EXTRACT FOR
Simon Says
(Dianne Herbert)

"Hey, come on girl. We are not as bad as all that are we?" He started to speak as it became clear that I wasn't even going to bother answering him and had sped up to just rush straight past. "What do you say, Simon? Do you think this lovely lady should stay for a chat?"



"Simon says that she should stay with us and talk for a while," he said, grinning at me like an idiot.



"Okay then, you want to talk, let's talk," I said coming to a halt alongside them, looking over their shoulders at the main part of the waterfall. Thankfully the water flow wasn't too heavy today as sometimes it was difficult to hear what people were saying, what with the pounding of the water going over the edge, so everyone here needed to shout.



I kept moving, bouncing just a little on the spot to keep my legs from stiffening up. Stopping and starting when out was a royal pain in the butt, which was one reason I liked an early morning run when there were few people around to interrupt me. I took a drink from the bottle while waiting to see what they wanted.



Neither of them started talking though. They actually looked puzzled, as if surprised that I had stopped and agreed to talk with them. Great, just great. I'd thought that they had something to say, but it was no real surprise that they were not even up to holding a simple conversation with me. Morons!



 That left me to kick things off, and I asked how they had been since leaving school last summer. It was no real surprise to find that neither of them had continued in education. They had part-time employment with a builders firm where they were learning on the job, but hoped to be kept on when they had eventually learnt what they needed. I doubted that though. They might be great as cheap labour, but I wouldn't trust them with anything more.



While talking about this, and broadening the chat to other people that we'd been at school with (not that we had any actual friends in common), neither of them seemed fully engaged. They were both acting even more dimly than usual, and eventually asked me to 'hold on for a second.' They then went into a little huddle together and, with frequent glances over to where I was gently jogging on the spot, had an earnest conflab.



Eventually, well after at least a minute or so anyway, they broke this off and turned to face me again. Getting the next thing out of their mouths seemed a struggle for them, and I felt like leaving, but finally Peter told me he'd like to see me doing some star jumps. I told him to sod off and called him a pervert!



"Simon says, do some star jumps," said his brother.



Actually, it did seem a good idea to move my arms about, as Peter had said. I'd been keeping my lower body moving so that it wouldn't stiffen, but my back and shoulders were not really getting much in the way of benefit from that. I dropped my water bottle and started doing a few star jumps just to keep the circulation going in those areas.



"Are you wearing a sports bra?" He asked me, and I told him that it was none of his business. I was, of course, as a normal bra was rubbish at keeping everything in place when you exercised. "Simon says, lift your bra off your tits so that they are free of restraint, and keep up with the star jumps," was his reply.