Out of Luck by Julie Steimle (to read list .txt) 📕

few others were also shivering, their uniform jackets obviously not enough to keep them warm. Dawn was shivering a bit too, but I hadn’t felt the cold. Granted, I never felt the cold. I merely shrugged and looked back at our coach.
“Don’t worry, once the sun rises it will heat up,” our coach said.
I could tell from the groans and the noise the waking imps were making that they didn’t care about when the sun rose, only about now and their freezing arms. However, the sky was already lightening up.
“Get into your positions!”
We obeyed, finding our places on the pavement.
The band was already making their noise, tuning and adjusting their instruments in their position behind us. I could tell my older brother Will was testing his trombone. He went through his scales and then started to play a simple tune to make sure he got the part right. My other brother Travis was tuning his clarinet further back.
Adam McGuire, the drum major, called for the band to get in formation.
The cheer captain shouted for her team to get ready.
Our horsemen guided their horses into place.
The dancers, the cloggers, the kettledrum team, and even our very own brawling boxing team gathered on the asphalt in their designated formations with the other school bands and teams from the nearby towns that did not have St. Patty’s Day parades.
So, all of us drawing in a deep breath, waited for the signal to start.
Ptweet!
The whistle blew.
The leader of the drum group started a beat. That was the signal.
“Ready?” Someone ahead called to their team.
My heart pounded. We had gone on parades before in other towns, but this was my first year with the high school team in our hometown. It was exciting, performing for locals on our town Founder’s Day celebration.
“Ladies!” Patricia Davish called out to us, lifting her baton. The group ahead of us had started to march. We were now waiting for our signal to go.
I held my flag ready.
“Ready!” Patricia shouted to the air.
I lifted my flag with the rest our team.
“March!”
And we did, right leg first.

Our knees were high. Our chins were high. Our flags were high.
Keeping our eyes on what we were doing, our team was nearly in synch. Not always, but that can be expected from a group of amateurs. And boy, you could just hear the cheers as the band marched behind us, playing their routine of songs. I could have gone nearly deaf from it, but I was also happy for it because it drowned out the nasty things the imps were suggesting to the crowd to do to disrupt the altogether pleasant day.
The sun rose. The air got warmer. Everyone was smiling. And even I felt glad that I had missed surfing for once. There was always tomorrow anyway.
And we marched, parading through the main thoroughfare as our friends and neighbors stood and sat along the roadside as the participants threw candy and flowers to them. And as we smiled, I felt an intense flood of satisfaction wash over me as I executed every part of the routine with exactness.
But then I heard it from behind. “Trip her with your flag, and blame it on her clumsiness.”
I felt the whoosh of the flag skim near my ankles, and I jumped.
We heard the flag clatter to the ground, skimming right under me to where Patricia was leading us. And then it happened. Patricia tripped.
It was like one of those slow-action horror scenes. She slipped on the flagpole first, her feet then tangling in the long green and white flag so that she lost her balance. Toppling forward, she scraped her legs on the ground as she crashed down. I could hear her heart jump as she fell. Around us, the crowd groaned with sympathy.
“Patty!” her friend Mara ran over to her.
Dawn swirled around and glared behind us. “Who did that?”
I turned to look also, but I already knew who it was. Becky Dominae stood next to Megan, flag-less and suddenly very white in the face.
“I…I…” She then turned to me, pointing. “She kicked it out of my hands!”
I gave her an are-you-stupid look. “How could I possibly do that?”
“Ladies? What is the hang up? You are holding up the parade!” Our coach ran over to us from the sidelines where she had been following. The parade had stopped behind us.
Jill Saunders pointed to Becky. “She lost grip of her flag, and it tripped up Patricia.”
My coach looked past me at Patricia, going even whiter. She jumped over to help her up. Patricia was crying. I don’t know if it was from the pain, because I could smell the blood coming from her knees, or from embarrassment. Nothing was broken though. I would have known right away it had.
Pointing to me, our coach was about to say something, but Megan stepped forward and said, “I’ll take Patty’s place. I know her routine.”
Our coach grimaced, glancing at me once, but the team looked more likely to let Megan lead than me. “Fine. Just keep it going.” Then she pointed to Becky. “You. Out.”
Becky looked ready to protest, but the glares from the rest of us drove that from her lips and she stomped off. A policeman in charge of crowd control helped her past the barrier my teacher had just hurdled a minute ago.
“Alright!” Megan lifted up Patricia’s baton, handing her flag to the coach. “One, two, three, let’s march!”
And we started off again.
I rolled my eyes.
“Don’t trip,” Dawn called forward with a snort.
“Keep your eyes on the baton,” I chimed in.
Some of the other girl’s snickered, throwing their flags in the air as they returned to the routine. Megan really did strut before the boys, more than she was supposed to, which was why she dropped the baton so much. She was watching them and not keeping her eyes on her real business.
But the parade continued on and we got past the judges’ stand before Megan dropped the baton. I suppose she dropped it because she was passing a certain someone’s house. All I knew was that the back of her neck was flushed red and her heart was beating harder.
“Klutz,” Mandy Peppercorn called ahead.
Megan cast her a dirty look as she picked up the baton. “Fat lard.”
Mandy’s face went bright red. “Jerk.”
But Megan merely lifted her chin and went back into her routine.
And the parade went on. On and on…and on until the air was warm enough to cause the band members to sweat in their coats and for Jill Saunders to moan loudly that her hat was slipping. We marched all the way through town and around it until we ended up at the park where people were already taking off their jackets and loosening their collars. The moment we stepped into the park, Megan did one last toss, just to show off. It was only one baton. No big deal. But it was high and people stared. Some clapped.
Dawn snorted, lowering her flag with a shake of her head. “Get real. Even I could do that. I’d like to see her handle three batons.”
“She’s working on it,” I said, following her. We had to take our flags back to where our teacher had her van parked to collect the equipment. That was in the north parking lot. We were on the south side.
My sister looked back at me with a smirk. “Working on it is not the same as mastered it. Come on, Eve. You can twirl circles around her.”
I was an ‘excellent’ level three-baton twirler. I was working toward ‘superior’, but I have to admit I was not as dedicated to my baton twirling as I was to my surfing. Mastering baton was easy for me though. You could say it was genetic. Speed was in my blood, besides having great eye hand coordination and technique. I think what I lacked was some of the finesse some girls naturally had with their routines. Though my body movement was fluid, I guess I wasn’t that much of a showman. Or how my coach put it, I didn’t strut quite enough to be satisfying.
But the parade was over and discussing baton at this moment was not important anyway. Dawn and I had to change into our Celtic dance costumes for the performances later that morning. We crossed the least crowded part of the park and found the van in the parking lot. The back was open and most of our team was already there. The band was also dumping off their heavy instruments, though most of them were getting rides home to really take care of their stuff. I chucked my flag into the back of the van and spun around to head home.
“Where are you going?” Dawn stared at me as I headed toward the thick of the park’s mayhem, not quite in the direction we had come.
“I have to get my costume, remember?” I said.
Dawn had a hard time hiding that I-told-you-so look on her face. “Hurry it up, or you’ll be late.”
Wrinkling my face at her, I stuck out my tongue. “The competition isn’t for at least two hours from now. I’ll be back in time.”
“Coach won’t like you late,” Dawn replied, lifting her eyebrows.
I made another face and hurried on my way, but not at a run. The park wasn’t that far from our home and I wanted to see what was in some of the booths before I considered bringing money to spend.
The first set of booths on the skirts was opening up just across the rides from the traveling carnival. Already the Ferris wheel operator was starting up his ride, letting people into the compartments as I passed by. Entering the rows of booths, I could see the typical carnival games. There were fishing booths, all kinds of ring toss booths, shooting booths, smash the groundhog booths, you name it. Then I passed the more interesting booths, the ones set up by locals, interspersed with more challenging games. There was chain mail on sale, dragons and crystals with pewter pieces. There were real four-leaf clover charms in acrylic molds on chains sold beside green bowler hats. There were wishing booths, fortune telling booths, and even a booth for henna tattoos. I think my mother would have a fit if she saw