handle. The ground below was black and wet, barely visible.
“How deep?” I shouted at the cabin. I strained to hear past my heaving breath and pounding heart, but knew it was futile—there would be no response from my father. “Oh fuck,” I said, twisting the handle between my hands. “Oh fuck, oh fuck.”
I grabbed Grinder and pulled. She unstuck from the moist dirt and hummed in my hands. My mind was spinning. I had asked for this. I had insisted that he teach me. This was what I got for allying myself with a maniac. I kicked aside the more delicate tools of a backsaw and spade. Harnett’s rules could go to hell. I had no time for fussiness and no stake in anything beyond rescuing my calculus.
The digging hurt, but not as much as before. Four feet later I struck something and instantly dropped to my knees. I tore through the mud with my fingers and after five minutes of grappling dislodged a black garbage bag wrapped around something hard. I reached into the bag and withdrew a flat piece of wood, apparently inserted by Harnett so that Grinder did not damage the homework tucked beneath. I removed the papers and shook them in a muddy, victorious fist.
Sunlight warned me that first period was just minutes away. Fine, I’d miss first period, but not the second, not if I ran. I examined the mud slopped across my clothes and skin, the wet soil oozing from my shoes. Maybe at school I could change into my gym clothes. The idea was so inspired that I felt a tuft of grass fall from my cheek when I grinned.
One hour later, we passed our calculus assignments up the row and I watched as Coach Winter flipped through them. It was obvious when he reached mine—from the back of the room I could see the muddy smears—and for a moment I thought he was going to reject it on standards of cleanliness. He glanced at me over the top of the papers, taking in the soiled shirt and jeans I had not found time to swap with my gym equivalents, and decided that berating me wasn’t worth the effort. He went back to shuffling assignments and I felt it for the second time that morning: victory.
Good luck continued at Fun and Games, which kicked off with an activity that was neither. Akin to a sack race, it involved standing back to back with a partner, locking elbows, and attempting to execute a number of ridiculous tasks, like picking up kick balls and ducking beneath a limbo bar.
Partners were switched up twice and both times I feared getting paired with Celeste or Foley. Instead my first partner was Heidi Goehring, an honor roll student with a questionable bowl cut but cool, chunky glasses. From what I had gleaned, Heidi kept her nose out of trouble and in the books; she would nevertheless appreciate the social darts that would fly her way if she mishandled her moments with Crotch. But she hesitated for only a moment before smiling and offering her elbows. We tripped around the gym like idiots, laughing a little more freely each time we ended up on our asses, and though the whole thing was too stressful to qualify as enjoyable, there were moments when I forgot everything except that only two thin pieces of fabric separated me from a real live girl. I fantasized that, for those brief moments, Heidi Goehring might have shared similar thoughts. When we finally unlocked and rubbed feeling back into our muscles, she returned my embarrassed smile. Unable to hold her gaze, I looked away and saw Celeste across the gym, somehow looking dignified even through this debasement.
Any residual sensation of contentment vanished once we had adjourned to the locker rooms. Guys gave Woody hell about Celeste, wondering how sore his wrist was getting in her absence. “Guess she’s too busy spending all her time playing fun and games with Crotch here,” Rhino laughed.
Woody’s glare was ferocious.
“We’re starting to wonder what kind of crotch you got under there, Crotch,” he snarled.
I pulled on my pants as quickly as I could. Rhino broke the silence by smacking Woody on the back and joking about how my menstrual cycle would probably align with the girls’ soon, while another guy flapped his wrist and tittered about what fun I’d have trading tampons with all of them. Usually such cracks broke the dark mood, but this time they hounded me