Third time’s an Apple | Sasheera Gounden

“Hey Batter, batter, batter,” taunts the testosterone-fuelled tag, Corey Apple.

It’s the Red Socks’ ninth inning and I’m Ted Williams. Boy oh boy does life hand you a dollop of sugar in the form of American baseball. The fans, the hot cheerleaders in mini-skirts… God I’m a perv and little Randy following the motion of my swing with his pygmy pig eyes. The umpire is being a total prick today, eyeing Katy’s cotton undies as she cartwheels through the summer air.

“Strike one,” calls Rahmed, the exchange student from Calcutta.

The pitcher, Corey is laughing his gigantic ass off-gesturing to Katy what a loser I really am. My mum’s the janitor at Presley Oaks High…so you can imagine the amount of ridicule I encounter on a daily basis.

“Hey Batter, batter, batter…” taunts Corey, that frickin prick.

“I did your mum last night,” I tease.

Corey turns crimson and recklessly throws the ball-aiming at my Adrian Brody face (No-kidding, my mum says I look like that Pianist guy) It hits me square in the left eye-that’s sure to cause a blue patch tomorrow which means more sympathy votes from Katy.

“Get him Teddy!” yells little Randy with Ketchup smeared across his say cheese grin.

Instead, Corey gets the equivalent of soccer’s red card and gets to go home to his hot socialite mother-the high priestess. I have a feeling Corey is juiced; I don’t blame him, his last name is a fruit that clears pus encased pimples.

Rahmed flashes that pearly toothed grin and whispers: “Strike two, strike three and you’re out, janitor boy.”

I flash that caramel-colored Indian the rudimentary middle finger, “Up yours, Rahmed.”

“Strike two!’ screams Rahmed with that godawful grin, his voice suspended within the burnt pork sausage scented air.

I glance at the spectators beneath the summer star. That mega hot Iranian girl, Homeira, is wolfing down a hotdog; my imagination is going wild. Little Randy is snacking on a bag of peach gummies, his favorite.

Just when Rahmed is ready to yell ‘strike three’ with delight, my good right eye is dead on the ball and my bat meets the sucker head on. Someone, somewhere, yells, “Homerun!”

I can feel my heart pumping iron and I skid across home base with patches of dirt stuck to my white uniform; I am Schulz’s Pig-Pen. Before you know it, my teammates are patting me on the back like I’m some Indian chieftain giving away the bride. We won the game and Corey Apple is still a juiced-up loser.

I buy one last cherry snow cone for little Randy and he swigs the glacial remnants down as if it’s his first two dollar beer. A two dollar beer tastes like cow’s shit, no doubt; my friend, Mikey Lim, hordes Keystone in the basement refrigerator (It’s the only thing he can afford). He saves up at the end of the month like some chocolate-high-Charlie Bucket. The only difference between him and that fictional chocolate-crazed maniac is that he spends all his money stashed in his mum’s ‘new Kardashian ass’ jar to buy packs of Keystone.

“Don’t swig it like that you spaz,” I warn.

Little Randy touches his head and yelps from brain freeze.

“I warned you didn’t I?” I tease.

I buy him fries and a dollar coke as a last treat.

“Ketchup and fries Teddy,” says little Randy, smearing red ketchup across my lips.

Katy glances my way and lets off a high-pitched giggle.

“Way to go little bro,” I grumble.

Despite my ruined chances of getting laid, a mega surprise waits around the corner-Corey Apple with the winning baseball bat and a couple of his loser sophomore football buddies to boot. Little Randy thinks I’m going to kick all their asses like Spiderman on our PlayStation 3; instead I run like The Flash, never letting go of Randy’s little arm.

I make peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches like some fancy profanity-yelling Gordon Ramsay; seriously, I shaped them with a star cookie-cutter. I plop my baseball cap on Randy’s oversized mushroom head and we watch The Chicago Cubs versus The St. Louis Cardinals. Mum drops a box of Miss Mendel’s homemade coconut clusters on my lap.

“How was the game honey-is that a blue eye?” she asks, no doubt concerned.

I smile, blue-eyed wide. “Game was great.”

Sasheera Gounden is a South African English teacher who has a flare for writing. Her article, “Twenty years of growth and success” was published in Accounting SA July 2015 issue. She has written numerous poems and short stories which have been published in The Literary Yard, The Bitchin’ Kitsch (2016) and the Guwahatian.