‘Can I carry your books home, Linda?’ Barry was a typical shy 14-year-old and he wasn’t very confident around girls.
He didn’t know how to talk to them and besides Linda was older: fifteen.
But he had seen in an Australian soap on TV that’s what jocks in High School did when they wanted to show a girl they liked her.
If she let him carry her books they could walk home together, even though when they left the school gates he turned left and she went right. He didn’t mind making the forty-minute detour to get home, not if he got to talk to her. He was already rehearsing what to say.
Linda wasn’t the least bit interested. She had her eye on the captain of the rugby team. She smoked cigarettes (but rarely inhaled). Her older sister had taught her about make up. What did she need with Barry?
Linda was not a Christian. She knew nothing of humility and everything about vanity.
‘Loser,’ she thought and enjoyed telling her pals so. Soon a plot hatched among the girls in the class.
‘Carry my books, Barry,’ said one.
‘And mine,’ implored another.
Barry was flustered; now even more conscious of his spots and bad breath and his thingy that he couldn’t control anymore.
‘And Mine …’ this time it was Sue.
‘Mine …’ even fat, smelly Myrna was in on the act.
Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 