Football Star’s Prank Backfires When Bikers Show Up
The football captain kicked her crutches away for fun… But a terrifying biker gang had other plans.
The sound of a crutch hitting a freshly waxed linoleum floor is unmistakable. It’s a rhythmic, hollow clack-drag-clack that echoes too loudly when the rest of the hallway is silent.
I kept my head down. That was the rule. If you don’t look at them, maybe they won’t see you. If you make yourself small enough, maybe you can disappear.
“Well, look who decided to limp back to civilization.”
My stomach dropped. The air suddenly smelled of expensive cologne and stale locker room sweat. I didn’t need to look up to know who was blocking my path.
Chase Miller.
The Golden Boy of Crestwood High. The quarterback with scholarship offers, the dazzling smile, and the soul of a shark. He leaned against the lockers, his varsity jacket gleaming under the fluorescent lights, blocking the only route to Mr. Henderson’s history class.
“Move, Chase,” I whispered, my grip tightening on the rubber handles of my crutches. My knuckles were white.
“Speak up, Ell. I can’t hear you over the sound of your bones knitting back together,” he laughed. It wasn’t a warm laugh. It was sharp, performed for the audience of three other jocks standing behind him.
Two weeks. I had been gone for two weeks after the “accident” at the quarry party. The accident where Chase dared me to jump from the ledge, and when I hesitated, someone—I still don’t know who—gave me a little shove. Just a joke. Just a prank.
The fall shattered my tibia and fractured my spirit.
“Please,” I said, my voice trembling. “I just want to go to class.”
“You want to go to class?” Chase pushed off the wall. He was tall, six-foot-two of American privilege, towering over my five-foot-nothing frame. “I think you need to learn some balance first. You’re looking a little… unstable.”
The hallway was full. Dozens of kids. Faces I’d known since kindergarten. Sarah, who used to share her lunch with me. Mike, who sat behind me in math. They all looked away. Or worse, they pulled out their phones, recording.
“Chase, don’t,” I pleaded.
He smiled. It was a terrifyingly calm smile. “Don’t what? Help you?”
He took a step forward. I tried to step back, but crutches are clumsy things. You can’t retreat quickly. You can’t run. You are a sitting duck wrapped in fiberglass and shame.
“Oops,” he said.
It happened in slow motion. His designer sneaker hooked around the base of my left crutch—th
Gravity is a cruel mistress.
One moment I was standing; the next, the world tilted violently. My arms flailed, uselessly grasping at the air. The crutch clattered across the floor, spinning away like a discarded toy.
I hit the ground hard.
Crack.
Not my leg this time, thank God, but my elbow slammed into the hard tile, sending a shockwave of nausea up my shoulder. My bad leg, the one in the heavy cast, twisted awkwardly. A fresh bolt of white-hot lightning shot up from my ankle to my knee.
I couldn’t help it. I screamed.
It was a ragged, wet sound that tore out of my throat before I could clamp my mouth shut.
Silence rippled through the hallway. For a heartbeat, nobody moved.
Then, Chase laughed.
“Touchdown!” one of his friends yelled.
“Oh my god, Ellie, you are such a klutz,” Chase said, looming over me. He didn’t offer a hand. He didn’t look worried. He looked… energized. Like he had just fed on something vital. “You really shouldn’t be here, you know? This school is for winners. Not for… whatever broken thing you are.”
I blinked back tears, the humiliation burning hotter than the pain in my leg. I tried to reach for the crutch, but it was three feet away.
Chase stepped on it. He put his full weight on the aluminum shaft, grinding it into the floor.
“I think you dropped this,” he sneered.
I looked up, scanning the crowd, begging silently for someone, anyone, to step in.
Mr. Henderson, the history teacher, stepped out of his classroom door ten feet away. He saw me on the floor. He saw Chase’s foot on my crutch. He saw the tears streaming down my face.
Our eyes locked.
Mr. Henderson looked at Chase—whose father, the town Mayor, had just donated the new scoreboard for the stadium.
Then, Mr. Henderson looked at his watch, sighed, and stepped back into his classroom, closing the door firmly.
Click.
That sound hurt more than the fall.
“See?” Chase whispered, leaning down so only I could hear him. His breath was hot on my ear. “Nobody cares, Ellie. You’re trash. My dad owns this town, and I own this school. You’re just roadkill we haven’t swept up yet.”
He kicked the crutch toward me, hitting my hand.
“Get up,” he commanded. “You’re making a scene.”
I struggled to my knees, shaking uncontrollably. I grabbed the crutch, using the lockers to haul myself up, gasping as I put weight on my good leg. I was messy. My hair was in my face. My jeans were dusty.
I was completely alone.
Or so I thought.
“Is there a problem here?”
The voice didn’t come from a teacher. It didn’t come from a student.
It came from the main entrance doors at the end of the hall.
Chase turned around, annoyed. “This is a private conversation, so why don’t you—”
He stopped.
Through the glass doors, the morning sun was suddenly blocked out.
It wasn’t clouds.
It was black leather.
One motorcycle engine revved outside. Then two. Then ten. The sound wasn’t a hum; it was a growl—a deep, chest-vibrating thrum that rattled the trophies in the display case.
The double doors swung open.
A man stepped in. He had to duck slightly to clear the frame. He was massive, wearing a cut-off denim vest over a leather jacket, his arms covered in ink that looked like war paint. On the back of his vest, a skull with wings grinned at the terrified hallway.
And behind him, nineteen others were parking their bikes on the sidewalk, killing their engines, and stepping off.
The hallway went from a cafeteria to a funeral parlor in three seconds flat.
The lead biker didn’t look at the teachers. He didn’t look at the students filming.
He looked at Chase.
Then, he looked at me.
“Ellie,” the giant rumbled, his voice like gravel in a cement mixer. “You drop something?”
Chase took a step back, his face draining of all color.
I looked at the biker. I had never seen him before in my life.
“Who… who are you?” I whispered.
The man cracked a smile that didn’t reach his cold, steel-grey eyes.
“I’m the family reunion you didn’t know you had.”
