Page 4

Chapter 4

brAVE NEW WORLD

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4

CHARLIE VON HEVRINGPRINZ | ID: V183019

Zero Hour: Homeroom

First Hour: Physical Education

Second Hour: Advanced Chemistry

Third Hour: Advanced English Literature

Lunch C

Fourth Hour: Advanced Calculus

Fifth Hour: Advanced World History

Sixth Hour: First-Year Civics

Physical education burns my eyes like acid.

I whip off the class schedule taped to my door and inspect the list closer. First-year civics should take up one of my two extracurriculars—a requirement I missed as a transfer. But when I submitted my desired course list over the summer, I nearly passed out when I saw all the literary options: Factual Journalism, the Art of Persuasive Writing, History of Chinese Literature, Intro to Poetry. Who wouldn’t kill for those? Well, minus poetry.

I had marked the first three down with enthusiastic interest, happy to get into any.

So why physical education?

Playing sports with other guys. Being compared to other guys. Showering with guys.

“No way in hell” shoots out of me so loudly that my voice echoes down the hallway, my filter annihilated after being awake until two a.m. last night.

Jasper doesn’t snore, but he does read. Loudly. Deep into the night, he leaned against his headboard, reading a book thicker than my head. Each page turn crinkled. His lamp buzzed. And, of course, he just had to vocally react to every stanza. Oh, wow. My goodness. Unbelievable. What could be that interesting? Ten bucks it was his own poetry.

I glance at Jasper’s made bed, which has a whopping eleven extra throw pillows and a decorative patchwork quilt patterned with knit ambrosia flowers. The posters of himself still hang from the ceiling. All that’s missing is the real Jasper.

He was gone by the time the bell tower woke me up, which allowed me to dig through my suitcase to ensure nothing could identify me as somebody he used to know. I ripped up my favorite photo of me and Delilah posing in front of Au Sable Forks Lake as campers.

Maybe Jasper is sneaking off to the sister academy to see his girlfriends. Wouldn’t be the first time he’s had more than one.

I glare at my schedule again. PE is a mistake like my single room. I’ll fix this before I even reach class.

“All men, rise!”

That’s the first thing I hear while stumbling onto the Pragma Recreational Center field, sweaty and gross and dying for a sports drink. Of course, even after a thirty-minute hunt, I couldn’t find Maverick the Residential Retainer in his room nor in the communal lobby space. The five gravel paths that sprout out of the courtyard like appendages turned me into a rat in a torture maze for thirty more, trying to find this center. The limited signposts did not help. I check my watch. Ten minutes late. The way an Excellence Scholar should not act.

At least there’s no Jasper. Just a plot of grass so freshly cut that I smell it in the air, surrounded by oak and maple trees, perfectly and evenly planted around the perimeter. An instructor in a red Valentine-crested tracksuit stands before lines of students. They vary widely in height, facial hair, and bulk, ranging from pre- to post-puberty. A multiyear class. They all wear the same tracksuit as the instructor.

I pluck at my tie. There’s a separate uniform?

The instructor starts explaining the locker room rules, flipping through her clipboard paperwork. A chance to join the crowd undetected. I claim a spot in the back row, behind someone a whole head taller whose tracksuit can barely stretch around his bulging biceps. A shield until I can figure out my schedule.

“Banks got a detention,” the human shield whispers to a guy beside him.

“For what?” the other asks.

“Out past lights-out. By three minutes.”

“That’s nothing compared to Richards. I heard he’s getting expelled .”

“Seriously? How? It’s only been a day.”

“Told his roommate he was planning a party in their room, and he snitched.”

Detention over three minutes. Expelled over a plan. I signed up for this life, but my stomach still twists.

At least I found some reliable informants. “Hey,” I say, tugging the tracksuit hem of the human shield. He turns. I instinctively step back to maintain enough space and lower my face. “I think my residential… re…” What was that called? “Retainer. He gave me the wrong schedule.”

His towering body leans over mine to read my schedule, shattering that space within seconds, and I go rigid. When I told Delilah I was confident enough in my appearance at orientation, I meant from a distance . Every student shoving their nose into my business wasn’t on my bingo card. He points at the top of the page. “Here’s the name and student ID. You Charlie?”

“Yeah.”

“Then this one’s yours.”

“But I didn’t sign up for PE,” I say, trying to deepen my voice to deflect his closeness.

“Every grade level is required to. You new here, bro?”

“Um, a bit. They make us?”

“’Cause Valentine doesn’t offer sports. They gotta make sure everyone keeps up with their fitness. You get it.”

I do not.

Defeat hits me hard. This really might be my schedule.

“Does everyone remember what first-day fitness testing is?” the instructor shouts with so much vigor that her dark brown braids wrapped in bows bop against her tan cheeks.

A resounding Yes, Ms. Nallos floods the field.

“To recap, you’ll be paired up. Every minute, you’ll rotate to different stations around the field. Signs will tell you what exercise to test each other with.”

I scan the outdoor exercise equipment. A few signs taped to orange cones are marked with PULL-UPS and PUSH-UPS .

Today?

“Halfway through the term, we’ll check again for improvements. Questions?” Ms. Nallos’s sneakers crunch against the tended-to grass as she meanders between rows to check.

The moment she locks eyes with my tracksuit-less body, it’s over.

She walks up, studying my outfit. “You’re quite overdressed.”

I obscure my hands into fists and lower my chin so my curls shroud more of me. “I didn’t realize PE was on my schedule, so I didn’t buy the tracksuit set. Is this class really required for every student?”

“It is.”

“Ms. Nallos, I didn’t sign up for PE either,” a nasally voice whines one row over. Some white guy with a foot for a face, his chin overpronounced and bedhead sticking up in chunks.

Snickers come from another row.

“Quiet, Cody,” Ms. Nallos yells, then smiles at me oddly before checking her clipboard. “I’ve never taught you. Are you the Charlie von… Heavy Prince… I marked absent?”

Close enough. “Yes, I got lost on the way.”

Ms. Nallos returns to the front of the field and digs through a workout bag on a bench. She pulls out a clump of red clothes and chucks them over the lines of heads. “Catch!”

The clothes land in a pile at my dress shoes.

“Luckily, I’ve come prepared to help those who forgot their uniform.” Ms. Nallos points toward Pragma Recreational Center. “Locker room. Go. Five minutes to change.”

Spotlight number two.

Murmurs hit me from every angle as I swipe up the clothes and make my trip across the field, then search for the locker room in the center, mortification crashing through me. My feet are too small to wear just socks, I wear dress shoe sole inserts for a reason, I can’t —

My back slides down the locker room door until I hit the freezing tile. The pants and shirt are marked with L on the tags. Could mean Loser . But probably just means Large . Now my body will look even narrower compared with everyone else’s. I check my watch again. Four minutes left. Maybe it’s already time to use my emergency phone call to Delilah. Why didn’t she warn me that physical education is mandatory? She should’ve known this would blow up my life.

Yet I sit there, frozen in place, letting time pass by as the fears I’ve swallowed since yesterday consume me. I haven’t gotten a second to breathe, let alone process everything already falling apart. Maybe I can’t pull off hiding here.

I have to. For Mom. For me .

I rush into a stall to change. Of course the joggers hang over my feet by an inch, and two watermelons could fit between me and this undershirt. By the time I’m back on the field, testing has begun. Ms. Nallos is listing off partners.

She recites a slew of names I don’t recognize before shouting, “Xavier Nguyen and Charlie von H, begin at pull-ups.”

From a group of muscular guys huddled in a friend circle, one steps forward. The six-foot-tall monster I cowered behind earlier.

My stomach drops as the walking mass of muscle named Xavier Nguyen approaches. I didn’t notice before, but unlike everyone else’s buzz cuts and short hair, the black bangs draped over his forehead are at least parted with a bit of style. He stops before me, and his meaty fist comes flying at my face.

I squeeze my eyes shut, but the blow never comes. I open them.

Xavier shows a crooked smile, waiting for his fist to be bumped. “We meet again, man.”

My nerves flip as I knock his fist back lightly—but not too much. Be manly. Was it too much? “Y-yo.” I cringe internally even as I say it. End me.

We walk toward a square expanse of asphalt marked with PULL-UPS , where three metal bars increase in height. Xavier zips off his tracksuit jacket, only leaving behind the undershirt, and pulls a spoon from his pants pocket. He kisses the curved back.

I blink at the spoon.

He returns a blink like I’m the problem. “What? Gotta beat my personal record from last year. This spoon’s lucky.”

It’s not even a miniature collector spoon for grandmas or a special trinket one could find in an antique store. Just a normal spoon. “How do you know it’s lucky?”

“My friend’s an expert in the dark arts.”

Okay.

Ms. Nallos blows her whistle. “One minute. Go!”

Xavier latches onto the tallest bar and pounds out pull-up after pull-up, keeping a perfectly parallel angle. I stare in awe. His muscles are bigger than I even imagined. If I stole his lucky spoon, would I sprout muscles like that?

The whistle goes off again, and Xavier’s feet hit the asphalt. His cheeks are flushed, but there isn’t a drop of sweat on that chiseled face I could only dream of having. He twirls his spoon over the top of his knuckles before shoving it into his pocket. “Verdict?”

“Um,” I say. “You had nice form?”

“No, my number of pull-ups.”

My shoulders hitch. I forgot to count. “Fifty?”

Xavier’s head tilts. “The pull-up world record for our age is forty-four.”

“Switch partners!”

I approach the medium-height bar. Maybe someone like Jasper Grimes, who magically achieves success at everything he touches, could hit the same number as Xavier. Not me. But if I don’t, will Xavier figure it out?

The whistle blows.

A fire ignites within me. I pull myself up as Xavier watches.

Then I come flopping back down like a dead fish. Stomach first, then head, a sharp pain zapping through me. I flip onto my back and squeeze my eyes shut. How many human sacrifices do I need to make to pass PE?

Ms. Nallos does the rounds with her clipboard, asking each pair for their numbers. She reaches us quicker than I’d like.

“I got twelve, I think,” Xavier tells her. “Charlie got two.”

Ms. Nallos inspects my limp body that very much got zero, then moves on to the next pair. Once she’s gone, Xavier offers to help me up.

My instincts warn me to decline so he can’t compare our hand sizes, but I’m in such a daze that I accept, only for my oversized tracksuit sleeve to get in the way. Slapping the sleeve back up to my shoulder, I try again. “Thanks.”

“You know they sell our gym uniforms at the campus gift shop, right?”

“We have a gift shop?”

Xavier’s brow pinches. Naturally, a gift shop was built since I was a camper, and I still know nothing about Valentine. “Yeah?”

“I didn’t know,” I mutter. “Why did you lie? About my score.”

He studies me in a way that makes my heart race. “Hey, we all took a break during summer. Let me know if you’re ever looking for a trainer. I train mornings and nights in the workout rooms here.”

On top of PE? “Thanks…,” I say again.

“Either way, I’m sure you’ll make some gains back soon, man.”

How am I supposed to make gains back when I never had gains to begin with?