“And she poked you with the pencil?” Erica asked calmly as she carried her brother down the hallway toward the final class of the day.

                “Well, I mean, she didn’t actually… poke me…”

                “What’s the problem, then?”

                “No problem, I was just saying.”

                Erica stopped dead in her tracks and brought her hand up closer to her face as her tiny brother leaned back against her soft fingers, confused as to why she had halted.

                “Bro, look, no offense, but you’re sort of putting me in an awkward spot here.”

                “Why?” Peter asked innocently.

                “Look, I mean, it’s no big deal or anything, but… it’s mom.”

                “She doesn’t have to know that stuff, right?”

                “Well…”

                Peter was beginning to feel worried.  Bracing himself against his sister’s palm, he carefully stood up on the fleshy surface, hanging onto his sister’s gargantuan thumb for support as he tried to hold himself up higher.  “Well, what?”

                “Look, don’t get mad at me about this or anything, it wasn’t my idea, but… mom kinda said I need to report everything to her.”

                “Everything?”

                “Everything.  She was pretty freaked out about all this.  You know that.  She’s not gonna be okay with it until she knows everything went perfectly for you today.”

                Peter sighed.  Somehow, he wasn’t surprised.  “She’ll never be okay with it.”

                Erica paused for a moment, swallowing uncomfortably.  “Yeah, I know.”

                “But you can just tell her it was fine, right?”

                Erica rolled her eyes.  “I’ll do what I can, but seriously, you’ve gotta be careful.  You know she’s gonna grill you about it too, and she’ll just be waiting for something to not add up.  You know she doesn’t want you here.  She wants you back at home.”

                Peter hung his head, flopping with defeat back into a sitting position.  “She doesn’t want me to ever grow up.”

                Erica continued walking again, gripping the strap of her backpack in one hand for support, and peered down at her brother sulking pathetically in her hand.  “Look, Peter, it’s not fun for anyone, but the fact is… you’re not going to.”

                Peter felt hollow.  He knew she was right, and that was what burned the most.

                “This your class?” Erica asked quietly.  “In the East Gym?”

                “Yeah.”

                “Cool.”  Without another word between them, Erica strode into the gym, which was already bustling with kids unpacking their athletic uniforms for class, many of whom had already headed off for the locker rooms to change.  Stopping at the partially folded wooden bleachers lining the long brick wall of the cavernous place, Erica stooped down and allowed her brother to solemnly disembark onto the seat before heading off for her own class.

                Peter sat down, rooting through his backpack for his wadded up gym outfit at the bottom, and gazed across the impossibly wide expanse of the gym.  The classrooms had been large enough. 

                This was almost too much. 

                Peter felt practically swallowed up by the sheer size of the place, the open air feeling cold and uninviting on his skin.  The rough wood of the bleacher seat was chipped and smelled a little like rubbing alcohol.  Wrinkling his upper lip, Peter unwrapped his custom-made gym uniform from the bag and pushed the folds out of it, letting it hang in front of him, before feeling the unmistakable twinge of impending defeat.

                Where was he supposed to change into it?
                “Great…” Peter huffed under his breath, frowning.  All he needed was another impossibly awkward situation to top off this peachy day.  Blinking a few times with frustration, Peter could feel vibrations of heavy footfalls rumbling through the ground and up to him.  He looked up again to find himself staring into a monumental pillar of toned flesh, a quadricep like a tree trunk tightened warmly on the smooth plain of skin.  Momentarily flustered, Peter’s eyes quickly darted the rest of the way up the towering figure before him, his vision whizzing past the rumpled hem of an athletic shirt, the mountainous hills of two fully matured breasts, and finally to the face of a woman who looked to be in her late forties staring down at him.

                “Um… Ms. Watson?” Peter piped nervously, gulping a little.  He knew he certainly had no reason to be nervous around a teacher, but there was something about his new gym teacher that was imposing.  Unnerving.  The way she held herself, with one hand poised on her athletically curvy hip, her fingers scrunching into the carelessly wrinkled Physical Education shirt.  One of her thick brunette eyebrows raised almost accusingly on her somewhat rubbery face, like she wasn’t starting down at one of her students, but rather a centipede skittering across the floor.

                “You’re Clark, right?  The kid the school board made all the hubbub about?” she asked with slight annoyance, her feminine voice pervaded by a gravelly gruffness.

                “Yeah.  Yeah, that’s… that’s me,” Peter said with an earnest smile.  With some irony, considering this was a gym teacher, Peter noted to himself that it sounded like the woman smoked pretty regularly.

                Ms. Watson nodded, frowning a little and clearing her throat.  “Right.  So, according to the school board, I’m supposed to be able to supervise you while you’re in this class, so I can’t let you go into the boy’s locker room on your own, even if you can get a friend to take you in there.”

                “That’s fine.  I knew that,” Peter offered, continuing to stare directly up at his teacher, who made no attempt to stoop at all to lessen the huge expanse of air between each of their faces.

                “My office is in the back of the girl’s locker room.  The best I can offer you is just letting you in there so you can change, and bringing you back out here afterward.”

                “Okay,” Peter responded, swallowing.  Somehow, this made him a bit nervous, but he wasn’t about to go breaking any rules on his first day when he’d already drawn more attention than he’d hoped.  Besides, all things considered, this wasn’t so bad an arrangement.

                “Good.  So, you just hop in, I guess,” Ms. Watson said, her voice coming out sounding more like an order than an offer.  She kneeled slightly, lowering her hand toward the wooden bench a few inches away from Peter’s feet.  The boy couldn’t help but be amazed as he watched the bare, meaty thighs in short gym shorts carrying the comparative immense figure before him into a crouching position, the massive muscle contained within the tan skin seeming to inflate slightly as Ms. Watson clenched in order to hold herself steady.

                Peter eyed the leathery palm of the huge hand laid in front of him before cautiously stepping into it.  Ms. Watson’s fingers were long and thick, looking powerful enough to allow her to palm a basketball.  As the diminutive freshman took a careful seat in the center of his teacher’s palm, he could feel a slight unevenness below his rear end in the form of swollen callouses on the heel of the hand.  He shifted uncomfortably as the woman’s hand rose back up to chest level.

                “Don’t mind that, my hands just get a little rough from the weights in the West Gym,” Ms. Watson said indifferently, evidently feeling the boy’s slight squirming against her skin.  Silently, the pair proceeded across the gym.  Peter got a few more stares from kids who had already changed into their uniforms, but for the most part they were too preoccupied with chatting or roughhousing along the padded walls to care about him.

                It was refreshing, for once.

                Peter tried to keep his eyes averted as Ms. Watson pushed through the swinging wooden door into the girl’s locker room and began walking through the immense caverns of navy blue metal lockers, although he caught glimpses of girls in sports bras and panties dashing past on the tile floor.  All of them slowed down when they saw the stern look on the gym teacher’s face, before coming to a complete stop and gasping in shock at the sight of Peter cupped in the teacher’s rough palm.

                Peter looked back up, feeling his cheeks fully flushed from the embarrassment of being so near to the partially nude girls.  He wondered if they cared that a guy was being allowed into the locker room.  It was almost like a breach of their privacy.

                Would any of them complain?  Would there be problems with the school board?  Would they have to come to some other, even more uncomfortable arrangement?

                “Keep it together.  It’s all cool,” Peter whispered under his breath as Ms. Watson’s hand came to a smooth stop at the surface of the desk in her cramped office.  More stress was the last thing he needed at this point in the day.  Sighing, he climbed off the tips of the woman’s firm fingers and looked around the desk, clutching his backpack against his chest.

                There was a laptop pushed up against the very edge of the desk that to Peter looked more like a big screen TV, as well as a plastic cup containing broken pencils that read “ Best Mom Ever” in dull red letters partially worn away by repeated trips to a dishwasher.  A very small picture frame not much taller than Peter himself was propped up in the corner of the desk, showing Ms. Watson hugging a muscle-bound man in a t-shirt Peter assumed to be her husband, with a young girl in pigtails who looked to be in elementary school standing in front of her parents and frowning.  A short stack of attendance sheets spilling from a manila folder was the only other item on the surface.

                “Look, Clark, we’ve gotta get class started,” Ms. Watson said suddenly, breaking the silence with the blunt weight of her voice and making Peter jump with surprise.  “You wanna get going, or what?”

                “Yeah, sure.  Could you just…” Peter nodded, looking suggestively at the door for Ms. Watson to leave him in momentary privacy.

                “Could I what?”

                “You know… give me a minute?”

                Ms. Watson raised an eyebrow again.  An amused grin cracked across her lower lip.  “No.”

                Peter felt like a lump was making its way up and down his dry throat.  What?

                “I… um, I mean…”

                “School board’s order.  I’ll show you the email if you want.”

                “I… no, no, I don’t need to see it, but…” Peter stammered, feeling the familiar shaking threatening to return to his knees.  “…why?”

                Ms. Watson shrugged uncaringly, tilting her head and pressing her tongue against the inside of her cheek in boredom.  “Liability, I guess?  Something like that.”

                “I… guess that makes sense,” Peter shrugged uncomfortably.

                “Now c’mon, we don’t have all day and the others are waiting.  Take off the shirt and drop the pants.”

                Peter did as he was told, closing his eyes a little as he quickly jerked the clothing off, although still keenly aware that the powerful woman was standing over him like a stone titan.  Watching.  Waiting.  Probably subconsciously studying.  Probably raising an eyebrow in disapproval.

                He was cold.  Icy, almost.  He could feel the goose bumps rippling along his skin.  He wondered if Ms. Watson could see it.

                Arbitrarily, Peter mentally thanked whoever it was in history that had decided underwear didn’t have to be included in the gym outfit.

                Gratified to be done, Peter ended the ten seconds of embarrassment by tugging his gray gym shirt over his head, knowing sooner rather than later he’d need to swallow his pride.  He was in this for the long haul.  He’d promised himself.  This was just all part of the package.  He was in no place to complain.

                “Good work.  See, and it didn’t even sting,” Ms. Watson offered in her best attempt at a joke, although she still sounded irritated with the burden that had obviously been thrust unwillingly upon her by the school board.  “Now, I do have other students to teach too.  Leave your stuff there next to the computer, no one will be able to get in here.  Hop on.”

                Peter didn’t say another word as he awkwardly clambered into the once again awaiting hand of his gym teacher, grateful at least for the warmth he could feel in her toughened skin.

                It was the homestretch of the new chapter of what Peter was beginning to realize was a journey much more complicated than he’d ever considered.