Not Another Vampire Story - 7
7. Yowch!
PG13. Tween, humor, middle school, angst, vampires, serial, teen, fiction, summer. #ReadFree
Suggested Music: K-Pop YouTube
That’s gonna leave a mark…
Having gym first period was Sylvia's worst nightmare, or at least one of her nightmares. She was quite sure losing her bikini top at the pool was the worst. And she didn't even have Holly to share her misery of gym. Holly had art, with Jamie, first hour.
"Heads up, Burns!" someone shouted as Sylvia turned in time to get the whop of the red rubber dodge ball on her left cheek. The bone-jarring impact was followed by a stinging that promised needing a skin graft after lunch.
"Ow!" she shrieked, and then moaned, her hand going to her face, dropping the thirty-foot-long beaded jump rope. The rope was whisked across the floor by Tish in mid-swing at the opposite end, cutting the feet out from under Annie and Sarah who were skipping in tandem in-between. Tish pulled the rope back like a bullwhip from sheer momentum.
As the rope skipped across their ankles, Annie and Sarah fell in a heap of legs, ponytails, and elbows onto the hardwood floor. A four-layer of girls shreiking rent the gym air space.
"What's going on?" Mr. Lincoln crossed the maple gym floor to where half the girls in the class were holding assorted injuries.
Annie and Sarah were in a crumple of knees and bruises, holding their ankles and tailbones, and Tish had received a smarting flip from the rope's recoil. Mr. Lincoln looked them all over briefly, and then headed to Sylvia first.
"What'd you do?" His hand turned her chin jerkily, fast enough to make a secondary whiplash injury. He was a tiny man, petit, if he'd been female, and had all the soft and soothing qualities that came with his type-A chainsaw personality.
"I didn't do anything," Sylvia grumbled, making a face that only led to the cheek feeling like a black mark at a traffic light after a street race. "One of them brutes," she said, indicating the dozen eighth grade boys trying to hurt each other with the dodge balls.
"You're fine. Walk it off, and then hit the locker room." Mr. Lincoln turned his attention to the other girls.
Sylvia held her wounded cheek and quickly walked it off directly to the locker room across the gym. Once there she got a better look at the mark in the wide mirror over the row of sinks, and Golly, it's a big one, she thought. Half a palm in size, bologna red, and hot as a sunburn. She frowned into the sink and ran the cold water tap until it was mediocre cool. She wetted her fingers and held some of the water to her face, then bent to stick her face under the faucet.
"I think he meant the girls locker room."
Sylvia stood up too quickly at the male voice behind her, a somewhat cracking voice, and scraped her cheek on the faucet. She spun around to see Matt standing a few feet away, grinning and skinny in his gym shorts and t-shirt. She frowned as much as possible, then cranked a wad of paper toweling out of the wall dispenser and held it to her dripping cheek.
Girls...? She looked at the blue lockers past the sinks. Beyond those were the wall...
She darted for the doorway.
"Anytime," he said as she quickly slipped past him and back out to the gym floor.
She dove into the nearby girls' locker room, separated only by two water fountains.
What kind of lousy setup was having locker room entrances only ten feet apart? she wondered, weaving among the few other girls now at the benches between the rows of olive green lockers. Shouldn't there be a set of bleachers between the locker rooms?
Sarah was sitting on the bench between the lockers and holding an ice pack to her ankle. "Why'd you just let go, Sylvi?"
"I didn't just let go. I got hit in the face by a ball." Sylvia dried her cheek and tossed the paper towel in a waste basket.
Annie was leaning against the wall by the tall mirror amid the lockers, an ice pack between the block wall and her tailbone. "Is that what happened to your face?"
"Yes." Sylvia found her narrow green locker and tried to remember the combination to it.
Sarah frowned, wincing as she looked at Sylvia's face. "That looks like it hurts."
Sylvia nodded. "Yeah."
"Why'd you go into the boys' locker room?" Annie asked, giggling a little. "You got a thing for Matt?"
Sylvia glared at her. She felt her cheek sizzle with new humiliation. She was hoping no one had seen that.
She ripped open her locker door, gritting her teeth as she blocked her view of Annie.
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Thanks to Sakurapu for sharing her story!
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