The Final Game of the Season
Admiral Biscuit
Written for Rewan Demontay for Jinglemas 2023
Sunset tugged at her shorts—today was the big game, and everyone on the volleyball team wore their uniforms all day to build spirit or something. They were comfortable enough on the court, but for class? Too short, too cold, too revealing.
Didn’t help that the shorts didn’t have pockets. What was she supposed to do with her cell phone without a pocket? She didn’t like carrying a purse with her volleyball outfit, it just felt weird.
Her head snapped around at the sound of the crash, and she just as quickly turned back, hoping she hadn’t been noticed, hoping that she could fake interest in—in what, the contents of her locker? The school shouldn’t have let us change lockers, she thought. They were assigned by some Byzantine process at the beginning of the year, and friends and teammates often traded to get clusters of lockers together . . .
It’s not her fault, it’s your fault.
Shut up, shut up. Sunset grabbed the paper bag containing her lunch out of her locker, even though her appetite was gone.
Six lockers down, mercifully obscured by the locker door, Kerfuffle was once again performing her terrible transformation. She’d limped to her locker and leaned up against her neighbor’s (Cloudy Kicks, Sunset’s brain reminded her) and was completing the change from normal-girl to pirate-girl.
That wasn’t quite right, but it was close. Kerfuffle had sported two legs when she walked to her locker, and now the ends of the crutches were poking out, and when the door slammed shut, Kerfuffle only had one leg. Well, one and a half.
A great magic trick.
Do you have to do that right in front of me? The words never crossed Sunset’s lips; she slammed her locker door shut and spun her combination wheel while Kerfuffle notched the crutches into her armpits, balanced on them, reached back into her locker for her own lunch.
Sunset was already storming around the corner when she heard High Winds offer her assistance to Kerfuffle. “I can carry your lunch . . . your bookbag . . .” do you want me to take tests for you, too? Maybe write an essay?
She crumpled her brown bag in her fist and then spiked her uneaten lunch into a wastebasket, a brief flash of regret at the time she’d spent making it, and then stomped down the hallway. Sunset huffed out a breath as she passed the parking lot entrance. A small alcove alongside the shop classroom made it a favored hideout of a few of the ne'er-do-wells, a good spot to sneak a few puffs on a forbidden cigarette.
Right now would be a good time to take up smoking. She could get through a whole pack on her lunch break. Maybe that would help alleviate some of the stress.
If for no other reason than it was hard to be stressed when coughing her lungs out.