Painting the Black by Carl Deuker Page B

rippling back muscles, and adoring girls.
    But that morning I lifted the right way. Squats, curls, reverse curls, bench presses—all of them with medium weight and lots of repetitions.
    I lifted for about forty-five minutes. My muscles were so fatigued my hands twitched and my legs felt as though they had turned to Jell-O. Back upstairs I drank about a gallon of water, then went to my bedroom and got to work stretching.
    I sat on the floor and pointed my toes toward the opposite wall. My left ankle curved easily, but the toes on my right foot were still pointed toward the ceiling. I could barely get that ankle to bend, and it hurt like crazy. Still, I held the stretch for a twenty count. Next I pointed my toes toward my face and held that for twenty. Toward the wall; toward my face. Over and over. Once the ankle had finally loosened a little, I rotated my feet—first clockwise, then counterclockwise—through the whole range of motion. When I was done with my ankles, I worked on my legs, my arms, my back—doing the stretches right, the way Josh did them in the summer.
    After lunch my dad helped me get the rowing machine down from the loft in the shed. It wasn’t so much heavy as awkward. An arm smacked me in the head twice.
    I wouldn’t have known where to oil it or what kind of oil to use, but he did. “You can keep this in your room,” he said when he was satisfied he had it working as well as it could work. “Just shove it under the bed when you’re not using it.”
    I thought rowing would be easy—or at least easier than lifting weights or stretching. I set the resistance pretty high, put the timer on for thirty minutes, and started. What a shock that was! After five minutes or so I was gasping for air. I had to stop and make the resistance easier, and at the twelve-minute mark I had to stop and make it easier still. I was laboring, but I made the full thirty minutes.
    You always hear that being selfish is about the worst thing, that you should think of other people. That day I had thought about nobody but myself. And at the end of it I felt good, really good—better than I’d felt in a long, long time.

11
    I got up early Monday morning and did pushups and sit-ups, and then stretched. I took a shower and planned out the rest of the day. There was school and weightlifting and the rowing machine and homework. And there were more sit-ups and pushups, and more stretching. In one day I’d gone from having nothing to do to having too much. But I felt good about it, good about making a commitment to myself.
    In the hall before school I saw Josh. There were about ten people around him, so I went right by. But when he spotted me he broke free and came over to me. “Sorry about Godfather’s,” he said. “I got hung up.”
    â€œNo problem,” I answered.
    Rita Hall playfully tugged at his sleeve, drawing him toward her. “We’ll talk at lunch,” he called. “I want to hear what you thought about the game.”
    Lunch.
    All morning I stewed about it. I couldn’t sit at the center table of the cafeteria, couldn’t be the flying fish, the square wheel. No way in the world. I didn’t belong there, had never belonged there. But I wasn’t sure how to explain it to Josh.
    Then, during third period, an idea came to me—library. I could tell Josh I had to study during lunch, and then grab something quick in the cafeteria in the final ten minutes before afternoon classes started.
    It was a perfect excuse because it was true. I was falling behind in chemistry, and I had stuff for Mrs. Beck too. Still, I was sure Josh would argue, that he’d tell me I was his best buddy, and that I had to eat with him.
    I paid even less attention to the discussion in Ms. Hurley’s class that day. Class ended and we headed down the hall toward the library. When we reached it I stopped. “I’m going to do some