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Poodle skirts were tacky. Betty’s mom said.
Patty Simcox’s poodle skirt with an actual poodle on it billowed out behind her when she ran up and chastised Betty for the unladylike sweat lines running down the red pinstripe of her dress. She actually said that, too, unladylike, with her big horse teeth glaring up at her like Patty’s poor mouth couldn't contain them.
Unladylike. As if Betty cared. She knocked her kitten heels right into Patty's pointy face.
Patty scampered off like the rat she was to tattle to the recess matron, but Betty had better things to do than worry about her or her massive molars or the state of her dress. She blew an escaped curl off her forehead and concentrated on the metal bar in front of her.
Cool earlier that day, the metal rungs of the monkey bars were now hot and sticky where her hands curled around them. The blue paint cracked and stuck to her fingers. Marty had taught her this thing last week where you swing back and forth on the monkey bars until you can reach out and skip as many rungs as you can. Betty’s record was three. Marty’s was five.
How she managed to get that far, Betty didn't know, but Marty was puking her guts out with the flu today, so Betty was gonna figure it out.
She licked her lips and kicked back. Her fingers slid sticky trails on the bar over her. Betty swung her legs forward in big hoops, her dress beating against her calves as she whipped through the air. Then, she gritted her teeth and flung herself forward.
Her hands came down on top of a bar with a smack, jarring her teeth on impact. Betty chanced a look back and grinned. Four.
Marty’s record was toast.
Her fingers were slipping on the bar above her, so she dropped and hit the playground mulch with a thump. Her hands were red and raw, the skin peeling in places. And--she scowled--her armpits did feel gross now that they were not hanging out to dry.
God was baking everybody into cookies in a giant oven today. Her mom said.
Betty rubbed the flecks of blue paint off her palms and looked at the metal rung above her. The sounds and smells of the playground were roaring, but she forced herself not to care. She had a goal today. Her hands would be fine for one or two more tries.
Betty repositioned herself, jumped, and grabbed the first bar. She squirmed until her fingers were comfortable and blew that languid curl out of her face again, fixing her gaze further than she had last time. Marty could do this, and so would she. The fifth bar.
She hiked her hands further up and prepared to swing when something slammed into the monkey bars.
Her grip snapped. Reverberation cracked through her arms and they went loose where they should’ve been tight, the ground sprinted up to meet her as she slipped, and her ass cracked on the mulch. "Watch it!" Betty barked, tearing her eyes from the bar above her to the other side of the monkey bars.
Two flat, blackened palms were pressed against the metal holding the bars aloft, framing the grubby boy between them. His lips curled back into a slick and easy smile. "Recess matron says it's someone else's turn to use the monkey bars,” he spat, words sliding out of his mouth from the gap between his two front teeth.
Betty twisted to look at the lady. She was still consoling poor barking Patty and her unfortunate horse teeth. Betty was due for a beating from her, but it wouldn't be over monkey bars.
She spun back around and gave the boy in front of her a once-over, from his brown chucks and stained jeans to the crop of curly yellow hair sprouting from his head. Blondie.
Every blondie's brain turned to mush because the sun bleached their heads too much. Her mom said.
Betty snorted. "I ain’t stupid," she said. She stood and brushed the mulch dust from her dress. "She's still on about Patty from when I kicked her teeth in earlier, and I got some minutes before she comes to get me.” The boy glared as she wound up and jumped, wringing her fingers around a bar. She gave him that sick-sweet smile her mom said brought out the sour apple in her eyes. “These are mine. Scram.”
The boy turned a ruddy shade of flamingo pink and stepped in front of the bars. His hands left dirt stains on the poles. "She could’ve said it earlier," he said, wiping his nose with one grubby fist so his chin jutted up at her. His gaze stuttered off to the side and he crossed his arms. “You don’t know everything ‘bout it.”
Betty followed his eyes to where they landed on a gang of boys digging fingers into the sun-warmed tar in the cracks of the sidewalk and smearing it over the concrete in dirty words.
So that’s what coated this boy’s fingers. Tar. Eeewwww.
Blondie scowled at something he saw from his friends and stepped toward her swinging feet. "Look, just lemme have a turn, okay? I'll be quick, I promise." He made to grab the hem of her cotton skirt.
Betty kneed him in the face so hard his blonde eyebrows flew off his face.
He shrieked, stumbling back to clutch at his nose and wheezing. "Ssshitt," he hissed, pulling his hand away with red and cutting a glare at her. "What the ‘ell was that for?"
She hauled herself up through the bars to sit on one of the hot rungs and leaned forward, bracing her arms on the bars in front of her so she could peer down at him. "Whad'ya think it was for, numbnuts?” she whined, mimicking his pitch. Her legs dangled in the air.
He spit and yanked all the snot and blood back into his face and sneered, wiping his sleeve across his nose. "I just wanted to use the fuckin' monkey bars", he spat, his teeth glinting in the sun.
Betty squinted. It made him look different, somehow, with his lips curling back over the sharp edge of a molar. She decided she liked him better when he sneered.
Regardless. She lay down fully against the bars and pulled her lower lip and eyelids down in a pout. "While I guess you're just gonna have to wait your turn, aren't ya?" she simpered.
Her lashes were drifting inches away from where his eyes glared angrily up at her. His eyebrows cut across his face like scars, blocking all that anger in with nowhere to go. Betty almost laughed. It was like watching a tiger in a circus, gnashing its teeth against a cage.
A hand wrapped around her ankle before she even saw him move and for one horrible second she panicked, and her body braced in a rush. The muscles in her leg squeezed, her shoulders slid tight, and her grip cemented on the bar in front of her.
But then his face cleared and he let go just as quickly, stepping back and swallowing. The hand he’d curled around her leg rubbed the back of his neck.
Betty knew she must’ve looked wild. Face like a fruit salad, cheeks an anxious cherry red and apple eyes wide. She gave herself a moment to breathe through the wave of panic that had sprinted through her.
She was a girl. He wasn't going to hurt a girl.
Blondie wasn’t making eye contact with her. Aww, poor baby. Did it bother him and his pudgy fingers to see how much he’d messed with her? "Whatever," he grunted, muffled since he was tracing his tongue over the bruised inside of his lip. His curls fell into his face as he scuffed his shoes in a turn back towards his friends.
Betty slowly straightened on the monkey bars. She smoothed her dress out, ignoring the tremors in her fingers. Served him right.
“Bitch,” he mumbled.
It was only pure luck she heard him.
Betty had bitten her nails all the way down. “Filthy habit,” her mom had scolded that morning when she tied Betty’s hair back in a curly bow.
And maybe she was right. But it sure as rain made it easier to curl her fingers into a ball and throw a square punch at this boy.