Alibi Junior High by Greg Logsted Page B

too overly excited. Try to act cool.
    “I’d love to.”
    I can feel my face getting red. Why did I say “love”? What a stupid thing to say, “love.” Why did I say that?
    She smiles. “Great!”
    “Oh, what’s the project about?”
    “France.”
    She starts walking down the hall.
    “Renee.”
    She turns around.
    “I didn’t steal your notebook.”
    She flashes me a smile. “I know. I left it for you. I could tell you needed an excuse to talk to me.”
     
     
    I ’m late. Time to bolt down the hall to the gym. I really thought gym was going to be a blast. Too bad Coach Dinatelli has to takeall the enjoyment out of it. The man’s a fun vampire, just sucking the fun out of everything. I bet he spends his nights dancing with snakes and sticking pins into the voodoo dolls of all good people.
    The bell rings as I burst into the locker room and I nearly plow right into the evil one himself. He’s abandoned his black cloak, sharp teeth, and night wings for his day uniform of gray sweats and a whistle.
    “Teacup. Do my eyes deceive me? Are you late?”
    “I beat the bell, Coach.”
    “That doesn’t make you on time. I expect you to be on the floor when the bell rings, not walking into the locker room. Are you on the floor?”
    “No, I’m not, Coach.”
    “So what does that make you?”
    “I guess it makes me late, Coach. Sorry, I’ll change fast.”
    He shakes his head in disgust. “Stop talking and start changing.”
    I quickly move toward my locker. Just when I’m beginning to think the coach is going to let this drop, I hear him open the door leading into the gym and bellow, “Seems like Teacup and Frankfurter both arrived late today. So you all can thank them for the extra two laps you’ll be taking.”
    I hear a loud collective groan as I round the corner to my locker. Frank’s locker is next to mine and he’s standing there half dressed. He turns his back to me in an effort to hide the rolls of fat draped around his body.
    I start spinning my lock combo. “Coach seems to be in a bad mood again.”
    Frank snorts. “He’s always in a bad mood. Get used to it. Now the whole class is going to be mad at us for making them take two more laps.”
    “We’re not making them take two laps, Coach is.”
    “Yeah, try telling that to the class. They’ll blame us. They always do.”
    I open my locker and quickly pull out its contents, and I’m overwhelmed by a strong, sweet smell.
    Frank notices it too. “Whoa, what’s that smell? Perfume?”
    I lift the uniform to my nose. “Oh yeah, it’s perfume. Someone sprayed a ton of it into my locker.”
    As he struggles to slip his excessively large shirt over his head, Frank grumbles, “Isn’t school great? Don’t you just love it? It’s just one humiliating moment after another.”
    I stand there wondering what to do. I could quickly wash everything in the sink and dry it with the hand dryer, but I don’t have enough time.
    I could disappear, suddenly get sick, steal someone else’s clothes, or call in a bomb threat. Any one of those ideas would work but I’m betting they’d create more problems than solutions.
    It looks like my only option is wearing the stinking uniform.
    Frank finally gets his shirt on. I pat him on the back. “Listen,my whole locker smells. Could I squeeze my street clothes into your locker?”
    “Sure, no problem, if you can find the room. Are you really going to wear that thing?”
    “Looks like I’ve got no choice.”
    “Coach is going to have a field day.”
    I slip the shirt over my head. I can’t believe how bad it smells. This is one gym class I’ll definitely be taking a shower after.
    Sometimes you can get yourself all worked up about something and it turns out to be nothing. Other times it turns out your fears were completely justified.
    Gym class—which, for me, consists largely of just running lap after lap with breaks in between for Coach to shout and call me names—is even worse than I feared it would