The sky was still an ornery shade of gray as we made our long trek across campus to the gym, which was way down near the pond, football fields, and big toy. I pulled my cardigan tighter over myself as we passed the big toy, as the empty fields didn't provide the same cover the school buildings did, and boy was that wind chilly. Though I was the line leader, Mr. Pony was technically the one that led us around a bend in the pond through a small grotto until we finally reached the gym. The stuffiness of the heated building was a nice relief from the dreary outside weather.

The gym lobby was large and lit with fluorescent light. Two restrooms and a currently closed concession stand stood opposite the two sets of entrance double glass doors, with two more sets of double metal doors that presumably led into the gymnasium itself. Everyone else fanned out around me, as Mr. Pony began speaking of our next activity.

"All right, you lot, sit tight for a few seconds. The gym teacher, Ms. Korny, will be here shortly." I exchanged a puzzled glance with the people standing next to me as some shy murmurs erupted among the class. However, after only a few more seconds, one of the metal doors open and out lurched a gruff looking being. Could this be… another teacher? How many of these were there, exactly?

"Hello everyone," said the being awkwardly, in a voice that sounded a bit like Petri Engelhardt's. "I'm, uh, Ms. Korny. I'll be your gym teacher today."

"Yes! Thank you so much for agreeing to have my class," proceeded along Mr. Pony. "Everyone appears to be in attendance, so you lot can go right ahead and jump right into it! I've gotta skedaddle for a little bit, but I'll be back later!" And with that, Mr. Pony peaced out with the speed of a centipede, leaving us alone with this strange new being.

Ms. Korny seemed a bit unsure of what to do next. "Um, I didn't really have a, uh, lesson plan for this, so we're just going to play pinball today. Is that okay with you?"

"Pinball?" asked Kristy. "Like those things you see in arcades sometimes?"

"No," answered Ms. Korny. "It's, uh, a game I just made up now. Would you like to hear the rules?"

Huh? I thought. I wasn't really sure I wanted to just stand here and listen to Ms. Korny make up rules for their game on the spot so I answered no.

"All right then, if you ever change your mind about that, let me know," Ms. Korny said. "Good luck!"

What was that supposed to mean?

As I started to lose myself in my thoughts, and the music, the moment, I wanted it, I could never let it go, Randy stepped up and took charge. I had a strange sense of déjà vu – as if this had happened before, in the past, but I couldn't quite place it. "We need to split into two teams for this game," he stated. "which means we need to pick teams. Does anyone want to be captain, or should we just have Jordan and I again?"

Again? That's right! My strange sense of déjà vu suddenly became unstrange. We had done this before, with kickball. It felt like so long ago, even though it couldn't have been more than last week… right?

"Oh! I wanna be a captain! Pick me!" Kathleen raised one of her hands high above her head and hopped up and down excitedly.

"Okay," agreed Randy, nodding in affirmation. "Anyone else?"

"Actually, if no one else minds..." began Jacques, a bit unexpectedly, "I would like to be captain too."

"Got it," said Randy. "So Jacques and Kathleen are our two captains. Kathleen, since you went first, you can pick first." This time, as the players shifted their positions, no one really questioned Randy's direction – either they had gotten used to his role as stand-in leader in Mr. Pony's absence, or they just didn't care.

Kathleen crossed her arms and looked to the side thoughtfully. Now that we all knew each other a little better since our first game of kickball, it would be interesting to see how the order of our picks changed. "Jeremy."

"Heck yeah," Jeremy walked over to Kathleen's team and the two fist bumped. I was already a bit nervous – having the two most athletic kids on the same team was bound to make this a pretty one-sided game, right?

"Randy," called Jacques.

"Eli."

"Kristy."

"Hmm… Jordan."

"Owen."

"William."

"Jenny." Jenny seemed relieved to have been picked for Jacques' team.

"Skylar."

"Julia."

"Kiki."

"Rachel." It was not much of a surprise to see Rachel picked last. While she was still a mystery to me, her stubborn refusal to participate in virtually any activity meant she was probably not going to be very helpful on any Pinball team.

"Okay, if you're all set," inputted Ms. Korny suddenly, "Follow me into the gym. I'll need some help setting up everything for pinball."

"Hold up!" inputted Owen equally suddenly. "I gotta go potty first!"

"Ah, right," Ms. Korny replied. "The bathrooms are right over there." They gestured towards the two bathrooms on either side of the concession stand. "If anyone else needs to go, now would be the time."

I flashed back to yesterday. Owen had ditched our lunch group to do… something in the bathroom near the cafeteria then. Was he up to something again today? With lightning speed, I made my decision. "I have to go too," I half-spoke, half-muttered as I half-raised my hand before heading after Owen, haphazardly.

"Gee, Jor-bah, don't you know it's creepy to keep following people into the bathroom like this?" scolded Owen once we were out of earshot of the rest of the class, inside the cracked linoleum chamber. This bathroom looked positively ancient, there was even signs of one section being completely replaced at one point due to the tiles being slightly different shades of red along the wall.

I was also taken aback by Owen's comment. "It's not like that!" I insisted defensively. If I had been a prepubescent teenager, my voice definitely would have cracked just then. "Don't make this all weird."

"Relaaaax, Jor-bah," he said, his tone suddenly lighthearted. "It was just a joke. Unless..." he tilted his pink baseball cap over his eyes, imitating my 'curling my hand to my forehead advancedly' pose. "...you really are up to something suspicious in here."

"Suspicious?" I was disappointed, and slightly annoyed. "If anyone here'd be up to something suspicious, it'd be you."

"Nah, I'd never do anything suspicious," joked Owen, before placing his finger to his mouth inquisitively. "...At least, not while you're here. It's all about what you do when no one's watching, you know."

"Whatever," I said, regretting my decision to come in here with him. "Let's just do our business and get out."

After Owen and I left the bathroom, we headed into the main gym, which was a large, laminated wood floor with court lines painted on it. On either sideline stood five bowling pins, and both splitting the court down the center and separating the two teams was a line of small plastic cones and six DeVoit dodgeballs.

"Owen! Over here!" called Jacques, waving him over to his team's side.

"Yeah, you too, Jordan!" called Kathleen, throwing what looked like a dark blue cloth at me. It bounced off my face before I caught it in my hands, and I caught a whiff of its rank odor before feeling its meshy texture. "Put on this penny too!"

I blinked upon hearing that word. Penny. Where had I heard that word before? My head felt a little dizzy, as if it had just been struck by a bouncing basketball. Nonetheless, I put on the penny and got into position on my side.

Ms. Korny pulled out a folding chair, a book, and a brown paper sack full of a sandwich, an orange, a juice box, and a six-pack of Oreos, and sat down and blew a whistle. Was this supposed to signal the start of the game?

The other students all rushed forward toward the center of the gym to grab the dodgeballs. Once I saw what they were doing, I followed suit, but my delayed reaction ensured that I only got there too late to get any balls. Suddenly self aware, I hopped back, assuming the squatting turtle position. Was this 'pinball' that Ms. Korny said we were playing anything like dodgeball? Was I about to be mercilessly pelted with dozens and dozens of DeVoit dodgeballs? However, as my quick, no-longer-bespectacled eyes took stock of the situation, no one seemed to be throwing a ball at me. In fact, they seemed to have fallen back, standing between the midline and the rows of bowling pins on the sidelines. A few of them were clutching dodgeballs in their hands, but no one seemed to be willing to make a move yet. I slowly backed off as well, waddling backwards while maintaining my athletic, crab-like stance. One could say I had the juice, and the sauce.

"What r u doing, Jor-bah?" asked a nearby Kiki, using only the letters for 'r' and 'u'.

"I don't know," I replied quite honestly.

Jacques' unblinking eyes blazed intensely as he seized his opportunity. While Kiki and I were distracted by our conversation, he windmilled his long, lanky arm to roll a wicked underhanded kickball pitch across the floor of the gym. The ball whooshed between our two bodies and collided with the bowling pin behind us, knocking it over with a satisfying clunk.

"Quick!" urged Kathleen to the rest of her team. "We need to counterattack!" She quickly stepped into a spot where she had a clear angle at the pin that Jacques' forward rush had exposed and threw her dodgeball, but Owen leapt into the air and knocked it down before it made contact with the pin. Jeremy also launched his ball, this time hitting a slight curveball to strike the pin from behind Owen. Owen scurried off to Retrieve ZeBall, which is what the 'RZ' in 'RZ Trainer' stands for, and after taking another quick look around to make sure there would be no more of those… things flying my way, I turned back to Kiki. "What's going on?"

"We're playing pinball," she responded. "But I'm kinda hungry. I hope we go to lunch soon."

"Yeah, but what do we do?" I asked frantically. Owen and Jacques were coming back with more dodgeballs to throw at us.

"I dunno," she replied, her small shoulders shrugging under her big orange coat. "That's why I was asking you."

Well, that didn't do either of us much good. Shoot, I thought, as Kiki and I ducked away from the opposing team's volley of dodgeballs. Maybe I should have listened to the rules after all. I have no clue what I'm doing. Another of our bowling pins fell, and I felt like it was time for a change.
"I'll go ask Ms. Korny," I said quickly before taking off. "Wait here." I ran across the court, dodging, dipping, ducking, diving, and dodging as fast as my little legs could carry me, until I arrived next to the being seated in the folding chair.

"Ms. Korny," I panted, out of shape. "I changed my mind. What are the rules of pinball?"

"So, it's pretty simple," the teacher replied. "Each team has bowling pins on their side that they have to guard, and the other team has to knock them down using the balls. You win if you knock over all of the other team's pins, and if you catch a ball in mid-air, you get to stand one of the pins back up."

"Is that really it?" I asked, befuddled. "Golly, it does seem simple when you put it that way."

"Yep. Any questions?"

I went through the rules in my mind over and over again, trying to think if I had any questions, but I couldn't come up with any. "Not that I can think of," I answered hesitantly. "Thanks." And with that, I hurried back onto the court, eager to apply my newfound knowledge to the game unfolding before me. As I got back to Kiki, I had to skrrt around Jeremy as he caught a dodgeball thrown by Kristy.

"Jordan," he said suddenly. "Put that pin up, I caught one." Clearly, he was too focused on engaging the other team and didn't have time to step away and do it himself. I willingly obliged before getting back to Kiki and telling her the rules.

"Huh, ok," she said. "I think Imma just, uh, guard this pin then." she shuffled over to stand near the pin I had just reset.

While Kiki seemed content to just chill there, I decided to try and help out Kathleen and Jeremy with knocking over the opposing team's pins. I awkwardly half-ran up to the front line, preparing myself to intercept any dodgeballs that came my way. Both my eyes and my mind were in alert mode, as the adrenaline pumped through my body. Scanning the other side of the gym, I noticed that Jacques and Owen seemed to be playing more offensively across from myself and Jeremy, while Randy and Kristy were competing more against Kathleen and William. Jacques was clutching an orange dodgeball in his hands, and there were a few used dodgeballs lying against the wall behind the other team's bowling pins.

Jeremy was facing off against Jacques and Owen, curling and uncurling each of his fingers individually and repeatedly as if he was about to participate in an American western gunfight. You could almost hear the intimidating tumblewheed whistling in the background. He closed his eyes.

Jacques clapped his hands around the dodgeball. "You want to go?" he asked brusquely, annunciating every syllable. He wound up ferociously and yeeted the dodgeball towards the pins behind us.

I heard a single drop of water spelunking in a pond as still as glass. Trouble on my left, trouble on my right. I've been facing trouble almost all my life. Before Jacques had even completed his movement, Jeremy had lunged directly into the path of the dodgeball so he could catch it above his left shoulder. He immediately turned around to call to the less-active members of our team. "Skylar, put the last pin up! I caught another."

"Don't boss me around," she complained, but once Jeremy brushed her off and turned his attention back to the other team, she went and set the pin back up anyways.

Owen and Jacques took a few steps backward to prepare for Jeremy's throw, with Owen stealing a quick glance backwards at the dodgeballs against the wall. Though Rachel and Julia were hanging out near them and the pins, they didn't seem to be actively playing. I guess there were just some kids that weren't into P.E., but at the very least they could block some of the pins like Kiki was doing.

Jeremy's eyes remained tired as he wound up, twisting his arm a little to throw another curveball. As Jacques moved to intercept, Owen ran to the side wall to pick up some of the dodgeballs. However, the curveball proved too tricky for Jacques to handle, and Jeremy claimed yet another of their pins. In other words, that meant that between Kathleen and Jeremy, our team had knocked over three of their pins, while all five of ours were still standing.

"Jacquesypoo! Catch!" Owen tossed Jacques one of the dodgeballs he had retrieved. "Hold on, let's throw at the same time!"

"Aye," agreed Jacques, nodding. Oh no, I had to keep an eye on both of them?

"Now!" The balls flew at myself and Jeremy. I hesitated, went for the one on my left, but stopped once I saw Jeremy was already moving to knock it down. I tried to switch directions, but it was too late – the other ball had already gotten past me and knocked over an unguarded pin.

"Crud!" man, I was bad at this game.

"Jordan!" barked Jeremy. I looked towards him, startled. "Get me that ball."

"B-but you have one!" I replied, since he was already holding a dodgeball.

"I need two," he insisted, before turning around. "Kathleen! Over here!" he yelled. I sensed that I wasn't supposed to refuse, so I hustled after the ball.

"Jeremy!" I yelled, getting his attention before lobbing a pass he had to take a few steps forward to catch. I noticed that he was no longer holding the ball from earlier, and Kathleen was now standing by behind him, holding it. The two of them took off and my brain finally registered what was going on – Jeremy was coordinating the same double throw that Owen and Jacques had just done, but with himself and Kathleen. It also occurred to me that this is exactly what they had done to counterattack after Jacques' initial throw.

Jeremy and Kathleen zeroed in on the two remaining pins on the other team's left side. Kristy, on offense, and Jenny, on defense, stood in their way. Jeremy faked an overhand throw to Kristy's right, which she reached up to block, so Kathleen threw an underhand throw to Kristy's left, aiming at the pin in the back corner. Jenny stepped towards that pin to block Kathleen's ball, so Jeremy could finally nail the now double-exposed bowling pin with an underhanded throw to Kristy's right.

Kristy looked from left to right like she was about to cross a street. "H'aw man," she remarked. "You guys sure got me good."

Randy knocked down one of William's throws and picked up the ball. "We have all the balls now," he said. "Everyone throw at once!" Now that they had time, the other team gathered Randy, Jenny, Kristy, Jacques, Julia, and Owen all armed with dodgeballs. It was like staring down the gym class version of a battleship.

"3, 2," counted down Randy.

"NOW!" screamed Owen, before he could finish. In the resulting confusion, only Jacques, Kristy, and Owen threw on Owen's cue, and the first two a bit hesitantly. I was able to swat down Owen's ball, Jeremy caught Jacques', and William knocked down Kristy's.

"No! Why?" shouted Randy as he turned to look at Owen. At that moment, the ball William had knocked down rolled in front of Kathleen, and without second thought she kicked it into the last pin that Jenny was no longer guarding, sending it flying. If this had been a dramatic TV show, or a video game, the pin would have exploded into three pieces in mid-air, but it didn't.

"Yesss!" cheered Kathleen as Ms. Korny's whistle blew. "That's game, everyone," she crunched. "And just in time too. This is the last Oreo."

"Aw man!" said Owen. "Let's play again! I want a rematch!"

"Unfortunately not," said Ms. Korny. "We're just about out of time here, and Mr. Pony should be here to pick you back up momentarily."

"In that case," said Randy, "Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere!" Most of us bustled about gathering up the game equipment and putting it back in the gym supply closet, and afterwards, we reconvened in the lobby where some of us drank from the water fountains to rehydrate. I sat on one of the benches near the big front window, the temperature of the glass from the drizzle outside cooling my body. My mind was still replaying the events of the game, so I barely noticed Rachel sit down next to me.

"You noticed it too, didn't you," Rachel said.

"What?" I asked.

"The innate strategy and teamwork that they developed during the game," she clarified.

"Oh… that. Yeah, I was surprised that they already knew what to do."

"Everyone is so preoccupied with the spelling bee," remarked Rachel, "But do you not think that is equally as admirable of a skill?"

I frowned as the nearby glass door opened and Mr. Pony entered the gym. "I guess so?" I answered quickly. "I've got to go be the line leader now, though." And with that, I headed to where Mr. Pony was now calling the class together. I wondered what had made Rachel strike up such an unusual conversation with me, but decided to put it out of my mind - between discussing sandwiches with William during centers and burning so many calories during P.E., I was beyond ready for lunch.