Peter sat transfixed behind the plastic scorecards on the sidelines of the east gym, safely poised on a folding table as he witnessed what he could almost convince himself was the hallowed storm-bringing of Olympians.

Or at least Olympians playing volleyball.

                Due to his sore lack of stature and hitting power, he had been assigned to scorekeeping duty while the rest of the freshmen class played.  It stung, like it always did when Peter was forced to miss out on fun activities that normal-sized kids could participate in with nary a blink, but he was at least grateful he got to be involved somehow, and what was more, watch the ferocious display of digs, sets, and spikes.  There were four nets set up side-by-side in the pristine space so that everyone could be involved, and Ms. Watson had allowed Peter to choose which court he presided over.

                After quickly scanning the area, he’d become aware that most of the eyes of the class were on him again, clearly interested in having him for their side.  It wasn’t a welcome change, and knotted his stomach back up the same way it had been the day before: a feeling he had mistakenly thought was beginning to fade.

                However, after his gaze passed over the goggle-eyed student body again, he latched suddenly onto Lisa, standing unassumingly by the side of the small crowd, with her brilliant red tresses tied back in a ponytail.  As usual, hers was only pair of eyes that didn’t lock onto him with academic hunger.  She delicately raised a hand and waggled her fingers at him, an encouraging smile on her lips, and suddenly Peter felt relaxed, despite the continued presence of monumental gawkers.  He quickly selected her court, much to the groaning chagrin of several disappointed parties.

                Of course, as Peter realized once Ms. Watson had deposited him onto the side table, he wasn’t exactly being left alone yet.  Just as soon as he’d chosen, he could feel a sense of foreboding creeping under his skin.  The trio of Sharon, Amy, and Kimmy had guessed Peter would make such a move and ensured they were in the same game as Lisa.  Each of them, especially Amy, flashed him a self-assured and borderline victorious grin as they filed onto the court and took their positions.  For a moment, it made Peter question his choice of court, but a gratified glance from Lisa set him straight again as the class finishing lining up and Ms. Watson blew a whistle to begin the games.

                From the first serve it was clear that the talent on the court wasn’t evenly spread.  Most of the players fell into the camp of Lisa and Kimmy, both of whom clearly didn’t have much practice with a volleyball.  Sharon, being fairly athletic, had some experience, but even her efforts paled in comparison next to the Amazonian Amy, who took full advantage of her height and toned physique to dance effortlessly around the court, leaping up to the net to smack and place the ball with near-perfect accuracy.

Her bronzed arms bulged a little on each dig, and she seemed capable of bounding right over the net on each lithe attack.  Nearly every one of her spikes met the floor on the opposite side for a point, and when her inexperienced opponents were lucky enough to get under the ball, they ended up with raw forearms just trying to get the thing back in the air, and that included the boys who had to try very hard not to look like they’d been hurt on the dive.  There was boredom as well in her gestures, as if it was all inevitable to her.

Amy was a titanic and ferocious beast at the game, and each time Peter found himself having to flip the score card counter over the metal rings due to her fierce moves, he could see her shooting him a glance, expectancy in her dark irises.

She had her audience, and Peter couldn’t help but be reminded on each spike that those same powerful fingers had so effortlessly plucked him like a scurrying mouse from the sanctity of the ground.  He had felt the musculature even in her firm fingertips, practiced at applying just the right amount of pressure to accomplish whatever needed doing, be it shutting down volleyball tournaments or snatching up tiny teenagers into her warm palm.

By the time Amy had closed down the first game and moved onto the second, every ear-splitting crack of her hand against the ball caused Peter to cringe, unable to help himself imagining being attached to the white sphere as it soared over the net, closer and closer to Amy’s enormous waiting hands to receive their prize.  The thundering screech of her larger-than-average shoes as she dove across the floor didn’t help matters, either; it made Peter grateful to be on a table rather than the floor.

The tiny teen did his best to ignore these aggressive displays, though, and focused his attention instead on Lisa, who was unfortunate enough to be on the opposing side to the team Amy was single-handedly delivering to victory.  The redhead seemed unconcerned with the increasing gap in the score, and was simply doing her best to contribute wherever possible without having her arms shattered by one of Amy’s whizzing spikes.  Several of them landed on the linoleum hard enough to make a crater, mere inches from her feet, and as Peter watched, he was well aware that any one of those impacts would render him a quadriplegic were he in Lisa’s position.  Her play style was decidedly more defensive, but she simultaneously appeared unwilling to cower in the corner of the court like some of her even less athletic cohorts.

It impressed Peter, to say the least, to see her throwing herself as best she could into a foreign sport, her orange ponytail whipping back and forth behind her head with the effort.  After a few minutes of watching her get the hang of it, he was able to forget even Amy’s percussive show.

With the end of the day nearing, Ms. Watson’s whistle bleated in everyone’s eardrums, drawing attention for the announcement of the three-minute warning.  Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw Amy drawing further back on the court and bending down a little so Sharon could whisper something in her ear, a smile cracked over her thin lips.  The siren’s silver eyes flashed over in his direction as she finished uttering the last of the secret to her taller crony, flaring like flames in the midst of a fog.

Peter clutched his arms around his chest for warmth.

The players took their positions again and served to Amy’s side.  Kimmy, the shortest of the trio, hunkered down and bopped the volleyball up, allowing Sharon to tap it on her slender fingertips just above the net.

That was when Amy came charging up the court in a blur of pounding feet and whipping hair, nearly bowling over a clearly clueless male classmate who had been blankly observing the play.  Her fingers clenched into fists that, despite the roar of cheers and laughter over the entire gym, Peter would’ve sworn he could hear crack.  Hurtling off the floor with the full power allowed by her toned thighs, Amy would her mighty hand up, where it collided with the ball and fired it back over the net, directly into Lisa’s face.

Peter wouldn’t have needed to hear the sound of the strike to wince, though it was a thunderous marriage of rubber on flesh all the same.  Lisa, thin and noticeably dwarfed by the towering Amy, was swept down to her haunches by the blow, and audibly gasped.  Even at the distance, Peter could see her biting her lip and fighting back the urge to moan with the stinging surprise that no-doubt was still resonating in her skin.  As Lisa pulled a trembling hand away from her face, a distinct pink welt was visible, and her smallest classmate flinched again.

Frozen in place, Peter turned away from the sight of a few players on Lisa’s side checking on her and observed the opposition.  Amy’s hands were planted firmly on her hips, her mouth quivering a little, as though fighting back a gleeful little curl.

A few feet away, Sharon was standing with arms crossed.  More practiced stoicism was gelled on her face, unmoved and devoid of emotion as Lisa was helped back to her feet.  With a tilt of her head, the mythic blonde paid Peter one of her famous glances that managed to barrel right through his being.  Her lips pursed tightly together for just a second, puckered, and then relaxed again.

Peter tried to swallow, but realized his throat had gone bone-dry.

“Sorry!” Amy called out to Lisa with barely concealed sarcasm.  “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” came the humble reply from the victimized girl.

“That was totally on me.  I’m just getting into the game, I guess.”  Amy’s eyes darted over to Peter as she spoke these final words.

After a timeout whistle from Watson, Lisa was hustling off the court, still grimacing from the sting of Amy’s spike, but she couldn’t help but smile at the sight of Peter.  She took a seat behind the table, careful not to jostle it as she laid a soft, pale hand on the surface behind the scorecards.  Peter felt instantly soothed at the sudden proximity to her again, and almost matched the width of her grin.

Eyeing her hand, the same one that had so tenderly cradled him with iron steadiness in Bio, he found himself wishing she’d be willing to hold him again, but knew it would be a serious overplay to request such a thing.

“Hey,” he began awkwardly, scratching the back of his head.  His eyes fell on the pink welt on Lisa’s cheek, but he forced himself to return to her green eyes for refuge, before the mounting secondhand guilt got too great.

“Hey,” she responded with a sigh, shutting her eyes for a few extended seconds.  “You know, I don’t think I’m cut out for volleyball?”

“Nonsense.  You just need practice,” Peter defended instinctively before realizing she was just trying to lighten the mood.  “You were doing pretty well.  You got a good number of hits out there.”

“Uh-huh.  Fifteen in an hour isn’t exactly Olympic level.”

“Nineteen,” Peter corrected, blushing as soon as he’d said it.  Lisa blinked, processing his precise count, but clearly resolved not to let him stew in his bashfulness for too long.

“Wow.  Better than I thought,” she said.

“It’s definitely more than I could get.  I think my limit would be one.”

Lisa fought back a giggle and shook her head, resting her cheek on a hand.  “You’re a real goofball, Peter, you know that?”

“I try,” he said simply.  The tiny freshman eyed Lisa’s forearms, rosy as well from striking the ball, then traced up to her raw cheek, unfettered by the dotting of freckles over her countenance.  “I feel like some people around here could use a laugh sometimes.”

“I know what you mean,” Lisa whispered under her breath, shooting a glance back at the court, where Amy had just slammed her umpteenth ace.  Her voice puffed theatrically with sarcasm: “I’m starting to think the three of them don’t like me very much.”

“Maybe so,” Peter said truthfully.  “That doesn’t matter, though.  Not everybody has to like everybody.  They’re not worth the time if they don’t.”

The green eyes swiveled back to Peter at this.  “They seem to want to make friends with you, though,” she said as she lowered her head toward the table, resting her cheek on its side.

Peter shrugged, taking a few steady steps closer to Lisa’s adorable billboard-sized reclining face.  He stopped just an inch shy of where a silky strand of her red hair had come to rest.  “I know the kinds of friends I want to have.”

Lisa batted her eyelashes a few times, obviously just as flustered now as her much smaller peer, and allowed herself another smile.  For the second time this day, they were caught in a surprisingly comfortable silence.

“All right, that’s it.  Class dismissed,” barked Ms. Watson after a final attention-getting whistle.  “Don’t leave your sweaty shorts on the floor, or they become mine, and they’re ten bucks for a new pair.”  She marched back from the center of the gym through the sea of exhausted trudging teenagers toward the scorekeeping table, addressing Lisa by surname as she did all students: “Feeling all right, Carol?”

“Yes, I’m fine, thank you.”

“Just splash a little cold water on it and it’ll be gone in a couple minutes.  Keep on the move next time,” the woman instructed, tucking a pencil behind her ear through the ruffled nest of her short brown hair.  Her eyes turned to Peter.  “Sorry we couldn’t find a way to bring you in on this game, Clark.  I’m still trying to figure out ways to have you participate.  I want you to be getting something out of class time, too.”

“That’s fine.  I understand,” Peter said with a nod, recognizing the difficulty the woman was probably having in integrating a five-inch-tall kid into physical feats intended for those whose ankles he could barely pass.

“Ready to hop in and hit the lockers?” the P.E. teacher said, an honest-to-goodness grin revealing rows of slightly discolored but nonetheless straight teeth.  Her tanned hand lowered to the table, the thick fingers toughened by weightlifting forming a lightly callused bridge for Peter to dock.

He stiffened slightly at the timbre of her voice, even as he willingly climbed aboard her palm with a last smile at Lisa.  The forty-something educator’s gruff tone from the day before had mollified noticeably; certainly it struck Peter as a step forward, considering the irritatingly intimate proximity he had with the woman while changing in and out of his gym uniform, but this adjustment irked him all the same, as though she’d been replaced by some B-movie extra-terrestrial.

“I’ll keep thinking about some possibilities and keep you posted.  And if you think you’ve got any ideas about how to keep yourself busy during days like this, you just let me know, okay?” Watson said, even more gently than before.  “We don’t want you getting bored, hon.”

What was this “hon” business from a woman who would’ve looked perfectly comfortable cracking skulls in the MMA circuit ten years ago?  Peter wasn’t one to judge someone’s personality, but this was the same individual who’d put up only a meager effort to conceal a blistering contempt for him the day before.

The freshman hugged his legs to his chest in the leathery palm as Ms. Watson re-entered her office, resolving at last to ignore it and instead focus on the several far more pressing and threatening aspects of his reality, namely the fact that his most sinister fans were hell-bent on removing the closest person he had to a best friend from the picture.