Dizzy

This flash fiction piece was written as a story companion to the day 19 drawing prompt Dizzy from the 2020 Inktober prompt list. Click here to see the drawing.

She stands in the middle of the playground, her arms flung haphazardly to the side, and she spins.

She always liked spinning, always like the way the world tilted this way and that when she stopped. It was like a magic trick, like bending the world into something different. More than that, it was distracting.

As long as she was spinning, she didn’t have to think about being alone. As long as she was spinning, she didn’t have to think about the way her best friend Stephanie told her that Tracee didn’t want them to play together anymore because Tracee was Stephanie’s best friend now. As long as she was spinning, she didn’t have to think about when the teacher accused her of hitting Tracee when she’d never hit anyone in her life, or about how, when the teacher wasn’t looking, Tracee laughed and stuck her tongue out, and how when the teacher looked back, suddenly Tracee was crying.

After that, no one wanted to play with her any more. Going up to other kids on the playground to join tether ball or a game of tag or even to offer to push someone on the swings became pointless. They wouldn’t even say no, just turn around and act like she wasn’t there. Once, she tried tapping someone on the shoulder and they started shouting a word she’d never heard before: contaminated.

That’s when she found out they’d all decided on a new rule, that no one was supposed to touch her. If they did, all the other kids started shouting, “Ewww!” as loudly as they could. So she found her own games. Sometimes, she spent the entire recess sitting in the grass and looking for four leaf clovers. She only ever found two-leaf ones.

That was last year, in the Spring. When school started again in the fall, the grass was dead and she had to find something else to do. At first, she invented a game where she pretended the telephone poll at the edge of the blacktop was the center of a gigantic spiral staircase in a castle. The first half of recess, she walked up the stairs, and the second half she changed directions and started to come down.

After two or three days, she really started to like this game. She wrote a story about it in her head, about how she was a princess and had to run up to her room to get something and then run it back down before the bell rang. She was running as fast as she could around the telephone pole, trying to make it to the bottom of the stairs in time when a group of girls nearby exploded in laughter. Immediately, she knew they were laughing at her. Looking over at them, she saw Tracee in the middle of the group, running around and doing a cruel impression of her new game.

When Tracee saw her looking, she stopped and pointed in her direction. “No one touch the telephone pole!” She howled with laughter. “It’s contaminated!” More kids nearby started laughing.

But then, after Christmas, Jacob came.

He was all alone at recess, too, so she asked him to play. He didn’t say ew, and he didn’t say, contaminated. He smiled and showed her his favorite game: spinning. They would spend all recess spinning around and around until they were so dizzy they fell against each other, landing on the ground in a heap, laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe. She’d never been so happy in her life.

Jacob was seated next to her in class and he would make her laugh. One time, he snuck in a rubber band and, when the teacher wasn’t looking, he whispered, “It’s the Lincoln assassination!” and shot it at the poster of the presidents on the wall behind her head. She’d had to duck under her desk for a minute so the teacher didn’t notice how hard she was giggling. For the first time she could remember, she woke up every day excited to get to school.

Last week, Jacob met her on the playground with another kid in tow: Josh E., from the other fourth grade class. They all spun together, for a while, and she was coated in bliss. She went from being alone to having two new friends. But when they got dizzy and she fell on top of Jacob, Josh E. started laughing in the weirdest way. When Jacob asked what was so funny, Josh E. ask how long I’d been his girlfriend and Jacob lost it. First, he said they were just friends, and Josh E. laughed and wouldn’t stop until Jacob shouted, “We’re not friends!! I don’t even like her, I was just trying to be nice!”

Then, without a word to her, the two boys got up off the black top and walked off, like she was never there. When she tried to talk to Jacob back in class, he turned the other direction and ignored her.

So, now, she spins. Faster and faster and faster until she bumps into someone.

“Ew, get away from me!” They shout, so she walks to the middle of the blacktop and sits down, watching the world twist and bend.

“Why is she always spinning like that? She’s so weird.”

“I know, right? Who cares, she’s a freak. Just ignore her.”

She stands up and starts spinning again. Maybe, she thinks, maybe if I go fast enough, I’ll take off and fly away.