Junior Year Box Set

“Aw, shit,” Alan said, and I had to agree with his sentiment.

He opened it up, and we both read it. Seven players had been arrested, four of them for sex crimes. During a two-week period, freshmen had been hazed by the seven team members. Four players were held against their will and improperly touched sexually. When I read that, my stomach turned. I started to think my gut reaction not to enter the gym may have been the best one I’d made to this point in my life. There were two different ways it could have gone: I would have been associated with something like this, or I would have been arrested for killing my teammates.

The story got worse from there. The school had canceled the rest of the season. I was frantically thinking of where I might transfer to if that happened. School started on Tuesday of next week. Wesleyan had already begun their classes, but I would bet Teddy could get me in on short notice.

“Read this one,” Alan said, showing me another story.

It laid out the case as to why the football season had been canceled. There were two significant differences between what happened here and the New Jersey case. The first was that there were admissions that the hazing in New Jersey had gone on for years and that the coaching staff knew about it, as evidenced by the incidents happening over a two-week period. The second that the article mentioned was the four players who had been sexually assaulted had been held down, and fingers had been inserted where they shouldn’t be.

I was certain our coaching staff would take this very seriously, and I couldn’t imagine Tim and Jim allowing anyone to shove a finger up a freshman’s butt. With that in mind, I got up.

“Come on,” I said.

“Where are we going?” Alan asked.

“The twins live next door. I need answers.”

We walked to their front door and knocked. Brit answered holding Precious, who saw Alan and hissed. Poor Alan might have peed himself a little bit. Brit and I both grinned.

“I assume you’re here to talk to my idiot brothers,” Brit said.

“Yep. Can we come in?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said and then led us to the family room.

They both looked up and glared at me. Brock held an ice bag to his right eye, and the rest of his face looked puffy. We took a seat to talk to the boys. They weren’t only twins; Brit made them triplets. She sat next to me on the love seat, apparently planning to sit in on our talk. It was clear her brothers weren’t happy with that, but Brit held Precious, which was equivalent to a loaded gun, in my opinion.

“Tell me what happened in New Jersey,” I said.

Neither brother would meet my eye. I was surprised when Brit started talking.

“During fall practice, it was tradition that the seniors would haze the incoming freshmen to make them part of the team. It was normally harmless stuff and done as fun. Last year my brothers told me it felt different. They noticed the freshmen were actually scared and would run screaming to the locker room when a particular group of seniors would show interest in them. Then ‘the incident’ happened.

“Brock walked into the locker room and found the seven guys who ended up being arrested had the freshmen cornered in the shower. They were doing things,” Brit said as her voice trailed off.

“Four of them had Josh held down, and they told me to leave the locker room, or I was next. I told Bryan what was going on. He rushed in to stop them. I, I, I did nothing,” Brock said, as fresh tears started to stream down his face.

“Did they hurt you?” I asked Brock.

Brock wouldn’t look at me, but he nodded yes. I felt my lunch start to come up and rushed to the bathroom; I barely made it. I rinsed out my mouth, slowly made my way back, and sat down.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” was all I could think to say.

“What happened today?” Alan asked.

“We were goofing off yesterday, and I suggested we initiate the freshman linemen. I told them some of the goofy stuff we had to do as freshmen and everyone thought it sounded like fun. We told the freshmen they had to get there early today,” Bryan said.

“What did you make them do?” Alan asked.

“Things like put your forehead on a baseball bat and spin around until you lose your balance. Nothing bad.”

“Until the elephant walk,” Brock said to interrupt his brother.

“What’s that?” Brit asked.

“You have them get in line on all fours. Then you take tape and put it on the butt of the guy in front of you and then on your nose. They make you crawl around, and it looks like a group of elephants,” I said.

“Bryan suggested they do it in just their jockstraps. I came in, saw what was going on, and lost it. It was too much like what happened at our last school. I couldn’t believe my brother would do something like that after what had happened to me.

“We moved here so we could play football. Everyone blamed me for telling what happened, and I couldn’t face going to school there again. Now I have to face it all over again here. And I was starting to like Lincoln,” Brock said.