Kyle pushed himself from the splits into a sitting position easily, and then stood. He walked quickly over to the mirrored wall and grabbed his towel off of the warm up bar and wiped the sweat off of his face before turning to his coach. His coaches expression was hard to read, as it often was. He couldn't tell if he'd redeemed himself and earned himself the right to go home with what he thought was a flawless, and almost effortless, performance, or if she was still angry with him and would keep him here to do his performance six more times. And not just the ending of it like he'd just done, but the first two minutes of it as well.
"You're lucky I have other things to do tonight Broflovski, or I'd keep you another two hours," his coach said finally, letting her arms fall to her sides. "Now go change and get out of here." Kyle nodded, not needing to be told twice and hurriedly left to the locker room.
The boy's locker room was a small one and always felt almost eerily empty to Kyle. The lockers in it were half lockers and there were only about twenty of them. Against one wall was a long mirror with a counter in front of it, and at the opposite side of the room was a door that lead to a small bathroom with only a sink and a toilet. And in the middle of the room was a long wooden bench screwed to the floor that barely had enough room to walk around.
Kyle walked quickly over to his locker, just missing banging his leg on the bench, and opened it without having to put in the code for the lock. He never closed his locked fully, because in the twelve years he'd had it he'd been the only boy using the locker room. He wasn't even sure he remembered the code for his lock anymore.
After pulling out his shirt, pants, boxers, shoes, socks, backpack, and jacket from his locker, Kyle slipped off his slippers and began to strip off his dark blue leotard and tossed it into his backpack. Next he pulled off his light blue tights, along with his little white briefs, and stuffed them into his bag as well. Then he quickly pulled on his boxers, dark blue skinny jeans, Terrance and Phillip shirt, slipped on his socks, sneakers, and orange jacket, and tossed his towel into the laundry bin by the door as he practically sprinted out of the room.
"I don't know how many times I have to tell you Kyle, just get changed at home!" Kyle's mom shouted as soon as he was out of the change room and in the hallway. She was standing there with her arms crosses, looking very impatient. It was almost like looking at, and listening to, an exact image of his coach. The only differences were that his mother was a little bigger and had red hair done up into an outdated style, instead of nice long black hair tied up into a ponytail. "You take way too long to get changed after practise and we always go straight home after you're done, there's no reason for you to be wasting time switching clothing when we could be on our way home! I come all the way out here to this ballet studio because you don't want anyone in South Park to know you're in ballet, the least you can do is just go straight to the car after class!"
"You come all the way out to this ballet studio because you're the one that wanted me in this stupid sport and I told you, when I was four! Four! That it was stupid and I didn't want to do it because my friends would laugh at me, and the only way you could get me to do it was if you brought me all the way out here and promised me my friends would never find out! And that deal still stands! So if you want me to go straight to the car after practise instead of changing you're going to have to come up with a new deal!" Kyle practically screamed at his mother before turning and storming off towards the car. He knew he would regret his outburst shortly, because his mother wouldn't stop lecturing him all the way home, but he was in a foul mood over the whole ballet thing and was due for an angry outburst. He was just glad it had been his mother that had pushed him over the edge so he had a legitimate reason for being angry, instead of blowing up on his brother for using up all the toothpaste, or one of his friends for bugging him during class, or something else equally as trivial and stupid.
One thing was for sure, everything Kyle had said to his mother was true, so he felt it wouldn't be fair if she lectured him on stating facts, but she could lecture him on the way he'd stated them. His mother had stuck him in ballet practically against his will at four years old. Kyle always thought it had something to do with her secretly wanting to be a ballet star when she was younger, and even now, but never having the chance to pursue that dream. Of course he was never totally one hundred percent sure about that fact because he was never interested enough, or brave enough, to actually ask his mom, but he always thought it was a good possibility.
It took Kyle's mom about a week to finally get him to agree to at least try the sport out, but she had to promise to take him to the ballet studio two towns over to insure that word didn't reach his friends in South Park about his 'girly' after school activity. Of course as soon as he was done his first practise he wanted to quit, but somehow his mom had convinced him to keep going and that he might learn to like it. He never did learn to like it however. But his mom still managed to convince him keep going, especially after she found out he was naturally gifted in the sport. Even now she kept him going to practise and competitions by telling him that as soon as he quit, as long as it wasn't from injury, she no longer had to keep his ballet a secret for him and could display all his awards, old outfits, and competition pictures around the house proudly for everyone that came over to see, instead of keeping them hidden in her own bedroom. But Kyle still hated ballet. He didn't care how good he was or how far he could go with his skills. He didn't have fun with it and he was constantly trying to hide his involvement in the sport from his friends, which was getting harder and harder to do. He was always making up excuses for why he had to go straight home, his dad and brother were always having to cover for him if one of his friends went over to his house looking for him and he wasn't home, it helped though that his practise schedule was almost completely random, and he had to try to make up good excuses for not hanging out with his friends on the weekend and for canceling dates with his boyfriend without seeming like a douche. On top of all that he had spent his whole life pretending he couldn't dance, and that he had no rhythm in him what-so-ever. It was just completely overwhelming and annoying for Kyle to keep up with all his excuses and lies, especially now that he was a teenager and all his friends were a good amount smarter than they were back when they were in elementary school.
Kyle stood by the car and waited for his angry mother to come out the ballet studio and unlock the car doors before tossing his bag in the back seat and getting into the front passenger seat. He'd learnt from experience that it was better for him to sit up front and take the heat from his mom when she was mad, rather than sit in the back and make it seem like he was trying to hide from the issue and didn't care that he'd done anything wrong.
Soon his mom was in the driver's seat beside him, starting the car. She backed out of her parking space quickly and made the car tiers screech on the road as she raced out of the parking lot and onto the town's streets. She drove recklessly, but the fact that they almost got into an accident several times didn't even faze Kyle. She'd driven angry and like this many times over the years without getting hit, so he figured she was probably pretty experienced with driving recklessly by now. Like usually his mom stayed quiet and concentrated on the road until they got out of the town and onto the highway where there weren't as many cars and obstacles, and then the fireworks flew. And they continued to fly with Kyle silently watching and listening, and making sure to show that he was paying full attention, until they reached their home in South Park and pulled into its driveway.