Phys. Ed.

Keith slouched into his desk at school. He tucked his book bag into the cubby under his seat and put his pencil into the groove at the top of his desk. He glanced around the room. Would anyone recognize him? He had gone away for the summer and hadn't seen any of his classmates. While away he had a growth spurt and when he looked into the mirror, he didn't recognize himself. Weaving between the desks he saw Ann in the front row and Johnny was already cutting up in class and the bell hadn't even rung.

Everyone scurried to their seats as the teacher walked to the front of the class. "Hello, I'm Ms. DeYoung," she was short and had a mole on her face with a hair growing out of the middle. The speaker up on the wall started to hum and the principals’ voice boomed down from the wooden box. "Good morning students. Let us begin our day with the pledge of allegiance to the flag of this glorious country of ours." The class stood and put their hands on their hearts and started to recite a mantra that had been drilled into them since they were practically infants. "Have a good first day students," said the principal as the speaker popped with his clicking off of the microphone.

They all started to wiggle back into their seats when Ms. DeYoung said, "Don't get comfortable we are heading outside for P.E." Turning she started to walk towards the door. All you could hear was wood seats creaking and mumbles of, "Alright, cool, this is great."

Keith looked around at his classmates; Ann was talking to JT and looking over at Jamie who was talking to Kim. He searched for his friend Adam, but he knew that his dad was getting stationed in Virginia so he wouldn't be back this year. There was a new kid in class and he thought he heard him say his name was Andre and he had already made friends with Johnny. They were laughing walking down the hall while they imitated Ms. DeYoungs waddle.

The sun shone bright as the steel doors opened to the still cool morning air of August. The class made a rudimentary line walking down the sidewalk. This was fifth grade and all of the students felt like they were masters of the school. These halls and breezeways were theirs; they had become part of them. The walls and posts had been touched by most of their hands since they were five and in kindergarten, when they were learning to walk in a straight line and follow rules. They had the cracks on the sidewalk memorized, and you could see that none of them had to look down to make sure that they didn't step on a crack and "break their mothers back".

To get to the fields where they were going to do calisthenics or play basketball or kickball they had to cross the street. It was residential so it wasn't busy, but they all had to look both ways and stay in a single file line while crossing. It was announced that to get the year off to a good start a game of kickball was going to be played. On the baseball diamond there was a large netted bag with three large red balls and two smaller ones awaiting the chosen pitcher and captain of the teams to pick from. But first there came the dreaded picking of the teams. Everyone walked out onto the clay field, shuffling their shoes and leaving dark red clay lines trailing behind them.

"Alright boys and girls, line up. Boys on this side and girls on this side." Ms. DeYoung pointed to the right and left sides of home plate. She looked down at her attendance sheet and scanned the names.

"Jackson?" she said scanning the line of boys. A tall black haired boy walked towards the pitchers mound. Jackson Arthur, ‘Jack’ once the nicknames were established, the most popular boy in the class was always picked first because his name was always at the top of the attendance sheet.

"Theresa?" Ms. Young said. Theresa Boyd stepped forward humbly wearing her homemade clothes with her hair in braided pigtails. She was the shy girl in class that didn't like to draw attention to herself, but once again was usually picked first on this day of school because of her surname.

You could see the two lines getting antsy, feet were shuffling, heads were looking down at shoes, while some were waving, drawing attention to themselves so they would get picked first. Keith just stood there, he ended up in line next to Andre and he could tell that he was nervous, as the new kid you never know when you are going to get picked. Keith was hoping that his growth over the summer would make him more appealing to the captains of the teams, but he steeled himself for being picked somewhere towards the end.

Walking over from the class and crossing the basketball courts to get to the baseball diamond a few of his classmates had said hello to him and asked him how his summer was. They had recognized him, but did they see the change in him as much as he did? They had all changed over the summer so maybe his change was overshadowed by theirs.

The line of boys was systematically whittled down until Keith realized that it was just he and Andre left to be picked. Thoughts swarmed through Keith’s head. "Pick me I've changed, I am bigger." "Pick me, I can run faster this year." "Pick me, I can kick farther, can't you see how much I have changed?" "Don't pick him, you don't know him. Sure he is new but you don't know anything about him." "You know I can kick far, and now look at me I can kick so much farther." "Pick me!" Keith screamed in his head.

Jack raised his hand and pointed toward the two boys.