I don’t know her name, and I’m not sure I’ll like her when she speaks. But I know I’ll never forget her. Her smile, however fast it comes and goes in this moment, coincides with the first full breath I’ve taken in years.
I try to hold her attention, leaving my grin in place, a crooked one, just to let her know I’m sorry I bumped her. Sorry—not sorry. I slide the beanie from my head, and I know my hair is probably a mess by the way she lets out a breathy giggle when she sees it. I run my fingers through, but stop quickly. I like the way she giggles, and I don’t care how I look. If my messy hair makes her smile, I’ll wear it that way every day.
“Are you new, too?” she asks. I nodded yes at first, but correct her quickly. Her voice had me in a trance.
“No, I’m just…special,” I say.
She sizes my response up for a few seconds, her lip quirked up on one side. “What makes you so special?” she finally asks.
I hold her gaze for a few seconds, liking this feeling of just sitting here looking at her. I stare until she has to look away, her cheeks growing more pink and her eyelashes fluttering as she stares back to her lap, where she’s holding a small pink pass with something written from a parent or teacher. She keeps folding and unfolding the corners, wearing the paper out on the edges. She’s nervous.
“Nothing makes me special. I’m not very special at all,” I say, which only makes her peer back up with a sideways glance. Her lip ticks up again. Her mouth is pink, and tiny, and there are freckles that dot her nose.
“I bet you’re special to someone,” she says, her smile reaching the other side of her mouth now. She’s being nice. No…she’s being sweet. Goddamn is she sweet.
“I have an opening for that job…someone. Want it?” I tease. I see her eyes flash wider for a second, and I can tell I made her tense, so I tap my toe against hers again. “I was just kidding. But thanks.”
“Emma Burke…Andrew Harper?” The voice breaks through our silence, startling us both to our feet. Mr. Crest, the PE teacher, is standing with his clipboard, two uniforms wrapped in plastic tucked under his arm. I bet these come in a big box, on a big truck, from a warehouse filled with ugly blue uniforms. Thank god my shorts aren’t as small as hers. Thank god her shorts are that small.
“I’m supposed to give you this,” Emma says, stepping closer to the teacher and handing over her paper slip. He reviews it and stuffs it in his back pocket, then marks something on his clipboard.
“You, this way,” he says in my direction, shoving a bundle of pale blue material at me while jerking his head toward the boys’ locker room. I don’t even care that he’s talking to me like this, like I’m some slacker he plans to fail. I don’t care because she’s still biting her lip, trying not to look right at me for too long.
“I’ll see ya around, Emma,” I say, taking my ugly-ass PE uniform into my arms.
“Bye, Andrew,” she says, only letting her lip go from the grip of her teeth long enough to utter my name. Her voice is just over a whisper, and she’s timid, and sweet, and I love PE. I want to change my schedule to nothing but PE. All day. Every day—as long as I can have this class with her.
* * *
I may have oversold my enthusiasm for PE. I’ve been taking a bus here for three weeks, and so far, I’ve been the first guy out in dodgeball a dozen times, and forced to stand on the free-throw line in basketball for an hour until I could sink a shot. The only saving grace was the day we played field hockey. Of course, I got a warning from Mr. Crest and a lecture that made me miss my bus after I checked a guy on the field. Apparently, there is no contact in PE field hockey. When I told him they shouldn’t call it hockey then, he sent me to the principal’s office.
The only bonus about today—we don’t have to wear our uniforms. We get a break for the entire week, in fact. It’s the square-dancing unit. For about ten minutes, we’ve been sitting in the gym, our backs flush against the wall outside our locker room, while Mr. Crest struggles with an ancient sound system. Based on the few times he was able to get the speakers to make a sound, I’m pretty sure we’re not missing anything by not hearing this music. He finally turns a microphone on and sets it next to a tiny speaker he plugs into his phone.
“All right, gentlemen. On your feet, and form a line against the wall,” he says. There’s a collective grumble as we stand, but that sound stops as soon as the girls’ locker-room door swings open and a single-file line that matches ours begins to fill the space along the other wall.