Read Online Bad Kid by David Crabb - Free Book Online Page B

this time that . . . you had to do gym class!”
    I started to laugh with him, but not the way I usually did with kids who mocked me or adults whose jokes I didn’t understand. It wasn’t fake laughter intended to let me fit in or save face. It was chest-filling, gut-busting, very loud laughter.
    â€œHey!” Coach Allen boomed at us from below, “Quiet! You got five more minutes!”
    â€œDavid,” Greg whispered, “another part of ‘sitting out’ is never looking like you’re enjoying yourself. It’s key!”
    Suddenly it all made sense: Greg’s stoic lack of expression, his bored silence, and, most important, his yearlong lack of participation in gym class. No undisclosed disability or top-secret physician’s note was required to sit out. All it took to not do it was not doing it . I thought back on my entire freshman year: all the push-ups and jumping jacks, and the hundreds of miles run on that blacktop track, all because I assumed I had to. How much time did I waste playing volleyball in those ill-fitting polyester shorts? And how many afternoons could I have spent laughing, albeit quietly, with Greg Brooks in the bleachers?
    In the hallway as we left class, a shaft of sunlight hit Greg’s handsome face, turning his bronzed hair platinum as he swept it off his forehead. Looking at him made me feel like a shrunken, gray-skinned zombie.
    â€œSee you tomorrow!” he yelled, swinging his backpack over his shoulder. “If you don’t change out, let’s hang out in gym tomorrow.”
    Waving good-bye, I knew perfectly well I would never change out for gym class again.

CHAPTER 5
Alone in a Darkened Room
    G reg and I spent the last week of our freshman year getting to know each other in gym class. We also spent a fair amount of time getting yelled at by Coach Allen for laughing. Coach was so mad by Friday that he made us both change out and run on the last day of school. Greg and I completed our laps side by side, chuckling together as he cursed me for ruining an otherwise perfect record of nonparticipation.
    â€œI hate you so much,” he snickered, panting as he picked at the crotch of his gym shorts. “These shorts blow chunks.”
    â€œNow you know,” I laughed, trying not to look directly at his face in the blinding sunlight for too long.
    â€œWell, I understand why you’re so skinny now,” Greg moaned, wiping sweat from his brow. I chuckled lightly, trying not to seem excited that Greg had noticed my body changing over the last school year.
    After class, we exchanged phone numbers and agreed to hang out that summer. At home that first day off from school, I waited for Greg’s call, but nothing. A week later I still hadn’t heard from him, and I was starting to feel crazy. I would’ve clasped my hands and knelt by my bed had I not decided a few weeks back that prayer was a racket. I figured that if God was the kind of architect who would make me fret and suffer that much over his own faulty design, I’d rather not work with him (if he was even there at all).
    Although I had Greg’s number, I was afraid to be the first one to call. I had to play it cool and wait it out. But after another Greg-less week passed, I was crushed. I was also as pale as a ghost from all the hours spent indoors staring at the telephone.
    And then the phone rang.
    â€œHello,” I answered, my voice quivering at the possibility.
    â€œHey, it’s Greg,” he said as I hopped up and down as quietly as I could. It turned out that Greg’s family’s four-day summer trip to visit his great-aunt had become an extended stay when she fell down a flight of stairs. They had only just gotten home. I felt bad that Greg’s aunt had gotten busted up, but I could’ve cared less as the following question flowed from the receiver into my ear.
    â€œYou wanna stay over tonight?”
    I hesitated—partly out of