Dodgeball

Chapter 7: Get ready for freakin' Dodgeball!

Miss Vera's whistle is piercing and stuns me for a second as the opening rush begins. 

I don't know what the dodgeball rules sheet was talking about with "retrieving" the balls from the center line, because retrieving sounds somewhat orderly and polite and that is nothing like the retrieving that's going on here. 

Compact and low to the ground, Mason Kidder moves like a cheetah. He pushes me away from the center line, grabbing the ball I was about to take. Then I'm practically run over by Dillon Berger, who might be bone-skinny and not as fast as Mason, but he's still almost a head taller than I am.

"Hey!" I say, and it costs me, because one of those red rubber balls makes contact just below my shoulder. It stings.

"You're so poned, dude," calls Justin and I'm forced to sit out on the bleachers. Insult upon injury coming from him. And to top it all off, this game is not producing a single piercing insight or idea or even an inkling of one that could reinvigorate my Junior Masters treatise. In fact, all it makes me think about how much I'm craving a Chocolate Bombgurt at Moo Bar. Sorry, Mr. T.

I wrap my arms around my knees and watch Justin "pone" Bea Parker, Queen of the Techies, in her rather corpulent belly. Taylor, who's on OUR TEAM, laughs and claps her hands and I just about want to kill her. Hannah does my work for me, though. She whips a ball at Taylor's head, smacking the jeweled barrette right out of her hair, which then cascades in a misshapen curtain to her shoulders. It's against the rules to hit above the shoulders and Hannah's got to sit out now, but I can tell it was worth it for her. She tosses her flaxen locks all the way to the bleachers, where she chooses to stand instead of sit, her arms crossed over her C cups. I give her a wink and she winks back.

 And no, I do not feel guilty this time. 

The Taylor of yesteryear - she of the surprise homemade cupcakes with your name frosted on them, of front row tix to Meghan Trainor (the thinking girl's Taylor Swift), of the best crack-your-back and spin you around girlfriend hugs - has left the building. I stretch out my legs and cross my arms over my (sigh) A cups as Pearl and Ambrose, from Justin's team and my esteemed rival Gerard Yu, from ours, join us. I swear it's no less than fifteen seconds into the contest.

And it's really no contest.

While some of us do okay - Mason Kidder, for instance, who's an awesome lacrosse player, and Mickey Chin, who I'll get into more detail about later; the real contest is between a girl named Easter White and Justin. Not surprisingly, both Easter and Justin came from the public school system and have had some experience with this dodgeball business.

Easter's tall, but quick, dodging the balls like they're bullets. Her short, ginger hair is wet with perspiration and sticks to her forehead - though somehow, it makes her look spirited and kind of hip, instead of gross. Justin has this stare, and pretty much once he fixes his eyes on you, you're as good as gone.

But he can't get Easter, and Mason Kidder is pretty good at staying in the game by keeping close to her. Mickey chucks the ball hard at Justin, and it looks like he's going to be out, but then Justin catches it and Mickey gets benched. He doesn't sit with the rest of us, though. He sits on the floor, next to the emergency exit.

Okay, now I'm going to tell you a little bit about Mickey Chin. 

Mickey moved here from California last year and has not exactly fit in at Putnam. To begin with, outside of school he wears combat boots, flannel shirts wide open with ironic t-shirts underneath (including my personal favorite, a Zombie Apocalypse Now t-shirt which reads I love the smell of rotting flesh in the morning), and ripped jeans. In school, he wears a uniform, of course - navy pants and a light blue button down shirt. Somehow he still manages to look irreverent, though, even if Ms. Beasley makes him take out his earring. Did I mention the earring? It's a pewter fist! The black, spiky hair is always the same. Even when he wets it down - which he's been asked to do on numerous occasions - it dries all over the place anyway.