Playing to Win

I wasn’t talking to Jenny because of the trick she’d played about my needing to wear a netball skirt, but still badly wanted to improve my game so Emily wouldn’t have to see my losing to her little daughter each week. That left Morgan, who as you might imagine played quite a lot of sports with other girls who belonged to her so-called community. Sure enough she said they could fit me in for netball when they met that weekend.

Trotting almost neurotically into the sports centre corridor at the time we’d arranged I detected Morgan at once, when my nostrils were suddenly so assailed by her cherry soda perfume that I caught my breath. “H-Hi, Morgan!” I gasped aloud, heartbeat going into overdrive. “All ready for our game?”

Without even waiting for an answer I gave her a kiss at once. She drove me out of my pants, and she so knew it.

“If you want to join you’ll have to come along right now,” Morgan said bossily, once she’d accepted my kiss with the smug air of having deserved it. “Netball’s about to start.”

“Shush!” I hissed to her urgently. Like I wanted the whole sports centre to know that that was what I was here to play!

We were about to set off when my friend from school happened to pass by. “Oh no, it’s a teenager!” he exclaimed in a silly put-on voice when he saw Morgan. I just squirmed!

“So how long have you been coming here, Merridew?” he then asked her, trying to flirt, though it was clear Morgan put him in as much of a flutter as she did me. “Up to anything today?”

My heart missed a beat. Please, Morgan, please don’t answer that last bit! I couldn’t imagine anything worse!

“Netball,” was her smart reply. Long-lashed big blue eyes flicked at me for a second, smug. “Wanna come watch?”

And there was the one thing worse than I’d imagined. Trust Morgan!

“You’ve got to be the luckiest boy I know,” my friend declared afterwards. For someone so lucky though it was funny how crimson my face was!

“Maybe you liked watching it!” I blurted in reply. “But you’d be feeling as ashamed as me right now if you’d had to play!”

“Well, next time they try that, tease them right back,” he suggested. “You just got your pants in a twist.”

He wasn’t wrong, because my temperature was steadily going through the roof. “If I ever see that Little Miss Morgan Merridew ever again it’ll be too soon!” I fumed. “Standing there holding the ball and looking as sweet as could be. But all the time not letting me so much as once get my hand on…!”

I couldn’t even finish. “I saw one or two things I could have quite fancied getting my hand on,” remarked my friend innocently.

In truth I felt just the same, but I sure wasn’t about to let him know, any more than I’d give those girls the satisfaction of knowing it!

“Sounds like you’d be in just the right place then, if you’re that much into look-but-don’t-touch,” I retorted. “If you think they were even playing netball you’re wrong! Their favourite game’s the one they call religion or personal belief, and boys always lose. If I had my way I’d pick apart every last little ribbon and...and smelt down every one of their silver rings and pins! Then at least they couldn’t show it off all the time!”

I was about ready to shed tears.

“Don’t cry,” my friend said, in some concern. “You’re just hot and bothered because girls got the better of you. Maybe no need to go as far as smelting down Merridew’s pin, she smells enough as it is!”

It was such a cheesy joke that I actually managed a laugh.

“Thanks, you’re sweet,” I told him gratefully. And he was, I thought to myself as we said our see-you-Mondays and I watched him walk off. He’d made me feel at least a tiny bit better after that maddening netball match with Morgan.

Speaking of whom! All of a sudden the corridor smelled of cherry soda again. If she was here to tease me about losing, she’d better know right now I was so not in the mood!

“Should take a shower after that,” Morgan yawned lazily, sounding every bit the teen.

“You need one,” I told her at once, but she just giggled at my pertness as if she knew all about the pang I’d suffered on picturing her amid the steam and spray.

“Betcha you’d like to come along,” she said.

I caught my breath, and could see her starting to giggle. Flustered, I burst out: “If you think waiting for you to finish your smelly shower is my idea of a dream come true, then…!”

But she was already holding my hand, pulling me her way, and before I knew it I was blushing with embarrassment in the girls’ changing room. Luckily Morgan was the only other person here! Even so, being somewhere I knew I’d get in trouble for being was making me so fretful I could hardly sit still, and I was frightened some girl might come in any minute and find me here.

Morgan once again lowered her long-lashed eyelids. “You first,” she breathed.

Side by side with her on the bench I couldn’t resist. I shuffled awkwardly over and gave the girl another kiss and oh, she tasted like cherry soda too.

I still felt like I was going to cry. “Like you so much, Merridew,” I just about managed. Funny to think that ten minutes ago I was all set to never talk to her again!

“Like you too,” she replied comfortably. “The girls are fun but otherwise my school smells. You’ve got to wear a bra, and stockings!”

“Could be I’m not quite as sorry there aren’t any boys,” was my confession.

“And cheering!” she continued to complain. “That so smells. You’ve got to do your hair in bunches and wear matching underwear! It smells that I’ve got to go to a girls’ school like that, just because,” and scornfully she rolled her blue eyes.

“You really are my dream come true,” I moaned to her, meaning it with every breath.

“You’re an orange,” she told me in reply.

Morgan had to go then – no time for a shower after all, we’d flirted too long! - because she had a small part on a television programme. A lot of the boys and I gathered excitedly to watch her later that afternoon. I had to say, she didn’t make a very convincing little girl, something to do with the tight sweater and milk-bottle legs I guessed! I didn’t know why the director hadn’t just cast her as a teenager, since that was so obviously what Morgan was. There was nothing at fault with the saucy way she delivered her lines though, and all the boys and I secretly groaned throughout our shared crush’s one scene. Maybe it was worst of all for me, but at the same time I was starting to think my friend might be right – I was kind of lucky!