Slob - Ellen Potter [25]
In gym class, Mr. Wooly had set up a balance beam and a trampoline in the front of the gym, and now he was laying down a line of mats in the back of the gym. Not good.
“So are you going to take my advice, Flapjack?” Andre asked me as I took my place on my spot.
“The fat excuse or the lawsuit?” I asked.
“Both.”
“Nope.”
“Neither?”
“That’s right.” I was in a fairly cocky mood this morning.
Mr. Wooly had finished with the mats and was on his way back up front when he actually came up to me and patted me on the shoulder in a friendly sort of way.
“Morning, Birnbaum,” Wooly said.
“He’s scared you’re going to make trouble for him about the dog harness thing,” Andre whispered when Wooly had passed.
Andre was probably right about that.
“Well, I won’t,” I said.
Andre shook his head. He interlaced his fingers, flipped them upside down, and flexed his wrists. “You know what your problem is, Flapjack?”
I growled. Quietly.
“You think life has to be hard.” He smiled at me, one of his windsurfing-in-Malibu smiles. I wanted to punch him right then and there, but suddenly his smile crumpled and he looked uneasy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look like that before. He was looking at something behind me, so I turned my head to follow his gaze. Mason had come in the side door of the gym, accompanied by a teacher’s aide. Up to now, I had mercifully been spared Mason’s presence in gym class. Andre had told me that Mason had a “psycho exemption,” although I assumed there was a more official word for it.
The teacher’s aide went up to Mr. Wooly and began to talk to him with her back turned to the class in order to be discreet, but Mr. Wooly’s face was clearly visible to all of us. And he was not happy. In fact, he made no effort to keep his voice down when he said, “Well, just so’s we understand each other, I won’t be held responsible when all hell breaks loose in here.” The gym was dead quiet and his voice echoed so we all heard his words quite clearly. It was the first time all the rumors about Mason had been confirmed by an adult in the school.
The teacher’s aide was now angry too. She pointed a finger at him and said, “That was massively inappropriate, Gene.” She didn’t bother to keep her voice down either, so that we all heard her scolding him but more importantly, we caught that his name was Gene.
“Gene?!” Someone in our class repeated loudly in an incredulous voice.
“Settle down, people!” he called out to all of us. He probably would have called us “ladies” instead of “people” if the aide hadn’t been there.
I was watching Mason. He had been working his jaw for several seconds, his mean little eyes fixed on Mr. Wooly. I suspected he was busy collecting a large glob of phlegm to use as a projectile.
Yeah, do it, Mason, I thought. Hit Mr. Wooly right in the face with a fat, juicy goober.
Instant revenge on both my enemies. You can see how much that would appeal to me, I’m sure.
“Mr. Ragg,” Mr. Wooly said to Mason, “A4.”
Mason’s jaw stopped churning. He stood there for a moment, glaring at Mr. Wooly, until the aide put a careful hand on his back and guided him to the spot on the slickery gym floor, showing him the A on the wall to his right and the 4 on the wall behind Mr. Wooly.
Mason was front and center, directly in Mr. Wooly’s line of fire.
Excellent.
During our stretches, Mr. Wooly made us do a tricky series of leg hops, which he’d never had us do before. There was a lot of “left, left, right, left, right, right,” so that we had to keep switching legs in this random jig. We were all stumbling around—even Andre managed to look awkward. But today, Mason was Mr. Wooly’s prime target.
“Keep up, Mr. Ragg!” Mr. Wooly shouted over the sound of furiously pounding sneakers. “This train doesn’t stop for latecomers! It’s sink or swim, pal! I see your feet moving, but the parade is passing you by!”
That’s three mixed metaphors in a row, in case you didn’t notice. Obviously, Mr. Wooly didn’t.
I guess I should have felt pretty pleased that he was picking on Mason, but I couldn’t somehow. Maybe it was because