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Carl’s skin burned.
Not like a settle simmering under the skin, but rather a never-ending scorch that didn’t want to go away.
It had started off small, not as a burn but a twisting and turning feeling in his chest that wouldn’t go away.
As though something had grabbed a hold of his lungs and was crushing them in its bare hands, then he had sworn something had grabbed him.
Had touched him.
And it burned where he had felt it, after that, dread kicked in.
Dread for Carl always came with a warm feeling that spread from the center of his chest and through the rest of his body, going so far as to make him lightheaded.
Somewhere, in the far corners of his mind, he was aware that his breathing wasn’t right, but he couldn’t get it back again.
The reason behind the burning and the weird, not quite right breathing, was stupid.
Push-ups were Carl’s personal hell.
Sit ups? He could do.
Excessive running? Sure.
Weird jumping jack-boot camp-straight-from-hell-exercises that Coach Smith came up with? Whatever.
He could even do a couple pull ups if told to.
But he couldn’t do push-ups.
It’s not that he didn’t have the strength, he did.
It was the position a push up put you in that…stopped him.
Every time, every time there had been push-ups in gym class since he was fourteen, Carl would sit on the ground and stare down the gym teachers.
I’m not doing it.
Most of them had just sighed and accepted it, some gave him points for it, some didn’t.
He didn’t care either way, as long as he didn’t have to do them.
Coach Smith would typically give him points for the push-ups he didn’t do as long as he did whatever else there was, and so he did.
Coach Smith was…weird.
His sense of humor was off, and everybody hated him.
He was Carl’s favorite teacher ever.
Which was new, typically Carl hated Coaches and they hated him back, which had given him years of mutual ass-holery between him and anyone with a bright orange whistle around their necks his entire educational career thus far.
Well, Coach Smith’s whistle was a dark red.
If people were making fun of Carl’s eye, he would come over and tower over whoever it was until they walked away.
If Carl couldn’t figure out whatever math he was given, Coach Smith would try to help him. (Even if they ended up doing the math completely different than how they were supposed to most of the time, at least they got it done, right?)
Half the time, he would eat lunch with Carl in the cafeteria, or Carl would go to his office and eat there.
He wasn’t sure exactly how they had become friends—if they even were—but they had.
In short: Carl trusted him.
A lot, actually.
So, there came time for Carl’s annual hell.
The push up test thing.
In groups of three or four, everybody in Coach Smith’s gym class would get in a line and do as many push-ups as they could before either giving up willingly or collapsing to the ground.
Last year, Coach Smith hadn’t been there, and there had been a different gym teacher, Carl didn’t remember his name.
In any case, Carl had paid him twenty dollars in cash, and he had given him the gym class equivalent of a B on the test, which worked fine.
He knew he couldn’t do that with Coach Smith.
He seemed like he would accept bribes, but no, not at all, actually.
Carl hadn’t wanted to argue with him.
Not even a little tiny bit.
So, Carl got into the line of the second group and got on the ground.
He had frozen.
Carl hadn’t managed to move to touch his chest to the ground, which was what made it count as a pushup.
He hadn’t even tried.
Just frozen.
Coach Smith had sighed, walked over and kneeled down next to him.
“I’m gonna help you out here, alright? Just to get you going, ‘kay?”
“Sure.” Carl had said.
Coach Smith’s hand had gone to his back and pushed down, just a little.
That’s when the weird breathing had started, when the burning had started, too.
So, he supposed that someone had touched him, but not in the way the burning felt.
Coach Smith’s hand wasn’t burning, other places were.
Which brought Carl to where he was currently.
On the ground, tensed up and not breathing right.
His breathing got faster, his chest moving in short fast spurts, making his head feel heavy and his back and legs and neck got warmer and warmer.
He was on fire.
“Kid? You, okay? I didn’t hurt you, did I? I was trying to be gentle here.”
“Get your hand off of my back.” Carl said.
“What?”
“Get your hand off of my back .” He said it firmer this time, louder, too.
Coach Smith did, and Carl scrambled to get away.
As far away as possible.
All the other boys that had been doing push-ups had ceased, opting to instead stare at him with sick curiosity and amusement.
Carl backed himself up against the gym wall, and it was like his eye couldn’t focus.
He could see clearly, but he was looking at things so quickly that it was disorienting and nothing quite looked right.
He tried closing his eye, but that made it worse.
He couldn’t see.
He only closed one eye, why couldn’t he see?
“Carl.”
His head snapped up and Coach Smith loomed over him.
“Do you need the nurse or….”
“No—No it’s fine. It’s fine.”
Coach Smith looked behind him at all the boys that were staring.
“What are you looking at? Go grab the basketballs and volleyballs and do something before I make you run the rest of the week.”
Nobody moved.
“Have you all suddenly gone deaf? Have I developed some sort of stutter that makes it harder for you to understand me, or are all of your temporal lobes malformed? I said, go!”
They all went.
Coach Smith stood up straighter and offered his hand to Carl.
Carl tried to lift his arms, but they were heavy, so instead he just moved himself up the wall to stand.
It sort of worked.
Carl held onto the wall as Coach Smith gently (as gently as he could anyway) guided him out of the gym doors and into the hallway, then down the hallway and into the bathroom right near the gym.
“Easy now, hold on just a second kid.”
As Coach Smith went to turn on one of the faucets—for reasons Carl couldn’t figure out—he looked in the mirror.
Why was there a bandage over his eye?
Why—
Oh.
Carl gripped the sides of the sink hard, and a sobbing noise ripped its way through his throat.
The spots that were burning before no longer burned but itched and he could feel it all.
All of the hands and weight of that man.
He could feel the hands on his head, back, legs.
Hear the sound of that goddamn belt buckle.
The laughing and the few words spoken by his father when he ripped the man off of him, but not before one man there—he didn’t remember which one exactly—could pull the trigger and shoot his eye.
Carl stared at his eye.
The itching feeling became pressure, so similar to his chest his knees buckled, and he had to catch himself on the edge of the sink.
He had started hyperventilating, but also laughing.
He didn’t know why, but he was laughing like a maniac and Coach Smith had quit messing with the faucet and was over by his side.
“Carl?”
“I’m—” He laughed. “I’m sorry!”
Carl threw his head back, but not a sound of amusement was released, no, this noise was closer to that of a pathetic sob, one that came after you had already cried, and your throat was dry.
Except Carl had just started crying and his throat didn’t feel dry at all, in fact his mouth was filling with saliva.
Without any other words, Carl turned and bolted into a bathroom stall and puked into the toilet.
“Jesus.” Coach Smith said behind him.
He held Carl’s hair but didn’t dare place a hand anywhere actually on him.
Maybe thirty seconds later, Carl slumped against the wall of the bathroom stall, giggling and crying.
Coach Smith was leaning on the other wall.
Carl was pretty sure he was saying things like “In through your nose, out through your mouth.”
Carl’s breathing evened, and his giggles went away, leaving him only with sniffles.
“You uhm…better now?” Coach Smith asked.
“That’s one word for it.” Carl knew he was slurring his words, but he was just so…exhausted.
“Kid, I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“I caused…” He gestured vaguely “ This.”
Carl shook his head. “Nuh-uh. You didn’t cause this.”
Coach Smith raised an eyebrow. “Then do I have an evil twin I’m unaware of?”
“No—no, the man—it’s…long story.”
Coach Smith’s face fell.
“The man?”
Carl nodded.
He closed his eye, he was so tired, but knew he couldn’t fall asleep.
“What…what man?”
Carl swallowed a lump in his throat.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m gonna worry about it. I have no taxes to worry about for a while, so I need something to worry about.”
Carl couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Look, if you can’t tell me exactly what…the man did, can you at least tell me what I did? So, I won't do it again.”
Carl opened his eye again and looked at Coach Smith.
“If I tell you…then you’ll know what happened with the man.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you’re not stupid.”
There were a few seconds of silence.
And in those few seconds, Carl decided “Fuck it.”
“When I was fourteen, my dad and I were held at gunpoint and these guys were robbing us. One took me to the ground, and uhm, and touched. Everywhere. Unbuckled his belt and everything, got my pants down too I’m pretty sure. My dad got him off of me, but someone, one of the robbers, had a gun and shot out my eye.”
Carl paused and tried to interrupt Coach Smith’s face, but he had always had trouble with that.
He looked mad, and Carl got scared.
“You uhm, touched my back and pushed me down. Even if you were being careful, it just—I had sort of forgotten about it, well obviously not entirely, but still, I didn’t think about it as often.”
“This why you won’t do push-ups?”
“Yeah.”
“Christ.” Coach Smith put his head in his hands.
Carl bit on the inside of his cheek.
“I’m sorry.” He muttered.
“No.” Coach Smith said.
“What?”
“No. You have nothing to be sorry for. You hear me? Nothing. What happened—what that guy did to you—” “He didn’t do anything, though.”
Coach Smith stared at him.
“What?”
Carl shrugged. “He didn’t do anything. Dad got him off of me before he could do anything. Plus, I could have gotten him off.”
“Carl—”
“No. It’s stupid. I shouldn’t—I made this sound like a way bigger deal than it is.”
“Carl. He did do something. Just cause—just cause your dad got him off of you before he could do more doesn’t mean he didn’t do something. And you said you were—what, fourteen—and this was a grown ass man? There’s no way in hell that you could have gotten him off, and even if you had been the strongest fourteen year old in the world and totally could have gotten him off of you, and this still happened, it’s still not your fault.
“It was still something, Carl.”
Carl didn’t say anything.
“So. No touching your back. Good to know.”
He still didn’t say anything.
Coach Smith sighed and stood up.
“C’mon, we can go chill in my office for a while if you’d like. I’ll write you a note for your next class.”
Carl stood with him.
They played cards in Coach Smith’s office for the remainder of the day, actually.
Carl wasn’t quite sure how he had gotten Carl marked present in all the rest of his classes for that day.
But hey, gift horse mouth.
Coach Smith asked what else would have the same effect as a hand on his back, and Carl told him what he could think of.
Which wasn’t much, but a start.
Then, at around noon, Coach Smith said “I don’t know if I said it before, so if I did, make sure you listen real good this time, and if I didn’t then still listen real good. What happened, shouldn’t have happened. No one deserves that. No one, you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“Good. Go Fish.”