The Kramorian Exchange

Chapter 7: Dunk-em hover b-ball

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Spignek and I arrive at the door to the gym and wait in line with the rest of the boys from our year. There are 30 of us all together in the seventh grade, 15 boys and 15 girls. Here with me right now there are 9 humans and 6 aliens. I think Spignek is the oldest here, but not by much.

  Tayona is 136 and about 2 inches taller than Spig. Mosgyhha is 135 and is actually here with his twin brother, Mosgyhhi. I'm pretty sure they exchanged with twins too, a couple from Grasslands. Rewit is 132 as well, and Travis is the youngest male alien in our year at 131 Kramorian years old.

Poor Travis, He has tried so hard to get us to learn his Kramorian name but we all get it wrong so often he just ended up picking an Earth name he liked and stuck with it. I actually like Travis a whole lot, the name and the alien, and strangely the name suits him. He's short for an alien, about 6'8", and I think back home he was picked on a bit for it.

Standing in the hall we all have just one question on our minds. 'What on Earth is going to be behind that door?'

We can't hear anything from inside, although some of the lads have tried standing with an ear pressed to it countless times before. There are certainly no windows to peek through either and, as always, we start guessing.

"I reckon it'll be birds again" Says Harold Post, "Doves. And we'll have to catch them and get the messages from their legs and decode them. And it will be a race..."

"Nah, it'll be jungles again for sure" Says Will Kinrid, "I hope I get to use a machete again, that was..."

"Dungeons! with maps and compasses..." Shouts someone else.

"Jelly Wrestling!", "Fishing!", "8 legged races..." Everyone is shouting ideas now.

Travis is standing behind me. He is always just a little on the nervous side before a Gym class and right now he taps me softly on the shoulder, "August?" He asks. I turn around and he is standing with his hands shoved in his pockets, a glum look on his long face as he stares at the ground.  "You don't think we'll have to, you  know, jump over things again, in there, do you?"

Poor Travis. A few weeks ago we'd opened the Gym doors to find a mega obstacle course. There were blocks and tunnels and webbing and ropes. And you had to get over, under or on top of something before the time was up. Travis was always the last one finished (if he finished at all). Personally I'd thought it was super fun. Especially the part where we had to leap over these logs that moved then catch a rope, then swing out over a pit filled with balls, and land on a teeny platform. Then you had to climb another rope up a wall and slide down the other side for the buzzer.

Yeah, I rocked that course!

I give him a smile and punch him lightly on the arm. "Hey, I don't think so buddy" I say, trying to make him feel better. "They don't normally have the same thing so close together, do they?"

Actually I wasn't so sure, and I had really loved that class anyway. Even though I was smaller than most the other lads, I could scale things quite quickly, and it was way easier for me to get under and through things then it was for the bigger guys. Being short certainly has its moments. Few and far between, granted, but still some moments.

There was a florescent light strung over the door to the Gym which told us when we could go inside. I was giving Travis one last pep talk when the fluro light turned Orange, and we all fell silent at once, holding our breath. The door unlocks with a clank and squeals piercingly as it swings open automatically. We pause for a moment, and then all try to jostle inside at once, elbows being the most efficient weapon when you wanna be first.