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Or maybe it’s my own jadedness I’m seeing.
Maybe all the girls in dance were nice and supportive of each other. Maybe the awkward one would come into the locker room, deflated, and all the girls would rally around her and say she’ll get that pirouette right next time. Don’t worry, I can also hear them saying—the same imaginary girls I imagined as mean a second ago. We’ll help you out. We’ll stay late and work with you until you get it right!
My heart warms.
I wonder if Spruce isn’t as horrible as I remembered it at all.
I had friends.
I had a support system, too.
Good days when I felt on top of the world, riding on some silly praise I was given by a teacher, or a friend, or myself.
As I let these thoughts of Spruce marinate in my head, I come to a thoughtful stop by the glass window that looks into the dance teacher’s office. There’s a large opened folder on the desk inside, and it’s something about that folder that draws me into a memory.
It’s one of Chad.
By a desperate call of nature, I remember grabbing a hall pass from my gravelly-voiced Algebra II teacher (I recall this precisely because we’d just learned the formula of an ellipse that day), and I headed to the bathrooms in a hurry.
On my way, I happened to pass Chad—also with a hall pass—walking in the opposite direction.
Our eyes locked in the hallway. His were on mine, and mine were on his. Neither of us stopped walking. Neither of us made a face, either. Neither of us even said a single word.
We only watched each other.
Like curious yet wary cats passing one another in an alley.
I remember thinking: Who are you without your jock buddies? My chest felt strangely light as I passed. Are you afraid of me on my own?
It was a bewildering empowerment that flooded my heart in that brief yet poignant moment of passing Chad in the hallway. He might have been returning that day from the very same bathroom I was headed to. Maybe, had I left my classroom just five minutes earlier, I would have ended up in that same bathroom, standing awkwardly side-by-side at the urinals.
Maybe he would have bullied me in there, cornering me and laughing in my face.
Maybe he would have been just as silent as he was in the hall.
Or maybe some secret, buried part of me actually knew back then.
“Oh, man,” comes Chad’s voice.
I pull my eyes from the glass window. Chad’s hand is resting on the push bar of a door leading into the gym, which he’s holding open with surprise.
His eyes are alight as he turns my way. “It’s unlocked!”
The two of us pass through the door and into the gymnasium, which is about half the size of the main gym, but still quite big. The irony of small towns is, despite their ‘small’ size, everything in them seems so much more spacious. I guess that’s a direct result of having so much area to spread out across.
Though the lights are off, there is an emergency light in two corners of the gym, which stay on at all times, spilling across the shiny floor and dimly lighting the whole space. Chad is out ahead of me, strolling with his eyes drinking in all the sights.
I follow behind him, studying his back with so many questions and thoughts hopping around in my head. And by “studying his back”, I don’t just mean how deliciously he’s filling out that plain, royal-blue button-up shirt and those tight-fitting skinny-leg slacks of his.
Okay, maybe that’s exactly what I mean. What I wouldn’t do to get him into something I designed …
“I know what you’re thinkin’,” Chad says suddenly, speaking over his shoulder.
I lift my eyes from his ass (yeah, sorry, I was staring) and say, “Is that so? What am I thinking, then?”
“That I could come here whenever I want. You’re wonderin’ why I’m so amazed by all this. Truth is, Lance, I haven’t been back to this place since we graduated. It’s just as much of a trip down memory lane for me as it is for you.”
“Not even to say hi to a favorite teacher?” I ask teasingly. “Or your old wrestling coach? I heard he’s an asshole and a half.”
“Nah, he wasn’t that bad.” Chad stops and gives it a second thought. “Actually no. He was bad. He was a major asshole. Is an asshole.” He lets out a hearty laugh, then shakes his head. “Thanks for reminding me. Anyway, our lack of trophies should surely clue someone into the fact that this place needs a new coach.”
“Ever thought about making that person you?” I suggest as I catch up to him.
“Nah.” He shakes his head as we resume strolling across the gym at a leisurely pace, now side-by-side. “Coaching isn’t really my thing. Besides, I got my dad’s ranch I’m lookin’ out for while he’s … gone. Both my mom and dad are countin’ on me. I mean, my mom doesn’t live at the ranch anymore, having moved out to live with her sister in Little Water—my Aunt Amber. And I do a damn good job runnin’ the ranch on my own. Hell, I ain’t even showed you half of it.” He eyes me. “Since you took off so fast last night.”
