Steve on a Friday

Wrestlers were walking out of the school doors.
They seemed wrestlers to Steve because they all had an air of superior virility about them. Sweat, stink, warm beneath thick jackets. And it was wrestling season. His job was to make sure that no students left without a pass and that no unreasonable person entered the school without stopping by the office for a nametag.
“You guys going to a meet or something?” He asked.
A lanky featherweight with zits looked at him and, with a surprisingly baritone voice, bellowed “Yeah.”
“Oh, well good luck at State.” Steve really only knew that it was time for the State Wrestling Championship because of the stupid Mohawks that the state qualifiers were given by their team mates. Cauliflower ears and Mohawks. The students continued to stoically saunter out of the doors. Two of the kids had been in his literature class last semester.
“Hey Juan, Sean, good luck at State!”
The students’ faces glowed with sweat, not pride. They both had grins on their faces after Steve had given them the platitude. No reply, though.
The floor in this part of the school building was new, and it made a tapping sound with every type of shoe. The tapping now had stopped and the hum of vending machines filled the corridors. A few kids’ voices echoed down the halls. A door slammed. Concrete settled. One last kid with a Mohawk came past Steve, he was on his way out the door.
“Good luck at your meet.”
“Oh. We already went to the meet. I am going home.”
The teacher was a freakin’ boulder in a field of rocks. Another kid down the hall screamed. Then the sound of rushing water and the echoing hall with the new floor and the rubber mats, the blue and orange humming vending machines, the teacher sitting at the desk checking kids’ passes all in unison went silent in a roar. The dilapidated pool on the second floor had caved, Steve couldn’t swim, and it was a Friday.