Gym Class Read online

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  Gym Class

  About the Author

  Other Titles by Dara

  Copyright Information

  Gym Class

  Dara Girard

  Published by ILORI PRESS BOOKS LLC

  www.iloripressbooks.com

  Smashwords Edition

  An F.

  That was what his mid-term report card said. But it wasn’t just a letter. It meant failure, flunky, loser. Just because he couldn’t do a stupid two mile run in under twenty minutes. Heck, he could barely do it under an hour no matter how hard he tried.

  “Come on Bones, move it,” Coach Stuart, a red haired man who looked as if he belonged in the Marines, shouted as Gerald puffed his way around the track. It was a cool Philadelphia spring day, but he felt as hot as a man lost in the Sahara. His lungs felt ready to burst and sweat covered every inch of him, making his skin wet and tight, both from the exertion of the run and the sting of embarrassment.

  Bones. He didn’t have to imagine the snickers that nickname elicited. He was used to being laughed at by other students; he’d been laughed at most of his life. But it was the first time that a teacher made fun of him too—the man seemed determined to make his junior year hell. Everybody knew Gerald Morgan was anything but ‘bones.’ He was all fat. And today he felt every roll.

  But as his feet stumbled along the track and he heard his own belabored breathing, he realized that he was tired.

  Tired of the nickname and the snickers.

  Tired of looking in the mirror and hating what he saw: a fat black guy with thick glasses and braces.

  He heard fast footsteps pounding behind him, then felt the breeze of Taylor Price as she raced past him like a cheetah. It was probably her sixth time around the track. He was still on his first.

  He watched her with envy. He wished he could move like that. Nobody laughed at her. She was fit and pretty. She probably never failed at anything.

  He didn’t want to fail gym class. He didn’t want to see the sadistic joy with which Coach Stuart made him run. But he had only two months left to pull up his grade. He needed help.

  ***

  “How do you do it?” he asked Taylor as she stood waiting at a bus stop a block from their school. She was usually surrounded by her girlfriends. Today she was alone and he knew this was the best way to talk to her without making a complete idiot of himself.

  Taylor looked at him confused. “What?”

  “Run like you do.” He gripped the straps of his backpack, wishing his palms didn’t feel so sweaty. “How do you do it?”

  She shrugged. “I just do.”

  He pushed up his glasses, then gripped the straps of his backpack so tight that his hands shook. “I want to do it too,” he mumbled.

  “What?”

  He spoke a little louder. “I want to run like you. Could you show me how?”

  She looked skeptical. He couldn’t blame her. He remembered tutoring a guy who still mouthed his words and used his fingers when he read. It had been a long night, but Gerald had been patient and gotten the guy a C. That’s all he wanted: a C. “I’ll work hard.”

  Her mouth quirked. He held his breath, waiting for her to smile or laugh at him. He was used to it.

  “Could you show me how?” a deep voice said behind him, mimicking a falsetto. Gerald didn’t need to turn to know who it was: Miles Randolph, the class president and track star.

  “Shut up, Miles,” Taylor said.

  Miles sniffed. “He couldn’t run after a fast food truck.”

  “With those bandy legs of yours I’m surprised you can run at all,” Taylor said. She turned to Gerald. “I’m not sure I can help you, but I’m willing to try.”

  ***

  Beauty and the Beast. That was their new nickname. But Gerald didn’t care. He met with Taylor on the track or at the park, after school and on the weekends.

  “It’s fun for me,” she said when he’d asked her why she liked to run as they made their way around the park.

  He panted beside her. How could this torture be fun?

  “It gets me out of my head,” she continued.

  “I like being in my head,” he managed to say, gulping in air like a drowning man.

  Taylor looked him up and down. “That’s why you’re out of shape.”

  “Why aren’t you on the track team?”

  “I just told you. I do this for fun. I don’t want to be in a race. I don’t like competition.”

  “You’d win.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t care about winning.”

  He did. He liked being at the top of his class. He may not be fit, but he was smart. But not smart enough to see an old Frisbee in his path. He stumbled over it and fell.

  “Maybe we should stop,” Taylor said, stretching her hand out to help him up.

  He ignored the offer and stood, his face burning. “I thought you said you’d help me.”

  “I did, I am.”

  “Then don’t tell me to quit.” He started jogging even though his legs felt like lead. “I have to do this.”

  “Why do you care about this?”

  Because he didn’t like feeling old. He’d stopped looking at himself--avoiding mirrors like a vampire. He’d started to hate his mother’s touch and his father’s back slaps as they pretended that he was okay. As if being fifty pounds overweight at seventeen was okay.

  His grandmother had had her left leg amputated last summer, and an uncle had a stroke two winters ago. “It’s just part of getting old,” his mother liked to say when he worried about his relatives’ state of health or questioned her about her type 2 diabetes and his father’s high blood pressure. “We’re just big boned,” she said. “Don’t you go on feeling bad about yourself.”

  But he did feel bad. His knees hurt sometimes and his joints. He didn’t want to be like that. He didn’t want to go blind at forty and be dead by fifty.

  “I don’t want an F,” he said.

  Taylor was silent for a long moment, as if she didn’t believe him. “Well, unless you pick up your pace, you’re going to get one,” she said before shooting in front of him, her long legs eating up the ground.

  She helped him change his food habits. He’d expected her to only help him with his running, but she sent him food tips and an app to help him calculate his calorie intake.

  “Why are you messing with that?” his mother asked when she caught him following a fruit mix recipe on his cell phone that listed all the nutrients he’d receive.

  “It’s just something to help me with my weight.”

  “Your weight is fine, baby.”

  Babies are supposed to be fat, not men. “No, it’s not,” he mumbled.

  “What did you say?”

  Gerald turned off his phone and took a bite of his mix. It tasted good. “Nothing.”

  “Is that skinny girl the reason you’re trying all this nonsense?”

  “It’s not nonsense, Mom, I want to get healthy.”

  “You are healthy.”

  He took a deep breath. He couldn’t make her understand and didn’t have the energy to. “She’s helping me with gym class. I need a good grade, that’s all.”

  But that wasn’t all. It was a lot more than that, but he didn’t have the words to tell her, although he wished he did.

  ***

  When he saw Taylor at the park, her eyes red from crying, he didn’t have the words then either. He wanted to tell her that he’d lost ten pounds, but didn’t think now was the time when she looked so unhappy. So they ran in silence.

  “I run because I’m stupid,” she finally said. “I run because it’s the only thing I do well.”

  “You’re not stupid.”

  “I’m failing almost every class.”

&n
bsp; “Why?”

  She looked at him annoyed. “I just told you.”

  “You’re not stupid. What’s…” He bit his lip. It was probably none of his business, but she’d helped him, so he wanted to help her. “I can tutor you if you want.”

  “It won’t help.”

  “Why not? And don’t say ‘cause you’re stupid.”

  “It’s why they’re getting a divorce. They fight about me all the time. They’re both lawyers and brilliant, but I’m not.”

  “My parents don’t know why I’m doing this.” He watched a woman on a skateboard being pulled by her golden retriever. “They think I’m crazy.”

  “At least they’re staying together.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not because of me. People fall out of love. It happens.”

  “You ever been in love?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “From an uncle of mine. He’s on his fifth wife.”

  Taylor fell silent for a long moment then said, “Maybe he’s right, but it still feels like it's my fault.”

  Gerald knew what she meant. People kept telling him now was the greatest time of his life, but he wasn’t having much fun. All he felt was pressure. Pressure to make good grades, to go to the right school, to please his parents. Pressure to be someone else. That’s why he’d wanted to start running, he felt like he’d been boxed into a hole that wasn’t him. He didn’t want to be ‘Bones’ or the dork who only helped others with their homework. He wanted to like himself and have bravado like the football star. He liked sports too and didn’t want to have to choose anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He knew it sounded lame, but he didn’t know what else to say.

  Taylor sighed. “I didn’t join the track team because I don’t want to lose. I don’t want to let people down.”

  Yeah, he knew how that felt and he was surprised to hear her say it. She seemed to have everything together. They’d both been running in different ways. He’d been running away from being physical so he could cocoon himself in books and online. Taylor had been running away from the reality of her parents’ unhappiness.

  She had to stop running.

  “You’re not stupid and I can prove it,” he said.

  “How?”

  He took a swing at her; she ducked.

  “See? If you were stupid you would have let me hit you.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You know you’re a dork, right?”

  He grinned. “Yes. Clever of you to notice.”

  She laughed then playfully punched him. After several moments of silence she said, “I’ll improve my grades and join the track team next year, if you run two miles in fifteen minutes.”

  He pushed up his glasses. “That’s not fair.”

  “Don’t you want a reason to run?”

  “I already have a reason. I don’t want to fail.”

  “Don’t you want a better one?”

  He wasn’t sure. Not failing had always been his main goal; he’d never thought of having another one. But she was right. It was nice to have another reason. Another reason to help him fight his parents’ lack of support and for his own growth. It was time to be his own man. And that meant thinking beyond himself. He wanted to run for her. He wanted to see her race on the track team and not let her parents’ divorce steal all her joy. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  ***

  But he didn’t. He made it in twenty.

  Gerald thought his heart would burst when he saw the time. Five minutes short. He’d failed himself and her.

  He felt a hearty slap on the back. “Great job, Bones!” Coach Stuart said with a wide smile.

  Gerald looked up at him confused. “What?”

  “Wow, man I’ve never seen you move like that,” another kid said. He looked around the class, not understanding the smiling faces. He’d failed. Were they laughing at him? What joke was he missing this time?

  “You were great,” Taylor said.

  Gerald swallowed back tears. He’d pushed as hard a he could, but it hadn’t been good enough. “Shut up.” He turned.

  She jumped in front of him. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I didn’t do it in fifteen.”

  “But you did it in twenty. You passed!”

  For the first time everything became clear. He’d reached his goal. He’d run two miles in twenty minutes, and as he looked out at the track and saw two other students still slowly making their way, he saw how far he’d come. He realized that he’d once been them. He’d forgotten how far he’d come. He’d never known that failure and victory was a matter of perspective.

  He was still ‘Bones’ and he was still fat. But he didn’t feel the same and he knew that was just the beginning. “Next time I’ll do it in fifteen.”

  Taylor laughed and he felt his heart jump because her laughter sounded real, he heard the possibility in it. That she’d pull her grades up even though her parents’ marriage was falling apart. She pointed to the far fence. “Race you!” she said, then took off running.

  He followed her.

  And they both ran under a cloudy spring sky not because they were running away or towards anything.

  They ran for just one reason—because it felt good.

  The End

  About the Author

  Dara Girard, the award-winning, bestselling author of more than thirty novels, continues to gain new readers with novels such as The Daughters of Winston Barnett and Honest Betrayal. You can visit her website at www.daragirard.com.

  Other Titles by Dara

  If you enjoyed Gym Class you might enjoy Dara Girard’s other stories, collections or novels:

  Stories

  Lola’s Decision

  Spare Room

  A Thousand Words

  A Gift for Philomena

  Ten Days of Grace

  A Home for Adam

  Miss Lana Wilson

  Something New

  * * *

  Or collections...

  Lost and Found

  Five Holiday Tales

  The Lady Next Door and Other Stories

  * * *

  Or novels...

  The Daughters of Winston Barnett

  Illusive Flame

  Honest Betrayal

  The Sapphire Pendant (Book 1 in the Clifton Sisters Series)

  The Amber Stone (Book 2 in the Clifton Sisters Series)

  Discover these books and more at www.iloripressbooks.com

  Copyright Information

  Gym Class

  Copyright 2015 Dara Girard

  Gym Class is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed herein are fictitious and are not based on any real persons living or dead.

  Published by Ilori Press Books LLC

  Cover and Layout by Ilori Press Books LLC

  Cover Photo by Stephen Metz/123rf

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any fashion without the express written consent of the copyright holder.

 

 

  Girard, Dara, Gym Class

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