Rachel stumbles and falls. "Get up, Rachel!" Mr. Jaffer shouts. Startled, Rachel gets up, takes a few hurried steps, comes in front of her own way, stumbles, and falls.
"Rachel!" Mr. Jaffer shouts. Rachel wants to stay on the ground and cry.
Her class' usual Physical Training teacher is on leave for a week. The assistant suddenly got sick as well. The school couldn't find a substitute on time, so they asked the football coach for help.
"Stop lying there on the ground. Get up and use your legs!" Coach Jaffer says.
Rachel can hear her friends laughing from the bench. It's not that Rachel doesn't want to use her legs. It's just that she's tired from all the falling and getting up she had to do.
She and their usual PT instructor, Ms. Wiley, had an understanding. Rachel never exercised, or participated in any of the activities. She spent her time during the class solving workbooks while the rest of her class played one of the sports.
But now, out of blue, their school's champion football team's coach has come to know of Rachel's existence and her athletic limitations.
Rachel sees a pair of shoes come stand next to where she has fallen. A shrieking whistle nearly tears off her eardrums. "I said, get up!" The coach's voice rings.
Sighing, Rachel pulls herself up.
"How did Ms. Wiley let you even pass in this class?" Jaffer says, "Now, run!"
As per her capacity, Rachel more or less jogs on the track, or maybe it's called power walk. She wouldn't know. But she finishes her lap.
While she's still panting like a dog in summer, Jaffer comes to her and tells her, "You're staying back for an hour after school for additional training." Rachel looks at him in utter shock and terror.
He says, "Mrs. Wiley shouldn't have passed you. Clearly you skipped your PT classes. If you don't want this to be reported, you need to complete the regimen just as everyone else in your class had. Don't be late for the after school training. It'll be on the football field."
Rachel wants to say no. That he can't do this to her. That she's an A grade student. The top of her class. She has won many science awards. Even some literary ones. She's... But she's still not done even catching her breath and Mr. Jaffer had already left.
Moira and Annie appear before their traumatized friend. "Oh, poor, Rachel. We feel sorry for you," her friends say not feeling sorry at all.
Rachel shakes her head. "Like hell I'm staying back by myself," she says. Her friends groan in unison, even though they had already decided they will stay back with her in school.
IN THE EVENING, after school hours, Moira hangs by the school's swimming pool with her boyfriend, Nelson, and Annie works on one of her pet projects in the photography club with a few other members who always stay back in the club room at this time.
Rachel stands at the edge of the vast expanse of the grass field that is the football pitch.
Before today she had only ever set foot near the rows of the audience seats in this part of the school, and seen the field from up in those rows. Today, however, the field seems much larger when she's standing this close to it.
Rachel sees the players in red jerseys and helmets run around on the pitch in a chaotic synchronization.
Mr. Jaffer notices Rachel. Rachel notices Mr. Jaffer.
He gestures her to come to him. She goes over. "Run ten laps around the field," he says.
"Ten?!" Rachel says.
"Would you like it to be twenty?" Jaffer asks while keeping his eyes on his team.
"No. I'll do ten."
"Good. Get going now."
Seeing he's still looking at his team, Rachel also glances at the boys. Maybe the coach won't notice if she skipped a few laps because he's busy watching the players, Rachel thinks.
"I'll know if you skip a lap," Mr. Jaffer says without turning around.
Gasping, Rachel takes a step back. How?
She shakes her head, then goes over to the nearby bench and carefully arranges her things on it.
She looks at the small track around the field. This is the first time she had noticed it. Ready to face the greatest challenge of her life, Rachel goes and stands on the track, and lifts her right leg to commence the run.
"Warm up first!" Mr. Jaffer shouts at her, while still looking at the field.
Rachel puts down her leg, and stands still for a moment. Then she places her hands over her waist, thinking.
"You don't know how to warm up, do you?" Mr. Jaffer says. Rachel gives him a guilty smile.
Jaffer blows the whistle towards the pitch. "Alright. That's a five minute break," he says to the boys, and turns around and looks at Rachel. Rachel swallows.
BY THE END of the second lap, Rachel wants to die.
Dying would feel better than this, she's sure. Or maybe she's dying right now, that her heart is giving up, but she has no strength left in her to feel it.
At the completion of her second lap, she sits down on the bench where her things are resting, catching her breath. She hears her heart beat so loud and clear as if she's hearing it through a stethoscope.
Rachel looks up at Mr. Jaffer, to check if he noticed she had stopped running. When he briefly turns around and sees her before turning back, Rachel is sure the man can read the students' minds.
Then she looks at the players. Rachel knows the names of a few popular ones, including Hector. But she can't really say who is who from this far. She can't read their names either, just the large numbers on the back of their jerseys, and she doesn't know which number Hector wears.
Rachel sighs. The jacket. After it dried, she had rolled it back into the canvas tote and hid it at the same spot at the top of her closet. The longer its stay is with her, the more stressed Rachel gets every time she remembers it.
Tiredly, Rachel blinks her eyes a couple of times. She begins to feel a little sleepy. Probably because she's tired and there's a soothing breeze making rounds across the field.
But all sleep escapes her like hot air from balloon when Mr. Jaffer looks at her a second time, and this time he keeps his eyes on her until she silently stands up and starts running again.
After Rachel completes her set of ten laps, she realizes that sometime along the way she stopped feeling her legs. She looks down to check if they are still attached to her body. They are. She's sure she's going to feel every nerve and tendon in those muscles tomorrow morning.
The boys had finished their practice, too. They pick up their gym bags at the benches and head for the locker room. Rachel watches Hector grab his bag and leave. Since she saw him at the lunch line, this is the second time she was this close to Hector, close enough to speak and be heard.
But she doesn't have his jacket on hand to give him, or enough breath in her lungs to explain why she would have his jacket in the first place.
Rachel packs up her own things and goes to Mr. Jaffer. "Tomorrow. Same time," he says. Head hanging low, Rachel heads into the school, to find her friends, so they could safely transport and drop Rachel's exhausted body at her home.
After rejoining, Rachel and her friends reach Moira's car at the parking lot. Moira is the only one in the trio that has a car.
When Rachel turns around to face the door, she sees Hector climbing up on his bike at the end of the row. He's wearing a brown leather jacket.
Although Rachel had seen Hector some reasonable times before by now, this is the first time she realizes that Hector is always in a leather jacket.
He must own many, Rachel thinks. Maybe that's why he didn't mind leaving one at the roadside as a stray kittens shelter.
In that case, Rachel wonders while getting in the car, would Hector really mind if he didn't see that jacket of his she's keeping ever again? Perhaps he had never thought of going back for it.
After reaching home, Rachel takes out the jacket and stares at it, trying to figure out the ethics of returning an abandoned item to its owner.
She hears footsteps and quickly shoves the jacket under the bed before her mom appears with a stack of freshly laundered bedsheets.
Rachel takes the stack off of her mom's hands and neatly puts them away in the closet. After her mom leaves, Rachel is sure, no matter what, she has to move out the jacket at all cost. She doesn't want to explain to her mom why a boy's jacket is in her room even if no boy has ever stepped foot in it.
End of chapter