High-Tops to High Heels: Part 1

[Cover Design by Jenny North]

It was the biggest basketball game of the season: the Jefferson High Tomcats versus the St. Ceylan’s Sprites. The bleachers were packed with students from both schools, along with what seemed like half the town, and the noise was deafening as the game reached its final moments. Fans were hollering and the cheerleaders were jumping up and down. There was good reason for all the excitement -- St. Ceylan’s was leading 98-97, time was winding down, and the ball was in the hands of Jefferson High’s star athlete, Bobby Vickerson.

The crowd’s cheering reached a fever pitch as Bobby brought the ball across half-court, surveying the floor, a look of determined concentration on his handsome face. He was the smallest player on the Tomcats’ roster, but easily the most talented. His ability to weave through the defense with his dribbling, and to hit shots in the biggest moments, was already the stuff of high school legend.

As seconds ticked off the clock, Bobby signalled for a pick, dribbling hard to the left to make St. Ceylan’s defenders rotate. He had the match-up he wanted: Josh Delacroix, the Sprites’ star center. Six inches taller than Bobby, far bigger and stronger, unguardable anywhere near the basket and a shot-blocking menace. The two of them had been trading buckets all night. But at the moment, they were nowhere near the basket -- they were out at the three-point line, where Bobby thrived.

“Ready to take another L, Delacroix?” Bobby grinned, dribbling the ball between his legs.

“Not tonight, Vickerson,” his rival growled. “I’m locking you up.”

“Lock this!” Bobby said, and hit his opponent with a cross-over move so fast the ball became a blur. As Josh scrambled to recover, Bobby stepped back behind the three-point line, rose up, and shot the ball.

The entire gym watched breathlessly as the ball left Bobby’s fingertips, arcing high through the air. It splashed down into the opposing basket, hitting nothing but net, just as the buzzer sounded!

Bobby was immediately swarmed by his overjoyed teammates. Jefferson High students were screaming his name, leaping out of the stands and onto the court in their excitement, chanting the “We Love Bobby” cheer that seemed to erupt every other game. Even the cheerleaders from the opposing team couldn’t help but swoon a little bit as Bobby Vickerson, hero yet again, flashed his perfect white grin and flexed his biceps for the crowd, basking in the glory of victory.

God, Kimberly hated him. She had known the ball was going in from the second it left Bobby’s hand -- she had seen it a dozen times before, after all, what with being a cheerleader for the Tomcats, and had already tossed her pom-poms to the floor in frustration.

Just once, it would have been nice to see the great Bobby Vickerson taken down a notch. To see him lose a bit of that macho swagger he used to compensate for his height. To see him embarrassed the way he had embarrassed her three months ago, by dumping her in the middle of the cafeteria, when he had called her a dumb blonde airhead and said he’d be better off dating a Barbie doll.

Kimberly Quinn may have been blonde, but she was far, far from an airhead. She acted the part, that’s all, the same way Bobby acted the part of charming, dashing athlete when he was really just a cocky asshole. And as she watched her ex-boyfriend soak up the adulation, she decided she was going to prove just how smart she was -- by finding a way to ruin Bobby Vickerson’s perfect life.

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The truth was, she’d actually liked Bobby, back when they first started dating. She and her mom had recently moved from California to Green Lake, a nondescript town in the Midwest, where her mom was opening an upscale salon to bring a little glamor to the truly boring place. The only even remotely exciting thing at Kimberly’s new high school was Bobby Vickerson. Sure, she’d had popular jocks at her old school, and even dated a few, but Bobby was on another level -- for some reason, people seemed to just worship him.

Part of it was that he was handsome. There was no denying the fact that he looked like a boy-band heart-throb: great hair, soulful eyes, a flawless white grin. He wasn’t a square-jawed muscle-bound kind of jock, though, and maybe that was why his excellence on the basketball court made him everybody’s hero. He was small, and skinny, and looked like a bit of a pretty boy compared to his much bigger and hairier teammates, yet he still made fools of every opponent he went up against.

And boy, was he ever cocky. Kimberly had to admit his confidence had turned her on at the start. He was always so sure of himself, in whatever he did or said, and was always surrounded by admirers desperate to agree with him. The whole cheerleading squad fawned over him. But Kimberly Quinn, being the hot new blonde from Cali, was the one who got him. They had hooked up at a party against her better judgment, and, to her surprise, the sex was pretty fantastic.

That, plus the fact that dating Bobby Vickerson instantly made her the queen bee of her new school, was enough to persuade her. She used a few tricks from the hard-to-get playbook, and before long they were a Facebook-official couple, strolling hand-in-hand through the halls. Bobby was a great basketball player, but the world’s best boyfriend he was not. Once the charm wore off, he was sexist, misogynistic, more concerned with his friends’ opinions than hers, and generally a huge asshole. He even told her, to her face, that her only job was to shut up and look pretty.

And for a little while, since she was in a new town with no friends and totally isolated from her old life, she tried to do just that: wear sexy outfits for Bobby, join the cheerleading squad for Bobby, ooh and aah over Bobby like every other brain-washed kid at Jefferson High. He was still insatiable when it came to sex, but it wasn’t hot anymore -- he was getting demanding and piggish about it, to the point where she was giving him blowjobs every other day and getting no satisfaction in return.

She finally decided enough was enough. She had seen the real Bobby Vickerson, the wannabe tough guy, macho, prick, who hid his insecurities through his play on the basketball court and took out his frustrations on whatever girl was unlucky enough to date him.

But of course, because he was Bobby Vickerson, the day before she was planning to break up with him he dumped her in the middle of the cafeteria. In front of half the school. So, yeah. Bobby Vickerson officially had it coming. Kimberly needed to humiliate him the way he had humiliated her, and she wasn’t going to let anything stop her.