June 2024 Flash Lit 3.2 - Banana

“Go!  Bananas!  B-A-N-A-N-A-S!” Carrie shouted, waving the pompoms.  Even as she did it she thought it wasn’t going to work because her brain insisted that the pompoms looked like sea urchins, and that was not a cheerleader-y thought.  It wasn’t the kind of thought Melody would have.  Carrie snuck a look at the other girl, farther down the line of hopeful middle schoolers.

Melody’s hair smoothed back from her face into a perky ponytail.  Her head was garnished with a blue-and-white grosgrain bow—school colors.  Right now, Melody, like the rest of them, was wearing the same boring gray t-shirt and shorts that made up their gym uniforms, but she somehow made it look cute.  Carrie looked down at her own flat chest and skinny legs; she looked like a prisoner of war.  With sea urchins for hands.  Captured at sea, maybe?  Fighting to the last with her trusty urchin throwing stars?

 

Mrs. Perry blew her whistle and Carrie and the rest of the girls stopped screaming.  “Very nice,” she said with a smile.  “Drop the pompoms in the basket.  I’ll post the list on my office door tomorrow morning.”

 

Behind Mrs. Perry, the boys flag football team wound up their practice.  Carrie saw Charlie, a head taller than the rest, laughing in the middle of the pack.  She vowed never to think of sea urchins again.  Her hand absently tried to tuck a rogue curl behind her ear for a smoother, Melody-like look.

 

Most of the girls had clustered into a knot of increasingly shrill excitement.  Carrie had missed the cue and now she was outside the circle, again.

 

She dropped her urchins—the image stuck—into Mrs. Perry’s basket and trudged toward the locker room to change.  Halfway across the field, she was overtaken by a wave of boys going the same way.

 

Charlie crashed into her.  “Oh,” he said. “Didn’t see you.”

 

Carrie said nothing, speechless and blushing.  Of course he didn’t see her.

 

“Well, sorry,” he said.

 

His buddy punched him on the arm.  The other kid said, “What are you talking to her for?  She’s not even cute.”

 

Charlie snorted.  The boys ran off.

 

Carrie, cured, threw imaginary sea urchins at their backs and turned down her spot on the cheer squad the next day.