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Out in the playground, boys are traded like marbles in the sugar-sticky palms of the younger girls. They get played with for a while, more or less roughly, sometimes being accidentally "broken". And after that, when the girl tires of her acquisition, or the bell rings for lessons, the boys are discarded and crushed underfoot, squished next to the chewing gum and twigs on the underside of a girl's Mary Jane shoe.

Some of the younger girls have invented a new game. A chant is heard:

"Run, boy, run!
'Cause Meagan's going to come
And squish you down into the ground
So run, boy, run!"

The helpless boy is made to run, herded into a circle by the surrounding players, while the chosen girl, the one in the middle, stamps around as if in a tantrum. She is blindfolded.

When the boy's tiny scurryings bring him near the edge of the circle, the girls nudge him back in with a push of their toes, or hover their shoes threateningly over him so that he must ran back out of their shadow into the ring.

What is the boy thinking? Maybe he has seen, or heard about, this game before. Maybe he wonders if there is any possible escape from the ring, under the eyes of so many cruel goddesses. Maybe if one of the outer girls was sleepy, and he ran up the titanic glossy leather of her shoe, and caught the edge of her pretty white sock, he could survive. Maybe if he dodged between the feet of all of the girls, without being noticed -- not likely, when he is the centre of attention, the tiny pet to be squished to pulp for their amusement.

Maybe if he-- CRUNCH. Meagan's Mary Jane finally finds its target, eliciting appreciative squeals from the girls, many of whom crouch down for a better look at the gory, unrecognisable remains. "Thirty-three seconds!" the girl with the stopwatch announces.

Smirking, Meagan rejoins the crowd of observers, and the next girl -- a pretty blonde thing with pale skin and freckles -- steps into the ring for her turn. She has slipped off her shoes, electing to feel the boy squish under her stockinged feet instead. The new victim is placed in the ring; he looks around in fear at the forest of schoolgirls' legs (some still crouching so he glimpses a flash of underwear before they stand up again). A giggling Cindy is blindfolded and the chant begins again:

"Run, boy, run!
'Cause Cindy's going to come
And squish you down into the ground..."

Cindy's stockinged foot splatters her little victim within ten seconds. The girls push and clamour for a look at the gooey mess spread across the underside of Cindy's foot, wrinkling their noses in delighted disgust. Cindy teasingly shows her messy foot to the remaining tiny boys.

By the end of break, the inside of the ring is full of little gory stains.

Then the bell rings, and all is forgotten.

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