Page 7 of Finding Her

bear

No. No, no, no, no, no.

I refused to be partnered up with the sunshine girl. It was bad enough that she had come skipping over to talk to me before class even started, but now she wanted to stick by my side for the whole period?

No.

But… Was there any ideal partner in this class?

Poppy was going on about something else now, but I tuned her out and looked around the room.

Most of the pairs of girls around the room were whispering and giggling with each other—a fair number of them looking at me —but maybe there was one who wasn’t partnered up yet.

Some freshman girl who would be scared of me.

Not that I made it my mission to scare young girls or anything.

“Now, everyone, introduce yourself to your partner,” Mrs. Dixon said, as if everyone wasn’t already talking.

But when I spared at a glance at Poppy, she raised her eyebrows, clearly telling me that I was supposed to be talking to her right now.

But she didn’t look angry, just expectant, as her brown eyes shone at me.

“Bear,” I said, then turned away again. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her bewildered expression. Then the next thing I knew, she was ducking around my arm so she could come to stand in front of me. She was a persistent one, wasn’t she?

“What’s a bear?” She asked. I closed my eyes and let out a long breath. This year was already off to a bad enough start, I wasn’t going to make it worse by getting detention for yelling at some poor, defenceless girl in gym class.

“It’s my name ,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. When I opened my eyes again, her face was all scrunched up in confusion.

“What kind of name is Bear?” She asked.

“It’s short for Barrett.”

And for some reason, that made her look absolutely bewildered. “So your name is Barrett, then?”

Why was she so obsessed with knowing my name? All she needed to know was that I went by Bear, did she really need my full legal name on top of that?

“No,” I said tersely. I didn’t want her going around calling me Barrett, so I had to give her some answers. “It’s Levi.”

Her face scrunched up even more, her glossy lips twisting into a frown. “Then where did Bear come from?”

I prayed for strength. “My name is Levi Barrett, known as Bear. It’s based on my last name.”

Her face finally un-scrunched and she nodded as it all came together.

Not that it was exactly rocket science, but at least she’d finally caught on and I wouldn’t have to keep explaining.

I heard her mumble under her breath, “I knew Levi sounded wrong,” but I didn’t ask what she meant. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“Let’s start with warm-ups!” Mrs. Dixon called. “Two laps around the gym.”

I set off at a run immediately, hoping Poppy would take a minute to catch up, but she kept up with me. I did my best not to look too annoyed. I guess we were partners, even if I didn’t see any reason that we needed partners to run.

“So, why do you have to take gym?” she asked.

And here I thought we’d have some sort of unspoken agreement about not asking why we were both in the wrong gym class. I guess she didn’t think the same.

“Why do you?” I shot back.

“I moved around a lot when I was growing up,” Poppy said, which didn’t answer the question at all. I just stayed silent, figuring she would keep talking. She seemed like one of those people who couldn’t stand to be in silence.

“Some credits slipped through the cracks,” she continued, just like I expected.

“Actually, what happened was that I moved halfway through grade nine and they didn’t have any girls’ gym classes to put me in.

They offered to put me in a boys’ gym class, but I told them that I would just defer it until next year. ”

That had to be a dig at me, right? When I glanced over at her, I realized she was staring at me, even as she ran. I hardened my expression, hoping to scare her off but it seemed to have the opposite effect as she said, “Obviously, you didn’t make the same decision.”

I scowled. As if I would ever choose to be put in a freshman girls’ class. I was very much here against my will. In fact, I think this could be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

“I didn’t choose this,” I snapped. We came to the end of our second lap and stopped running.

To my annoyance, she didn’t seem even remotely out of breath even though I’d set a fast pace.

She just put her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows, clearly not believing me.

As if there was any boy in the world who would choose to be put through this torture.

“Seriously, I didn’t. They stuck me in this class without even telling me that I had to take gym again. ”

Mrs. Dixon came by and gave us a sheet of exercises we had to do during the period.

Poppy didn’t break eye contact with me as she took the sheet from Mrs. Dixon.

I got the feeling we were having a staring contest, but I didn’t understand why it mattered so much to me that I didn’t let her win.

It was like my pride was somehow on the line, for reasons I couldn’t comprehend.

“You’re a senior, right?” Poppy asked. Maybe I should start lying about it and tell everyone I’m actually a junior or a sophomore.

Okay no, the idea of me passing as a sophomore was laughable.

But convincing her I was a junior would probably be possible.

But would that really be any less embarrassing for me—saying I was a junior in a freshman class, instead of a senior?

Besides, it seemed like she already knew the truth and lying might not help me.

“Yes,” I said.

“So, why do you have to take gym?” She asked. “I told you my reason. Tell me yours.”

I let out an annoyed breath and looked around. I didn’t want to have to explain this to anybody, but especially not to her. I took the paper from her hand and looked over the exercises.

“Come on, we should start,” I said. “It’ll take most of the period to get through all of these.”

She snatched the paper back. “Not until you tell me.”

She put her hands on her hips and stared, looking like she was trying to burn a hole through me with just her eyes. I didn’t know what I’d done, but for some reason, I’d made this girl become determined to see all my innermost thoughts and I did not like it.

But I also couldn’t just stand around chatting with her for the whole period.

I couldn’t risk anything going wrong in this gym class—if Mrs. Dixon decided I wasn’t participating enough, she could fail me and force me to repeat the class again next semester and I was not letting that happen.

I’d spent hours last night looking up school rules, seeing if there was some way of getting out of this, but everything I found said the same thing: participating on a school team did not count as an exemption from gym class.

I was stuck here, whether I liked it or not.

And I didn’t.

I moved in so close that Poppy’s eyes widened and mumbled, “I failed gym.”

She stepped back, her eyes growing even wider. “Nobody fails gym.”

Great, she didn’t believe me. Not only did I have to tell her the truth, I had to convince her, because it wasn’t like she was just going to let it go now.

“Well, I did,” I said.

She just stared at me. Then her mouth twitched like she was gonna laugh, but she schooled her expression back to a neutral one and said, “Okay. You failed gym. How?”

“What do you mean how? I just failed.”

“Yeah, but you’re a hockey player,” she said. “I mean, shouldn’t that like automatically make you pass?”

“You would think so, wouldn’t you?” I griped.

See, it wasn’t that I’d been so bad at gym that I failed or anything.

In fact, I didn’t think anybody could be that bad at it.

It was just that I hadn’t bothered to show up most days.

I mean, it just seemed so stupid that I would have to take gym class, then also go to hockey practice after school.

I didn’t see a reason to do both. I showed up for our health class days—although, even doing that was painful—and for any days I knew we were being evaluated so I had some scores, I just didn’t worry about the participation marks.

I thought I’d shown up enough to make me pass, but apparently, I’d missed some crucial classes.

And the next thing I knew, my folks were getting a call from the school telling them that I would have to repeat the class this year.

What they had neglected to mention was which class I would end up in.

That had been a nice little surprise when I received my schedule yesterday morning.

And Coach had been none too sympathetic when I’d stormed into his office and slammed the paper right down on his desk asking if he’d known about it.

Seriously. The guy had taken one glance at it and gone, “Oh yeah, I did notice, but…” He shrugged and said, “Oh well. Anyway, we better go.”

I was convinced he was doing it to punish me, because there was no reason he should have wanted me here.

Punishing me for what, I wasn’t sure. I guess he was just mad that his star player had somehow managed to fail a class.

But it wasn’t like I’d done it on purpose and I hadn’t gotten any warnings last year telling me there was anything wrong, so how was I supposed to know this was going to happen?

I guess that was enough of an answer for Poppy because she shrugged and dropped onto the ground to do the first part of the circuit.

I followed suit, hoping that would be the end of us having a conversation at all.

But then, once my guard was down as I started doing push-ups, she started talking again.

And I swear she didn’t shut up for the whole class.

By the end of the hour, I was convinced girls’ gym classes were harder than boys’ ones. Heck, that gym class was harder than most of my hockey practices. Or was I really just that unfit after my summer off?