The Cool Girls
by Laura Plummer

It’s Lyndsy’s eleventh birthday. The girls she invited are a year older than us. Wanting to impress them, I show off by doing handstands in the above-ground pool. I’m wearing my tie-dye one-piece and feeling totally rad.

Mr. Parker calls to us that it’s time for lunch, and the girls file out of the pool. One last handstand, I decide, and plunge into the heavily chlorinated water. Commotion on the back porch jolts me back to the surface.

“Oh my God,” someone exclaims. “Whose Pocahontas underwear?”

Oh shit.

“Laura, are these yours?” My goggles are foggy, but I can see Tori pointing to the last pair of panties on the clothesline. They have a motif of the Native American icon rowing her canoe.

“Nope, not mine!” I holler back.

“But you’re the only one still in the water!” Melanie shouts, and the girls erupt in laughter.

I briefly consider suicide before I pull myself out of the pool and stomp up the deck stairs. I grab my T-shirt and shorts but leave the disgraced garment swaying in the sun. When I come out of the bathroom, the girls are waiting for me.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed,” Vanessa says, clearly amused, but I hold firm to my denial.

Lyndsy finally corrals the gawkers into the living room where a stack of Domino’s pizzas is waiting. I again try to impress the older girls by singing Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby,” but it’s too late.

On the car ride home, I curse my mother silently. Damn the itchy inseams of my denim shorts against my bare bottom and damn the Hanes Disney Princess line.

Laura Plummer is an American writer from Massachusetts. Her work has been featured in numerous print and online publications, including The Sun and Chicken Soup for the Soul. Read more at lauraplummer.me.