“You’ve never met him before?” Michelle asked.
Rachel answered her question this time. “He’s a sophomore, so I guess Caledon doesn’t have a lot of opportunities to be around him.”
They did some warm-up exercises by following what Dennis and Rachel did, then they followed Dennis to one small part of the climbing wall that wasn’t currently occupied. Caledon peered down at the small blue bag with an open mouth and a protruding drawstring that Dennis was carrying by its handle.
“What’s this?”
“It’s my chalk bag.” He tilted it in Caledon’s direction to show him its contents. “I use the chalk ball on my hands for better grip on the holds.”
“Will I need it too?”
He held out it to him. “You can use mine. Don’t use too much, or it can actually make your grip more slippery. It mostly helps if you have sweaty palms.”
“Oh. I probably won’t need much then.”
Caledon mimicked Rachel, reaching his hands into the chalk bag.
“Do you want to use mine?” Rachel asked Michelle.
“Thanks, but I think I’ll just watch for now,” she said. “I’m not sure my sneakers are suitable for climbing, anyway.”
Rachel gave her shoes a quick look. “They should work for the beginner routes if you want to give it a try. In any case, yours look better than Caledon’s.”
Caledon was wearing regur sneakers as well, but they looked more suited to sports than hers—hers were ft soled.
“Really?”
“Yeah, a lot of climbing shoes are ftter than regur shoes.” Rachel pointed to her own. “See?”
In the end, Michelle stood by at the side while Dennis pointed out a beginner bouldering problem, which was color-coded by tape beside the respective holds for easy recognition, to Caledon. Most people in school had probably touched the climbing wall at least once, but she didn’t know if Caledon was one of those who enjoyed the gym csses where they had to use the climbing wall.
“So do you guys have competitions and stuff?” she asked Rachel.
“It’s mostly recreational. We have a few friendly competitions throughout the year, but it’s nothing serious.”
Caledon pulled himself up onto the starting holds. Michelle had barely watched him maneuver his way through the next few holds when squeals filled the air. Her confusion was immediately quelled once she turned around in the direction of the noise.
The girls Dennis had said were here for Augustus either had both hands covering their mouths in excitement or both hands cupped around their mouths to call out to him.
“August, you’re so amazing!”
“That was so cool!”
It officially rendered Michelle speechless.
“Literally what is this? Are they straight up just his personal cheerleaders or something?”
“More like a fan club, really,” Rachel said.
The guy in question had heaved himself across from one hold to another in a fairly impressive feat of strength and dexterity. Michelle made a face at the way he twisted both his head and the upper half of his torso backwards for the apparent purpose of smiling appreciatively at his fans.
He was rewarded with more cheers and swooning from his adoring audience, and then Michelle realized the reason for those girls’ behavior—he had the kind of face that belonged to boyishly handsome teen pop stars, the kind of face that wouldn’t look out of pce on a poster in someone’s bedroom. His strawberry blond hair was styled in an obviously deliberate tousled manner, keeping most of his hair from his face and accentuating the sharpness of his high cheekbones.
She snorted. “I didn’t realize our school had a celebrity.”
“They have nothing better to do,” Dennis muttered, keeping an eye on Caledon’s progress.
Michelle didn’t recognize a single one of those girls. “Are they sophomores too?”
“Probably, but I think some of them are freshmen.”
A few other guys waiting for their turn at the wall kept shooting them annoyed looks, with a couple of them scowling at Augustus’ oblivious back. Michelle wondered how much of it was envy and how much of it was frustration at the distracting nature of the girls’ presence.
“If they’re just here to cheer for him, you could just make them leave, right? They aren’t a part of this club anyway.”
“We tried that. They came back the next day to sign up as club members.”
Levi had his share of quietly blushing fans, but even they didn’t have the audacity to pretend to want to join the drama club purely to admire him. She wasn’t sure that their club president would stand for such a thing anyway. Everybody in their club contributed in one way or another.
“And you can’t kick them out for not participating?”
“We’re just a recreational club. People join or leave as and when they feel like it.”
“I remember them pretending to participate that one time.”
“He’s not even that hot, though,” Michelle said pensively. “I mean, he’s cute, but not cute enough for me to spend an afternoon watching him flex his muscles.”
Laughing lightly, Rachel said, “I wish he could’ve heard you say that.”
Caledon grabbed onto one of the yellow holds near the top of the wall with his right hand.
“You solved it,” Dennis called out to him. “Come down normally.”
Slowly, he lowered himself down the wall, using the easiest holds to reach for his feet to rest on, and eventually hopped down from the wall when he got to the lowest avaible holds.
“That was fun,” he said, turning back to give the climbing wall a once over. “I never really bothered trying before.”
“Yeah, it’s a beginner problem,” Dennis said. “When you move on to the harder ones, you’ll need climbing shoes.”
“Aren’t those expensive?”
“We hold fundraisers twice a year to subsidize part of the cost of the equipment for people who decide to commit.”
“Oh,” Michelle said, nodding. “The bake sales. I like those cupcakes with the blue frosting.”
Rachel grinned. “They are good, aren’t they?”
The excited high-pitched chatter coming from Augustus’ fan girls gradually became a steady stream of background noise in a way, allowing Michelle to realize just how the bouldering club members were able to tolerate their presence.
There were a couple of other guys who were climbing across the wall that demonstrated simirly impressive levels of agility and strength—one of them threw himself from one hold to another that was more than an arm’s length away—maybe even more than Augustus, but nobody was even looking at them.
Dennis seemed to catch her looking at them, because he said, “They’re seniors, the best in our club.”
“They’re really good.”
“They have to be. We basically manage ourselves in this club and teach all the newcomers ourselves.”
“What about Ms. Enfield?” Michelle looked around. She was nowhere in sight.
He shrugged. “She’ll probably get here … ter. She just sits around grading homework or something most of the time, anyway.”
According to Dennis, their previous seniors taught the current ones everything they knew about bouldering, and they passed it all down to the next batch that came in. Apparently, despite it being a recreational club, the people who started the club five years ago were really passionate about bouldering and drew in more members who were like-minded.
Under Rachel’s persistent encouragement, Michelle gave it a go herself. She tried the same bouldering problem that Caledon had just solved and found it surprisingly easy and enjoyable to move between the holds when there was no pressure of being watched by the rest of the gym css.
She got to see Rachel linger at one of the holds for the longest time, eventually moving on after enough coaxing from Dennis. They were the most obvious couple here—there didn’t appear to be another pair who would interact so cloyingly with each other among the rest of the climbers. Everyone else seemed busy with their own challenges, sometimes breaking off into small groups of twos or threes to chat casually while resting.
At one point, Augustus was swarmed by girls offering him bottles of water at the side as he took a break from climbing. Michelle was amused to watch them snip at each other for the opportunity to be the one he spoke to.
It was Caledon’s turn to rest, so she stood beside him as he chugged water.
“So, are you going to join them?”
“Feels like it,” he said. “I like how casual it is.”
“Maybe I’ll come and watch you when I’m bored.” That happened frequently now that all three of her best friends had a boyfriend. Since the big py of the year had just ended, her boredom was exacerbated even further.
She raised an eyebrow at his sudden snickering.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said, his gaze traveling to the other side of the gym again. “I was just picturing you cheering me on like those girls are doing for Augustus. It was kind of funny.”
“You know what, that is kind of hirious. You think they’d stop if they saw how horrible it looks when someone else is doing it?”
“Why don’t you try it, and we’ll find out?”
Michelle snorted out a ugh herself. “Nice try. I might consider it if I’m bored out of my mind.”
“Hey, you must be Caledon.”
They turned towards the guy who had moved within earshot to say that.
It was one of the two seniors Michelle had made a note of earlier said. Up close, he was more well-built than Augustus, as evidenced by the fairly impressive muscle tone to his forearms leading up to his upper arm, but most of it was hidden under his regur fit T-shirt.
Unlike Augustus, however, he merely looked like a regur affable guy, which expined why he didn’t have his own band of fan girls. His smile was warm.
“Yeah, I am,” Caledon said, nodding back at him. “How do you know my name?”
“Dennis told me he was bringing you here today. I’m Bke, the club president. I saw you two try out a couple of bouldering problems earlier. What do you think?”
“I liked it. I’m thinking of joining.”
Bke perked up at Caledon’s words.
“It was fun. But, uh, I just tagged along to check it out. I’m already in the drama club. I’m Michelle, by the way.”
“Are you Dennis’ friend too?”
“She’s my girlfriend,” Caledon corrected with some pride in his voice.
There seemed to be an air of confusion and amusement around Bke. “So you came with him as support? That’s nice.”
Startled, Michelle blinked. By the looks of it, Caledon felt the same way too.
“No, I came because I was bored.” She paused. “Wait, is that not allowed?”
Even his ugh was genial, as though anyone was welcome to ugh along. “Oh, no, no, you’re good. If those girls can come here every week to cheer for someone, I don’t see a problem with this. Feel free to drop by whenever you like. But I’m gd you’re interested in joining us, Caledon!”
Dennis and Rachel came back to them while Bke was eborating on the friendly competitions they participated in against some other schools, seemingly in an effort to entice Caledon further. It was then that Michelle finally saw Ms. Enfield stepping into the gym.
She taught Biology, but, as far as Michelle was aware, she was also the club sponsor for the girls’ volleyball club. One of her friends who was on the school volleyball team had mentioned it to her before, and it seemed like she was an active coach and advisor to them. Here, however, she sauntered to the bleachers and sat herself down, pulling out a ptop from her bag and opening it. She spared the students in the hall exactly one sweeping gnce before getting to work on her ptop.
“Wow, she really isn’t involved,” Michelle said.
Mr. Sanchez at least helped them to look over their scripts and shared tips with students struggling with the characters they were portraying.
Bke followed her gaze. “When our seniors first started the club, none of the other teachers even wanted to sponsor us. They told us that Ms. Enfield was the only one who agreed to be our advisor as long as we handled everything ourselves and only went to her for administrative things we needed her for.”
“They must have really wanted to start this club,” Caledon said with raised eyebrows.
Excited squeals filled the air again. Michelle gnced over. Augustus had started climbing again, leaving the girls at the bottom of the wall to cheer him on. Without turning around to see what the commotion was about, Bke rubbed his hand over his face.
“Man, I can’t wait to graduate.”
LotteStarburst
