High School Fur - A gay furry coming of age story

Chapter 16

Mondays lunchtime was quite unusual, I sat down as I normally did with Ella at our table, we were catching up about our weekend with Shannon when Jackson walks over and sits at our table

"hey" he says taking a seat next to Shannon, who's jaw nearly drops to the floor and stutters a somewhat indecipherable greeting out which was a mixture of hello and hi, and sounded like 'hellhi'

"whats up?" I ask trying to be cool, but still wondering why he wanted to come sit with us, we weren't the cool kids, sure my status of being on the football team had somewhat elevated me to semi-cool status, but still there was a lunch time order of things and Jacksons table was always the one to be at.

Everyone would flock to his table, not the other way around, he never sat with anyone before, he would sit at his table over by the window, and all the cool kids would fight for a seat there, this... this was odd

"just thought I'd mix it up, watch everyone freak out when they don't know which table to sit at" he smiles and scans the room with his eyes watching what the others were doing, Bryson slipped in beside me and another guy Jeff who usually sat at Jacksons table filled the last seat.

This left josh without a place to sit and now he had to go sit on another table, nobody switched seats this was crazy.

"your dad give you rabbit food again?" Bryson asks Jackson who is pushing a plain piece of chicken around some salad leaves, "u-huh, yeah and I had to do a 5k run this morning, he was tracking me on the app too, says I slacked at the weekend because of the cinema, had to do double the lengths at swimming yesterday"

"you seriously should just move out" Bryson says shaking his head

"I know, I know" Jackson nods still pushing the salad about, "he's disputing my moms... you know, so its complicated"

I sensed it was perhaps a topic we wasn't really meant to hear, although it raised more questions than it answered, Ella said his mom died some years back, but she also said it wasn't really a topic he spoke about much

"hey you ready for practice today" Jackson said looking over at me, "yeah of course" I smiled sensing he was glad for the topic change, "coach said you might get to start in Wednesdays match too"

"did he say that to you?" Jackson was the captain so he had this inside knowledge with coach, "nah, just Danny is pretty pissed about something so I'm pretty sure on it"

"oh" I say looking down into my sandwich box

"ahh don't worry about him" Jackson says picking a piece of chicken off

"yeah he told me he wasn't too bothered about playing anyway" Bryson says offering Jackson a crisp which he declines

"I hope so, I feel bad now if I take his place, I only wanted to play" and that was true, i didn't want to replace him, and make him sit on the bench, I knew how that felt I'd been on the bench all my life.

"coach will play him, there's always someone who don't turn up, or quits the team after the summer, your just his favorite right now" Phil said

"yeah, all he yapped on about in the locker room, said we should all play more like you, don't go showing us up" Bryson smiled at me although I found it hard to believe coach said anything at all

"I wont" I said not sure what I was going to do differently, "well still play well though, I mean usually when we get beaten by Milton, we get a good beasting and have to lap the pitch until coach is a little less pissed, I don't think I've ever seen him in such a good mood" Jackson said picking the last bit of chicken and scrapping the salad out onto a plate