The Realest Ever - By Keith Thomas Walker Page 0,4

and seniors. He was an imposing figure, whether he had chalk or a football in hand. Donovan stood six-foot-four with 231 pounds stacked pleasingly on his frame. In his football days, Donovan played defensive end. It was his job to stuff running plays and sack the quarterback. And he was good at it.

Donovan was a little slimmer now, but still in excellent shape. He was unofficially crowned the most handsome male teacher at the school, and with Miss Murphy being the most attractive single female, the students assumed they would hook up. Some of the faculty felt that way, too.

“Miss Murphy is my co-worker,” Donovan told the squad for what felt like the hundredth time. “That’s all she’ll ever be to me.”

During his social studies class and for most of their time on the football field, Donovan would never allow such friendliness with his students. But after school and after practice he maintained a mentoring relationship with all of his boys. They would come to Donovan when they were bullied or if their mother forgot to give them lunch money. They would talk to Donovan about problems they had at home or trouble on the streets. The school’s principal often joked that Donovan should get an extra paycheck for being a part-time counselor.

Of course that was never going to happen.

A slight vibration in his front pocket notified Donovan of a new email. He retrieved his cellphone and stopped cold when he read the message. His jaw became unhinged as he stared at it, not believing he read it right. Donovan’s massive chest heaved with a quick intake of air. He stuffed his phone in his shorts’ pocket and had to fight off an overwhelming urge to sprint to his office in the back of the gym.

“Calvin! Hurry up and get those coolers packed up!” Donovan barked. “You too, Kevin. Help him with that stuff! Victor, get my balls off the field! Help him, Shawn. Morris, Booker, Quincy, Trey – y’all get those tables folded up and bring them in the gym!”

He clapped his hands loudly.

SMACK!

“Come on! Get moving! We gotta clear this field!”

With that, Donovan could stay his eager legs no longer. He began to eat up the field with long strides, without looking back to see if his team was doing what he asked of them.

“Coach!” one of them yelled. “We ain’t through drinking yet!”

“Hurry up!” Donovan shouted back. “And pack it up right! If I come out here and see one football on the ground, every one of you is running sprints!”

“Coach, wait!” Kevin hollered. “I thought you was gon’ help me with my math!”

“Come to my office when you get through!” Donovan told him, and then he was too far away to answer any more of their questions.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Donovan didn’t use his computer in the gym very often. He nearly had a heart attack while waiting for it to power up. He read the message on his cellphone over and over with an excitement he hadn’t felt in years. Kyra Reynolds was alive and well. Donovan’s smile was from ear to ear. It was an unusual sight; a burly football coach hunkered over a computer with tears in his eyes.

How many times had he searched for Kyra on Facebook? It was impossible to count. When the networking site first hit the internet in 2004, Donovan was reluctant to get sucked in to another MySpace-like environment. He didn’t want to post private pictures of himself, and he didn’t want to be bombarded with silly updates from people he barely knew in real life.

But as Facebook’s popularity grew, Donovan began to spend more and more time on the site. He reestablished contacts with people he met in college and with folks he knew way back in middle school. Donovan found that he actually liked to see updates from his long lost friends as well as pictures from their vacations or trips to the ballpark.

And the name Donovan typed into Facebook’s search bar most often was Kyra Reynolds. In the early days he searched for her as often as once a week. Shocked that he couldn’t find her, Donovan tried just her first name, thinking she got married. But he still couldn’t find her among the hundred or so Kyra’s who did have accounts. Sometimes Donovan searched until he had a stress headache. But he never stopped looking.

Almost every time he logged onto Facebook, Donovan wanted to know if Kyra Reynolds had a profile yet. Today his prayers were answered. Donovan