popular

by Beth Sherman

On an ordinary spring afternoon at Hills East High School, I was sitting in the bleachers watching the boy’s baseball team get crushed by Hills West. I like baseball – the lazy innings, the thwack of the bats – and I like Alex Martino, the team’s shortstop, though he only hangs out with me because I do his Chemistry homework.

My friend, Margo Markle, took a last sip of her bottled Frappuccino and said, “Alex asked me to prom.”

“What?”

“Prom.” She wouldn’t meet my eyes and kept staring at her sneakers. “I hope it’s okay with you.”

I couldn’t answer because something weird was happening. My legs started shrinking so that my feet barely touched the metal bottom of the bench. My eyes got froggy. My hair grew shaggy as a buffalo’s mane. I felt like a rubber band stretched to the breaking point. This crazy tingling sensation took over my body. Like someone dropped me in a blender and pressed Pulse.

Margo looked like she was about to pass out. “You’re a . . . a . . .”

“A what?” I croaked through oversized lips.

“A troll,” she said, handing me the mirror she always kept in her backpack.

There, staring back at me, was one of those funny Norse creatures you see on kids’ TV shows, only hairier and uglier. All I lacked was a bridge and some goats.

“Well,” I said, thinking things couldn’t get worse. “So much for Prom.”

Before, I was nobody. You’re thinking it’s normal to feel like that in High School. But it was bad. Everything about me was ordinary – brown hair, brown eyes, chunky body. Nobody smiled at me in the halls. Or wanted to sit next to me in the cafeteria. Or, except for Margo (and I think this only happened because our mothers are friends), ever came over to my house. I told myself it didn’t matter. I told myself you don’t want to be the girl who peaks before she turns eighteen. I told myself a lot of things. Now that I’m popular, my old life seems as dry as uncooked spaghetti. Now everyone wants to be me. Ugly.

Every day girls come to school with their hair frizzed and two splotches of red on their cheeks. They threw out their high heels. Stopped shaving their legs or waxing. Some of them even glued dark hairs on their arms. I don’t know where they got it – from their pets? From Amazon? It’s strange. Alex can’t get enough of me. He trails after me like a puppy, practically panting for my attention. “Kiss me,” he whispered on the lunch line yesterday. “Your teeth look so sharp.” I like that he’s attracted to me. He’s popular now, too, because I like him. Margo isn’t though. Margo, who used to lord it over me that she’d gone to second base when I thought she was talking about sports.

“How did you do it?” she asks, a dozen times a day. “Teach me to turn troll.”

Even if I wanted to I couldn’t. It happened out of the blue, like a rainstorm or getting your period.

Before, girls acted like I was invisible. Girls named Kylie and Chelsea and Lily. Girls with pores that never clogged, hair that reached to their waist, straight and silky.

“Why?” I asked Chelsea, as we studied for a Math test.

“You’re different in a good way,” she said. “Like different cool.”

She’d rubbed dirt on her face to ruin her complexion. Used modeling clay to make her chin pointier. I thought she looked ridiculous. It made me worry that I was just a fad, like Cabbage Patch Kids or mood rings. What would happen when things went back to the way they used to be? I twirled a piece of my wiry hair, bit the ends off. Chelsea did the same. Across the cafeteria, Margo watched us with a strange look on her face. She wasn’t welcome at the popular table. Alex had uninvited her to Prom. He got his teammates to spell out the word PROM? with baseballs on the field – his new Prom-prosal to me.   

I liked the way my new body felt. Powerful. Free. I was short but had fewer limits. Smarter. Trickier. More elastic. A troll can squeeze into places normal people can’t. We see better. Run faster. Have thicker skin.

“Do you even feel bad he dumped me?” Margo asked.

We were sitting in the bleachers again, watching Alex field ground balls.

“Did you feel bad when you first said yes?”

“Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

“You can’t judge a book by its cover,” I countered. “Ignorance is bliss. The grass is always greener on the other side.”

We think faster on our feet. 

At night, I lie in bed naked and wave my phone over myself like a wand. The flashlight is on and I see everything clearly. I like what I see – the curly hairs that start just below my chest and prowl down to the place between my legs. My fingernails brittle and hard, not quite claws. My knees, knobby and endearing. My chest, flatter than the pancake special at Denny’s. The bristles on my knuckles, my hair a warm robe for my skin, my eyes too red pinpricks in the darkness. My body entirely different from anyone else’s, entirely my own. I don’t need Alex or Margo or anyone. I’ll be just fine. If I stopped being popular, I’d still have me. I want to take this new skin out for a spin. Show everyone a rare wildflower. A secret cave. A cloud that’s no longer a symbol. A field of tender grass, flipping off the wind.

Photo of Beth Sherman

BIO: Beth Sherman has had more than 150 stories published in literary journals, including Flash Frog, Fictive Dream, Bending Genres and Smokelong Quarterly. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2024 and the upcoming Best Small Fictions 2025. She’s also a multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. She can be reached on social media @bsherm36.