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Captains

This is how Sally and I first became friends.

Like the singing, in my head I am completely coordinated as far as sports are concerned. Now I am an adult I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to, but I still like to lie in bed imagining how I can catch ball after ball in hands that open and caress rather than sting painfully. My legs find such a sweet rhythm as I run the 800 metres that I almost levitate off the ground, able to go on and on and on as I race past all the other runners.

In reality, I became the school expert at the rain-dance I created in the hope that games would be cancelled. It wasn’t just the humiliation. It was the way your legs would get so cold on the hockey pitch, the skin red and blue and sharp with pain.

Sally walked in once just as I was jumping up and down in the deserted shower rooms, hands on top of my head, elbows flapping. I was chanting ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, rain, rain, rain.’

She took one look and left. I thought she might have been smiling but I’d been too embarrassed to look closely. Neither of us said anything.

One hour later we were standing at the edge of the sports field in the perfect sunshine. Sally was at the front by the games teacher as she was always one of the team captains. I was standing at the back so I wouldn’t have to keep getting out of the way when the other, more popular, girls were picked for the teams.

I thought it was a joke when Sally chose me before anyone else. I didn’t want to go up at first but everyone kept prodding me. Sally always picked me first after that.

I never asked her why, even afterwards when we took a vow to tell each other everything. I always hoped it was because Sally was the one person who could look into my head and see those sweet catches I made in my dreams. How perfect everything was there.

See Blackbirds, Robins and Nightingales, Kindness, Vendetta, X-ray Vision

Codes

S all yan dI u se dt owrit eletter si ncod ebu twhe nyo utak ei ta sseriousl ya stha tyo uhav et ohav esomethin gt osa y. N othin gi swors etha ngoin gt oth etroubl eo funcoverin ga s ecre tan dfindin gnothin gther e. T hat’ swhe nw estarte dshopliftin g. W e’ dwrit elist so fwha twe’ dtake ni nou rcod e. I t hin ktha twa swh yw ewer eneve rcaugh t. I fpeopl ecan’ tunderstan dyo u, t he yten dt omak eyo uinvisibl e. T he ydon’ tbothe rwit hyo u.

See Friends, Indecent Exposure, Woolworths, Yields, Zzzz

Colin

I am starting to get suspicious about Colin. Maybe it’s a hangover after my escapade with Peter, but I worry about the way he seems to treat Sally so casually.

Sally says that as long as he pays the bills and keeps her happy, she doesn’t mind if he is the mad axe-man. She says his attitude is a relief.

‘I’m blossoming,’ she says, and so she is. I try to be happy for her but when I walk up and down the road where Sally says Colin lives with his wife and family, I see no sign of him. I can’t smell Colin in the air. Also, he is spending more and more time with Sally in what she calls their ‘love nest’. ‘Isn’t his wife jealous?’ I ask.

‘If Colin doesn’t mind, who cares?’ Sally says, and I must admit it seems a little bit odd that it’s me who does.

See Best Friends, Foreheads, Love Calculators, Stalking, Youth

Crème Caramel

Sally has a friend who can suck up a whole crème caramel from a plate in one go. I have seen her do it. She stands over the table, with her hands behind her back, and then she hoovers it up in one go without leaving a drop either on the plate or round her lips.

Sally herself can fit thirty-eight Maltesers into her mouth at once. She has to stuff them round her lips and in the spaces at the back of her jaw. It is not a very attractive trick, especially when she has to spit them all out again. But then neither is the crème caramel suckingup, but at parties, people always ask to see them. It makes Sally and her friend the centre of attention, and the rest of us feel jealous.

Unfortunately I don’t like either Maltesers or crème caramel and the one trick I do know is very complicated, involving three packs of cards. Could this be where I am going wrong?

See Captains, Underwear, Wobbling