Dear Edward(48)

But how can the crisis be over when he still struggles to sleep, and has to wear his brother’s wardrobe in order to feel intact, and will never see his family again? So, when Lacey asks him, with eagerness in her eyes, Is camp fun? Do you like it? he has to hide his irritation. No, I don’t like camp, he thinks. His main sensation is relief that this new experience is not unbearable. Edward finds himself avoiding his aunt, and spending more time than usual at Shay’s house. He understands the adults’ desire for him to just be healed—how could they really understand what he’s been through? But he feels like Lacey should know better.

When the summer ends, his aunt becomes visibly excited about him starting high school, which is completely mystifying, because Edward can’t see any real difference from middle school. He and Shay still go to the same building, with the same principal. They simply take classes on the top two floors instead of the bottom. The only change that feels significant, to Edward, is that he’s no longer exempt from gym class. He’d enjoyed spending that period in study hall, reading or doodling in a notebook.

The massive high school gym is in the back corner of the fourth floor—Edward finds the teacher in her office, right before the first class, and says, “I can’t run that fast, and I lose my balance sometimes. I think it’s best if I sit on the bleachers and watch. I could keep score for you. Or operate your stopwatch, if you want. Time kids, or whatever.”

The gym teacher, a squat woman named Mrs. Tuhane with short brown hair and a whistle around her neck, doesn’t even glance up from her clipboard. “This isn’t a team, son—it’s gym class. You won’t be the only kid out there falling over. You have five minutes, and then your bippie better be on that yellow line, wearing the proper attire.”

“But—”

“No buts.”

After changing clothes, he finds Shay waiting for him outside the locker room. “I think we’re starting a basketball unit,” she says. “Have you ever played basketball?”

Edward and his brother sometimes shot baskets at the local playground. He shakes his head. “My father didn’t think much of organized sports.”

“Maybe you’ll find that you like it. I like knocking the ball out of assholes’ hands. That’s legal in basketball, you know. It’s in the rules.” She gives him a sideways look. “You might find that you’re good at sports.”

“It’s unlikely.”

Shay shrugs.

Edward’s legs are cold in his gym shorts. He’s growing so fast that his arms and legs ache all the time. He doesn’t want to be here. He says, “Stop expecting me to have hidden powers, okay? I’m not a freaking wizard.”

“I don’t expect that anymore.”

He looks at her and knows it’s true. The Harry Potter series is in the distant past, and that possibility—that childishness—is behind them. They’re growing up. Edward—in his stretching body—is a disappointment to her, and to himself. He braces himself for a wave of sadness and is surprised by anger. When his voice comes out, it’s mean. “I can promise you I won’t be any good at basketball.”

“Jesus,” Shay says. “Fine.”

His face burning, he follows her onto the court. He stands where the other kids are standing. When the class begins, he finds the acoustics of the gymnasium excruciating. The repeated shrieks of the whistle, the slamming of the basketball to the floor, the scuffling of feet, and the thudding of bodies into his. The volume of the room, the urgency of the noise, calls up memories he tries to run away from. His heart, as he crisscrosses the court, beats inside his ears. He averts his eyes so no one will pass him the ball. Once, when it bounces into his arms, his entire body seizes. He hurls it away, as if it’s a grenade about to explode.

Twice the gym teacher yells, “Adler, you’re headed in the wrong direction! Turn around!” Edward becomes convinced that the clock on the wall has stopped, or that he’s fallen inside this hour, as if it’s a pool of quicksand, and he’ll never work himself free. Time has swallowed him whole. He will sweat and panic across this gym forever. When a kid bangs into him, Edward acts without thinking: He turns and shoves him in the chest. The kid—who Edward sees is not a him but an Asian girl named Margaret, who’d helped him find his new high school locker—falls to the floor. Mrs. Tuhane says, “Adler, get off the court right now! Take a seat!”

That night, he says to John and Lacey, “You need to write a note to get me out of gym class. Just for a few months, until I’m stronger. It’s too dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” John looks at his wife. “Have they changed gym class since we were kids?”

“I’ll fake a stomachache every time if you don’t write me a note,” he says. “I’m not doing that again.”

“Honey,” Lacey says. “Of course. We’ll write a note.”

When he enters Shay’s room that night, he stares down at his feet. He can still hear basketballs pounding the floorboards in his head when he says, “I’m sorry I was a jerk.” He registers that he sounds angry, even though he’s not; he’s just trying to speak loudly enough to be heard over the rattle of balls.

“What do you have against Margaret?”

He tries to think of a way to explain what it felt like on the basketball court, how his nerves were being lit on fire, one wick at a time. After gym class, he’d apologized to Margaret. She hadn’t said anything in response, just glowered at him and walked away.