a huge trophy. It was a simple trophy with a golden basketball sitting up on four stilts. Next to the trophy there was a picture frame with a picture of a basketball team in a huge stadium. One player was hoisted up on the team shoulders with the trophy held high over his head.

The player was Michael.

Underneath the picture and trophy was a newspaper clipping with the headline Middle Schoolers Take The Gold. I quickly skimmed through the article and found out that the team had been on a winning streak and actually won the state finals.

I was shocked to say the least. Winning state finals was near impossible, especially for a smaller city like Austin. Usually Dallas or San Antonio won.

I continued to read the article and found the most interesting line in the entire article.

Michael Jones, the point guard, scored a three point shot with two seconds left of the game, ultimately winning the game.

I suddenly heard footsteps and I backed away from the case and ran down an opposite hallway. I smiled when I saw the bathrooms and ran in them.

"Yo, Gavin! You dead or what?" I heard Holden say, giggling after. I walked out of the bathroom and shook my head.

"Oh, good. Come on, the other teams here and they're throwing around some interesting smack talk."

...

"And the newest but coolest member of the Austin High School Basketball team; Gavin Free!" The announcer called out as I ran out onto the court. Holden threw me a basketball and I dribbled it down the court, doing a layup and making the shot, before joining the rest of my team at the side of the court.

The game began and I took up my position as the shooting guard. I looked to my right to see Arron, who was the point guard, give me a look telling me he was immediately going to pass me the ball once the buzzer rang.

However as I looked at him, I found myself looking past him. Someone in a dark basketball hoodie was standing behind the rest of the team that had a striking resemblance to a certain red head I knew. He watched me, along with Arron with great interest and I found myself getting distracted and staring at him.

The buzzer rang and Arron threw me the ball, catching me off guard. Someone from the opposing team ended up stealing the ball from me and Arron shot me a glare as he chased after the rest of the team.

I sighed and focused back on the game.

...

Sweat was dripping down my face, my muscles ached, and my lungs burned.

But I pushed myself forward.

Arron made eye contact with me and passed me the ball. I dribbled it down the court to our basket, looking up at the scoreboard and seeing I had three seconds to make a three point shot and win the game.

I took a deep breath and stopped, shooting the ball towards the basket and praying to God that I made it.

And I did.

I heard cheers roar around the court as the buzzer buzzed, signaling the end of the game. I finally let out the breath I was holding as I realized we won the game and we were going to Sectionals.

My team rushed over to me and hoisted me onto their shoulders. The crowd began chanting my name and I looked up into the stands seeing my mum and brother smiling proudly at me and chanting along with everyone else.

Eventually the announcer handed us a trophy and the team handed it up to me as I held it over my head. Lots of people took pictures of us and congratulated us.

However, when I looked back over to where my team had been sitting moments before I saw Michael still standing there. I watched him giving the team a sad look and I realized something with a shiver.

I replaced Michael.
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So, I'm sorry if this chapter is a little more boring then the others. The next one will be much more exciting.
Please let me know what you think. This is honestly my favorite story so I'd really like to know what you guys think!
Thank you for reading!