Chapter 12 Crab Down
CRAB DOWN
GREY
The elementary school smells like vegetable soup.
I don't know why, but it's smelled like this for actual ever. Like, since the school was new and I was a kid. At this point, it’s in the foundation. And as nasty as cafeteria vegetable soup is and as unappetizing the smell, it always makes me a little hungry.the smell is Must be Pavlovian.
The cheerful sounds of teachers in the midst of lessons floats through the halls, and I find myself smiling.
I've been doing that a lot lately.
It's Thursday, and despite being slammed all week, I've seen Molly nearly every day.
If not for teacher team practice, Rambler's practice, where she showed up with Cass and her stepdaughter Cricket.
Today was the only day I wasn't slated to see her.
Normally, I don't get a chance to come over here--I teach shop at the high school and coach baseball, but I have a bit of time in the afternoons on Thursdays.
So when the PE teacher started puking his guts up with the flu and the principal asked for a fill in, I didn't think twice.
Not until I said yes, at least, on remembering it didn't just mean I could pop by the elementary school library to see Molly, but that I had to actually teach elementary school kids.
When I reach the edge of the sunken library in the middle of the school, my only thought is Worth it.
Molly's sitting in front of a group of rapt little kids, reading a book aloud, and they're hanging on every word.
I lean on the wall, and then I am too. She's doing all the voices, complete with faces and sound effects in a huge cardigan, pushing her glasses up her nose when they slip.
The kids giggle, then gasp. I hang on every word, and somehow, I have no idea what the book is about.
Sunlight cuts into the room in a shaft that illuminates her hair like a halo.
She sees me and smiles, and my hand leaves my pocket for a brief wave. And then I just watch her in wonder like a fool.
Where did she come from?
I've never met anybody like her. Sweet but sassy, inexperienced but unafraid.
I'm convinced she could do anything she sets her mind to on sheer will alone.
And she'd do it with that megawatt smile and musical laughter and all the joy she floats around with.
It makes wonder if she's ever cried, and the thought makes me so mad, my hands fist in my jogger pockets. God help the man who ever made her cry.
God help us all if it's ever me.
Just another reason to stay away from her. Hurting her would be inevitable. I don't know if I could live with myself if I did.
I throw it on the pile with all the rest of the reasons to leave her be.
I'm just helping her out, is my go-to excuse. She wants to learn. She can't live in that shack as it is. I'm just being a good coach. A good friend. A good person.
I'm the only one who can help her.
That one's the biggest lie of them all.
I want to be in her space, soak up all her sunshine.
Steal it like a greedy thief, feed this hole in my chest. I didn't even know it was there until she started pouring herself into it, and now I have a big problem.
Because I can't seem to stop. I can't make myself stay away. And it's about to get worse.
I've committed not only to reassembling her house, as she put it, but dinner at her place.
Every night. Every fucking night. She wouldn't let me help her otherwise.
She needed to barter, and I had no better ideas.
Felt like a win at the time. Until once again, I actually thought about it and realized it meant spending a couple of hours with her everygoddamnnight.
I am in the deepest of shit, and I can't seem to stop myself from digging myself deeper. How long until I slip up? And then what?
Then I'm gonna be the asshole who makes her cry, and I'll have to go ahead and eat arsenic. I can't imagine it ending any other way but tears. The odds of me being what she's looking for are close to nil. The odds of me disappointing her? Almost certain.
So stupid. So fucking dumb. Yet here I am, watching her read to a bunch of little kids with my insides swapping places and my guts tied in knots.
Greedy, stupid asshole.
When a finger pokes my triceps, I scowl in its direction, finding a smirking Cass. "Ready for your kids, Coach?"
"If I say no, do I still have to go?"
She chuckles and turns for the gym. "Yup, and you'd better hurry. The longer they wait, the more feral they get."
I sigh, meeting Molly's eyes once more, and we smile at each other as I push off the wall and follow Cass to my certain death. I hear my fate before I see it--a pack of screeching, squealing, yelling seven-year-olds running around the gym.
"Good luck," Cass says, laughing like the devil on her way to sit on the edge of the stage where she can witness my struggle.
They're just like teenagers, but with smaller problems and no impulse control.
"Look, there's Coach!" Cass says, all but siccing them on me.
In unison, they scream and run for me, slamming into me and bouncing and tugging on my arms. Everyone's talking at once, some version of What are we doing today, but I just stand there stupidly for a minute when my brain implodes.
I shake my head and clap real loud. "All right, settle down." While my brain powers back up, I search for the plan I made on my way here. "We're gonna do animal races today. What do you think?"
Twenty-something bouncy balls with eyes and missing teeth make unintelligible noise.
"Great. Okay, back up. Back up a little…a little more…okay good. Who knows how to crab walk?"
Me! Me! A couple of kids yell.
"Show me."
Mostly they totter around stiffly, making claws out of their hands. A laugh puffs out of me.
"Almost. Hands on the ground, belly up. Like this.
" Both shoulders pop when I get down on the floor, just in time for Molly to sneak in and go sit next to Cass.
I try to ignore them giggling and watching me, working on not busting my ass instead.
I crab walk for a minute, until they're all demonstrating.
When I get up, my body cracks in at least a dozen places, and I make way too much noise doing it.
"That's it. Cricket, go grab those cones over there."
"Okay, Coach!" she runs off, her braids flying behind her.
We set up the cones for a start and finish line, and I have the kids line up.
"Time us!" one of the kids yells, then half a dozen more join him.
When I pull out my stopwatch, they are so impressed, I almost feel cool.
"Ready, set, go!"
They go absolutely feral, as promised.
Roughly half of them do it right. Two little girls bump into each other and go down in a pile of giggles.
One kid flops around on the ground, and when I ask what he's doing, he says he's a dying crab.
I let him have that, doing my best not to crack while I correct them.
I don't know why I'm trying. It's not like form matters.
Next is the bear crawl. We end up with about the same percentages.
This time, half of them growl the whole way.
One speeds by and does three laps. The dying crab from last time is lying on the ground, snoring comically loud.
He informs me he's hibernating. The frog hop almost sends all of us over the top--they're hopping and croaking.
One cannonballs into my leg. It actually looks a lot like if I dumped out a box of frogs.
No one's going in a straight line. The kid who died and hibernated is now wiggling around.
I try and guess what he's going to say. He's a tadpole. Should have had that one.
The last round is a medley of all three. And, for the first time, they almost take it seriously. But they're laughing too hard to make much of it, and Molly and Cass are no better. I demonstrated all three moves, and I'll probably hear them eternally snickering in my nightmares.
The kids are laughing and sweaty and red faced, and on their way out with Cass, they line up to slap my extended hand. I make sure to raise it so they really have to jump for it, especially the creative one.
But Molly stays behind, watching me with that pretty smile of hers, ankles crossed and hands on the edge of the stage. When she looks at me like that, the urge to walk over there, slip my hand into her hair, and kiss her until I drown nearly takes me out.
I shake the thought away.
Never quite get over it, though.