A few strings of lights glowed over the patchy lawn. On that lawn, a circle defined by some rolled-up blankets surrounded two folks in padded dinosaur suits as they lumbered around each other, as if sizing each other up… until one suddenly charged at the other, stomach first, and bounced their opponent onto their back. Said opponent kind of flopped to the side due to their thick tail, then flapped their arms and legs around for a while. The same MC from the roller derby was on the side, yelling out play-by-plays. “And Jojo is down! Flail, Jojo, flail!” Watching Jojo struggle to get up was almost more entertaining than watching the two creatures fight. The small crowd around them seemed to think so too.

“So?” Shanti turned to me, hands in her back pockets.

I side-eyed her. “So what?”

“Don’t tell me you’re not dying to get out there.”

“Shanti, I am literally not dying to get out there.”

“Come on… you like getting physical, right? Bumping people around? Here’s a perfect opportunity!”

Uh… yeah, except those suits won’t allow for bruising of any kind. “Not really my thing.”

She stepped in a little closer. A shiver crossed the back of my neck. My sweat must’ve been cooling, I told myself. “It’ll be fun, I promise. And the team will love that you did it.”

Ugh. The team. Right. And at least I’d be hiding behind a dinosaur suit, well away from the scary closeness in Shanti’s room. I rubbed my face with my hands. “Okay. For the team, then.”

She grinned and held out her hand. “Two bucks, please!”

“I have to pay to humiliate myself?”

“Yup. That’s how we Honeys roll. Get used to it.”

God. I handed her the money and asked, “Now what?”

After the current match finished in sensational fashion, with both wrestlers flopping to the ground out-of-bounds and languishing there for a few moments, it was my turn to suit up. Shanti gave my name to the MC and helped me get the suit on, which was tiring in and of itself.

My opponent was a very skinny, short dude whose hands barely reached out of the already short T-Rex arms of the suit. But man, was he ever bouncy. For the first several seconds, all I could do was watch him prance around the ring, his tiny, almost-hidden fists swinging around at his sides. The sight caused me to snicker, and at this, he rushed at me. I didn’t even have time to react before I found myself lying on my side.

What the…?

The crowd burst into cheers. “A surprise bump by Vinny stuns Daya! Will she be able to rise from her puddle of PVC?”