Picked Last

Picked Last

You stare at the painted white wall in the corner, eyes drawn to a small lump where the paint had congealed. You slowly unzip your school gown. You’ve never enjoyed getting undressed in the dressing room with the other girls. You’d stand in the same corner every week, undress as slowly as you could get away with and then get into your sports uniform as fast as possible.
Even stepping out into the hall you grasp the bottom of your tiny netball skirt that is a part of the girl’s sports uniform and you walk up to where Mr. Keecherer is waiting for everyone.

Mr. Keecherer is okay. He’s very friendly, behind his back everyone calls him Mr. Feelerer as he has a habit of always touching the students. Not in a pervy way or anything, but he would touch your back or your shoulder whenever he spoke to you.

Today you’re going to play soccer and Mr. Keecherer chooses the team captains: Aaron and Chandelle.

Aaron is okay. You don’t know him that well except from one time when you had to do a team project with him. He didn’t let you touch anything and did the work himself.
In the end you got a very low mark with a comment from the teacher about the lack of teamwork.

Chandelle, though, you have an unreasonable dislike towards. Chandelle wasn’t mean or rude, although she could be self-righteous.
But that wasn’t why you didn’t like her. Your dislike of her stemmed from an incident that happened many years ago. Your best friend, Teyana told you about this game. You would pretend to chase her. She said that even though she would call out, Leave me alone! Stop chasing me! you would continue chasing her. You didn’t really understand the point of the game but you went along with it.
Leave me alone! Stop chasing me! She said, and she ran up to Chandelle.
Rebeckah’s chasing me! She won’t leave me alone! she said, and Chandelle marched up to you and started lecturing you.
Stop chasing her! It’s not nice to go around chasing people. Leave her alone!
You looked at Teyana and waited for her to explain that it was just a game.
Yeah, it’s not nice! Teyana said. You were confused. Chandelle said, don’t worry, you can hang out with me. I’ll protect you, and Teyana said thanks. You wandered off feeling guilty.
When you confronted Teyana about it later, she said yeah, Chandelle was being a bitch when she yelled at you like that.
Thinking back, you know it is irrational to blame Chandelle and not Teyana, but you still don’t want to be on her team.

To keep the teams gender balanced there is a rule that the team leaders have to coordinate between boy and girl when they chose who they want on their team.

There were always more girls than boys. Eventually they would run out of boys and you’d be one of the girls left over. This didn’t bother you because you never tried hard in sports anyway. You might’ve put more effort into it if it wasn’t so competitive, not just against the opposing team, but your own team mates. It always seemed that they wanted the ball more than you.

Ben is the last boy to be picked and he grimly walks to line up behind Aaron. There are still four girls left over: you, Emily, Teyana, and Sarah.

When it came to sports Sarah had as little enthusiasm as you, but for a different reason. Where you felt you couldn’t compete, Sarah was just plain bored. She would spend most of the game talking to one of her friends when you would stand by yourself.

Chandelle chooses Teyana, and you become conflicted on who’s team you want to be on. Teyana is your best friend.
Aaron chooses Emily, and it is Chandelle’s turn again. It is down to you and-

“I’m always the last one to be picked!” Sarah cried out, tears in her eyes. “Every single time.”
You are confused. For one thing, she isn’t always the last one to be picked. She is often one of the last...
“I just knew I was going to be last, I just knew it,” she sobs. Her friends try to comfort her.
There was that other thing that confuses you, too. It occurs to you that the last person to be picked is actually the second-last, as the last isn’t picked at all, they’re just the one left behind.
But neither of you had been picked, yet.
You think about pointing out that you are still sitting there, but surely everybody must be aware of this. You don’t want to embarrass yourself.
Mr. Keecherer takes Sarah aside to talk to her, and you observe how Mr. Keecherer has his hand on Sarah’s shoulder. Eventually they walk back and Sarah joins Chandelle’s team, but she still looks miserable.
“Okay, let’s get started,” Mr. Keecherer says, and everyone wanders to the centre of the hall.
You crawl under a table that was against the wall and watch the game. Aaron hogs the ball from his team but it is stolen from Chandelle, who kicks it to Sarah, who is still sulking and doesn’t even notice.
You close your eyes and think about how you’ve never really liked sports, anyway.