The Skirt Scare

I was at netball practice. Five minutes in I caught the ball then stood with feet rooted to the ground, knowing that the way these girls played I didn’t have much more than a heartbeat or two. Fright overcame me and I fumbled the pass so that Suzette, who was on the other team, smartly swept it up. I groaned at my own hopelessness. Why wasn’t I getting any better?

“Ha ha, the one pass you got off that half, and I got it!” Suzette taunted me when we were on our mid-game break. I blushed, hearing the other girls giggle.

“See why you did so well at advanced tryouts,” sang Suzette, really enjoying this. I glared at her, furiously jealous. She was a show-off, and she knew it.

The last thing I needed after a game like that was for Emily to be her usual cheesy self when we were having tea afterwards, but she’d picked up a sunburn and made a point of showing it off. Starting out by smiling sweetly like any schoolgirl (and she had her big glasses on too, which helped) she then slid back the side of her top to show how much paler she was underneath, while giving me and Suzette a funny grimace. The problem was that as she was sunburned in the first place you noticed with Emily, my cheeks ended up redder than she was!

“Mum, OMG, you are so embarrassing, like anyone wants to look at your boobs!” Suzette cried.

That Little Miss Know-It-All might just this once have actually been wrong about something though, because my head swirled with Emily for the rest of the day! Sometimes a thought that excited me almost desperately was that she might know full well what effect she had on me, and this was one of those times. Would a grown-up really do things like that on purpose, in front of someone like me? Well, Emily wasn’t exactly like other grown-ups! I thought of that kiss on the cheek she’d given me once and almost went weak from the memory alone.

Plucking up my courage, I asked Jenny if she’d ever feel like giving me a bit more one-on-one practice sometime. Whatever else you could say about her, she was really good at it! She agreed, but five minutes into our practice-session said something that gave me a whole new reason to dread netball practice.

“Now you’ve been going for a week or two, it’s about time we got you a proper skirt.”

All of a sudden I stopped even trying to play. I was scarlet!

Jenny, giggling at the look on my face, was a maddening sight. “What’s the matter?” she chided me, amused. “Haven’t you noticed everyone else wears one for netball?”

“But I can’t!” I cried, trying to make Jenny see why the thought of this frightened me so. “I’d never be able to, well, keep everything hidden!”

“We girls show our underwear when we play, it’s just something that happens,” was Jenny’s indifferent reply. As she was in her mini-gym skirt, and still holding the ball, she demonstrated by whipping round and scoring a perfect net. Sure enough her pleats-flare put her white cotton on show, which as usual was straining a bit to cover everything.

“But I’m not a girl!” I pointed out.

“Even so, you’d better get used to it,” was Jenny’s reply. “You certainly won’t win if you’re too busy being embarrassed about everyone seeing your panties.”

I was staying for tea, so when Jenny took a shower I went into the living-room and found her little sister there, watching television with her feet up on the couch. She never liked to see me in my netball things, which today made me wonder what she was going to make of me in a skirt!

“OMG, put some proper clothes on,” she blared at once. “You can look cute when you want.”

“Cute?” I repeated incredulously. “I’m not some boy in your class!”

“Er, you’re not a girl either!” was the retort. “I heard what my smelly sis was teasing you about. OMG, you didn’t believe her? Like they’d let a boy your age into the netball club at all if he had a skirt on! Only if you wanna get arrested!”

That was one big sigh of relief! I threw myself down next to her, exhausted emotionally as well as physically, my nerves still in shreds. Typical Jenny!

“You shouldn’t even have to wear little panty-things with shorts,” her little sister added. “They drive us girls up the wall so I don’t know what it’d be like for your lot!”

I couldn’t believe how scared I’d been about accidentally showing them off, and fumed at Jenny for tricking me like that when there wasn’t any need. Watching soap opera for a while with her sister did make me feel better though. In fact I even glowed a bit inside, to have a friend as nice as her.

“Wish I really was some cute boy in your class,” I told her at length, and I’d seldom longed for anything more passionately. “At that age I used to dream of girls noticing me. That was the one thing I wanted. Still is,” I sighed, and helped myself to one of her chocolates.

Funny how I started talking like Jenny’s sister the more time I spent with her. I guessed that was because she put me at my ease – which, among the girls I knew, made her pretty much unique!