Insinuations, Chapter Two

“I think your girlfriend suspects us, Robin,” said Mini-Flash Juniper anxiously, unlocking her front door.

“Trust me, she hasn’t guessed,,” Mini-Flash Robin murmured back. “Carrying your netball home for you was the perfect excuse.”

Quickly Juniper led him inside and closed the door behind them. They were alone.

“This thing is so big, though,” she declared. “You won’t be able to hide it from her.”

So saying she picked up a hardbound book on sports theory, which was indeed very large. Robin set down the netball and took it.

“I’m going to keep it at Joe’s,” he explained.

Looking around him, Robin began to gape as he surveyed the small room’s décor for the first time. Plastered over the walls on paper of every type and size were drawings, apparently by Mini-Flash Juniper, and all depicting the same young man. He seemed to be winged like a moth. This figure of delicate physical beauty smouldered along the perpendicular plane from skirting-boards to the corners of the ceiling. Heaped atop Mini-Flash Juniper’s desk alongside her pencils and charcoal were yet more sketches on the same theme, waiting to be squeezed into what little space remained as soon as they were done.

“Oh,” said Juniper, noting the direction of Robin’s gaze and starting to blush again. “I wish I could draw.”

“Erm, looks to me like you’re already quite good at it,” was all he could say in reply.

“I can’t draw anything else though,” Juniper confessed. “I’m not even sure what this image signifies. Who he’s supposed to be, I mean. Just that he’s eternally in my thoughts.”

Robin listened, weighing everything up, and concluded he was reasonably content.

If he had to have competition at all, it could totes have been worse. Chap needn’t expect too much romantic rivalry from someone who wasn’t real.

The morning of the tournament soon came around. Joe and Morag took their places bright and early atop the crowded bleachers, ready to watch Robin play his qualifier against Presh.

“One week,” Joe mused aloud. “Perhaps it will prove to have been long enough.”

“He’ll have learned a fair bit from Mini-Flash Juniper by now,” Morag agreed, not unsmiling. “But as for the match coming up, well…shall we just say, may the best one win?”

That was very much our hero’s hope.

The match however didn’t seem to have started yet, and from below were rising the sounds of some sort of commotion. Morag looked.

“Er, I don’t like to worry you, Joe,” said she, “but I think that’s ours.”

“Far too little a surprise to be a source of worry,” Joe assured her wearily, and standing they set off together for the courts to see what was the matter.

Mini-Flash Juniper had indeed turned up in her tunic and knee-boots, either on Robin’s recommendation or because she felt it was what the occasion required. The resultant beige trio arguing at courtside made Joe wonder whether everyone he knew of a certain age had been in the Brownies, not that even the rowdiest of packs would have tolerated such red-faced vehemence as was loudly proceeding from Presh.

“I won’t do it!” our hero and Morag were just in time to hear her vow.

“My scheduled opponent was two grades below me,” returned Mini-Flash Juniper, mild where the other was furious. “So, although Robin’s shown some improvement this week – ”

“How exactly do you know that?” inquired Presh sharply.

“ – and may be ready to compete against you one day,” Juniper resumed, paying her no heed, “what makes sense for the present tournament is that he and I switch.”

“We’ve agreed, Presh,” Robin pleaded in addition. “You know you’re better at it than me. It’s totes the sporting thing to do.”

Presh however would not be placated.

“Wanting to win every time at the only things you know, Presh, comes of liking your comfort zone too much,” Mini-Flash Juniper tried again, unsympathetically, but as one speaking of a subject which mattered to her. “Just because we can serve out to the boys doesn’t always mean it’s the right thing to do. Someone had to teach me that. Someone wise, who I trust. Now perhaps it’s time for you to learn the same lesson.”

“What a pity then I’m not going to,” Presh sneered in response. “Because you can’t change opponents just like that. It’s not allowed.”

An adjudicator was by. Joe could never understand the common complaint that such people were never around when you needed them. In his experience they showed up right on cue.

“Have you read the rules?” the adjudicator asked Presh. “It’s allowed.”

“So it looks like we’ll be finding out whether your netball’s as clumsy as your insinuations,” Mini-Flash Juniper put in.

It was said. The saying of it incensed Presh more than anything else so far.

“I did see that film!” she flung at the company. Joe as it happened had always believed her, and did so more than ever having witnessed such bafflement and near-tearful wrath. Juniper however merely countered briskly:

“They don’t make films like that, and people don’t cheer at those parts.”

So saying she swept for the netball court in apparent hopes of starting her game. These no longer looked in any danger of being disappointed, for it was clear enough Presh was well beyond threats of non-participation by now, and nothing but the grimmest of grudge-matches would do. Before setting off however she shot her glare at Joe, and with great suddenness announced:

“You won’t win.”

Our hero stared back at her.

“That is why I have not put my name down,” was all he could think of to say. “I am under no illusions as to my netball skills.”

“Lucky for you then your skills at deception and sneaking around more than make up for it,” came back the reply. “Secret lessons for Robin all week? They’ve both as good as admitted it, and I guess you didn’t stop there. Seems you had a quiet little chat with the organizers too. Independently wealthy Bostonian, with the nice big house? I can see it.”

“It’s true,” commented Morag. “You do make clumsy insinuations.”

“Don’t try to tell me there’s no bias here,” Presh hissed. “Everyone mysteriously refusing to take my side? Something’s going on behind the scenes, and I’ve no doubt you’re equal to as much, Joe. That sort of thing is why you’ve yet to realise you’re also Boston’s laughing-stock.”

By now Morag and Robin were as lost for words as Joe. Presh on the other hand was only just hitting her stride.

“An overgrown little privileged boy. Cooking for one. Living on his own. Doing nothing all day long. It’s pathetic. Oh, sure, you can fiddle a netball tournament when it suits you. But trying to convince the rest of us there’s some better way we should all behave?”

“She did not refer to me!” Joe cried. He himself had been supposing it was Brown Owl.

“And you’re not going to change the world, Joe,” Presh informed him. “You’re powerless. Nobody cares what you think or believe. You should go back to your attic and watch some cartoons. The world doesn’t need you. It’s fine the way it is.”

She stalked off, then tossed her curls mid-court and threw a final glance over her shoulder at Joe and his friends.

“I may be about to lose to that Mini-Flash Juniper,” said she. “But you? You’ve already lost. And you don’t even know it.”

Presh’s withering words troubled Joe more than he’d expected them to. This may have been because her prediction proved accurate, and Juniper after trouncing Presh in their qualifying round proceeded to annihilate the rest of the competition for good measure. There was a prizegiving ceremony later that afternoon, so Morag persuaded Joe to put on a proper shirt then went home herself to change. Mini-Flash Robin accompanied our hero back to his, and so too did Mini-Flash Juniper who needed to collect her book.

Now she was sitting at the desk in Joe’s room with her reading-glasses on, poring over some printed guidance she’d received for the upcoming awards. All around her the other two were turning the place upside-down in search of Joe’s cufflinks, as the slender interval before they all had to be back at the park steadily ticked away.

“Procedure,” Mini-Flash Juniper read aloud. “Assume the podium, curtsey – good thing I wore my tunic – and smilingly accept the prize. I can do that. I’m glad wore my tunic.”

“When did you last see them?” asked Robin.

“They are always in my waistcoat pocket,” Joe affirmed, flinging cushions and pillows about as his undone cuffs flopped over his fingers.

“Yes, that would be why I looked there the first time you said that,” replied Robin, who’d kept his temper while the girl two grades below Mini-Flash Juniper danced rings around him but looked dangerously close to losing it now.

“Am I wearing my tunic?” Juniper checked. “Oh, yes.”

It wasn’t that Joe objected to her commentary, although if given the choice at that particular time he had to say he’d have preferred his cufflinks.

“Assume the podium, curtsey, and smilingly accept the prize,” she recited again. “I’m sure I can manage that. It was good thinking to wear my tunic.”

“What about there?” Robin demanded, pointing at the desk-drawer directly alongside Juniper.

“That is locked,” Joe protested feebly.

“In the name of Polomonoog!” erupted Robin, marching over. “Whatever that means!”

He unlocked the drawer and threw it open. Sure enough, there were Joe’s cufflinks, sitting on top of a stamped and sealed envelope.

“Oh,” said Mini-Flash Juniper, blinking in surprise.

She picked up the letter and surveyed it.

“I know Mini-Flash Pseudangelos,” Juniper declared. “She’s never mentioned she used to live here. It’s a small world.”

Joe began to fasten up his sleeves. There was enough to cope with at the moment, he decided, from Presh making a spectacle of herself at the tournament to Morag’s gifted but neurotic netball friend going through his things with a fine-toothed comb. Once the ceremony was over he’d be able to unwind. True, there’d been certain other perplexing little mysteries lately, but this was just a letter which had somehow turned up in his drawer on an already hectic day. It was out of proportion for its appearance to stir feelings of impending doom in him. Nor had these any reason to intensify, plunging Joe deeper still into dread, when Mini-Flash Juniper continued:

“I have her present address. Since it looks like something important, and it’s already been misdirected once, I think we’d better deliver it by hand.”

END OF CHAPTER TWO