Rich / l.h ✔️

28

~Lilith's POV~

Seeing Luke on Monday started off a little bit uncomfortable, to say the least. Now that I knew he'd been kicked out of his house, everything made so much more sense to me. That explained why he always got upset when I brought up not only his house, but his parents as well. Both of those things were sensitive for him. However, now I had a much more pressing question on my mind. If Luke didn't live with his parents, then where? Where did he live?

Obviously I knew he wasn't living on the streets since he always wore clean, new clothes and was clean himself. But then where did he live at now? Was it a good place? Was it a good area? Was he doing okay there? Did I need to ask him if he needed any help?

I forced my thoughts away as I sat down at my assigned spot in gym class, already having gotten changed into my PE clothes. Luke was sitting somewhere behind me, I knew that, but I didn't look at him. I'd tried to talk to him today, to smile at him, anything that I could to get him to acknowledge me and yet nothing worked. I didn't like to think it because it upset me a little, but I was pretty sure that he was embarrassed about having me find out that he'd been kicked out of his house. The one time that I had caught his gaze today, he'd broken it immediately and looked down as if he were ashamed and embarrassed. It upset me, not because he wasn't looking at me, but because he felt like I'd think less of him for anything like this.

He was a friend to me, so it upset me that he had acted that way. I'd wanted to talk to him, tell him that this really wasn't a big deal, but he wouldn't. Maybe he just needed his space before he was ready to be friends again. I could wait for him to get past it if I needed to.

Coach Rivera and Coach Powell came walking back into the gym after everyone had finished getting dressed into their PE clothes, the door slowly shutting behind them. The two of them sat down in their seats at the front of the room and began to take attendance, as per usual, while we all waited until they finished. Rivera stood from his seat and scanned his hard gaze over everyone in the room. "I want everyone up. We're doing stretching." He demanded to us all, crossing his arms over his chest. We all stood up immediately, standing quietly in our spots while waiting for further instructions. "First, you'll bend over and touch your toes. If you can't reach, go as far as possible. Hold that until I say to stop." He instructed, looking us all over again.

When he gave us the go, I bent over and my hair fell upside down as my chest brushed my thighs while my fingertips touched my feet. I stayed bent over until I heard Rivera say, "Stop." It had only been maybe ten seconds, but it was long enough to earn some sighs of relief from other kids. I stood up and placed my hands on my hips, waiting for him to say what else we needed to do. He placed his hands on his hips and said, "Now you're going to use your left hand to touch your right foot, then we'll switch to right hand and left foot." He explained, gesturing for us to do as he said. I bent down and stretched my left hand to my right foot, touching my toes.

We switched to the other way next and then held that for fifteen seconds before he told us to sit down, which I did so gladly. I stretched my legs out in front of me with them open just a little, looking at Rivera for further instruction. "I want you guys to stretch your arms out until your fingers pass your feet." He instructed, so I did that. All of these were quite easy to do, so I had no problem with doing these.

I stretched my arms out in front of me, my fingers stretching out past my feet. As we continued doing our stretches, I could feel people staring at me, though it wasn't anything that I wasn't used to. For some reason, people always looked at me, even though I'd been here months. They all still just stared at me as if it were their first time seeing me and I didn't understand why. I always just tried to ignore it, though.

Eventually we all finished doing our stretching, which had eventually branches off into doing work outs, and both of the coaches dismissed us to go change back into our regular clothes. I headed into the girl's locker room and went over to my locker, getting my clothes and changing back into them. I pulled on my pink dress with a bunch of butterflies on it and a low-cut neckline. It had thin straps and a cut out design across the sternum, and tied together at the chest. Because I wasn't wearing a bra today, I got changed in the bathroom stall, not wanting to flash my boobs at everyone. That'd be embarrassing.