Quad Squad

by R. Barri Flowers

P.E.

  Everybody knew ninth grade P.E. was a joke. Well, by all the girls Maya took seriously. Maya had played on soccer and volleyball teams in summers and school squads since fourth grade, and she actually enjoyed P.E. back in middle school, but at Kennedy it was quite clear that she could either take it not too seriously or risk people thinking she was weird. This was not a difficult choice. Play some softball and hang out and don’t try too hard.

  The first and most complex problem in P.E. was the locker room. She had tried to get there early, because it became a mob scene, but Sabrina had pulled her aside.

  Just outside the locker room, Sabrina said, “I’m not feeling that great.”

  Rachel, who was right behind, said, “What’s wrong?” This was kind of annoying Maya, who was going to ask the same question, and get credit for being a thoughtful friend, not that Sabrina would say that she was, but Maya would know in her heart. Still, it was hard to be mad at Rachel for being nice. Being nice was what Rachel did, everyone knew that.

  Sabrina was wondering if she should have said anything. She was still high from a blunt before school and feeling like she might need to either eat or puke, which was very confusing.

  “I’m just really tired,” she said.

  “Right?” Maya said. Everyone was always tired in high school. “I’m so tired” was like the easiest thing to say to anyone at any time in the school, because who says like, no you aren’t tired.

  Sabrina said, “Let’s just go in.”

  Rachel said, “Do you need to go to, like, the nurse’s office or something?”

  Sabrina thought about that. For a moment she had this fantasy of just lying there in the nurse’s office, maybe a thermometer in her mouth or one of those blood-pressure things on her arm and just staring at the ceiling, not having to go to class or go home. She could imagine just staying there for the rest of the day, forever maybe.

  She said, “No, I guess not.”

  Naeli and Karen rushed past them, laughing about something private super loudly.

  “Sometimes I kind of hate the way they laugh,” Maya whispered as she turned her face away from the pair.

  “Right?” Sabrina said, but she wasn’t smiling.

  Rachel said, “We’re gonna be late.”

  They went into the locker room. Now it was in fact a mob scene, full of girls, mostly ninth, but some tenth, some standing still, some rushing, some arguing, voices too loud, and a few girls just looking lost and frozen, like Sabrina. Maya made a mental note to check on her during warm-ups, but for now she had to hustle to her locker. It wasn’t insanely crowded, but it felt stifling to Maya, like every girl had a five foot bubble around her and it was best not to invade anyone’s. She had to squeeze past girls shouting or hiding themselves, or standing there in their underwear and bras, and try not to look or compare bodies, and try not to judge when somebody sprayed some gross perfume on themselves way too much or brushed their hair so hard it looked like they were ripping it out of their scalp.

  Maya quickly did the combo on the lock and popped it open. Her shorts and shirt were there, probably smelly if she thought about it, so she didn’t. She undid her jeans, trying not to look around if anyone was looking at her.

  “Skinny bitch!” she heard in the babble, and her heart skipped a beat, then she realized that it wasn’t aimed at her. As far as she could tell. She had her uniform on now and got her sneakers tied quickly, then hauled ass out onto the field.

  Tim was already out there, and getting impatient already. The guys’ locker room wasn’t anything at all like what they show you in the movies as far as Tim could tell. In the movies, guys are always either hardcore shoving someone into a trash can, which was a ridiculous thing that would never in his humble opinion in a million years happen. Or the opposite: joking and showering and playing pranks and high-fiving each other for winning.

  But this was P.E., not team sports, and anyway Tim had a feeling that at Kennedy nobody did any of that team spirit stuff in the locker room even if they were champions of something. Which nobody at Kennedy ever was. It was kind of pathetic, how bad the Kennedy teams sucked.

  P.E. was right after morning break for Tim. He usually got in, changed and got out to the field in less than two minutes. He was kind of proud that he always managed to get out there before anyone else, except maybe Mr. Kahn. Mr. K. was a pretty sick teacher who just wanted people to be healthy and have fun, and maybe the kids in his class could have like a little respect? It was kind of ridiculous that he had to beg people to change clothes, line up in straight lines and stretch, and then do some sports.

  Especially the girls. Girls were always taking for fucking ever to get out there or to do actually play. There was nothing worse in Tim’s opinion than getting a girl on your team who just wouldn’t do anything, like anything at all, like they would just stand there and watch a volleyball go by. So many times he had gotten a couple of really good guys on his team like maybe Cole or Dylan and then some girl would get on it and they’d lose because the other team would serve it right at her. Which was what Tim did when there was a weak girl on the other team, but still.

  In math and English there was a bunch of confusing information and you had to be a genius and do all the homework to get a good grade. But in P.E. all you had to do was put on a uniform and just try a little and you’d get a good grade from Mr. K.

  “Like, how hard is that?” he said, but no one was listening. Mr. K. was at the other end of the asphalt rolling a cart full of equipment toward the near end, and Tim could see it was going to take him a minute or two.

  New Mike who had just transferred and Jerry and Malik came out just after Tim, then Cole with a tennis ball from somewhere, and they started up a game of keepaway. This was fun enough, especially because Tim was probably the fastest and tallest, so he could stretch where the other guys couldn’t.

  New Mike was It and Malik came around quietly directly behind him. Tim had the ball and he got a half grin because he could see the plan was for him to throw it right where New Mike would think he could get it, and then for Malik to grab it from above him.

  Tim threw it, sideways, just above New Mike’s head. He turned to grab it, but Malik not only grabbed it, but threw it right back before New Mike could see what had actually happened.

  “Nice!” Tim yelled.

  “So slow,” Malik said to New Mike.

  Cole said, “Over here,” but Tim wanted to try it again.

  “Luck entirely and completely from start to finish,” New Mike said, his eyes locked on the ball as he said it.

  “Pass it, ball hog,” Jerry said to Tim, but that wasn’t really the way Tim was, so he didn’t worry about it. He could see Malik now creeping up again behind New Mike. Tim faked a throw to Cole, who got the plan instantly and pretended to catch it, which got New Mike’s attention for an instant.

  “Got it!” Cole yelled out.

  “You ain’t got shit,” New Mike said, but now Malik was right behind him again. Tim knew New Mike would be ready for the same trick and Malik was a little too close, so Tim threw it harder than last time to sneak it by.

  It was at this point that the girls came running up to line up before they were marked late and got another detention. Maya was fast and hyper aware of sports body language, so she slid past the boys safely to her spot in line-up, but Sabrina got a tennis ball hard right into the side of her head.

  “Oh,” she said, not even sounding like she was really in pain, more like surprise, or realizing something, and then she collapsed to the ground, slowly sitting down.

  Rachel, who was right behind her but had been missed by the ball by a few seconds, ran to check on her. Maya was already seated and starting to stretch when she looked back and now she was again seeming like the mean one and Rachel the nice one, so Maya got up to go check on Sabrina, too, even though she would have preferred to just keep stretching.

  “What happened?” Lauren asked, but no one answered because Lauren had been hanging a
round with Zachary who was going out with Emily. Zachary wasn’t a player, everyone knew that, but he was just too nice to tell Lauren to go away, so now in P.E. the girls huddling around Sabrina chose to ignore Lauren out of solidarity with Emily, who couldn’t possibly have noticed because she was off in science class, but Maya was already planning that she would text her about it from the locker room later so that by lunch Emily would know, and would be grateful that Maya had been the first to tell her.

  Sabrina hated all the attention. She wanted to just go walk over to her spot but she was still dizzy from the surprise of being hit, more than the pain of it, and she had probably smoked too much this morning, she was realizing, but couldn’t say that. Obviously.

  Karen said, “Dude, go apologize,” to Tim, who was standing twenty feet away looking confused.

  “What?” he said to Karen.

  “Go apologize,” Naeli said, backing Karen up.

  “He didn’t do it on purpose,” Cole said.

  “Just messing,” Malik said.

  New Mike wanted to say that that wasn’t the point, but he was still a new guy and didn’t know if he should get involved and be on the wrong side of some girl-boy social confusion thing. It was all really complicated at Kennedy. His last school had been just forty kids in the top two grades, a really small school out in East Washington. In his view, this place was such a large and confusing clusterfuck, on a daily basis.

  He was also worried that if he said something nice for Sabrina he’d be siding with the victim. Because he had, if he was being honest, been losing at keepaway and getting sort of embarrassed, too. If he took her side too much he’d look like a pussy, which was the very last thing any guy would ever possibly want.

  New Mike chose silence.

  Mr. K. said, “People!” which meant line up in your warmup spots. He hadn’t noticed Sabrina and now she was slowly getting up with several girls helping her in a sort of exaggerated way and throwing evil looks to the boys, basically almost saying, “Look how bad she’s hurt and you’re doing nothing, this is just like you, insensitive boys! This is why we are always upset at you, in fact this just proves what we usually suspect, which is that you have no hearts. So you can be sure none of you are going to touch any of us, ever, pervs, unless you change your ways pretty damn quick, although this doesn’t necessarily apply to you, there, yeah, you, you’re sort of cute, although watch yourself, that opinion could change any second if you’re not cool about it.”

  Jerry was much better at reading these kinds of signals than Tim and the other guys, except possibly Malik, who everyone knew was a had done stuff with tons of girls. Jerry came over to Sabrina and said, “Hey, you okay?”

  “She’s fine,” Lauren said, and got glares from the other girls for this.

  Now Sabrina had two major problems: getting all this attention off of her, and not letting a fight between Lauren and the other girls start because of her. Well, a third problem, she remembered as she shook off the arms supporting her: she felt weak and dizzy.

  She resolved all her problems in one shot, taking a deep breath so as to not be nervous. She liked Mr. K. and everything, but adults just made her nervous. He was short, about her height, so she was forced to look him in the eye as she muttered, “I have to go deal with a girl problem.”

  Mr. K. said quietly back, “Go ahead,” in a way that meant: I'm a guy teacher but I'm totally cool with periods and I'm not making a big deal about it.

  As she walked past the lineups of stretching kids, Tim said to her, “Hey, sorry,” but she didn’t want to get into it and especially didn’t want to have anyone ask her what she said to Mr. K., so she ignored him, even though she was a little bit grateful that he had acknowledged that he had hurt her. No one ever did that in Sabrina’s life and it was a bit odd. Nice, but odd, so she kept moving.

  Tim thought, “Shit, she hates me now.” This confirmed his suspicion that all girls thought he was gross and he didn’t even care in that moment that Sabrina was hot, it was just the way all girls thought he was gross.

  “Basically,” he thought to himself, “Kennedy sucks ass.”