And They Were Roommates(8)

Snickers come from another row.

“Quiet, Cody,” Ms. Nallos yells, then smiles at me oddly before checking her clipboard. “I’ve never taught you. Are you the Charlie von … Heavy Prince … I marked absent?”

Close enough. “Yes, I got lost on the way.”

Ms. Nallos returns to the front of the field and digs through a workout bag on a bench. She pulls out a clump of red clothes and chucks them over the lines of heads. “Catch!”

The clothes land in a pile at my dress shoes.

“Luckily, I’ve come prepared to help those who forgot their uniform.” Ms. Nallos points toward Pragma Recreational Center. “Locker room. Go. Five minutes to change.”

Spotlight number two.

Murmurs hit me from every angle as I swipe up the clothes and make my trip across the field, then search for the locker room in the center, mortification crashing through me. My feet are too small to wear just socks, I wear dress shoe sole inserts for a reason, I can’t—

My back slides down the locker room door until I hit the freezing tile. The pants and shirt are marked with L on the tags. Could mean Loser. But probably just means Large. Now my body will look even narrower compared with everyone else’s. I check my watch again. Four minutes left. Maybe it’s already time to use my emergency phone call to Delilah. Why didn’t she warn me that physical education is mandatory? She should’ve known this would blow up my life.

Yet I sit there, frozen in place, letting time pass by as the fears I’ve swallowed since yesterday consume me. I haven’t gotten a second to breathe, let alone process everything already falling apart. Maybe I can’t pull off hiding here.

I have to. For Mom. For me.

I rush into a stall to change. Of course the joggers hang over my feet by an inch, and two watermelons could fit between me and this undershirt. By the time I’m back on the field, testing has begun. Ms. Nallos is listing off partners.

She recites a slew of names I don’t recognize before shouting, “Xavier Nguyen and Charlie von H, begin at pull-ups.”

From a group of muscular guys huddled in a friend circle, one steps forward. The six-foot-tall monster I cowered behind earlier.

My stomach drops as the walking mass of muscle named Xavier Nguyen approaches. I didn’t notice before, but unlike everyone else’s buzz cuts and short hair, the black bangs draped over his forehead are at least parted with a bit of style. He stops before me, and his meaty fist comes flying at my face.

I squeeze my eyes shut, but the blow never comes. I open them.

Xavier shows a crooked smile, waiting for his fist to be bumped. “We meet again, man.”

My nerves flip as I knock his fist back lightly—but not too much. Be manly. Was it too much? “Y-yo.” I cringe internally even as I say it. End me.

We walk toward a square expanse of asphalt marked with PULL-UPS, where three metal bars increase in height. Xavier zips off his tracksuit jacket, only leaving behind the undershirt, and pulls a spoon from his pants pocket. He kisses the curved back.

I blink at the spoon.

He returns a blink like I’m the problem. “What? Gotta beat my personal record from last year. This spoon’s lucky.”

It’s not even a miniature collector spoon for grandmas or a special trinket one could find in an antique store. Just a normal spoon. “How do you know it’s lucky?”

“My friend’s an expert in the dark arts.”

Okay.

Ms. Nallos blows her whistle. “One minute. Go!”

Xavier latches onto the tallest bar and pounds out pull-up after pull-up, keeping a perfectly parallel angle. I stare in awe. His muscles are bigger than I even imagined. If I stole his lucky spoon, would I sprout muscles like that?

The whistle goes off again, and Xavier’s feet hit the asphalt. His cheeks are flushed, but there isn’t a drop of sweat on that chiseled face I could only dream of having. He twirls his spoon over the top of his knuckles before shoving it into his pocket. “Verdict?”

“Um,” I say. “You had nice form?”

“No, my number of pull-ups.”

My shoulders hitch. I forgot to count. “Fifty?”

Xavier’s head tilts. “The pull-up world record for our age is forty-four.”

“Switch partners!”

I approach the medium-height bar. Maybe someone like Jasper Grimes, who magically achieves success at everything he touches, could hit the same number as Xavier. Not me. But if I don’t, will Xavier figure it out?

The whistle blows.

A fire ignites within me. I pull myself up as Xavier watches.

Then I come flopping back down like a dead fish. Stomach first, then head, a sharp pain zapping through me. I flip onto my back and squeeze my eyes shut. How many human sacrifices do I need to make to pass PE?

Ms. Nallos does the rounds with her clipboard, asking each pair for their numbers. She reaches us quicker than I’d like.

“I got twelve, I think,” Xavier tells her. “Charlie got two.”

Ms. Nallos inspects my limp body that very much got zero, then moves on to the next pair. Once she’s gone, Xavier offers to help me up.

My instincts warn me to decline so he can’t compare our hand sizes, but I’m in such a daze that I accept, only for my oversized tracksuit sleeve to get in the way. Slapping the sleeve back up to my shoulder, I try again. “Thanks.”