Fall in May

~15~ Hubris

"Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." ~Lord Lucifer, Paradise Lost 

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I roll up to Lee's and Abrams on the aluminum pool bleachers and chin check at my two new bleacher buddies in the local custom. Lee's chin checks me back, but Abrams is still hunched over with his head in his hands. He looks like death warmed over, and is clearly still struggling to suck air.

"So we're all on a team ...together?" Lee's actually looks scared to death like we are all crazy enough to make him go in the water. Espeically after he has clearly stated he cannot swim ...more than once.

"Relax Lee, no one is going to throw you in the water." I shake my head. "I'm taking your place in this relay race bullshit. All you have to do is just make sure you stay where I tell you to stay, got it?"

"Okay cool." Lee's breathes all kinds of relieved.

"What about you dude?" I nod down to Abrams. "How you doing down there?"

"Not so good." He starts wheezing back answers before I even ask. "I almost had an asthma attack from the chlorine. But I can swim, just not too fast or too long."

"Yeah I watched you, I know you can swim." I glance up at Lee's, who shakes his head back. Even Lee who can't swim at all agrees that Abrams doesn't swim for shit.

"If you have asthma you should have told Chad ahead of time, or at least brought your inhaler. At a minimum, you shouldn't have pushed yourself so hard." I add insult to injury. "That test wasn't timed freahmeat."

"But the stopwatch..." Abrams points out.

"Yeah, he just suckered all the chum like you into trying to kill themselves." I cut him off before he can't point out the obvious. "That stopwatch he keeps swinging around is just for timing kids he's interested in for trying out for the swim team. Thus this 'let's have some fun doing a relay race' bullshit. That was all for show, just to weed out the few freshmeat he wants to take a look at before the official tryouts."

"Oh...shit." Abrams wheezes, as it dawns on him that Chad has been flipping around the stopwatch, but never actually looked at it. Nor did anyone else fail, other than him for cheating.

"No shit." I shrug. "Oh, and I also might have mentioned to him that you were seriously offended when he brought Jesus up, and your parents are angry ACLU lawyers."

"Why would you do that guy?" Abrams frowns up at me, see's my tattoo's staring back and suddenly finds something at his feet way better to look at again.

"So he will leave you alone from now on, stupid freshmeat." I frown down at him to get the point. "Public schools are terrified of getting sued over religious discrimination, it's a thing."

"How is that discrimination?" Lee blinks up at me in confusion.

"He invoked The Jesus and Abrams being Jewish, duh?" Damn stupid flocking freshmen really don't know shit about the way things work in the real. It's no wonder they get picked on all the time.

"But I'm not Jewish, I'm an Episcopalian." Abrams gapes at me.

"Yeah well, you're Jewish now if you want Chad off your ass for the rest of the year." I shrug. "So either go march over to Chad and tell him I was wrong and to please keep screaming at you. Or go buy a gold David star and wear it proudly during gym, so that blazing idiot will leave you alone. Hell, he'll probably even pass your dumb ass out of fear of losing his job."

"Will that work if you're Buddhist? Cause I could totally be Buddhist?" Lee muses. "I think my grandfather was maybe Buddhist once...or something like that?"