The five-inch freshman steeled himself again his usually uncomfortable surroundings as he stood on Ms. Watson’s desk at the end of his final period of the day. After all, since he’d had to change into his P.E. uniform after Mandy soaked his other clothes in toilet water, there was no need to change out of them. A small blessing, in a depressing kind of way.

                If he could survive a face-forward encounter with Sharon like he just did and walk away from it relatively unscathed, surely he could weather another of these one-on-one exchanges with Watson.

                The dim mirror of the P.E. teacher’s desktop computer loomed above, offering a distorted image of the metallic private space which constituted her office. Only when he saw the door handle turning did something activate in his throat, though he couldn’t have said what it was.

                He felt like a dog who’d caught the scent of an oncoming tornado.

                The middle-aged woman stood above him in her over-tanned, slightly leathery glory - specifically self-imposed glory, as her sculpted arms were a little more swollen than usual, probably from one of those lunchtime workouts she was so fond of mentioning to her shortest student for some reason. Her broad hands were planted on her hips, the dense fingers tapping patiently at her waistline. It seemed to Peter she’d recently gotten a haircut, possibly by her own hand, as her short chestnut locks were ruffled at some creative angles.

                “Oh, sweet pea,” Ms. Watson sighed. She shook her head and clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth as though she’d wandered into her office to find a newborn infant swaddled up on her desk.

                “Hi, Ms. Watson.”

                “I just couldn’t believe my ears when I heard what that little brat did to you,” the woman said. She crossed the short distance from the door to the desk in three delicate footsteps, her tightly knotted running shoes thumping insistently in Peter’s ears nonetheless.  Once she was truly above Peter, she reached over his head and snatched up a plastic water bottle beside the computer. As usual, she took her time arching her hand out, giving him a lengthy view of her dumbbell-weather palm and softly calloused fingers.

                “Yeah,” he said blankly. Peter twiddled his thumbs, only occasionally chancing a glance up at Ms. Watson’s strangely earnest eyes.

                “Let me just tell you, if something like that happened in this class, she would never have gotten as far away as she did. And she definitely wouldn’t have had the chance to drop-”

                “-I… remember what she did…” Peter interrupted. He’d had his watery voyage repeated back to him enough times today. Odds were, it wasn’t going anywhere in his memory anytime soon.

                Ms. Watson placed her fingers gently against her cheek, her lips parting in a feigned swoon. “Oh, I’m sorry, sweetie. I didn’t mean to… well, make you live through it again. I’m sorry.”

                “It’s all right,” Peter said numbly.

                “Well, just know, in Physical Education, we keep a much closer eye on our students. Especially those with special needs. Anyone comes near you in here, I’ll have you back to safety before you can say Bob’s your uncle,” Ms. Watson declared. She unscrewed her water bottle and took a long swig.

                Peter wrinkled his nose. How old was that phrase? Not that it mattered. He was far too busy feeling more than a little creeped out as he watched his gym teacher’s hand unfolding, her fingers curling against her palm in a demonstration of her proposed rescue of her five-inch pupil under dire circumstances.

                How many times today would he have to listen to someone explaining how they would’ve rescued him from capture by capturing him themselves? It was becoming less funny each time. And it wasn’t funny to begin with.

                “And you know…” the teacher continued with a broad sweep of her hand in midair for emphasis. She still hadn’t pulled out her seat to sit down, instead choosing to remain towering above Peter. “…it pained me even more to hear, when I remembered that day I came in here to find you…”

                A siren in the freshman’s skull went off.

                “…oh.”

                “You were trapped down in the sweaty uniforms, sweet pea, completely helpless. Thank God I was able to save you when I did.”

                “Yeah,” he agreed with a stinging swallow. “Good thing.”

                “But today just got me wondering again,” she admitted with some hesitation that Peter realized was only being put up for show. She gnawed her lower lip, her fingertips tapping the plastic cylinder of her bottle. “If I’m doing the right thing… in not doing everything in my power to keep you absolutely safe.”

                “Ms. Watson…” Peter said, taking a deep breath. “It’s all taken care of, honest. Nothing else bad will happen. I’m… pretty sure the girl that did that to me was the same one who put me in the… you know. So really, it’s taken care of.”

                “Is it?” the woman questioned. She leaned in over the desk, her volume dropping down to a rasp. Her eyes seemed to have grown twice as large on the descent as she studied Peter with whatever she approximated as fearful pity. “Sweet pea, I hate to say it, but… thinking about all this… what it’s doing to my conscience, well… I’ll be honest, too. It’s putting some undue stress on me.”

                No mention had been made of it yet, but the boy’s gaze was instinctively invited over the edge of the desk. He crept forward, peering downward, and realized that his gym teacher had already pried both tightly socked feet out of her training shoes. Her digits were wriggling against the frayed white cotton. Their warm, mealy aroma was already wafting up from the ground and tickling his nostrils.

                Peter backed quickly away, looking up at Ms. Watson in time to witness a broad smile of recognition. A nod, oddly humble. He felt his liver rotate, and not just from trying to filter the rising scent.

                “Oh,” he exhaled. His arms hung limply at his sides. “Right.”

                “You catch my drift, honey?” Her voice actually dared to be playful. She took hold of the desk chair and dragged it steadily out from under the cold metal altar and deposited her overly toned rear end into it. The wheels groaned.

                “Y-Yeah.”
                “I see it as a mutually beneficial situation,” she explained. Ms. Watson placed her water bottle gently back on the desk and reached below the field of Peter’s vision, her bulging forearms fidgeting at ankle height. “There’s a way we can both be free of stress. You know, just doing a favor for each other. And it would mean so much to me, too.”

                “Uh-huh.”

                Peter didn’t allow himself to feel fear, though the revulsion was a little harder to withhold as his grinning gym teacher leaned back on the pad of her chair and hoisted both unfortunately bare and balmy feet up onto the tabletop. She slapped her palms down against her shins, indicatively massaging as her heels slid forward with a soft squeak. In a few seconds, she had each damp ped straight up and dwarfing Peter like a pair of linebackers.

                “Go on, sweet pea,” Ms. Watson encouraged. Her toes scrunched and flexed above. In turn, her entire sole to waned and stretched, gleaming dully with leftover perspiration. “Let’s get you a little exercise.”

                Plucking the neck of his shirt up higher and tugging it over his nose to impede the odor, Peter marched forward. He knew the score. Disgusted as it made him, now was not the time to be backing down in the face of adversity, no matter how angry it made him. Not after the hoops he’d had to jump in that office with his mother and the principal. This was for his friends, his costars, and the teachers who hadn’t decided to take advantage of their toy-sized student.

                And of course, this was for Lisa.

                Peter hooked his fists into the spongy sole of Ms. Watson’s right foot. Instantly his knuckles came away wet with salty sweat, but he didn’t pause. He plunged his fingers hard against the stippled wrinkles and began to knead. Bunching the thick, rubbery skin as close as he could against his fists, he punched it into submission, or as near as he could manage.

                “Mmm… that’s the spot, sweetie,” she said just a little too dreamily.

                Almost more grossed out by the woman’s sultry, nicotine-flavored commentary than he was by the landscape of sweat, Peter pressed on. He attacked the fleshy divets of her sole as high and as wide as he could reach. After a couple of minutes of solid work, a steadily formed droplet of sweat trickled down from her arch and along his thin wrist. The boy put his own legs to work as well, alternately kicking at her heel and digging the tips of his miniature shoes into the broad, rounded base of the woman’s sprint-swollen foot.

                When he was sure he’d covered every reachable square centimeter of the woman’s right foot, Peter regretfully turned his gaze to the untouched left one. It bobbed from side to side, as if trying to get his attention. Stifling a grunt, he coughed through the muted sourness of the air and took hold of her left instep.

                “Wait,” Ms. Watson said softly. “Sweet pea, go ahead and step back for me.”
                Unsure, Peter did as he was told, hoping to get through this as soon as possible through cooperation.

                “And you might want to get down, so I don’t knock you over.”

                “Get down? What fo-”

                Peter dropped to his knees, cowering just in time as Ms. Watson’s foot plopped over top of him. It didn’t go so far as to lay its full moist weight on the desktop with him between, but it was awfully close. A couple of inches of wiggle room was left underneath the woman’s musky sole. She chuckled, shifting her ankle as the ball of her foot settled heavily against Peter’s waist.

                “See, that’s the ticket,” she congratulated. “Now you’ve got all kinds of access.”

                Peter wriggled somewhat unsuccessfully, attempting to wrestle his way as far out from under her foot as he could manage. For leverage, he was forced to plant his hand between two of her middle toes. Promptly, she clenched both muscular digits together, entrapping him by the wrist.

                “Oops,” she snickered. “Sorry, sweet pea.”

                The toes relented their pressure after a few seconds, and Peter was able to wrench himself just far enough to free up his arms. His legs were still lodged awkwardly under his teacher’s bare, sticky sole. Of course, the commotion had easily caused the makeshift gas mask of his shirt to be tugged off his nose. Squeezing his cheek past the circled pad of the woman’s big toe was impossible without a firm greasing against his face.

                Shoving down his primal preoccupation with self-preservation, Peter resumed work. He rolled the rough weights of Ms. Watson’s toes against his palms; he dug his fingers into the tire-like grooves; he fished into the crevices when she parted them, coming away with gooey flecks of toejam smeared on his skin. The young man even went so far as to press his knees up as high as the heft of her sole would allow, compressing and undoing the athletic knots in her flesh. The boy tried to tell himself it was like working on a car, though of course that self-deception didn’t last long.

                By the time the final bell of the day rang, Peter’s uniform was more than soggy with both his own efforts and the imparted residue of his teacher’s extracurricular activities. Her sole peeled away from his legs, leaving the boy huddled alone on the desk, his fists still defiantly clenched into fists.

                “Oh, Clark…” the woman said. Her fingers languished against her cheeks, her thumb playing at the corner of her lips as she reached toward the floor to replace her socks and shoes as if nothing out of the ordinary had taken place. “…you’re such a generous student. I’ll be so sad to see you go someday.”