No Picnic, part two

Pettishly, I reached for a pink-iced cake. Whip! Holly snatched the last one and smirked at me. Scowling and red-faced, I reached for one with raisins instead but Jessica smartly caught that one too. Her giggles made my face burn all the more. I was getting so sick of these girls!

I glanced over at Kyle’s friend, sitting next to Holly a little way away. His eyes weren’t on me, though. They were trained on Holly as if in utter distraction. The little girl was smiling up at the treetops with an innocent absent-minded look on her face, but all the time she was lifting the hem of her white skirt up over her pale, slender, willowy thigh then dropping it back down again. This continued, right in front of the boy’s gaze. He didn’t dare take his eyes away for an instant. Ooh, I fumed! She was making even me mad. What it must be like for Kyle’s friend, who she was of course teasing with a whole lot more, I couldn’t begin to imagine!

“Got top marks in my presentation today, Mum!” Jessica then declared, showing off. “Am I getting a present?”

“I know someone who’s ready to give you his!” Holly remarked, raising her small eyebrows at me. Amid their giggles Jessica affectionately batted her little sister.

“It must be hard for you sometimes,” Jessica’s mother resumed, turning to me. “I mean going out with an overachiever like my Jessica, while you’re…”

She let her voice tail easily off, as if expecting I already knew how the sentence ended. My face however was growing hot again, this time not with embarrassment but indignation. When I’m what, exactly? That was the question going round and round in my head, which of course I didn’t dare ask her. I could certainly guess what she meant, but I’d have liked to have heard her say it all the same!

Then Jessica finished the sentence for her mother. “While you’re still getting your knickers in a twist just trying to keep up with the girls!” she said loudly.

I was scarlet in the face, mortified, and Kyle and his friend were starting to look a little hurt too. There’d been altogether too much of this girls-are-better-than boys talk this picnic so far! And no boy liked to hear it. It reminded us too much of an inadequacy we didn’t like and could do nothing about.

Jessica, however, wasn’t through with me yet. “You should have seen him in netball this morning, Mum!” the girl crowed. “Rebecca had him jumping for the ball six times and he still couldn’t get it off her!”

More giggles from the girls, and a real flash of shame and crossness went through me this time. My colour deepened furiously. Thanks, Jessica, for telling everyone about that and reminding me! At least my two friends looked sympathetic instead of joining in with the female laughter.

“Oh, well, girls are always better at that sort of thing,” Jessica’s mother smiled reminiscently, making all three of us feel slighted the more. “I used to tease boys in PE lessons just like your friend Rebecca did, back when I was a schoolgirl. In fact, I’m sure still could…”

A rather naughty smile flickered on her lips as she glanced at me, Kyle and Kyle’s friend.

“…and I’ll bet our little boys here couldn’t stop me either!”

That was all she knew, was my first incensed little thought! The other two looked like they agreed that we could show these girls a thing or two, even if we were only boys! But then both daughters greeted this pronouncement with an enthusiasm that filled us with dread. They hopped upright onto their knees at once, Jessica with another bounce that was maddening to see, while Holly squealed “Yeah! Girls against boys!” and Jessica shouting “How funny is this going to be?”

They were on their feet the next second, all three untucking and resettling their underwear in back as girls do. Their mother, leggy and stunning in her full-skirted swimsuit, bent gracefully and picked up Jessica’s netball from the grass.

The boys and I could only stare, getting more and more frightened out of our wits. It was one thing to feel scornful about girls-against-boys talk, and scoff inwardly about how girls were wrong when they said it. Any boy started to think that way when he had to listen to provocative assertions about how girls could easily get the better of him. But suddenly having to prove it, and face the terrifying prospect of getting teased by girls in a game and even the possibility of losing to them, was quite another!

END OF PART TWO