Pacman Frog

Pig

Pigs don't squeal...

P.E. is a subject that is centred around three main virtues; blood, sweat, and tears! It's all about making a generation of naturally unathletic kids work out like there suddenly training to fight the Nazis, putting them against each other in world-altering games of dodgeball, and leaving socially anxious people, like myself, perfect human meat shields. For me, it's a massive trigger, and not solely because I don't enjoy competitive games.

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The main gym was the school's pride and joy, and also my least favorite classroom. Although I had to admit, being on the expansive court when no one else was there was a surrealist experience. If you looked up to the ceilings you could see the many provincial championship banners. All 105 of them would hang from metal bars on the roof, slightly swindling from their leverage; like the mast on top of a grand cruise, and I would be in the middle of the spacious and empty room, reading a book. That was actually a true story, but my fantasy was short-lived when the P.E. teacher, Mr. Calon, came screaming at me to get up because the boy's basketball team needed it for their practice. If I was being truthful with myself, I got a kick out of delaying their practice, even if only by a few minutes. However that was a special case, and although I was heading the the gym today, I wasn't going to enjoy it. 

 Ophelia and I had P.E. as our last block right after lunch which was a kind of cruel joke, forcing a bunch of students to do crunches after having just eaten. "What if I throw up?" I asked my friend bluntly with a smirk. 

"Then try to aim it towards him," she replied, purposeful with every word that came out of her mouth. 

I chuckled and said, "Never wasteful, are you?" 

Ophelia simply nodded at me as she knocked on the automatically locking door of the girl's changing room. Eventally after some continuous banging on the metal surface, one of the girls from inside finally opened the door to let us in. We were a bit late to class so everybody was basically ready once we got inside, but teenagers love privacy, and objectively the changing rooms were the most secure and closed-off places in the school. Teachers obviously weren't allowed to be in the student's locker rooms, and because of the thick soundproof door, which reminded me a lot of a vault latch, everything that happened in the changing room, stayed in the changing room; like a chamber of secrets! Everybody knew this, so while I was putting on my shirt, I could hear gossip all around me. It was a buzzing hive, but I couldn't care less about meaningless school quarrels. 

"Look at her..."

I thought I heard something and briefly skimmed the room just to make sure, but all the girls seemed to be ignoring me so I continued changing 

"Holy shit, they were right!" 

Almost instantly I turned around with my gym shirt still dangling around my neck, and just like that, I saw them. Two tall girls stood across the room from me, one staring into my soul and the other whispering into that same girl's ear. There was no doubt about it, I was confident that those girls were talking about me. Suddenly, my usual fun-loving self seemed to shrivel up, drying until there was only a bitter pit left. I tried to ignore them but it's hard to ignore someone when you're in such a vulnerable state, and I hated every second of it. 

I got changed and left the room as quickly as possible. Thankfully Ophelia was already in the gym, sitting on the bleachers and waiting for me. My current mood was leaking out from within me. While I sat beside her, my arms were tightly crossed and my eyes dull.

"Grey really isn't your colour." commented my friend while she braided her hair. 

"Red really isn't his colour," I muttered silently as I watched a stocky boy with dyed red hair walk onto the gym floor.

Ezeke was, in the most offensive way possible, a total jerk! For a reason that I could never seem to grasp, he was just unjustifiably mean. For example, I remember during our freshman year when he would repeatedly call my name from across the cafeteria, and everyone would just stop and stare at me, expecting me to go up to him because they thought he needed something; and if I didn't go up to his lunch table, he would keep screaming, "Nina!" or "Have you seen Nina?" Even more sickening was that some kids would go up to me, unknowingly disturbing my lunch by reminding me that the guy with red hair was looking for me. And if I ever did begrudgingly go up to him, the only thing he had to say to me was, "Piggy." I had to admit, that as much as Ekeke was the thorn in my side for the entirety of high school so far, he was a genius manipulator, and because of that, he didn't get into trouble. Either that or everybody was turning a blind eye to his antics because nobody wanted to shame our school's star basketball player. After all, from the 105 championship banners hanging above the gym floor, three of them were from Ezeke. One for every year he had been bullying me. He was the main reason why I had to stop eating in the cafeteria, and intrusively I would think to myself, "I wish I could boil him alive, like a lobster..."