Infinite Jump

Elementary, Chapter 1

Being a senior in high school didn’t really make a difference to me because I still roamed in the campus with a vibrant yellow dinosaur raincoat from kindergarten. Mom and Dad never bothered to buy me an umbrella, and I found the coat at the back of my closet. It matched my “adorable” personality and short stature, so I wore it to please the crowd, despite that I hated the general public.

“Hey!” someone called behind me. “Watch out for that big puddle!” But I didn’t watch out for the puddle. I just walked right on through as if it wasn’t there. I turned around but saw no one of interest. With a shrug, I continued to walk towards homeroom.

I entered the class and immediately lay across the front row of desks. “Dear God, thank you for the rain so I don’t have to go to P.E. this morning.”

“The rain is awful this morning, don’t you think?” Liz asked. I rolled over to face her sitting at the very desks I lay on.

“It wasn’t that bad,” I said. “I barely got wet.”

“It’s pouring outside,” said Liz. “It must be magic that you’re not wet.”

“If only.” I sighed. “That’d require books to come to life, a fantasy that could only be hoped for.”

“Then you’d write yourself into a romance plot, right?” A twinkle settled in her eye. I frowned and shook my head.

“I’d prefer it as a subplot to an action story,” I said. “No, action sci-fi with a fantasy element and romantic subplot.”

“Male protagonist being a specific taco?”

“Now, how would I get over him like that?” I grimaced. “No, thank you. I could make up a better fictional boy anyways.”

As we chatted, my nerves were on edge. Somehow, I felt a pair of eyes watching me. Constantly. Was it paranoia? Probably, so I ignored it. But the feeling never went away.

I stepped outside, and the rain faded to a mere drizzle. By the time I trudged to the locker rooms, the rain had subsided. I sighed and changed with dreadful anticipation of Ultimate Frisbee.

I huddled together with my classmates before Ms. Truman marched out. The penguins of the class immediately dispersed to the numbers and shivered.

She told us to run two laps around the field before we started the games, a tad bit excessive for a warm-up in my opinion. But then again, I had the physical stamina of a brick. And to my horror, my team of procrastinating seniors was up against the athletic jocks. It didn’t matter that we were two years their senior (that was a pun). They were all taller and more fit than I.

“We’re screwed, aren’t we?” I said as my team slipped into the smelly jerseys.

“Who cares?” Mari scoffed. “It’s just P.E., and Eva and I don’t have to take it after this semester. Ever.”

“Lucky ducks,” I said. I made the mistake of deviating from my original plan to take one semester of P.E. for all four years of high school, thus completing my credits without suffering for any full year. I instead decided to have two semesters of study hall last year and had to choose a full year of P.E. as my senior elective. “I still have the rest of the year.”

“Sucks for you then.” Mari tugged on her ponytail. “Let’s pretend to try Ultimate Frisbee and walk off this field with an A for the day.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. Eva just nodded, like she usually did. So we marched onto the muddy field, expecting defeat.

Amazingly, we didn’t have our butts whooped. In fact, we were actually winning. Although, our athletically challenged team couldn’t take all the credit for it, to be honest. The wind aided us much of the time, opposing the other team like bulls seeing red. We also weren’t entirely incompetent today, either. But that was the wind’s fault, too.