Slob - Ellen Potter [2]
“What’s up, Flapjack?” he asked, flashing me one of his movie star smiles. He’s called me Flapjack for the past two years. I don’t know why. It’s idiotic, but people have called me worse.
“What do you think all that stuff is for?” I asked him nervously, looking at the equipment that Mr. Wooly was arranging. There were stands with metal poles across them, beefy-looking, vinyl-covered gizmos, loads of floor mats.
“Looks like we’ll be doing some gymnastics,” Andre said breezily.
“Oh, crap.” I said it under my breath, but Andre heard.
“Hey, Flapjack,” Andre hissed, tipping his head in a gesture for me to come closer to him. I glanced over at Mr. Wooly. He was kneeling down, unrolling a long blue mat on the floor.
“Yeah?” I said, moving closer a little cagily. You never know with Andre.
“Why don’t you just get one of those fat exemptions?” Andre said quietly.
“What?” I felt my shoulders stiffen up.
“A fat exemption. You know. Your doctor writes it for you. It says you don’t have to do gym because you’re so fat that exercise could make your heart stop.” He thumped me on the back. He thumps me a lot.
I grunted and started to walk back to my spot, but Andre grabbed my arm. “No joke, Flapjack. Look at that stuff.” He nodded toward the apparatus. “You’ll cripple yourself! And Wooly will love it. It’s not worth the pain.”
That’s the thing about Andre Bertoni. I can never tell if he’s being nice or mean. I often think I should hate him, but somehow he makes it difficult.
“Whenever Mr. Birnbaum is finished flirting with Mr. Bertoni, we can get started on our stretches!” Mr. Wooly had finished unrolling the mat and was now glaring at me with his ape arms crossed over his ape chest. A chorus of snickers and catcalls rose up from the class.
I have no trouble hating Mr. Wooly, incidentally.
Mr. Wooly led us through a bunch of ridiculous stretching exercises. He didn’t do them himself. He never does. He just barks out instructions. That day I didn’t mind doing the stretching, though. It delayed what was to come. My eyes kept drifting over to the apparatus next to Mr. Wooly. It looked evil. It looked like it was specially designed to humiliate me.
I actually started to consider the fat exemption. I wondered if that was a real possibility. Mom had taken me in for a checkup before school, and the doctor had clucked his tongue as he read the scale. Then he gave Mom what they call a “firm talking to.” I felt really bad for her. It’s not her fault, after all.
That doctor might give me a fat exemption.
But I couldn’t do that. I have too much pride.
There’s that saying, “Pride cometh before the fall.” Yeah, I thought as I looked at the gymnastic equipment, there was going to be a lot of falling involved.
“All right, ladies and gentlemen!” Mr. Wooly clapped so loudly that it echoed throughout the gym.
PS, this is an all-boy class. No ladies. Hardy har har.
“For the next three weeks we are going to try something different. We are going to challenge our bodies. We are going to test our fears.”
Andre Bertoni caught my eye and winked. I have no idea why. Maybe he was relishing the thought of having his fears tested. Or watching my fears being tested.
I don’t think I was the only one who was nervous about this gymnastic stuff, though. I had enough presence of mind to look around at the faces of the other boys. A lot of them were eying the gymnastic apparatus apprehensively. One really skinny kid named Justin Esposito was actually clutching at his stomach as though he were going to be sick. I felt so bad for him that I almost forgot to feel bad for me. Nima would have liked that. He would have thought it was very Buddhist of me.
I’ll tell you more about Nima later.
Mr. Wooly explained about all the apparatus and what we were going to be doing on each one in the next few weeks, whether we liked it or not. We’d be flipping