Head Over Heels ✓

5 / just kids

april, age 8

April was unseasonably warm, a week-long dry spell giving the grass time to dry for the children to play on the field at lunch time. Lucas stood on the side lines, watching as Asher did a cartwheel in front of him with a grin on his face.

"See? It's easy," he said, getting to his feet again and brushing his hands off. "You can do it too."

Lucas shook his head. "I don't want to get my hands dirty," he said, staring at the field. Asher held out his hands.

"It's not bad - it's dry today. Look." He wiggled his fingers in front of Lucas's face. "My hands aren't dirty. You can wash them at the end of lunch, too."

Lucas surveyed the field, watching as children from every class ran and played and did cartwheels. Some of the girls in his class were doing handstands, wearing shorts underneath the dresses that fell to their waists when they flipped upside down. They were trying to outdo each other, a couple of them able to walk on their hands. He couldn't think of anything worse, using his hands to walk when he already hated how dirty his feet got.

"I can't," he said, shaking his head. Asher launched into another cartwheel with a beam as though it would be that easy to convince his germophobic best friend to get to second base with the field. When he swung his legs over, he almost knocked out Adler who jumped back with a shriek.

"Careful!" she cried out. "You nearly hit me."

"Sorry," Asher said, a little out of breath. "I didn't see you. Can you do a cartwheel?"

Adler gave him a smug smile and nodded. Lucas just watched the two of them. He hated when they spoke, as though Asher was somehow betraying him by talking to someone he hated so much. An angry ball unfurled itself in his stomach every time he heard Adler's voice, as though she had the power to set off a chemical reaction in his belly. He watched through narrowed eyes as she launched into a cartwheel: she did three in a row.

"You do one, Lucas," she said when she finished, brushing her hands off on her chequered summer dress. He shook his head.

"I don't want to."

"Can you?" She was challenging him now, her hands on her hips. One of the oldest in the class, her birthday a few weeks before Asher's, she took that to mean that she was some kind of superior authority. While Lucas wouldn't turn ten for more than four months, she had enjoyed that age for half a year already.

He shook his head. "I don't want to do a cartwheel."

"Because you can't do it," she said.

"Because he doesn't want to, Addie," Asher said. Lucas hated when he used that nickname, as though they were friends.

"Why?" She frowned as though she couldn't imagine any reason Lucas wouldn't want to give it a go. They had been in the same class for six years now, not including the year of half days in Nursery, and yet she either didn't understand his sensitivities or she didn't care.

"I don't want to get dirty." He pulled the sleeves of his bright red school jumper over his fingertips.

"It's not dirty," she said. "It's just grass."

"I don't want to touch it," he said, his heart fluttering as he felt himself getting worked up.

"You're being a baby," she said. "You can touch grass, don't be stupid."

"Go away," he said, struggling to look her in the eye.

"If you do a cartwheel." She stood her ground: she was tall, coming eye to eye with him, and he shrank under her stare.