Shoot The Jerk

Chapter 3: Hyperventilating While Trying To Push My Shirt Up.

Hyperventilating While Trying To Push My Shirt Up

CHAPTER  3

Kayla

The next day, I told Martha what happened. She hadn’t been able to attend the wedding because she had been visiting her mother.

“He what?”

“I know right?”

“In themiddle of the dancefloor?”

“Yes. It was pretty embarassing.”

“Are you telling me that I missed it? Couldn’t you have waited till I showed up? How could you be so insensitive?!”

“So glad you’re sympathising with me.”

“Oh. Right. Are you okay?”

“My butt is sore.”

She grinned. “Maybe I could give you some of Grammy’s achy-lotion.”

“No, thanks! We both know what happened last time. Jeez, how does she put that stuff?”

Martha’s grandmother, also called Grammy because she sings so well (not), thinks she’s a witch. Seriously. She creates all these weird concoctions and gives them to Martha to try it out on me. I bet they’re a part of the Wicked Witch sorority.

As a rule, I refuse all these potions, but there was this one time when I fell.

One day, while going to school, my skateboard slipped on I-don’t-know-what and I fell on my back. Hard. Martha, whose bike had not slipped, had stopped and bent over me, concerned.  I must have been in real pain, because, apparently I allowed Martha to put the achy-lotion on my back. She carries that thing with her everywhere.

 And I actually thought it would work, until it started itching in the geography class. More than embarrassing, it was frustrating! I couldn’t reach that exact spot on my back. After a great deal of squirming and wriggling, I finally excused myself and ran to the washroom, with Martha hot on my heels.

Between the two of us, we somehow pushed up my shirt and poured water on my back till it stopped itching.

That’s not it. I also noticed that the colour of the lotion had been red, which had completely ruined my favourite white top and also spread everywhere because of the water. Apparently, mud can be washed off but not whatever had been put into that potion. I still have that top.

That’s not it, either. Martha made some flimsy excuse as to why I had suddenly run out of class which ran along the lines of ‘she suddenly felt a spider on her back bite her’ (she had to include my back in it because a girl from my class had seen us hyperventilating while trying to push my shirt up, a situation that could be easily misconstrued especially since Martha and I were best friends).

It’s been a year since that happened, and people still give me weird looks and call me Spider Girl, which other people think is sort of cool until they get to know the story behind it. And believe me; they do get to know the story behind it. It’s not everyday that the citizens of our illustrious school get to see the chief photographer caught in an embarrassing situation of such great magnitude.

Also, these students are essentially jobless. Not to mention that I wasn’t allowed to go skateboarding to school ever again because mother thought that the red stain on my back was blood.

What? I’d thought it was funny at that time.

So, no, I do not want Grammy’s lotion anywhere near me.