Marilee’s story…
“Hey, look! Here she comes!”
Marilee pulled her notebook higher, pressing the flat side against her chest in order to hide her embarrassingly large breasts. With lowered eyes, she walked by the group of teenage boys that always hung out at the lockers. She suspected that they all arrived at this moment, just so they could mock her.
It was horrible! Torture! She wished she could just blink and something horrible would happen to each of them – like their jeans would fall down, exposing their underwear to the rest of the students hurrying from one class to another. Or maybe they’d go home and their hair and eyebrows would turn purple! Yeah, that would be nice.
Really nice!
Unfortunately, nothing happened. She walked. They snickered. Her shoulders hunched as she tried to become smaller and smaller. Okay, new dream; she’d blink and become invisible! Oh, that would be so lovely!
Unfortunately, the fluorescent lights cruelly demonstrated that her wish hadn’t come true!
If only magic were real! If only she could blink or wiggle her nose. As she sank into the seat in the back of her algebra class, she tried wiggling her nose. Nothing happened. She wasn’t a secret witch, Marilee accepted. Again.
No matter how many times she wished it, the magic never shot out of her nose. Of course, neither did boogars, so perhaps she should be grateful for small miracles.
“Settle down!” the teacher called out.
Marilee sank lower in her chair, hating the hard wood and scratched metal. She’d been in such a hurry to get to class, she’d taken the wrong seat. This was the desk that had the wobbly leg because someone kept fiddling with the screws. Great! Perfect! She’d gotten through the snickering-teenage-boy gauntlet only to find herself in the wiggly chair. Sinking a bit lower, she pictured the desk collapsing and the four boys to her right laughing hysterically at her. That would be just perfect! High school was a miserable, horrible four years!
“Mary, Joe and Mark!” the teacher called out. “Up to the board and write the answers to problems one, two and three from your homework.”
Marilee groaned silently. Writing answers on the board? Could her day get any worse?
The three students finished at the board and Marilee looked down at her homework. Got two right, one wrong. Picking up her pencil, she pushed her hair off of her forehead as she tried to figure out what she’d done wrong on the problem. She’d thought….
“Joe, this isn’t quite right,” the teacher announced, going up to the board and demonstrating the error in Joe’s problem. Marilee looked down at her paper and smiled with relief. She’d done it right! Exactly right!
Four more students went up to the board. She got all of those problems right, happiness surging through her. The next four – again, all correct.
“Spencer, Dave and Marilee – you guys take the last three problems.”
Marilee groaned again. Dave and Spencer hurried up to the board and started writing. Marilee took her time, not wanting to be in the front of the class. The boys made jokes about her butt, which is why she wore long shirts, hoping to cover herself.
“I’m not fat,” she mentally chided herself. “I’m not fat!” But as she went to the board, she knew that the teenage boys liked only the stick thin girls. The girls with no boobs. If there was one thing Marilee had in abundance, it was boobs. They were big and round and, because she wore loose clothing to cover them, she also looked overweight.
She wrote her answer on the board, then dusted off the chalk from her fingers as she walked to the back of the classroom, slinking down into her chair.
“Spencer – good job. Dave – excellent.” He stopped and looked at Marilee’s answer and she shrank down a bit more.
“Nope. This is wrong.” With a piece of chalk, he X’d out several areas, shaking his head in disgust. That really fired her up. She’d gotten all of the answers correct on her homework, only missing this one. She had an A in the class, she always did her homework, the teacher never stopped the boys from making rude comments and now he was coming across as much harsher about her incorrect answer than he had with any of the other students.
Not fair!
Two boys turned around and snickered. Marilee was sick of being treated like a walking boob! “Back off!” she told them when they started to snicker. Their eyes widened slightly, but they turned around.
Marilee’s shoulders pulled back with pride. It felt really good to stand up for herself! And the desk didn’t collapse! All things considered, the day was a success!
Emerson’s story…
“You’re going to be fine,” Emerson’s mother told him as they pulled up outside of the old farmhouse where his grandmother lived.
Emerson stared at the house, picturing each of the rooms, wondering what piece of china he was going to break this year. His grandmother collected…everything! If it was breakable, she had it in her house. As a thirteen year old boy, one who was taller than anyone else in his class, including his teachers, he hated visiting this house because he was too big for rooms that had breakables!
His mom understood and gave him a gentle look. “Emerson, come on. You always have fun during the summers here,” she soothed. “Remember the horses and cows, the chickens? You love stealing the chickens’ eggs, trying to get the eggs before the chickens could peck your hand.”
Emerson grinned. “Yeah, they are pretty mean.”
“But you’re meaner, aren’t you?” she teased, eliciting an eye roll from her son.
Having no choice, Emerson pushed out of the car, stepping into the heat of the afternoon sunshine. The smell of freshly cut grass hit him and he looked around, shaking his head at the lines of cut grass on the lawn. His grandfather was too cheap to buy one of the new mulching mowers. His ancient lawn mower cut the grass and shot the unmulched blades out the side, forming a small mound of grass which created long lines. When Emerson walked through the grass after a mowing, his ankles and calves would be covered in blades of grass for the next few days.
Great, he muttered silently in his head.
At that same moment, the big, front door opened up and his white haired grandmother burst out of the house. “Emerson!” she yelled.
He chuckled as she approached. He really loved his grandmother. She made him chocolate chip cookies and whatever he wanted for dinner. Yeah, his grandmother was cool. Except for the breakables, she was probably the best granny any guy could have.
“Hi Gramma,” he said a fraction of a second before he was enveloped in a warm hug. But this time, his face wasn’t buried in her breasts. Thank goodness! There was finally something positive to being this tall, he thought.
“Goodness, you’ve grown a foot since last summer!” she said, pulling back and staring up at him. “What happened to my sweet, little boy?”
“He’s pretty tall, isn’t he, Mom?” Emerson’s mother teased.
Emerson looked over at his mother and she winked at him. “I’m not that tall,” he argued.
Both of them snorted as his grandmother hugged him once again. “Well, we’re going to make sure that you grow another few inches over the summer. I have my famous meatloaf in the oven for dinner tonight.”
Emerson’s mouth instantly started watering. He knew it wasn’t cool to like meatloaf, but none of his friends had tried his grandmother’s meatloaf! It was awesome! “With the small, roasted potatoes?” he asked hopefully.
She chuckled. “Why make meatloaf if you don’t have the roasted potatoes?” she asked rhetorically.
Emerson walked into the house between his grandmother and mother, thinking about the summer in a new light. He didn’t have to stay inside, he remembered. His grandfather kept horses and chickens, grew lots of different things in the gardens. There was also the barn with the sweet smelling hay and scent of horses and old leather.
Besides, summers were a good time to torment the local sheriff with new pranks! Yeah, avoid breakables. Don’t get caught by the law. And see if Kelly Nelson still lived on the neighboring farm. Kelly was blond and pretty and very kissable. Yep, add kissing Kelly Nelson into the list-of-things-to-do and the summer might just be awesome!
Now that he had a plan, it was going to be a good summer.
