Page 127 of Rock Bottom Girl

“Trust me, Mars. You want to go to this shindig,” Jake whispered in my ear.

Ididkind of want to see the inside of the house. I mean, the Greek columns on the outside couldn’t be the only ridiculous display of wealth, right? “Am I even invited?”

“Everyone is invited. Part of the fun is all the feuds and arguments that break out.”

“Fun,” I quipped. I turned my attention back to my pot roast.

“So, Cicero, you ready for some rainy fall v-ball?” Floyd asked.

The morning classes had been able to go outside for another sweaty mess of field hockey and flag football. But the skies had opened up and were currently dumping buckets of cold rain.

“About that. How much say do we have over the curricula?” I asked.

“You guys are lucky,” Haruko piped up. “While the rest of us schmucks have to worry our butts off about standardized testing, you guys can do pretty much whatever the hell you want.”

“Is that true?” I asked Floyd.

He shrugged his burly lumberjack shoulders. “There’s always the presidential fitness bullshit. But other than that, we’re really only limited by the equipment required. You got something in mind?”

I looked at Jake and found him watching me with a mix of interest and affection. It made me feel like I’d just drunk a mug full of hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream.

“I might have an idea. Do we have any Ping-Pong tables?”

“We can check. They might be buried in the back of the supply room,” Floyd mused.

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The kids looked at me like I was speaking Pennsylvania Dutch to them.

“So we’renotplaying volleyball?” a curly-haired senior with an overbite asked.

“No volleyball.”

“And no Ping-Pong either?” a freckle-faced sophomore clarified.

“No Ping-Pong,” I confirmed. “Instead, we’re going to break into teams to design and perform Ping-Pong ball trick shots.”

They blinked at me, trying to figure out if this was some kind of elaborate gym teacher trap. At any second, they expected me to blow my whistle and force them all to start pumping out push-ups.

“We brought you some visual inspiration,” Floyd said, whipping out his iPad cued up to a YouTube video.

“That’sDude, Nice Shot,” one of the kids said as they all crowded in closer.

The class watched as four grown adults set up what was essentially a beer pong shot from an upper level running track down onto a Ping-Pong table at center court.

A collective “whoa” arose when they successfully made the shot.

“You guys will be evaluated on the difficulty of the shot, teamwork, and your victory dance. Extra credit for a successful shot,” I explained.

“I call Milton for my team,” one of the boys soccer team stars shouted.

“Nice try, Danny. Mr. Wilson and I have already divided you all up into teams.” Diverse teams from all social backgrounds.Take that, punks.

We split the kids up and sent them off to their respective tables. We’d found five in the bowels of the storage room and had done our best to dust them off. The kids were already deep in conversation over strategy.

Damn if I wasn’t getting excited just seeing them get excited. Jake was onto something when it came to relevancy and involvement. The beauty ofDude, Nice Shotwas no one needed to be an athlete. In fact, it was better to be smart than physically strong. Everyone could participate.