Jenny-one for Tennis?

The sun was high in the spare bedroom at Jenny’s house when slowly I awoke. The first thing I saw was her, and she made my heart flutter almost unbearably because she had her tennis whites on. She was already clean and showered, so that the smell of her was awesome. I was very embarrassed to be seen first thing in the morning when she was like that.

“I’m going to knock a ball round out in the garden for a bit,” she told me, even at home the prim and pretty half-neurotic Jenny who drove me crazy all week. “Want to watch? Or play?”

She left, so I quickly got as ready as I was ever going to be in white shorts and tee and sneakers. Jenny, just as she’d said, was out on her tennis court by the flowerbeds, and every flip of her short white pleated skirt gave me a glimpse of her absurd big frilly-backed tennis knickers and made my heart weak. This was one of the reasons I really preferred to take the first of the two options offered and just watch her practice, but she started to pout that it would be more fun to have someone to play against, and when that failed began teasing me about how I was scared of losing to a girl. She did this so relentlessly that soon I was stung enough to end up facing her with her pink spare racquet in my hand, in quite a hot temper though not quite so much that I was able to forget how silly I felt.

Her serve was so fast and strong I didn’t stand a chance. I gasped, suddenly feeling twice as silly.

Jenny giggled. “Bet you didn’t think you’d lose to a girl so bad at this game too!” she sang out.

I flushed. Actually I’d been willing to bet she’d be as much of a tease at this as she was at everything else, but it wasn’t polite to say that out loud!

Her second serve was just the same. “Missed again!” she taunted me.

I felt like stamping my bare foot. It was almost too much to be treated this way by a girl. “You could at least give me one I can hit back!” I cried out, fevered.

“Don’t get hot and bothered,” she told me, maddeningly. “Boys can get good at this game too. I’ll go easy on you and we’ll see if you can do any better.”

She hit me another one, slower this time. I still had to run for it though, and I still missed. I swished my racquet hard, getting properly infuriated now.

“Er, maybe you try serving,” Jenny suggested. The way she said it was the worst cringe yet.

Still, I had to say I was looking forward to acing this smug show-off little girl with my first shot! This couldn’t be so hard, not if girls could do it. I untucked the ball I had down the back of my underwear and tugged it out from the leg of my shorts, feeling elastic slip irritatingly up but not wanting to unpick it while Jenny was watching.

Whack! I tried to serve but the ball hit the net. Maybe this wasn’t as easy as it looked! Jenny smirked, and that stung me into trying again. But the same thing happened.

I knew from long PE experience that hot tears were on the verge of squirting out! I just wouldn’t let myself though, not when Missy could see. That wasn’t even the worst of it because later some of Jenny’s friends came round to use her court so it was my job to keep all these girls in their tennis whites tanked-up on lemonade. Luckily for me they paid me hardly any attention at all, though they way they eyed me as girls do was more than enough to make me squirm.

While I was pouring-out, I overheard one girl complain: “I think I got slowed down a lot by all the frilly white lace on my butt.”

I blushed. Jenny’s friends were all like her, which was to say, capable of saying things like that with a straight face. As soon as I was done I made myself scarce until the next time the girls fancied something to sip. I groaned as I realised it wasn’t even ten-thirty yet, which meant there was more to come.

“Yay, cheese sandwiches!” cheered Jenny as the girls bustled into the cool kitchen around eleven all stuffiness and smell with their whites on. At once I drew Jenny’s chair back for her like I was supposed to, and she slid into it without so much as looking at me. The way she tucked her tennis skirt underneath the bumpiness of her full frilly-backs made me go limp.

For half an hour I had to stand there, holding the lemonade jug to top up the chatting girls when they needed it. “Jenny, you always eat just as much as you like and you’re still really good at sports,” said one of the girls, half in praise and half in envy.

“I weigh a lot more than you’d think,” was Jenny’s reply, and my heart ached for her yet again.

When the girls were finished and had gone out to play tennis some more, leaving me to pine over the memory of them and their leftover crusts, I tidied up then shyly helped Jenny’s mother get the salad ready for lunch. Then I made myself scarce and sought refuge in the spare room again, which was full of Jenny’s old performance things from when she was younger. Leotards and cheer-uniforms she’d outgrown, and even a fluffy pink tutu hung on the rail before my longing gaze as I sat on the bed, trying to eat, although in my emotional state even my small share of the cheese sandwiches were beyond me.

It seemed to me that everything here was quite cheesy! What was more, it turned out that wasn’t about to change, because presently the door opened and Jenny herself came in.

She was still wearing her tennis whites, and after a morning knocking the ball around in the sun that meant any confined space with her in it wasn’t to be gone into lightly. I hardly dared take a breath through my nostrils. Very different to the freshly-showered and pink Jenny of mere hours ago!

“Oh, you’re in here,” she said, and left – but was I only imagining the tiny hint of blush on her cheeks which I thought I saw?