“And she still has to date the other two?”
Despite how obnoxious this was going to be before it cooled down, I acted like nothing else mattered but Jane, which was more or less true. By the time we got to graduation, they all would long have moved on to something else.
Jane’s turn to swing came, and she was quite clearly nervous. First she grabbed the rope, testing her grip. She tried to jump with it and go… but her feet came back down almost immediately. Jane couldn’t hold her weight on the rope. Trying and failing to stay on, she was getting flustered.
I watched, actually feeling my heart break a little bit for her. Not the athletic type, it seemed. I tried to stifle a grin when it reminded me of Randy, who absolutely hated any PE activity where he had to run, jump, climb, or do push-ups. Trying desperately to avoid as much attention as possible, Jane switched her method. There was a loop on the rope and she stuck her foot through, finally able to launch from one side to the other- until she couldn’t get her foot out of the rope and wound up swinging back the other way, her face scarlet.
This scene told me quite a few things about Jane.
She wasn’t really doing significantly better or worse than anyone else, and absolutely no one was pressuring her to go or even getting impatient waiting. Everybody was just filing through the course. But she looked miserable, like this event was a disgraceful, massive, humiliating failure. What in the fuck had happened to her?