“You call that a throw?”
Petelma heckles from the sidelines, her yellow bloom shining like a sun over the chalked rooftop pitch.
Every afternoon, the neighborhood kids gather for rooftop cricket. Petelma keeps score, shouts critiques, and occasionally declares the entire game invalid “on aesthetic grounds.”
“I won’t count that point,” she tells Aurebel from the wall. “Your delivery form was disgraceful.”
Aurebel groans. “You’re a bowl, Petelma.”
“I’m a judge,” Petelma corrects, proudly adjusting the blush petal tucked along her rim like a rosette.
Later, when the last ball rolls into the marigolds and the shadows stretch long, Petelma announces the day’s winner.
(It’s always whoever thanked her first.)
