Gym Class

A short story

Billy Green didn’t like algebra—he shuddered each time he walked into the classroom, especially when Mr. Bridges announced a pop quiz with the words, “Close your books and take out a paper and pencil”—but despite his distaste, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday he hoped that Mr. Bridges would continue the class beyond the third-period bell. 

Because after the bell came something he dreaded even more: gym.

Pudgy and fond of jelly donuts, Billy was always picked last or second to last for team games, sometimes even after Nevis Chander, who walked with a limp.

He hid in the most distant row during dodgeball and wished he could sit out basketball games because his teammates never passed him the ball, treating him as if he were a dead tree stump on the court.

But as horrible as those games were, Billy despised other activities even more. Fifty pushups. Billy could barely muster twelve. Jog ten laps around the gym. Billy ran out of oxygen after three. The pommel horse. He always lost his balance. Wrestling. Defeat arrived with a painful sprained shoulder and pulled muscle.

Mr. Gibbons blew his whistle, a shrill noise that stung Billy’s ears, and said, “Everyone up.” 

Billy, who’d been sitting cross-legged on the gym floor with forty-two other kids, pressed his left palm against the floor, grunted, and stood. He tried to discern from Mr. Gibbons’ tone what kind of torture he’d endure today. Would it be a bleacher climb, up and down the steps until dizzy? Sit ups? 

Whatever it is, let it not be a game where it’s skins versus shirts, and I have to remove my shirt. 

Last Wednesday, during touch mini football he was a skin, and Chase Walters taunted him with, “Look at Green, a whale out of water. Good thing we’re not playing water polo because he’d splash all the water out of the pool.”

Walters is the worst. Gym is the worst. 

Gibbons blew his whistle again, louder and longer. The gym’s walls vibrated and then undulated like wet cement. The ceiling fluorescent lights flickered, making everyone look as if they were caught in a stroboscope, flashing in and out, one moment here, the next invisible. 

“Make four rows,” Gibbons said. In his usual cruel way, he didn’t say what for. 

He wants us to suffer from the uncertainty. 

Gibbons, a muscular man with crew-cut black hair, wore a t-shirt emblazoned with a fierce red tiger, the school’s mascot. 

Gibbons strode through the rows of eighth graders, casting his eyes over each kid, from head to toe and then back again. He’d occasionally mumble, “okay,” and “good” and “I like what I see,” but when he got to Billy, Gibbons rapped him in the back with his horse-riding crop and announced to the room, “Don’t slouch, Billy. Stand straight, not like the letter C.” 

Billy willed his back straighter.

“Still not good. But have no fear because I’ll fix that.” He smacked Billy’s abdomen and added, “Also, pull in your belly.”

Gibbons blasted his whistle. “Five minutes of jumping jacks.” He clicked the stopwatch hanging on a lanyard around his neck. “After that, we’ll see. Ready, set—” 

Gibbons blew his whistle again.

Billy jumped. On his first jump, he bounced a quarter inch into the air, his arms limp like two overcooked strands of spaghetti. Gibbons gave him an angry eye, and Billy knew what Gibbons was thinking. 

He’ll make us do another five minutes of jumping jacks and say it’s my fault.

Billy jumped once more. This time, his arms synchronized, but his legs didn’t spread.

Another glare from the gym teacher.

Billy tried harder, his legs parting to shoulder width and then some. But his arms didn’t cooperate. 

“Come on, Billy. Is it too much to ask for just one proper jumping jack?” Gibbons punctuated his question with a sharp whistle blast. 

Billy watched the ping-pong ball-sized whistle sound bounce off the walls, ceiling, and floor and then circle the room four more times before exiting through an open window. The sound ball pulsed red, green, and blue, with a comet’s tail trailing behind as it fled the gym. 

Billy’s face reddened. The public insult came sooner than he expected. “It is too much to ask,” Billy vented.

Gibbons weaved toward Billy through his classmates’ beautifully choreographed arms and legs. “What did you say to me?” he screamed from six kids away. 

Billy jumped higher, and his legs and arms cooperated as a coordinated team. He did another jumping jack, his limbs even more perfectly synchronized.

Gibbons was now two kids away.

Billy jumped-jacked faster. And faster, his arms and legs so swift that they buzzed. The wind from his frenzied movement knocked over Sandy Dona, the boy next to him, and then Pedro Sanchez toppled.

Gibbons tried to walk toward Billy, but the squall from Billy’s calisthenics blocked him. Gibbons leaned into the hurricane. He brought the whistle to his mouth, but the whistle flew out of his hand, snapping the lanyard and sending it into the gym wall, where the plastic shattered into a hundred pieces.

Billy performed his jumping jacks even more rapidly, and just as Gibbons was finally about to grab his t-shirt, he rose into the air. As he ascended higher in the gym, he looked down at Mr. Gibbons, his arms and legs fanning like butterfly wings. Billy angled toward the cavernous room’s open window through which a crystal blue sky shined, and flew away. 

He never returned. 

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If you enjoyed Gym Class, I think you’ll like my story, How Hallie Discovered Time Travel.