Stumbling backward, I try to wipe the water out of my eyes, and a tiny reptile part of my brain shouts, Run, run, run, to the beat of approaching footsteps.
Oh right. I’m being chased.
I spin and run blindly down the hall, but the footsteps are getting closer. Then I hear the sound of showers and the rush of steam as a door opens.
The locker rooms.
Water!
I still can’t see anything, so I swerve left until I bump into the hallway wall and shuffle forward with my hands out until I feel the metal of the locker room door handle. I jerk the door open and run inside.
Echoes. Humidity. Steam in the air.
Water.
The steamy air helps my chest to loosen up. I greedily gulp air and run toward the sound of the showers, slipping on wet tile. I plunge my flaming face into the stream of water blasting from a showerhead.
Instantly the pain lessens. I hold my face up to the cooling water, and it feels amazing. My clothes are soaking wet, but I don’t care.
My relief is shattered by a girl shrieking, her scream echoing off the tile walls.
I turn away from the shower and open my eyes just in time to see a girl wrapped in a pink towel, screaming and stumbling backward, pointing a trembling finger at me like I’m a swamp monster straight out of a B movie. I’d recognize that long blond hair anywhere, even though it’s plastered wet around her face.
It’s Vern.
I’m in the girls’ locker room.
The shower room is big, tile floors and walls shrouded in steam from a dozen showerheads spraying hot water onto the floor, but Vern and I are the only ones in it. Vern is so shocked it seems to be affecting her cognitive skills, because instead of running out of the open doorway into the locker room, she just stands there and screams like a steam whistle.
I’d ask her if she’d like to go to the dance with PJ, but this probably isn’t a good time.
Another girl runs in, wearing a damp T-shirt and jogging pants. It’s Mary, her short hair spiky wet. She’s dragging two other girls with her, and when the three of them see me standing under the spray of the shower like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, their mouths drop open.
Mary screams.
The other two girls scream.
Vern is still screaming.
What the heck? I figure, and I start screaming too.
Peals of terror bounce off the tile walls as I run out of the shower room. The girls shrink back and grab one another like I’m a giant spider scuttling past them. I head for the door back to the hallway, but then I remember that Rob and Jono are probably still out there. I spin around, almost falling over, my wet shoes slipping on the tile, and run back into the locker room. The screams shoot up an octave as the girls see me charging back toward them. I pass them to discover that, blessedly, the rest of the locker room is empty, so I’m able to run through the changing area without traumatizing anyone else.
I slam the door to the gym open and slide to a stop, sopping wet, on the sideline in the middle of the basketball court. Across the court from me are a bank of double doors that lead to the Thunderdome and salvation.
Unfortunately, I can’t reach them because the dodgeball club is engaged in an intense barrage in the gym. The opposing teams face each other across the two halves of the basketball court, and they are taking the game very seriously, whipping those big red elementary school kickballs at each other with deadly aim. They’re so busy throwing and dodging, juking left and right to fake the throwers out, that nobody notices me skid out of the locker room.
Nobody except Jono and Rob, who are walking down the sideline, about to go into the boys’ locker room twenty feet to my left. Jono freezes with his hand on the door and unsheathes a smile that splits the cut on his lip, dribbling fresh blood onto his teeth.
I quickly assess my escape routes: There’s no way I’m going back through the girls’ room, so that’s out. A pair of doors on the left leads to the parking lot behind the school, but I’d have to pass Jono and Rob, so that’s out too. It’s the Thunderdome doors or nothing.
Jono and Rob walk toward me, grinning, and I’m about to run when I notice something at my feet. A power strip with a bunch of thick electrical cords snaking into it.
The dance.
The lights.
I stomp on the red button on the power strip, and the bright lights overhead are replaced by flashing blue strobes and spinning rainbow lasers. Welcome to the party, pal!
I race through the middle of the dodgeball game toward the doors. The strobe light turns the gym into a jumble of gyrating limbs, white flashes of motion between blinding stretches of black. I hear the bounce of balls still being thrown around the court, people laughing and hooting. I jump over a fast-moving grounder that bounces between my legs. A ball hits me in the back, another in the leg. One or two balls must hit Jono and Rob because I hear them curse and trip.
“Hey, get off the court!” someone yells.
“Time out! Interference!”
A ball that feels like it was thrown with intent smacks me hard in the side of the head, and I stagger sideways, wet socks squishing inside my shoes while I continue to run, carried forward more by momentum than conscious thought until I slam through the double doors and into the bright lights and quiet calm of the Thunderdome.
I run face-first into a terrifying monster—PJ’s warthog head, which Ms. Torres is holding up and admiring like a Ming vase. PJ and Ms. Torres are just outside the gym doors, talking together, but they stop abruptly when I careen sopping wet out of the gym.
“Mr. Burns!” Ms. Torres gasps, looking me up and down with alarm. “Are you all right?”
“Uh, yes, great.” I’m panting so hard I can barely speak. “I just, uh . . .” I jerk a thumb at the flashing lights on the other side of the slowly closing gym door and stretch against a stitch in my side. “That dodgeball game is intense.”
Rob and Jono burst through the door a second after it closes, but they screech to a stop when they see Ms. Torres, who gasps in shock again. “Mr. Klein! Mr. Schmoyer!” I notice her tone is a little cooler with them than it was with me as she asks, “What are you two doing?”
“Oh! Uh, sorry,” Rob says. A bouncy red ball escapes from the gym, and Rob jogs over to retrieve it. “Sorry about that, Ms. Torres. Dodgeball game getting a little out of hand, I guess.” He dribbles the ball and slaps Jono on the arm. “C’mon, Jon boy, let’s get back to it.”
Jono gives me a baleful glare as he follows Rob back into the gym, where I notice the lights have returned to normal as the door closes behind them.
“Ms. Torres was just admiring the craftsmanship of my mask,” PJ tells me.
“Yes. It’s magnificent,” Ms. Torres agrees. “I had no idea Pablo did this all by himself! So nice to see someone working in papier-mâché. It’s a neglected medium.”
I smile, thinking that papier-mâché isn’t the most unusual medium PJ has worked in. Ms. Torres should see his Kool-Aid and cowhide paintings.
Ms. Torres hands the warthog head back to PJ. “Oh!” PJ says, pulling my backpack out of his duffel. “I grabbed this in the hallway.”
“Thanks,” I say, taking my bag.
The final bell rings. The few remaining kids in the hall pick up their pace, rushing to class, and Ms. Torres looks at her watch, the band a chunky jumble of beads and baubles. “You boys had better get to class.” She looks back and forth between us as she serenely glides away. “Such nice boys,” she says to herself.
I realize I should probably tell PJ that I just saw Vern in the shower, and then I remember I have something else to tell him first.
“Hey, PJ . . . I’m sorry.”
PJ makes a pained expression and looks away. He doesn’t like confrontation. “Uh-huh.”
“I’m sorry about being in the bathroom when Mark was beating you up. I was hiding in there, and I was just . . . I was afraid. Okay? It was a shitty thing to do. I’m a shitty friend. I suck, and I was afraid of
getting beat up.”
PJ looks at me seriously. “Yeah, it was shitty. But I get it. We’re all shitty sometimes. I shouldn’t have lied about telling on you and Jake. I shouldn’t have lied about Mark finding my bag. I’m sorry too.”
A young teacher with a Boy Scout haircut and earnest eyes walks past and looks at us curiously, especially me, since a small puddle of water has formed around my feet. “Don’t you boys have a class to be in?” He sees the warthog head PJ is holding and adds, “Go hogs.”
“Yes, sir! Go hogs!” PJ replies as the teacher walks away. He puts the warthog head into his empty duffel bag. “Well,” he says to me without much enthusiasm, “I’m going to geometry now, but I’ll head down to the gym afterward to help finish setting up. If you need a ride . . . the offer still stands.”
“Thanks, man. You’re a lifesaver.”
PJ smiles at that as he walks toward Circle A, and I follow him through the lobby as I head toward the pool, which is down a short hall next to the entrance to the circle. As I pass the first locker in the hallway that leads to the science room, I see that someone has modified the piece of paper there. They’ve scribbled out Matt’s name with a black Sharpie and written next to it:
CURRENT RECORD HOLDER:
KIRBY “CHICKEN LEGS” BURNS
ONE MINUTE FIFTEEN SECONDS
CHAPTER 23
* * *
I’M SOAKING WET, BUT SINCE my last class is swimming, I guess all I did was get a head start. As I hurry down the empty hallway, I check my poor battered book bag. It still has my trunks and all my stuff in it, including, saints be praised, my inhaler. I shake the inhaler, press the button on top, and take a long, grateful drag.
I rush into the swimming pool locker room. It’s empty, everyone already changed and out in the pool. I throw my bag in a locker and put on my trunks, and then I drape my wet clothes over a bench so hopefully they’ll dry a little bit before I have to put them on again. Maybe after swimming I can also use one of the hand dryers.
I sneak out of the locker room into the swimming area. Our pool isn’t Olympic-size or anything, but it’s still big, like the size you’d see at a YMCA or something. Bleachers line one side, and large windows high up near the ceiling let natural light in. There’s a diving board down at the deep end and blue-green tile all around the outside of the pool.
The whole class is clustered in the middle of the pool, standing in the water while our swim teacher, Ms. Everett, consults a clipboard and takes roll call from the side of the pool. I slip into the shallow end of the pool without anyone noticing and swim underwater until I see the sunken forest of legs ahead of me. I feel like an alligator as I slip around to the back of the group and surface soundlessly behind them.
A minute later Ms. Everett finishes up the roll call but does a double take when she spots me at the back of the group.
“Burns.” She consults her clipboard. “Where were you?”
“Underwater.”
She grudgingly checks my name off her list. She’s no fool, but she is also not someone who likes to waste time on nonsense. She has a short military crew cut and always wears the exact same outfit: a black bathing suit under blue shorts. Although she’s our swim teacher, I’ve never actually seen her in the pool. She looks more like she teaches kickboxing than swimming.
Myka is in the pool with Mary, who saw me in the girls’ locker room only fifteen minutes ago. When Ms. Everett says my name, I expect Mary to level a finger at me and scream, “There he is, Ms. Everett! There’s the pervert!” Mr. Hartman will pop out of the water in scuba gear, along with two frogmen, who cry, “We’ve got you now, Burns!”
But Mary doesn’t do that. Instead, she and Myka just turn and glare at me like they want to push my head underwater and hold it there until I stop struggling. They whisper back and forth together, then turn their backs on me.
I feel so shitty, I reflexively dip lower in the water until only my head is visible. I wish I could explain to them, “It was an accident! I’m sorry!” but I don’t think they would believe me. Anyhow, I certainly can’t do it right now.
One thing I don’t understand, though, is, why haven’t they told on me? I know I should be happy, but it doesn’t make any sense.
Ms. Everett blows her whistle and takes us through a couple of swim drills.
We tread water for three minutes, then do laps.
We do the backstroke, then the sidestroke.
I keep expecting Mr. Hartman to haul me back to the principal’s office for running through the girls’ locker room, but he doesn’t. About halfway through swim class I realize that it’s not going to happen.
Ms. Everett gives three sharp blows on her whistle. “Free swim!”
Everyone cheers. We love free swim. Kids dunk one another and play Marco Polo. They do cannonballs off the diving board, trying to get the biggest splash. The cheerleaders stand in the shallow end in a tight circle, talking and running their fingers through their wet hair.
I try to relax. After swim class I’ll linger in the locker room until I’m sure all the buses have left. Then I’ll go to the gym to meet PJ and get a ride back to his house. I’ll stay at his place as late as I can and then worry about my notebook after that. Who knows. Maybe Mom and Dad have calmed down since this morning.
I jump off the diving board into the deep end and hit the water with a satisfying velocity. Underwater, I swim over to one side, then tuck my arms and legs in so I sink to the bottom of the pool. The water is Easter-egg blue. Above me, headless bodies float; legs scissor back and forth as they tread water, and arms wave lazily like sea plants. I close my eyes and sink.
I’ve always liked swimming because it’s relaxing. When our family went to the beach, which was practically every summer except this past one, I would sit down in the surf and let the frothy white water wash over my hot skin. Melanie did the opposite. She would charge full speed into the water and dive headfirst under the crashing waves. She’d paddle out past the breaks, far from shore, then wave for me to join her. But I was always nervous to swim out that far.
When Melanie passed away, Mom said she was in heaven. I asked Mom what heaven was supposed to be like, and she said there were mansions there and lush vineyards and roads made of gold. I don’t know if that’s true, but I can’t imagine Melanie enjoying living in a gaudy-ass place like that. I think she’d enjoy heaven more if it was a big long beach with killer waves.
I hear the low BOOM of a cannonball above me, but I’m so deep that I barely feel its impact in the water. My toes touch the bumpy concrete of the pool bottom.
People describe heaven as whatever their idea of “nice” is, but I bet if being dead is like anything, it’s like floating underwater. No sense of time passing. Nothing changing. Not feeling or thinking, just maybe sometimes hearing the boom of things above you and remembering dimly that you used to be up there too.
Of course, there’s an easy way to find out what heaven is like. If I had the guts to stay down here another minute or two, I could see for myself if Mom is right and heaven looks like Northern California.
Melanie smiles and beckons me to paddle out and join her in the deep water, but as usual, I’m scared to swim out that far.
Distorted by the twelve feet of water above me, Ms. Everett’s whistle is a wavering warble, but its piercing note still calls me back to reality.
I realize suddenly that I’m out of air, my lungs burning. I push off the bottom of the pool and swim up, panic rising as I realize how far down I still am.
I breach the surface light-headed and gasping for air. Little black dots dance in my vision, and what I expect to be a breath of air turns into a big gulp of water as a wave splashes into my mouth.
I cough and flounder toward the edge of the pool, splashing frantically, and when I finally reach the ledge, I cling to it for a moment to cough up water.
Everyone else has already climbed out of the pool and is heading into the locker rooms, shaking the water off their hair a
nd waddling like penguins on the wet tiles. After a moment I paddle over to a ladder, pull myself out of the water, and join the line.
— — —
The boys’ locker room is noisy and crowded, guys snapping towels at one another’s naked butts, tossing insults around, and hooting like monkeys. I feel like some guys act extra manly in locker rooms just to prove that they’re totally comfortable being buck naked and showering with a bunch of strangers. I do not feel this way and make no attempts at such deception. I keep my trunks on as long as possible and always change back into my clothes like lightning, preferably in a corner.
Wooden benches run the length of the long room, with pale green lockers on one side and toilets, sinks, and showers on the other. Unlike the gym locker rooms, thankfully the showers here are all semi-private, separated from one another with little plastic curtains in front of them.
There’s a wire rack of dry towels inside the door, and I grab the last one. I hang my suit and towel on a hook outside one of the showers and step inside to wash the chlorine off.
I turn the shower off a minute later and reach outside the curtain for my towel, but it’s not there.
Neither is my suit.
I poke my head out from around the flimsy curtain, assuming my clothes must have fallen off the hook, but they’re not on the ground, either.
“All right, guys, very funny,” I say. “Who took my stuff?”
Guys are pulling shirts over their heads and tying up their sneakers. None of them will look my way, and a dark foreboding steals over me.
Naked and dripping wet, I tiptoe across the locker room’s wet floor, past the other guys who are fully clothed and closing their lockers, to where I had draped my clothes over the bench. But my clothes—as I had feared, as I knew they would be—are gone.
“Hey.” I try to sound tough when I say it, but I can’t. “Hey, which one of you guys moved my clothes?”
A few guys laugh, but everyone still studiously ignores me.
This Might Hurt a Bit Page 22