L E V E N
"Miss Hatherton, Miss James, separate!" shouted Coach Smith from the sidelines. He was my gym teacher, which was silly, seeing as he was a fat, bald, pale old man who nearly coughed himself to death every three minutes and just about fainted from walking across the school campus. His co-worker, Ms. McDonald, was Madalyn James' P.E teacher, and the adult to be afraid of.
I remember when I first came into gym this year. McDonald had introduced herself saying, "My name is Ms. McDonald. I am your gym coach. You will not make fun at my name. You will behave. You will not complain. Got it? Good," When she said Ms, I thought I must of heard wrong. McDonald was old, manly, tall, buff, loud, strict, and assertive- I had thought she was a dude. (Come on! The thing had facial hair for crying out loud!)
I moved to the other side of the gym, away from Madalyn. I hate her. She's a Popsicle- Jazz and I's name for the girlie-girls, preps, and jocks. (A.K.A, the annoying super-rich popular people.) Madalyn, however isn't just any Popsicle. She's Grape-flavored, which means that she's the worst, and the rudest, and the most Clone-like. James is like a mini-Barbie, the sort of daughter my stepmother would kill for. She's got fake platinum blond hair, fake pink nails, fake tan...
And Madalyn hates me back, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside! Yay!
Madalyn, who didn't get the message about "Go away", came up to me again. "Hey, look, I just wanted to say-I'm sorry. I didn't realize that you didn't know Halloween was four months ago."
I smiled. "It's okay. Oh, and the zoo called. They want the baboon's butts back, so you're going to need to find a new face."
She did that creepy 'sound of disbelief ' thing. "Have you been shopping lately? They are selling lives at the mall, you should get one."
"Your tan is running," I said sweetly and truthfully.
She stormed off.
Max came up to me. "What did she do to you?" he asked.
"Madalyn's just another clone. Nothing original. Anyway, she stole my Twix bar at lunch in second grade."
"And so you insult her every minute of your life?"
"Only when she comes in a twenty-foot radius."
"I think you should stop, Kim. She doesn't need you insulting her."
"Yeah? I don't need her in my life, but look, there the Popsicle is." I pick up my basketball and shoot it into the hoop, zoning out Max.
The bell rang.
"Come over after school, okay?" whispers Jazz as we pass in the hallway. I nod 'okay' and head for Health.
When I sat down in the Friendship Ring,(or Circle, or whatever) people scrambled to get away from me. Max, who had somehow came in earlier, moved to sit next to me, and I blushed-Err... wait... I just had been red from gym... and... umm... my heart was still beating fast from the running we had done! Yeah, thats it.
I moved away from Max, a little to the left. The girl sitting there moved closer to the geek on her right, who grinned foolishly before scooting closer to her. The girl got up and ran to one of her friends across the circle, leaving me sitting next to the geek. He moved away.
I proceeded to space out while Gary droned on about keeping our colons healthy.
I needed to answer a question, and I had to answer it truthfully. Do I like Max as a friend? Yes.
Do I like Max as more than a friend?
The question hung in my thoughts for a while, without an answer.