Unlike in every other class, Mr. Hutchinson has a plan for me from the moment I wheel onto the waxed floors. All the girls have gym together, and we are separate from the boys, thank Jesus. So there we are in a circle in the center of the basketball court, and Mr. Hutchinson starts to take everybody through stretches. Before I can even start to get embarrassed, though, he hands me two long, stretchy green bands.

“Triceps first, Cowan,” he says. And this is something I can totally do. I’ve been using these for arm and leg stretches for years. They look like giant rubber bands. I do triceps and biceps, and then when everybody gets up to run laps, he helps me loop the bands around the bottoms of my feet and pull up to stretch my calves. It feels good. I’ve been slack about my exercises since we moved. I’m supposed to stretch every day to keep everything loose. I can feel all the tightness where it’s built up in my ankles.

“Where’d you learn to do this, Mr. Hutchinson?” I ask him while he switches out the green bands for purple ones that are stretchier.

“Call me Hutch. You mean how does a gym teacher like me know how to do real therapy?”

“No, I just mean…” I fumble with an answer, because yeah, that’s exactly what I mean, but when you put it like that, it just sounds rude.

He laughs and rubs the back of his head. “Just teasing you, Cowan. I trained as a physical therapist and worked with the athletic department at OU before coming here.”

Before I can ask why in the world he would leave a college position for this, he stands and blows the whistle for break. Half the girls pull out their phones, which they are not supposed to have in class, but Hutch doesn’t notice or just doesn’t care.

“I’m glad you’re here, Cowan. It lets me practice my skills. Now rest up, because this next part you can do with everybody else.”

And then he blows the whistle for everybody to run the lines. They have to run back and forth from wall to wall, and I race along in my chair with everybody else, pumping my arms as hard as I can until I feel like my lungs are on fire. I feel like one of the extras in Murderball, that movie about the Paralympics. I always wished I had a chair as cool as theirs with the huge wheels that tilt in. Coralee jumps on my lap for the last round, and I just about drop her at the free-throw line.

If gym had been the last class of the day, it all might have been fine. I mean, still terrible, but bearable. But then I have Spanish, and then we have dismissal, and dismissal is worse than all the rest put together.