Senior High Cycle 4: Model Bootcamp - WINNER ANNOUNCED

I was dreaming again. I've had this dream many times before. I'm walking through the hallways at my school. Grant Hill High. The hallways are empty, which is weird because it's the middle of the day. There should be lockers slamming, students laughing and goofing off. Mr. Breaker should be yelling irritably down the hall urging the inevitable group of slackers to third period class.

I get to my locker, and I don't remember putting in the combination. Its 33, 40, 5. *click* My locker opens and there inside is all the colors of the rainbow. My heart starts racing, my hands start trembling. I reach into the locker and finger the cloth so carefully it's as if I expect it to twist back on itself like a rattlesnake and bite me. It's a flag, a rainbow flag.

I look around me quickly but there is no one to see it. To see me, staring at it neatly folded at the bottom of my locker. Suddenly I'm filled with rage and cold fear. I tear the rainbow flag out of my locker and fling it down the hall. It unfolds under the trajectory I've sent it on, fluttering unsatisfactorily to the shiny, polished cement. I slam my locker shut, mind racing in any direction I can go to hide.
The football field feels like my second home. It feels like safety. I can do suicides until I puke up the empanadas I had for lunch. I spin on my heel. My brain is wired to take me to the field, to take me out of this school and away from that ...flag. If I find out who put it in there I'm going to feed him that flag on the end of my fist.

Then I remember it's just a dream again, because in the time it takes me to turn around I'm on the field. I don't have any superpowers and I can't leap through time and space so this must be a dream. It's the only thing that can explain why I'm suddenly in my training gear, on the field with the lights blazing. I hear a chant but there is no one in the stand. I spin in a circle, wondering if I pinch myself hard enough I'll wake up.
Then I stop mid-spin. I'm looking up into the stands and there is this guy standing up there. His hands tucked into his pockets. He's staring at me. He's too far to hear me unless I shout, and my throat is far too dry for that. With cold dread it dawns on my just who this guy is. He probably recognizes me but it doesn't matter. I turn my back on him, jogging to the other end of the field. It's easy to do. I've been turning my back on the truth my entire life.

Except now, I don't want to run anymore.