Dumbest Girl in School

Flash Fiction

“Thank you for the surprise party, but I simply sold the company. I have not decided about retirement, and probably won’t. ”

Monica draped her arm around her daughter, sipped a glass of champagne that had gotten entirely too warm.

“I’m surprised,” she said “ you found a cheerleading photo. And I’m completely shocked you added it to the collage.”

Marie looked up at her mother, shaking her head.

“If Beth hadn’t dug up that photo you were never gonna tell me you were a cheerleader, were you?”

Monica reached over to the photo collage, tapped the faded photo with her knuckle.

“Probably not, actually. Just one season”

“You were gorgeous, mom,” Marie said. “You still are, but you were a stunning young lady.”

Monica downed the rest of the warm champagne, set the glass on a table full of empty glasses and partially eaten slices of cake.

“The Dumbest Girl in School.”

Marie’s head swung so quickly her hair whipped the sleeve of her mother’s dress.

“What? Who? You weren’t, I know that.”

Monica smiled a placating smile at Marie.

“I never wanted to be a cheerleader. Elizabeth talked me into it.”

Monica walked to the sofa, sat, looked up at her daughter.

 “Thomas Paine High School only had lights on one side of the field, above the visiting stands. I could look up, above our fans...woo hoo, go Raiders...and see the stars. I was doing parallax equations in my head. The other girls were chanting “hold ‘em, hold ‘em” and I was dreaming of being Hipparchus, Cassini, Bessel. I was fine in the daytime at practice, but on Friday nights, by halftime, when I could see the stars, I would always miss my cues. The athletic director told someone I must be the dumbest girl in school, and the quote got back to me.”

Marie plucked an untouched slice of cake from the table and popped a pinch of blue frosting in her mouth.

“You were salutatorian.”

“Yes, I was,” Monica said. “Second in my class.”

“So obviously far from the dumbest girl in school,” Marie said.

“Yep. But when you’re fourteen, stuff like that sticks harder than it should, kids that age haven’t developed that personal Teflon yet. At least I hadn’t.”

“I’m sorry the photo dredged up a bad memory, mom.”

Monica leaned and hugged her daughter, laughing, dipping her finger in the frosting.

She swallowed frosting and laughed some more.

“You think that picture called it back up? No, no, sweetheart. I never forgot it. I used that comment to motivate myself.”

Monica stood and walked to the photo collage, pointing at an 8x10 photo of her standing in front of the engineering firm she had just sold, the sale that prompted the surprise party.

She ran her well-manicured finger across the sign on the facade of the building.

Detroit Global Interactive Solutions.

“The acronym,” Monica said with a contented smile, “always carried more than one meaning.”

***

Photo by Frankie Lopez on Unsplash