Chad Jones's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

Chad walked back to the barn that afternoon, but he couldn't stop thinking about the magazine. The images weren't what bothered him. It was the feeling they triggered, like stumbling across someone else's secret and recognizing it as your own. He found the old backpack in the barn's corner, buried under a tarp with equipment he hadn't touched in two years. Canvas still stiff with dried sweat. He'd carried it his entire senior season, the year everything changed. Inside: workout logs filled with numbers that stopped mattering, protein bar wrappers, a team photo where his smile looked painted on. He pulled out a small notebook and flipped it open. Page after page of plays he'd memorized, formations he'd executed perfectly while feeling nothing. The last entry was blank except for one line: "This isn't mine." DeShawn appeared in the doorway. "You good?" Chad closed the notebook. "There's a shed out back. Weights and benches my uncle left." He walked DeShawn around the barn to the rusted structure with glass walls clouded by years of neglect. Inside, a bench press sat under a homemade sauna box, everything covered in dust. DeShawn ran his hand along the bar. "You gonna use this?" Chad shook his head. "That's the old script. We're not running that play here." They spent the next hour hauling the equipment out and stacking it by the tree line. The last piece was a concrete statue of a flexing figure his uncle had poured as a joke, all exaggerated muscles and ridiculous pose. Chad and DeShawn carried it together, setting it face-down in the grass. "What now?" DeShawn asked. Chad looked at the empty shed, then back toward the campsite in the woods. "Now we figure out what we're actually building." He didn't have the answer yet, but leaving the performance behind felt like the first real choice he'd made in years.