Will Byers

Ever since sixth grade, Mike, Lucas, and I had arranged our schedules so that we all had the same PE class, reasoning that three of us would be harder to take in the locker rooms than one. This posed a problem when we got to high school. Mike and I both wanted to take PE freshman year, to get it over with as soon as possible. The problem was that Indiana requires a half-credit health course, and Dustin, who was exempt from PE, wanted us all to take it together.

"I don't see what's so important about taking health class freshman year," Mike grumbled.

"So I can sue the school."

"For making you take health?"

"For making me take a health class where they have a goddamn priest come in and give you a lecture on keeping yourself pure or some shit. It's a blatant violation of the First Amendment."

It was traditional in Hawkins for the official curriculum to be supplemented by a week of lectures from a clergyman. The job was supposed to rotate among Hawkins' various denominations, but for the past few years had been dominated by Father Jeff, the junior priest of St. Aloysius, who was generally assumed to be good at 'communicating with the youth' because he himself was on the young side and displayed a much greater familiarity with contemporary popular culture than the older ministers like Pastor Charles.

"And you think, what, you can just hire a lawyer with your allowance?" Mike retorted.

"There's an organization that will take the case pro bono. I talked it all over with Nancy. She said the faculty advisor for the school newspaper already told her she couldn't run an article on it, so she's going to file dispatches to Murray Baumann's paper. It could go all the way to the Supreme Court!"

"I don't see why Nancy couldn't just sue them herself. She already took health."

"Because you're Catholic, remember?"

"I remember, alright." Mike had developed an intense antipathy towards religion after I went missing. To be fair, all of our religious beliefs had been upended by the revelation of the Upside Down's existence, which didn't exactly line up with Genesis. But whereas Dustin maintained a rigorously open-minded commitment to agnosticism and Lucas and I had settled into indifferent atheism, Mike hated everything to do with Christianity. His parents had made him see the priest for counseling when he started acting out over El, but he'd gotten out of confirmation classes by threatening to debate the existence of God with the teacher, and just to be on the safe side, his parents let him stop attending St. Aloysius' youth group, and he thought it was only a matter of months before he could get out of church entirely.

"So, she'd have a hard time proving standing."

"Why don't we just double up?" I asked.

"Huh?"

"Take PE and health at the same time. There's no rule against it." To be honest, I wanted to get health class over with too. I wasn't sure if 'alternative lifestyles' would come up, but if they did, I was sure I wasn't going to like what was said about them.

"That could work. I'll have to check with El."

"I thought she was exempt from PE," Lucas said.

"Yeah, but I want to make sure we have the same lunch."

I rolled my eyes. "How come superpowers get you an exemption from PE, but PTSD doesn't?"

"Ms. Kelley made the principal watch Carrie when they registered for classes."

Ms. Kelley was the CIA psychologist the government had stationed in Hawkins High School to keep providing me with 'services' now that Owens wasn't at the lab and to watch out for any additional problems, supernatural or otherwise. I decided to drop by her office to see if she would help me get an exemption, but I struck out.

"I don't see any reason PTSD would keep you from participating in PE."

"It's not really really about the PTSD," I admitted, "I'm…" I lowered my voice, just in case anyone was passing close enough to her office to overhear "…homosexual."

"That was in your file, but it hasn't stopped you from participating in PE until now."

"Well, I would have had to tell the gym teacher I'm gay. But trust me, it's been miserable. Have you seen the way they set up the showers? They put the shower heads in a circle around a pole so you have to stand facing some other naked guy." I was convinced that whoever designed those showers was a psychopath.

"Will, a lot of things in life are hard, especially if you're gay. You can't get in the habit of using your mental illness to try to avoid them."

"So, you're not going to get me an exemption?"

"Sorry."

We were at least able to arrange it so that we had health class right after PE, and right before lunch, so there would be a bit of a break between being an extra in Lord of the Flies and Latin class.

It turned out that PE in high school was even worse than in junior high. It wasn't just that we had to shower in public, it was that we were showering in front of athletes who were taking more PE than the required one year and who had no compunctions about making fun of our lack of development. There was one upperclassman who stuck up for us, a sophomore on the basketball team named Patrick McKinney, but he was almost worse. Since Lucas was planning on trying out for basketball, he would share a shower pole with us and share friendly tips about the tryouts. Basketball conditioning had been very good for his physique, and genetics had been very good for his facial features. I looked up at the ceiling as much as possible and showered as quickly as possible, hoping to get away from him before a reaction gave the game away.

Health class ended up serving as a sort of cold shower. We reunited with Dustin at the back of the classroom, and I could space out while the teacher showed us slides of various venereal diseases. It wasn't exactly what most people would want to look at right before lunch, but it was very effective in tamping down my hormones. They came roaring back when I went to bed at night, and I found that Patrick was displacing Mike in my fantasies. There were times when I caught a hint of a lilt in his voice or a vaguely swishy mannerism that gave me a wild fantasy that he might be in a position to reciprocate my affections. I tried as hard as I could to dismiss those thoughts. I knew they were probably just wishful thinking, and while I was glad to not be hung up on Mike, who for some reason had been in a continuous bad mood since the start of school, any more, I knew the odds were that Patrick would be much less sanguine than Mike if he knew how I really felt. I had to make sure he never found out how I really felt.

So of course, the universe decided that Patrick needed a geometry tutor, and the most logical person to do it was the freshman with the highest grade in the class. For some reason, he didn't want me coming over to his house, so he would be hanging out at my kitchen table every Wednesday until he brought his grade up enough to keep his athletic eligibility.