Page 7 of Impossible

We have a view of one of the strange PE classes that the boys on the gifted campus do—we know the school is co-ed, but these classes are always just guys. They look more like military bootcamp than PE, complete with olive green t-shirts and shorts and shrill whistle blows sending them from drill to drill.

Rose joins us a few minutes later, lips pressed into a thin line when she sees me sitting next to Cam. I scooch away from him, making room for her in the middle, but she heads to his other side instead.

Cam has a sandwich, clementine, and bag of chips, typical cafeteria bag-lunch fare. Rose has a protein bar. I have nothing. She glares at me when she sees this—I did mean to pack something, but I considered it a victory that I even made my coffee before staggering out the door to work this morning.

“I heard Gavin and Ben hooked up last night,” Rose says as she peels her bar open.

“Oh?” Cam says.

“Yeah. Finally, right?” Rose smirks. Everybody knows Ben is gay, except Ben. Everybody also knows that Ben realizing Ben is gay is something that should happen on Ben’s timeline. Everybody except Rose, that is.

That’s when I smell it—something acrid and strange and chemical. I sniff the air.

“What?” Rose asks.

“Do you smell that?” I ask.

“What’s going on down there?” Cam asks, pointing down at the field. The class of gifted guys had been doing a circuit of drills; wind sprints, burpees, and flipping massive rubber tires up and down the field. Now they’re all standing still, alert, heads flipping around as though looking for something.

“They’re probably smelling it too,” I say.

“Smelling what?” Rose asks, irritated now.

“Do you not smell it?” I sniff again. It’s a flat, foamy smell—a freshly unpackaged mattress or an office storage closet with paper and pens and printer cartridges.

Cam sniffs the air, and the sight of him lifting his nose and exposing his neck makes me want to lean in and kiss it. The instinct is so sudden that I jerk back. His eyes lock on mine, and for a breath I could swear he’s thinking the same thing. I watch his pupils dilate, his cheeks and lips flushing pink, perfectly kissable.

“Indie, what the fuck?” Rose says. “You are acting beyond strange.”

My eyes are fixed on Cam’s neck though—I am hyper-aware of the stirrings of spring, the fresh-cut grass and crocuses and daffodils and something else sweet I don’t quite recognize. But the plastic chemical smell is overpowering it all, and why does it feel like it’s coming fromhim?

I want to lean in and smell him, but that’s insane. Usually I can barely hug Cam, and now something in me is rising that wants to straddle his lap and nuzzle his neck and have himholdme.

“Ok, actually though, what the fuck,” Rose murmurs, eyes fixed down on the field again. The teacher—trainer?—is a giant blonde man, and he looks more frantic than any of the students, his head whipping left and right, searching forsomethingnone of them can seem to find. It makes me antsy, like I want to scan my surroundings for danger.

“Indie, are you ok?” Cam’s brow furrows with concern. I want to reach out and smooth his worries away with my thumb. I want to cup his face and pull it to mine. He bites his lip and before I know it, I’m shifting my weight, getting ready to throw away years of masking and disguising my feelings for him because the need to kiss him, to gently brush the lip he’s holding between his teeth and show him every inch of tenderness inside me, is just too strong. He’s leaning towards me too—does he want this as badly as I do?

But then his attention zeroes in on something below.

“What the…” he trails off.

My heart thuds in my chest, humiliation coursing through my veins at what I was just about to do. What is wrong with me? Did I think I was just going tokisshim? Out here? In broad daylight, at lunch, in front of Rose, in front of anybody who might walk by and see him rejecting me? Was I really about to ruin our friendship, one of my few anchors to this planet it sometimes seems, because he wasbiting his lip?

“Indie.” Cam’s voice is more insistent, and I yank myself from my pity party to look at what he is.

And what I see is terrifying.

On the field below, the class has found what they were looking for before. Now they stare at it intently: us.

“Ok, that is creepy,” Cam breathes.

They’re so far away that I can barely make their faces out, but I canfeelthe weight of their attention like a red laser beam on my chest. And somehow, I know—it isn’t Cam, or Rose, or the three of us that they’re looking at. It’s me.

A single moment of stillness, and then there’s no other word for it: theystampede.

Every single guy is suddenly sprinting, full bore, across the field and up the steep grass hill towards us. Their instructor is a single moment behind them, blowing his whistle frantically as he sprints to catch up.

He’s faster than the rest of them, and as we watch, holding our breath, he breaks out ahead of the pack, grabbing guys by the arm or elbow and tossing them backwards as he passes, making them tumble down the hill.

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