Healthy competition never hurts until it does
Friendly Competition
Leadership Week
Clarissa yawned and rose from her bleacher seat as though she had no concerns in the world, felt no threat from the performances that preceded her. Which she didn’t. She’d made school mascot two years running, and she’d claim the glory this year too. Her chief rival Joey Pudringer was changing out of the suit even now, and would leave it in the locker room for her to don just before her greatest performance ever.
She passed Joey at the entrance to the locker room, his face twisted with the same shit-eating grin he always wore, the shit-eating grin he could afford to wear since his great aunt, Mrs. Brassebowles, known to the students as Brass Balls, was also the school superintendent’s mother. And she had already given Joey a 10 for his performance, five points higher than she gave anyone else.
That ten still left Joey with a score of 22 from all three judges. Joey, the ass wipe sophomore with more zits on his cheeks than craters on the moon and a wit filled with zingers such as “you’re a homo, like your ho mo.” Still four points lower than Clarissa’s worst score ever. And the second best score was 18 from that slut Annie Leggsupp. Since Clarissa would get tens from the other two judges, even if she got a zero from Brass Balls, she would enter the runoff election, and no student would vote for Joey since a vote for Joey was a vote for Brass Balls, the most hated teacher in the school.
Joey’s great aunt, Mrs. Brassebowles, known to the students as Brass Balls, was also the school superintendent’s mother. And she had already given Joey a 10 for his performance, five points higher than she gave anyone else.
Besides, she designed the new Swampy costume, which everyone agreed was the best mascot costume that the Bayou High Swamp Rats ever had. And her routine would kill. The music? Mahna Mahna. She’d open with multiple somersaults across the gym floor, a roll, high-V, cone-motion approach, cone, touchdown and triple somersault to land in front of the judges, a fist pump and “go swamp rats.”
Two somersaults into her routine something wiggled in her crotch. It crawled up her back, and she shrieked. She pulled her costume to her waist, remembering only then that she’d removed her bra to keep cooler under the polyester lining. In her hand was a six-inch rat.
Joey leaped from the bleachers. “Hey, you found my pet rat, Joey Jr.”
Two somersaults into her routine something wiggled in her crotch. It crawled up her back, and she shrieked.
Clarissa opened her fist and dropped the vermin. “You put that rat in my suit to sabotage me.” To which Brass Balls replied, “You’re standing there half-naked and accusing my nephew? You better have proof.”
Annie Leggsupp won the runoff election by a landslide. Clarissa’s wardrobe malfunction disqualified her, and no one wanted the insufferable Joey as their mascot. (Rumor had it the only vote he received was his own.) The principal expelled Clarissa for indecent public exposure after Brass Balls threatened to have her son fire the woman for failing to uphold “the honor of the school.” Clarissa settled for an Associate Degree in Fast Food Management from the local community college.
High school politics are brutal.
Gone, and hopefully forgotten.
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Wry noir author Phillip T. Stephens wrote Cigerets, Guns & Beer, Raising Hell, the Indie Book Award winning Seeing Jesus, and the children’s book parody Furious George. Follow him at Phillip T Stephens.
