LJ Idol Week 13 entry
“What’s next?” someone asked.
“Rope-skipping” replied Miss E.
I wiped my hot face with the hand I had been holding against the floor for some cooling.
“You each take one rope and all start skipping. The last one that remains wins one bag”. The bags were located on a table next to the door of the gym hall with the wooden floor, in which the air carried the heavy scent of old leather and sweat. Each bag, featuring a christmas-tree themed design, was filled with chocolate, cinnamon stars and other sweets, as it was the last gym session before Christmas. On the top of each bag, I could spot some small oranges and a wrapped Father Christmas of chocolate.
One bag had gone to the winner of some ball-throwing game, in which I got lost quickly. But rope-skipping! I was good at it, or so I thought. My head felt hot, but not only from the game. It was a mixture of pre-Christmas excitement, that kind of excitement you can only feel when you are a child, when you are certain that the sweet rosé colouring of the sky are some angels baking cookies in preparation and of an upcoming fever that had started to rise to its full proportions on this friday evening.
My hands, now sweaty as well, took the rope, and then everyone started skipping, so that the wooden floor under our feet swung and creaked each time our bodies came down again.
Soon the first ones tripped, some fell, entangled in their ropes, some were exhausted. I was exhausted, too, but I had been drifting apart to another world, while my legs and feet worked on their own. More girls stopped, then they sat down and watched.
Suddenly, we were only three skipping girls in the large gym hall. The occasional talking had stopped and the only sound was the drumming of six little feet that were still in the game for a prize.
When the third girl stumbled and sat down quickly I looked up. The other one was one of the best girls in my age group. She wore a red gym dress and red shoes. I wondered how long we had been skipping. 15 Minutes? 20? I suddenly felt tired, ready to give up, to pretend I had gotten entangled in my rope, too, and then smile politely and tiredly, congratulating the winner and lay my feverish head to rest in my bed at home.
But a part of me was not ready to pretend a fall. If I was going to fall, then for real, maybe because my feet were too sore to jump, or because my shoe was falling apart. The reason had to be another one than to pretend a fall and accept defeat.
“She is not going to give up, I know her”. This came up in my head and I looked away from her, to the bags of sweets. I could almost taste the warm spicy cinnamon, the fresh oranges, and I could hear the sound of a chocolate Father Christmas just being unwrapped and suffering the first bite that cracked the whole milk chocolate.
Then I heard it. The jolt that went through the floor, caused by a pair of tripping feet. I looked up and the girl in the red dress stood where she had been skipping, the rope between her feet.
“It’s ok, you can stop, you are the winner”, someone called from somewhere in the hall and my feet stopped, my knees gave in and then I sat on the floor, which was now turning before my eyes.
That night, my mother peeled one of the oranges from my bag and gave it to me before I went to bed, where I closed my eyes and could not really believe that this had just happened. The proof in form of the bag full of sweets, waited patiently for me until the next morning.