It’s hard to match the ego of a star high school athlete returning to his old turf. The nostalgia of being back in the halls he used to walk with youthful arrogance and noticing the irremovable scuff marks left on the mascot statue from their senior prank made Levi Griffin feel like he was 18 again. The rush of the glory days was its own high but of course he wasn’t 18 anymore; he was 28, a fact he was reminded of and that briefly deflated that high when he passed a particularly reflective window on his first week back at Klover High School. His dirty blonde hair was a bit darker now, his eyes always seemed to have at least a little baggage under them, and the ring on his finger told the world he was a married man, a certified adult to any student there.

However, he didn’t actually stick out like an adult among the sea of kids he walked past during class changes. He’d topped-out at 5’9 years ago and his baby-face was mostly still intact with a boyish smile that had usually meant he was up to no good during his first round at Klover High. If you didn’t know any better, you might think he was still on his way to graduation but no, Levi Griffin, the all-star baseball player from a decade earlier wasn’t back for some strange Billy Madison reason, he was Klover’s new baseball coach.

Although he wasn’t a teacher, he had access to the teachers’ lounge like every other staff member and made his way in about 10 a.m. one morning with a few papers in his hand. The only other person in there was a man about six feet tall, having to hunch a bit to get a good view of the screen on the copier until he stood straight up to look who was joining him. “…Anthony? Anthony Craig? The hell are you doing here, man??” Levi greeted with a flash of his wide smile before reaching out to lock hands with Anthony and pull him in for a signature ‘bro’ hug. “I uhh, I work here. I teach Biology” “No shit…I didn’t know you came back too. I’m the new baseball coach!” Levi announced, clearly happy to see a familiar face.

“Yeah, I heard. Congratulations. How’d that happen?” Anthony asked. “Well, I was coaching about three hours away since that’s where my wife is from but she quit and I got offered this job about the same time so we said fuck it and moved back. You doing alright, man? You look good” Levi added with a chummy slap of Anthony’s arm. “Thanks, yeah, I’m doing well. I actually have class in a few minutes though so I should probably grab my stuff and get going” Anthony added as he gathered his copies. “Yeah, I hear ya. Good to see ya” Levi assured with another pat as he walked past, earning an annoyed look from Anthony that Levi couldn’t see but before he could make it out of the lounge, “Hey, I know you’re busy but I don’t know how to work this copy machine. You wanna help me out here a second?” Levi asked with the same kind of voice that’d charmed his way into copying people’s homework in geometry. “…sure” was all Anthony said as he reluctantly turned back around to help the eternal jock figure out the simple machine.

Two weeks later Anthony was in the middle of a lesson with his senior class when a knock at the door interrupted him, triggering a look over to see Levi through the window of the door. “Keep reading where we were and I’ll be right back” Anthony instructed and opened the door, “What’s up?” “Hey, sorry to bother you, man, but I need to see Kyle and Dante real quick” “Is this important?” “Yeah, it’ll just take two seconds. Real quick” Levi insisted with no real interest in how disruptive he was being to Anthony’s class time but Mr. Craig called the two baseball players out to talk to their coach. When they came back in, they were noticeably more talkative and defiant of Mr. Craig, snickering when he’d call them down after a fake concern for being singled out only to keep on talking seconds later. It was almost like being around Levi aka Coach Griffin had had that effect on them, as if he’d rubbed off on them somehow.

Anthony knew it was a stretch but he remembered how Levi used to be and although the jury was still out on if he’d grown up at all, all signs were pointing to no. He used to think himself something of a class clown. Being among the unwritten upper echelon of the student body meant it wasn’t hard for him to have an audience willing to laugh or admire anything he did and even when his jokes wouldn’t land, he still thought they were funny. Anthony had been in several classes with him during school and had even been the target of some of his teasing although it was closer to bullying at times. Digs about the kind of shoes Anthony would wear or the fact that he always made good grades stuck with Anthony. They weren’t even friendly jabs. Anthony didn’t come back at him or laugh along with him because they weren’t friends.

That’s what was so weird about the teachers’ lounge interaction. Levi acted like he was reuniting with a buddy. Perhaps it was because Levi had always thought everyone liked him or the mere fact that seeing Anthony back within the walls of Klover High meant they had a connection. It may have been unclear if he’d matured at all since high school but he still had the same cocky air about him and even after only a couple weeks, Levi was settling back into his Klover throne.

However, despite Anthony’s fear of Levi’s presence having a negative impact on his players, after a couple more weeks the tide was beginning to shift in a direction Mr. Craig hadn’t anticipated. It was a known fact that most of the baseball team was rowdy and that proved true most days in Anthony’s class with the two he taught, Kyle and Dante, but a few days in a row the pair of typically mouthy 18 year olds came in to class like zombies. They didn’t cut-up or joke around or try to see who had a snack they could get some of; it was the closest thing Anthony had seen to Invasion of the Body Snatchers in real life.

Mr. Craig soon made it a point to ask another student, Ryan, if he knew what was going on. “I think they’re just tired. Coach Griffin has been running them pretty hard at practice. I snapped Dante last night at six and he didn’t even open it until 9” Ryan explained. “Oh. Wow, ok. Thanks” was all Anthony said back, now with an answer to why his most energetic students were suddenly anything but. Coach Griffin was being a hard-ass. The man who’d flown a paper airplane during senior awards night and had tried to hook up with their junior English teacher was suddenly an asshole coach?

Anthony wasn’t a mischievous person or particularly devious but the idea to fix Levi was too irresistible to not at least do his part to push it forward. It’d came to him when he’d gone looking through his senior yearbook that Wednesday night, thumbing through the pages out of his own itch for nostalgia when a single picture among the ‘student life’ pages got his wheels turning. The next day Mr. Craig purchased a handful of old year books from the office, now only $5 a piece and put them in his room among his other books the students could read if they wanted. The addition of the yearbooks was quickly noticed by his first period, his senior biology class, and Anthony watched from his desk as more and more of them grew interested in looking through them once they were done with their work.

Dante and his girlfriend ended up with the one from Anthony’s senior year and Mr. Craig watched with subtle suspense from his desk. “Mr. Craig, this is the year you graduated?” Dante asked. “Yep, 10 years ago” “No way haha” Dante laughed, his announcement enough to intrigue Kyle into looking on with them as they flipped through the pages, laughing at the outdated fashion and silly superlatives until they landed on the student life section and Kyle stopped them from going any further. “Stop a second. Is that Coach Griffin??” Kyle asked like he’d discovered a secret among the pages. “Dude, that is him!” Dante confirmed as they studied the picture of young Levi Griffin sporting his standard black Klover Baseball hat being held down on the gym floor getting tickled to absolute pieces.

Anthony knew every detail of the picture the two baseball boys were so enamored by now, having become just as interested the night before. Big Bryce Wilson held Levi’s arms down above his head with ease while Gage Keller squeezed into his flanks and Brandon Rice drilled into his pits through the t-shirt and the twins, Dylan and Damon Meyer kept his legs pinned flat so they could annihilate his thighs. Levi’s naturally large smile was pushed to its limit in the picture, smiling against his will with a wilder, heavier version of Levi’s slightly raspy laugh almost audible through the candid yearbook photo. Anthony never quite understood why so many straight guys enjoyed fucking with each other so much but if they behaved the same way now as they did back then, the seed he’d just planted had a chance to bloom into something else all its own.

What happened next came to Anthony in pieces. Some of it was overheard from students in that same senior biology class and other parts from videos and pictures circulating on social media. Nobody ever came to Mr. Craig and told him the whole story but he knew enough to confirm that his yearbook seed had indeed done its job.

That Friday, two days after Kyle and Dante had seen the picture, Coach Griffin had decided to hold a different kind of practice. After pushing his team as hard as ever working on their infield game and catching ground balls, he told everyone to go home but the four senior players. He preached to them that they were the leaders of this team and that they should set a good example for the other players and they needed to be performing better than they were. That’s when he told them they’d have another hour of practice before going home. Kyle, Dante, Cole, and Ricky apparently decided they weren’t doing it, effectively challenging their new coach. This is the part Anthony heard being recalled in class.

“That’s when Ricky was like, ‘We practiced enough. This is bullshit’” Kyle explained in class that next Monday. “Yeah and Coach Griffin told him they didn’t have a choice and he’d have to run the next practice for swearing at him but none of us moved. We all just stood there and Coach yelled at us to get going back onto the field but we didn’t. Me and Kyle had already told everybody else about the yearbook picture so that’s when we made it happen” Dante explained while Anthony pretended not to listen. “Shit, it was so crazy! We just fucking ambushed him! We grabbed him and put him on the physical therapy table the athletic trainer uses when we need an injury worked out and Ricky grabbed some shoe strings from the underclassmen’s cleats and we tied his ass to the table!” Kyle recalled with giddy excitement like he knew how insane it was.

The videos going around online filled in the next bit better than Kyle or Dante did any justice. They’d tied his wrists to the top legs of the table and his ankles to the bottom two so Levi was flat on his back and he was bucking like a pissed off horse, “The fuck are you doing?! Undo this shit – NOW! I’m not fucking playing with you guys – I’m fucking serious!!” Levi shouted with red-faced anger as he fought the table and the makeshift bondage the best he could but he wasn’t strong or weighty enough to make anything happen, allowing the four 18 year olds to get back at him for pushing them so hard.

Cole ended up filming most of it while the others pounced on him. Kyle wrapped his hands around Levi’s lower sides and squeezed up and down as mean as he could and Coach Griffin nearly flew off the padded table, “AhAHSSHIIT!! mMoOoTThhEERFFuUuCCKK!! NNOAoOAHA!!” Levi erupted with electric laughter but you could hear him fighting to keep it in the whole time even though it didn’t do any good. The boys laughed at his explosive reaction and of course were then more motivated than ever to drive him as crazy as they could. Kyle wrapped up Levi’s left ankle and ripped his sneaker off, earning a look down from Coach Griffin of pure panic as he felt his shoe come off, “NOOO!! PPUuTTMMyYFFuUuCCkKIiNNNGGsSShHOOOEE BBAACCcKKOOON!! FFuUUCCkKiiNnGGSSTTOhOOPP!!” Levi raged with growing urgency as Dante continued digging into his sides as his t-shirt rose a bit and showed off the mild beer gut on his small frame.

Kyle grabbed the edge of the white ankle sock and let it fly through the air to land on the locker room floor before going to town on the fresh foot, keeping a tight armlock on his ankle as he scribbled all over the soft, slightly wide sole. “AAAAHAHAHAHAFFUUUUCCKK!!” rang out from Levi with newfound horror to his already over-the-top laughter the minute Kyle’s eager fingers were all over his foot, seemingly hitting a sweet spot not even the boys 10 years ago had managed to go after. “Holy shit, dude…he’s so fucking ticklish” Ricky laughed as his friends tickled their new coach without mercy. “FFuUUuCCKKOOOOFFF!! AOhAIIMMmGGGOONNNAAkKIiICCKk YyOOuUUURRRAASSSEEESSFFOoORRTTHHiIIISS!! LLLEETTEmMMEEFFUUuCCKKiINnNGGGGOoOOO!!” “We better make it worth it then” Ricky teased before hopping on the table and straddling Levi’s midsection to further assert his dominance over his unreasonable coach, flashing him a cocky grin before wiggling into his neck a little just to piss him off more.

Ricky let out a devilish, mocking laugh at watching Coach Griffin’s head try to fight the neck tickling but didn’t keep it up very long before doing what he’d gotten in that position to do and sank into both armpits with the kind of playful cruelty only an arrogant 18 year old can deliver. “AAHGHGGHAAHAHAFFUUUUCCCKKK!!!” Levi howled like he’d explode with the wildest laughter Anthony had ever heard. “I don’t think we’re running anymore laps during practice, right coach?” Ricky challenged while kneading into both terribly defenseless pits. “FFFuUUuUCCCKKKYyoOOoOOUUUAhAH!!” “Come on, say we’re not running anymore!” Dante encouraged from his spot now drilling into Levi’s stomach. “NNoOOOAAOH!! GGEETTThHEEFFuUuUCCkkOOOFFFmMEEENNOOOWW!!” “Maybe he wants us to keep tickling him” Kyle suggested with his own fiendish smile as he started scratching along the base of Coach Griffin’s bubbly toes, clawing along the stretch of smooth velvet flesh to get Levi squealing even harder.

“Come on, Coach…its’ gonna be a long season if we don’t all get along” Ricky insisted from atop his strict coach. “GGEETTToOoFFMmMEEE!!!” Levi demanded, refusing to give into his players despite how insane he was going, how out of control his laughter was, and how little a route of an escape looked possible. “Cole, get his other foot” Ricky instructed and he must’ve sat the phone down somewhere because the video became just the camera staring at the floor with only the sound of what was going on still going. “NO!! AohAOHDDOOoNnTTTTmMMEESSWwiIITTHHMmYyYFFOOOOTT!!” Levi protested as hard as he could with violent laughter mixing with his naturally giggly laugh until the sound of his other shoe hitting the ground told Anthony it was off and he could only assume the sock came with it judging by how unhinged Levi became after that, screaming with tortured, reluctant laughter as his four senior players wrecked their new coach way worse than Levi’s friends had years earlier.

The video cutout shortly after but not before Anthony heard Levi making more demands about leaving his toes alone and presumably Ricky must’ve started tickling his nipples because that also got Coach Griffin swearing and threatening him them even more. The video’s views grew like wildfire until it was reported and taken down. Thankfully Anthony had saved it to his personal phone before that’d happened; he couldn’t let something like that be lost to social media.

After the Monday of Kyle and Dante telling some other people the story in class, the following days were seemingly back to normal, before Levi had returned to Klover High. The baseball guys were talkative again and weren’t dragging every morning coming into class. It seemed their ‘talk’ with Coach Griffin had paid off; Anthony didn’t hear them complaining about practice or how much of a dick their coach could be anymore either. That Thursday Anthony was back in the teachers’ lounge making copies when he heard the door open and he turned around to see it was Levi, not nearly as smiley or with the same over-confidence in his step. “Oh, hey, Levi. How’s it going” Anthony greeted as casually as he could. “It’s going, man” “Sure is. You need help making copies?” “Thanks but I think I figured it out” “Alright, well I’m down the hall if you change your mind” Anthony offered as if he wasn’t as sour about Levi anymore. “Thanks, man. I appreciate it” Levi answered with a friendly grin before making his way to the copy machine, giving Anthony a chance to see what he was making copies of.

It was a permission slip to take the baseball team on a field trip to see the local minor league baseball team play an hour away. ‘ALL EXPENSES PAID’ was in bold font toward the middle and Anthony couldn’t help but try to figure out who was fitting the bill if the kids’ parents weren’t. To start, a coach taking players on a field trip was unheard of and Anthony had a hard time believing the school was paying for the trip, at least not all of it, meaning Levi must’ve been paying for at least a good chunk of it himself. Perhaps the senior boys had done more with their new discovery than just gotten Coach Griffin to relax. Maybe they’d taken his comment about leading the team and ran with it. Maybe they were leading him too, manipulating their new young coach with the threat of using his weakness against him, a humiliation he surely wouldn’t want to suffer again. Even an ego as big as his probably couldn’t take a round two. Anthony figured that might mean Levi would want to leave but with every coach signing a year-long contract, Klover’s returning golden boy would have to appease his senior players. He was too ticklish not to.