Clothed in our grief

Chapter three

You mean this with every fiber of your being. You mean this, with the burning fiery passion that comes from the depths of your heart. With every thought in your mind dedicated to it, a single honest meaning. The very being of who you are, your entire life purpose.

Fuck the pacer.

No really, screw it. This is terrible. As bad as it is to have Physical Education as your first class? It's like Satan is whispering in your ear, bringing those crusty red lips to your face and muttering those words with that wicked grin.

"The Fitnessgram Pacer Test is a multi stage capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues." You're dreading this, with every single fiber of your being. Nobody has even started, and everybody can all mentally come to an agreement that this sucks. No matter what type of family you come from, if you're here on a scholarship or just here because your family is rich.

Usually physical tests like this don't take place until  couple days into the school year. But this is a different school, and everybody got their uniforms and textbooks weeks in advance. You included, so nobody could use the excuse of not having their gym uniform. And since you came into class late? The teacher did yell at you a bit, he's one of those P.E teachers that was probably a drill sergeant recently. At least he wasn't three times his own weight and eating fast food while lecturing the class on dietary health. You've had gym teachers like that, and it never made sense to you.

The words were drilling into your mind, you hate this. Just as much as everybody else. Why? Because you weren't a runner. You were better at other forms of work out, just not running. You get winded easily, and your legs get sore for a longer amount of time than any other part of your body. You could probably do lots of sit ups and not feel that much of a burn compared to your legs. Sure, you can stand for a long time. A really long time, but that's because of the fencing. You move around a lot, you can run fast. Just not for very long. The pacer starts out slow, yes. But once it starts speeding up? IT start to overwhelm you a bit, and that's when you start to fall behind.

The gym uniforms were just a white T-shirt with the school name in the middle in dark blue writing, and blue basketball shorts and some sneakers. So they were easy to run and move around in.

Almost right before the actual pacer started, one last student came sprinting out of the boys locker room after handing off a green late slip that clearly read 'Library' on it in red ink. You narrowed your eyes on the figure, it's that boy again.

So he got to some in late and not get yelled at, but you did?

"On your mark, get set, start." You were too busy looking somewhere else, so you got a bit of a late start. Whereas everybody could walk the first pace, you had to jog slightly to catch up. No big deal, once you got to the other end of the line you still had a second to actually get ready. Somehow that other kid who came in late? Yeah, he was the first one on the other side, and he walked.

That mind boring music and dull tone of the music played loudly through the air as the test continued, everybody still able to just walk the next pace as the audio called out "One." Right after a ding.

Ding. "Two."

Ding. "Three."

Ding. "Four."

Ding. "Five."

This was simple, just walking. But after five it became a slight jog, and then ten through fifteen turned into a sprint. Fifteen through twenty was a faster sprint, Twenty through thirty was a steady run. After that? Just run faster.