The Cupid Shuffle Challenge
Most of my posts lately have been rather focused on thinking about life with different perspectives. It has been a while since I have done a short story or an excerpt. Lately, my more creative side wanted to get a little more work done. This week’s post is a short story going into a couple characters I have been working on for a bigger story. There are many quarantine challenges going around right now. This week’s post, The Cupid Shuffle Challenge, is not one quarantine challenge. I mean anyone could feel free to do it if there have other people in their house to mess with. At least for this post, the challenge is to shed some light the crew of friends during their senior year of high school. Enjoy!
The Cupid Shuffle Challenge
At Central High School, students have their favorite lunch special of the day which suits their favorite taste. Duncan’s favorite is the tacos. Marie’s favors the grilled cheese, while her cousin Fey enjoys the pizza the best. Myles’ favorite is surprise.
“I’ve got an idea for everybody.” Myles’ boredom had gotten the better of him, while everyone else was in midbite.
“This should be interesting.” Fey exasperatedly commented after swallowing her food.
Myles smiled wide and finished the nachos on his plate before beginning to unravel his plan.
“It’s the first month of senior year. There is so much going on and so little going on at the same time. I was listening to some music a couple days ago and somehow the song The Cupid Shuffle came on. You know the song used a lot for dances, right? Now picture those challenges which are shared on social media. So, I got this idea to do a group Cupid Shuffle Challenge. The challenge would have one of us randomly play the song throughout the school day. When the person who is challenged hears the song they must do the dance for the entirety of the time it is playing while continuing to do whatever they were already doing, such as a presentation or reading in class. On that note, who’s ready for the challenge?”
Once Myles finished pitching the idea, everyone sat in silence for a minute thinking about this idea.
Fey scoffed at the idea, yet Duncan responded first. “I’m in.”
Marie finished some of her side carrots and inquired, “I am in favor of your idea, but am wondering what is in it for us?”
When Myles heard this he brought back his giant grin to say one description to entice his friends.
“Smithereen Cookies.”
Smithereen Cookies are caramel drizzle peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. The friend crew would get them from time to time from Myles’ uncle Bruce would make and send during his breaks from his adventures. They were everyone’s favorite to snack on and Myles’ favorite using a spin on last name.
“Let me add a little more. The last person to survive the Cupid Shuffle Challenge as the last contestant will receive as many Smithereen Cookies as they want for a year.”
This last sentence made Marie, Duncan, and Fey were left with their mouths dropped.
“So, is anyone opposed to participating in the challenge now?”
Everyone shook their heads signaling that they were ready to take on this unique challenge. At that moment, the Cupid Shuffle Challenge had begun.
A couple classes later, Fey was in small group discussion for American Lit when she heard “They got a brand new dance” start playing in the room. Myles had started playing it discreetly from the other side of the classroom. When Fey heard this she proceeded to stand up and continue the discussion while doing the Cupid Shuffle. However, after a minute of the song Fey saw the immediate benefit of stopping embarrassment greater than the long term benefit of the Smithereen Cookies and sat down disqualifying herself.
Near the end of the same class period, Fey starting playing the song to challenge Myles right when the teacher asked him to answer a question about his group’s discussion. Then, Myles elongated his answer to complete the entire challenge answering the teacher’s question. Myles was still alive for the challenge.
The next day, Myles snuck to right outside the door of Duncan’s classroom for calculus. Duncan was in the middle of a quiz when the song began to echo through the room. Once he heard the music, Duncan searched to find a regular number two yellow pencil to replace his mechanical pencil. When Duncan found the other pencil, he walked to the pencil sharpener to do the Cupid Shuffle. All was going well for Duncan until a minute and a half into the song, when his teacher had enough of the nonsense sending Duncan back to finish his quiz at his desk with his now very sharpened pencil. Duncan had joined Fey as another outside observer of the challenge.
Since Myles had only needed the beginning of the class period to eliminate Duncan from the challenge, he made his way over by the science end of the building to challenge Marie. At the moment of Myles’ arrival outside the classroom, Marie was dissecting a frog for her AP Biology class. As she heard the Cupid Shuffle start to fill the room, Marie continued to dissect the frog at the same time. Marie held strong the entire length of the song dancing and dissecting. Everyone in the group had their chance for the first time with the challenge, and Marie and Myles were the only ones still vying for the title as champion with the price of Smithereen Cookies for a year on the line.
Marie had been dreaming of the Smithereen Cookies since last having them this past summer at Myles’ place for a bonfire. The opportunity to have as many Smithereen Cookies available for a year drove Marie to strategizing to eliminate Myles from the challenge. The next day at school, Myles was expecting Marie to play the Cupid Shuffle in any class. Nothing happened, so Myles got into his car to drive home for figuring out a plan for challenging Marie. He had almost left the parking lot when he started to hear the beat of the Cupid Shuffle. Marie drove next to his car and rolled down her window to blare the Cupid Shuffle for challenging Myles. At first, Myles was not worried and started to dance and tried to even use his car in his dancing. Yet, Myles got stuck mentally knowing that he could not fully do the Cupid Shuffle at that moment he took himself out of the game leaving Marie as the official winner of the friend crew.
The End
