2001-02 Charles River Review: Autumn Aching Spring

I rose to my knees from the pavement, clenched my fists tightly and tried to ignore the stinging sensation in my palms. Gritting my teeth and swallowing hard to choke back the tears that wanted to come, I picked the gravel out of my hands and gathered my backpack and the dilapidated paperback of Helter Skelter that had lost its cover in the ordeal. I refused to make eye contact with the gaggle of giggling fourth grade girls, one of whom had tripped me. I pushed past them and into the school, pausing to swish a finger in my mouth and confirm that I'd bitten my tongue when I fell. I stopped at the water fountain to rinse the coppery taste out of my mouth. When I got to the classroom, I paused at the teacher's desk and carefully taped the torn cover back onto my book, taking a moment to admire the tiny pinpricks of blood that had seeped from my palm into the title page. I then walked to the back row, settled into the hard plastic seat and fished in my desk for my reading glasses. Before long I was absorbed in Manson's world and no longer part of the small-town Maine experience that I so loathed.

A few minutes before the start of class I was startled away from my gory solace by an envelope landing on the pages of my book. I looked up to meet the eyes of The Boy I Liked, and immediately looked back down to the book. "We're having a Halloween party on Saturday," he nodded at me as he backed away and said, "You're invited." I swallowed hard and was able to block out the snickering girls behind me and the comments that the other boys made when he returned to them.

I didn't have any friends in my class, so I was never included on party lists, which was fine with me since I had long ago convinced myself that they had nothing to offer me. But The Boy had a sort of a knowing charm about him, a maturity that I didn't see in the others. He had carefully spiked red hair and good posture and reading glasses, and his nails were always clean. The Boy was mean to me, really mean, but that didn't change the way I stared at him from my seat in the "W" section of the classroom to his seat in the "C" section, memorizing his every feature, watching the backward way he wrote with his left hand. When he would catch me staring, he would yell across the room, "What are you looking at, Freak?" and the teacher would send him into the hall. Sometimes he would throw things when he yelled, an eraser with curse words carved into it, last week's crumpled up math homework, the chewed gum from his Blow Pop, and I would save these objects ceremoniously in a box in my bedroom.

The envelope in my hands was black, with a svelte ghostly figure on one side. It had my name misspelled on the front in silver, and the gob of metallic ink over the "I" was smeared with a fingerprint. As the teacher called to the class to settle down and get out our vocabulary lists, I fingered the crisp corners of the Hallmark envelope. It was sealed with a shiny jack-o-lantern sticker with a fuzzy kitten peering out of it. I gently peeled the sticker off the envelope, and as I rubbed it onto my desk with my thumb the velvety kitten seemed to purr at me. My eyes darted over to The Boy as I slid the invitation out of the envelope. The card had the same ghost with some goofy Halloween tidings embossed in foil. Inside the card a mother's tidy handwriting listed the usual specifics. On the left-hand side, the orange marker scrawl spoke to me, "I hope you come." I shoved the card and the envelope hastily into my desk and turned my attention to the teacher.

I had a variety of unhealthy behavior patterns, and it would later be determined that my clinical depression began at age six. The obsessive dramas started years before this all, and they got a whole lot worse before they got better. At any rate the act of focusing my dysfunction on a particular person was not new to me. The night before receiving the invitation I had carved his initials into my ankle with a pen knife. Walking home from the bus stop that day I felt the dull ache in my right ankle with each step and I relished it. With every crunch of leaves on the dirt road, the ache resonated to the pit of my stomach and back down my leg again. I was a latchkey kid, or at least whatever the rural equivalent would be, since in fact no one locked doors in my town. At the house I took the invitation and my cat upstairs to my room and curled up on my bed. I nuzzled my face into the cat's fuzzy belly and took in the warm pine smell of country kitty. I tacked the invitation to the wall next to The Boy's school picture, and explained to the cat that The Boy was finally going to be falling in love with me, yes he was. I scratched behind her ears. The cat tried to roll over and I scooped her up and squeezed her close, pressing my forehead into hers and staring into her eyes as I rambled that clearly, clearly, clearly, the months of pining after The Boy were about to pay off. She just purred and nuzzled me back, and I knew that she believed me.

Friday at school was our in-class party. I brought chocolate cupcakes with orange frosting and little pumpkin candies on them--for everyone except The Boy, for whom I had made one special cupcake with a black candy cat atop it. Sitting at my desk before class, I peeled the saran wrap away from the mound of cupcakes, licked the frosting off, and rolled it into a tight little ball. My eyes glanced slowly back and forth between the candy cat on The Boy's cupcake, which was on the very top of the pile, and the cat on the sticker on the corner of my desk. I mewed silently at them to send me the luck I knew I deserved. I rose from my seat, biting my lip, and carried the cupcake in two hands. He was turned around in his chair talking to somebody, and I waited for him to turn back around before I approached him. I made eye contact and forced a very rare, very brief smile as I placed the cupcake in his one hand. The place on my hand where it touched his would burn for hours.

I did not sleep Friday night. I dug through everything I owned and put together a Madonna costume and played with makeup in the mirror. I stared into eyes that looked much much older than the nine years they were, even before the makeup. I traced around and around and around my eyes with eyeliner and spread shadow up to my eyebrows while blink-blink-blinking at myself in the mirror, smudging and reapplying into the early hours of the morning. Washing it all off in the shower as the sun rose, I became anxious, doubtful, scared to death of having to socialize with the rest of them. Blue-black streaks of makeup ran down my face, neck, and chest as my breaths became more shallow. I stumbled out of the shower coughing and threw up. My face resting on the porcelain seat, my eyes burning with tears, I confirmed to myself, "It's okay, it's just a panic attack, you're okay, you're okay." This was familiar territory. I pulled my robe down from the hook on the door to the cold tile floor and wrapped it around my shoulders. Crawling along the carpet to my bedroom, my dripping hair clung to my face. I saw myself in the full length mirror as I rummaged around in my bag for my asthma inhaler. There were faint pools of makeup lingering under my eyes, and when I blinked they ran in long streaks down my cheeks.

I tottered on the white high heels as I walked up the steps to the house. A silver cat ran up to me as I approached the door. Before ringing the bell, I bent down to pet her and wondered if she was his cat and if he lay on his bed and talked to her. One more scritch scritch behind the ears as I told her what a very lucky cat she was, and I stood up. I could hear the music coming from the basement when a mother in a Halloween-themed-sweater opened the door. She shoved a paper bag of candy at me and steered me to the staircase with one hand on my shoulder. I paused when I got there and looked up at the mother as if I had never seen stairs before. She offered reassuring motherly cooing that they were down there and it was okay to go on.

I ducked my head under the arch of twisted orange and black crepe paper that framed the bottom of the stairway. Squinting my eyes until all the faces and gawdy costumes blurred into smudges, I focused on the twinkling Christmas lights on the walls. Carefully I high-heeled my way across the cement floor to the snack table, click-click, click-click, click-click, allowing my mind to filter out the conversations around me and listen only to the lyrics of the ballad on the stereo. A black balloon popped under the heel of my right foot and I stumbled, let a little squeak escape my lips, and regained composure. I dug into the chips and onion dip and concentrated on the saltiness and the crunching. I was fully aware that I had no idea what I was going to do next. I didn't really want to talk to anyone. I took a dixie cup of ginger ale and headed for a dark corner. From there I could inconspicuously peoplewatch. Chewing the edge of the cup, I marveled at the just-plain-stupid costumes: vampires with plastic fangs, a smudged clown in his mother's blouse, one ghost made out of a worn sheet that still had a faint floral pattern in some places--probably the only sheet his mother would let him cut holes in. I had nothing to prove to anyone, or to myself, so I just watched.

An hour passed. I had chewed the paper cup until it was nothing but a wad of wax the color of my lipstick, and I was spitting little pieces of it into my hand, when someone announced the inevitable game of spin the bottle. I dragged a folding chair to my corner and sat silently judgmental, seething at the way the girls were giggling, not sure exactly why it grated on my nerves so much. I was working my way through my bag of candy when some nondescript boy dressed as a ninja turtle came up to me and asked me to go play. "Me?" I asked, as if, having walked over to my dark corner of the room, he could possibly be talking to someone else. "Yeah . . ." he trailed off as he dragged me over to the circle. I tried to figure out how to sit on the throw rug properly in the too-short costume skirt I was wearing, all the while thinking about how I could be home finishing my book. I looked at my neon colored swatch watch and couldn't believe it was only 7:30. I was making a definite effort to turn up the volume on my internal dialogue loud enough to drown out the tiresome squealing and giggling. The floor was uncomfortable and cold and my legs were falling asleep. After half a dozen spins of other kids' hands, I found it to be my turn, and I was positive that I did not want to do this but it was obviously too late for that revelation now, so I rolled my eyes, reached for the plastic Coca-Cola Classic bottle, and spun away. Before I had time to consciously ponder or hope for the results I may have wanted, someone reached out and stopped the bottle. Lo and behold, it had been stopped pointing at The Boy. This was so, so far less than ideal. To no one in particular, I spouted, "Umm, so, what do I do?" Giggles. I stood up on my pins-and-needles legs, tottered on my high heels, adjusted my too-short skirt and looked down to Him on the floor where he still sat. He smiled, and got up.

He was dressed as a hobo in a poorly patched flannel shirt and corduroy pants that hung loosely on his wiry frame. He walked towards me. I leaned back against the support beam behind me and stammered, "You don't . . . I don't . . . I mean . . . don't . . . do . . . this if you don't want to." He didn't say anything, he just kept walking closer and closer and then there was the smell of watermelon Jolly Ranchers and hair gel and I closed my eyes and held my breath and there he was. It was over far too quickly and when he started to pull back I pulled him closer, which I was thinking really freaked him out but then it was him who was pulling me but it wasn't closer it was by the hand and away from everyone and then we were . . . alone.

Sitting outside the basement door on the grass he looked at me, "So, uh, hey," he said, and my age-appropriate conversation generator kicked into overdrive.

"Hey," I whispered, and I cleared my throat and heard my voice say, "great party," which wasn't what I was saying on the inside at all. The silver cat I had seen on my way in appeared at The Boy's side.

"This is Plymouth," he said, and he ruffled the cat's mane. I pet her too. There was a long silence. I pulled a blade of grass out of the ground and tied it into a knot. Finally, I remembered that he'd made a presentation to the class weeks earlier about his summer vacation and that he'd been to see Phantom on Broadway and it had been the coolest thing ever.

I said, "So, tell me about Phantom." He looked relieved and launched into an excited account of the show, the costumes, the set, and everything else he could remember.

"I have the soundtrack of the London cast," he said, "You can borrow it if you want."

"That would be great," I said, even though I already had it. I really wasn't nervous anymore. "I know you said one time that you wanted to be an actor, huh, me too." We talked about how our parents thought that was a really foolish idea and how we didn't care at all. We talked about how our little sisters were in the same class and how annoying they were. I had never talked to anybody like a friend before, just grown-ups, much less someone my age, much less a boy, much much less The Boy. We sat on the grass, his hand on mine, until the party was mostly over and parents started showing up. I saw my neighbor pull in and I said I had to go. I got up and backed away from Him. He said, "Wait," and he stood, too. "This was . . . really cool. See you Monday," and I closed my eyes and he kissed me, on the lips, hard. I picked up my shoes from the grass and ran to the car.

I may always remember the weekend following that party as the happiest time in my life. It felt as if I were smiling for the first time. I laid for hours on the hammock in the woods behind our house, my hair tied up in a red handkerchief, my walkman on and the cat asleep on my belly. When the rain came and the cat ran for cover I laid there still, hugging myself as the cool fall rain drenched me to the bone and feeling an amazing warmth inside me that I had never felt before. The strong musk of the wet forest held me and I napped there, waking up when the cassette snapped that it had reached the end of a side, and sloshed inside to write in my diary.

By the time Monday morning rolled around, I had a dozen more questions in my head that I wanted to ask Him. I woke up and got ready for school before my alarm had even rung, and dashed outside to wait for the bus. I couldn't even concentrate on my book and the hour and a half long bus ride seemed like an eternity. I felt so very different as the bus approached the school that day, unafraid and self-confident. Walking with my head up, I smiled at the secretary, and she said she barely recognized me. Entering the classroom, I noted that the boys were all huddled on one side of the room and the girls on the other, as usual. I walked over to my desk and saw something there. It was a note, folded up into a little origami square just like everybody folded their notes, only I'd never gotten one before. It was a piece of yellow math paper, and it had my initials written on the top. I smiled and settled into my seat. I picked it up, humming to myself, and very carefully unfolded it, smoothing out the creases as I went. The recycled newspaper grade paper meant that the tip of the obviously just-sharpened pencil had poked through in several places, little crinkled tears. I pressed the paper onto the desk and smoothed the tears with my index finger. The note began with my initials and read, "the whole thing was a dare stupid did you really think I actually liked you? Ha ha." It ended with his initials. I let out a little strangled gasp and looked up to meet laughter from everyone. I ground my teeth and looked for The Boy. He was there, on the boys' side of the room, and he was laughing, too. Grind grind grind. I swallowed and refolded the note one careful fold at a time, put it in my jeans pocket, picked up my backpack and walked past them all with my head still up, the pain in my clenched jaw distracting me from the heavy sinking sickness in my heart.