of: High School ^
They fell in love at fifteen.
It had been a fine March on the outskirts of Houston and the land was blooming all around them – in the form of twinges of Spring sneaking up through the weeds and the housing developments that were being bought out by strange creatures from the West Coast. She was one of them.
The mosquitoes were beginning to breed in the swimming pools and parents were rather cautious of their allergic, Californian children whose immune systems could not ward off the native pathogens. They were careful too of their children’s ever-changing bodies, rebounding on the cusp of awkward and delightful. Mothers watched their daughters nervously as some fathers shook their boys’ hands. The thin hair resting beneath their underwear functioned as a well-kept secret, the pendant of an exclusive club. They were leaving behind the days of middle school. Next year they would be freshmen.
They would meet that Autumn, after the sweeping days of Summer, when she learned how to apply eye-liner and mascara, when he learned how to masturbate properly. They waited, collecting their teenage angst and rebellion. Privately, they watched themselves in the mirror, anticipating the sleek, warm kiss of August that would wake them and let them race into the loose leaves of September.
She unpacked boxes while her father blasted the air-conditioner and bought a new plasma television for every room in the house. The new soft water machine that was placed in the garage left their skin feeling impeccably clean, and they could now drink out of any faucet in the house. As creatures of excess they bought water bottles, forgetting to recycle them, anyway. Little Lady purchased a small fish tank full of expensive fish that swam around in salt water and gaped at her as she dressed in the morning. They reminded her of the tar-infested beaches she would walk at home. She envisioned Summer on the coast of California, where wave upon wave bit at the sand, wasting away the children’s curiosity replacing it with experience. She would wink at the mirror and the fish would swim in circles – monkeys at the circus, waiting for the show to begin.
His mother died three years ago in a car accident that made front page news. Car Flips Over Center Median, Causing Small Brush Fire. A line of fire divided cars traveling North and South. When a Southeast breeze covered his home in light ash, he silently wondered if this was his mother’s way of coming back home. He was grateful.
He ended up living with his father and step-mother in a house whose walls were stained just enough to remind its inhibitors that they would have to buy class. His father was away at the war. His step-mother stayed at home and spent her husband’s money.
One night in August, he snuck out of his window and walked two streets to the lake, where he waited for his best-friend, a long-lost older brother that he would inevitably lose to a buried crime war in Chicago. They listened to the whistles of the night, the sirens raving in the distance. They smoked clove cigarettes and looked at a copy of Playboy. His best-friend would be leaving for college in North Carolina the next morning.
As his truck began to drive away, he was called Kid one last time, and was told to keep the magazine. Kid watched the car lights disappear in weird patterns behind thick brush and drive into, what he imagined was, a humid mouth who spoke only when something was taken away from him. Its breathing echoed against the night, as if to say, “Run.”
-
Kid and Little Lady had third period physical education together. Because this was the time of day when children were tempted to take their clothes off, their locker entrances were at separate ends of the field. Boys took off their shirts prior to entering, looking back at their prey and girls, daringly and messily, lifted their shirts as if to cool themselves in the endless Summer heat. A hint of the smalls of their backs glistening with sweat.
Little Lady maneuvered her way into assisting the coach and was beginning to know her classmates’ mile times by heart. Kid was one of the fastest runners in their class. He would mutter his number to her as he finished laps, then run off to join the wrestling team as they did suicides down the field. She was once snarky enough to tell him she already knew his number, but failed to mention she also knew his weight, last name and how flexible he was according to state standards. He replied, “I’m sure you do.” She scoffed desperately.
Their buses often parked close to each other, as the drivers worked in the same Coke Factory some decades ago. They were funny old men that reminded her of her grandfather, who only lived three miles away. They had seen wars, buried friends and broken bones – for the first few weeks of the school year, they were the only ones laughing. Little Lady appreciated them and Kid knew them by first name. The bus drivers would watch Kid and Little Lady walk to their morning classes with raised eyebrows. Then laugh.
Little Lady had grown into her awkward stage reasonably well, and her mother, a beauty specialist, had seen to it that she represented herself accordingly. Even still, California did not suit them. Little Lady’s mother came from old oil money – a long line of Conservative capitalists that decorated their kitchen with Americana, who sang songs at night on a pretty lot of land her grandfather bred horses on. She was Spanish with thick lashes and large teeth that told everyone, “You’ll see.”
It was the year 2008, and Texas and California still hated each other. At school, she was a marvelous ridicule from a distant place who could not take “y’all” and “bless your heart” seriously. People asked her if she saw celebrities in coffee shops, so she joked that she once helped Brad Pitt wipe his ass, donning her well-practiced wink. Her classmates imagined she had scandals of her own, and her lashes were awfully convincing. No one knew that she had never been kissed.
During passing period, Kid could pinpoint the distinct click of her shoes. From behind, she reminded him of his nanny from preschool – an awkward, towering person that spoke three languages and had dark curls of hair. Laleh would do outlandish and enticing things like eat cheese with basil and mint, and boil almonds, only to peel their small skins off and eat their porcelain bodies later. Kid could not understand her beneath the harsh, rough accent but remembered her crying. He would hold her hand often. Kid secretly wondered if Little Lady did things like that – if she ate butter with rice, or if she needed someone to hold her hand, too.
Sometimes Kid would linger towards the end of the hallway, explaining to his friends that he needed to grab something from his locker. The hallway traffic would grow thin as he perched near a water fountain – sometimes taking a sip to feel the cool rush down towards the tip of his chin. His locker was at the other end of the hall, irrelevant and empty. Little Lady’s fingers would slide against the doorway as if she were prancing into class. The flip of her hair was the last he would see of her. His friends would laugh at him for being late to wrestling practice. He was penalized for tardiness and had to run two extra miles.
Kid had lived in Texas for most of his life, save for a small quarter which was spent in Germany – where his father had been stationed at the time.
He had memorized the streets of Katy and could trace them against the grains of his palms. He could remember times when certain streets, houses and cities did not exist. As far as he was concerned, the town had been his. Kid had stolen, ran away and discovered the streets of Katy, Texas; he had slept in neighbors’ tree houses and watched electric storms roll across the flat, lush land – he imagined that his awe of them was what love felt like. The storms beckoned him from below; a large, vast thing that could not be contained – that made him feel inconsequential and small, filling him with wonder.
One night in October, he outlined the shape of her lip against his own, his pinky shaking, unable to remain steady. When his step-mother called, he told her he was busy. He fell asleep running his hands through his hair.
By the time it hit November in Katy, the weather had grown cold. The windows on the bus would fog as the children huddled together, falling asleep on the tight brown benches. Little Lady had not felt cold like this in years – she could distantly remember the chilly hum of Oregon – otherwise, the weather gave her reason to complain about a place, two-thousand miles away, that had no seasons. Her classmates rolled their eyes. It was only the beginning of cold. The Atlantic churned in its wake, readying itself to raise a bitter wall of Winter that would throw rain against Katy’s houses.
Little Lady’s father left the heat on throughout the day, at a steady seventy degrees. At night, they lit a fire and watched movies that reminded Little Lady of her childhood. Her siblings wrote their letters to Santa, asking her how to spell words like “dollhouse,” “PlayStation” and “Labrador.” Upstairs, in her parents’ walk-in closet, a kennel decorated with red bows waited patiently for later December.
Kid and Little Lady were formally introduced some weeks before Christmas Break, by a mutual friend afterschool. Due to rain, the buses were delayed, there being a catastrophe of a car accident on one of Katy’s major roads. Their mutual friend, Seth, the captain of the wrestling team, was waiting for his older brother to pick him up. He was in Little Lady’s journalism class. They were discussing deadlines before Seth called Kid over to them. Little Lady looked towards the storm and felt a sudden pull to a group of girls, who were also waiting, of whom she had no actual interest.
Seth introduced them, explaining that Kid had been one of his closest friends since grade school and was a wrestler. Little Lady nodded, moving her bangs out of the way as Seth mentioned her aspirations to be a journalist and her love of astronomy. Kid joked that the two subjects were barely, or not at all, related. She assured him that there was a niche for everyone and Kid laughed.
As Seth walked towards his brother’s Cadillac, waving back at them, Little Lady took the time to scramble for her cell phone. He asked for the time. Forty-five after. School had gotten out thirty minutes ago. He unzipped his jacket, handing it to her. I can walk you home.
She held onto the straps of her backpack. I’m sorry?
Can I walk you home?
-
Kid and Little Lady would meet again fourteen years later at their ten-year reunion hosted at the then-conspiring Kiwanis Club of Harris County. It was at this time that she started writing a novel about love, Summer in the South and frogs that were blown against brick houses during high winds. He had a fiancée and they watched each other over the beverages. Her face matured more than he expected – they hadn’t seen in each other in three years - and she wore a fierce glaze over her eyes that seemed to say, “How are you?” He tightened his jaw as she laughed.
Seth had gone and married already – and moved to Canada. Lady was visiting from New York. Kid took over his step-mother’s house after she passed and painted the walls cream - one of Lady’s favourite colours.
At the reunion Little Lady wore an off-white dress that was cropped, like her hair. The sight reminded him of home.
-
The conversation rang dry as Little Lady attempted to maneuver her way around the flooded gutters. Kid asked her silly questions that seemed to have no consequence, which failed to interest her. From the road, parents stared at them, alerting their toddlers in the backseat that walking in rain would give them pneumonia. Kid already knew this, he had had it once before.
Astronomy, right? Shouldn’t you know about things like this then?
Things like what?
Storms.
She laughed. I don’t want to be a meteorologist. Try looking up astronomer, instead. Anyway, what do you want to do?
Haven’t thought about it, really.
I’ve always known what I’ve wanted to do.
How do you know you’re gonna to end up doing it?
Well, I don’t. Little Lady was matter-of-fact. I just know I want to. She was pleased with this answer.
One of my friends said that there’s no such thing as plans, just possibility.
Did your friend also happen to tell you that there’s a difference between doing and trying?
Not without bringing up Star Wars, anyway.
When Little Lady had finally published her book sometime in their late-twenties, nearly fifteen years after they met, she revisited their walk in the rain, recalling rather vividly the beads of water falling down his temples. She wrote to her readers that some place North, sun had managed to melt through the grey, illuminating a water tower and an empty field in the distance. It reminded her of her sister who had, at that time, already gone away to college and lived with her estranged uncle in the pit of Los Angeles. Most people doggy-eared this page, because something felt wrong. No one could put a finger on it.
My sister used to call them the Hands of God, or something like that. They’re pretty, no?
Within the passage, Little Lady explained that the knuckles of his hands were bruised. She lightly addressed that it was around the time that the United States had grown increasingly aware of MRSA, a bacterium that ate at people, forcing hospitals to further sterilize their nooks and crannies, causing the world of medicine to smell distinctly like alcohol, soap and glycopeptide antibiotics. Kid smelled more like sweat, rain and bread. He was starting to work at his aunt’s bakery.
I believe in God, if that’s what you mean.
Little Lady hadn’t noticed his thin Texan drawl until that moment. They were close to her house now, several streets away. She did not feel like heavy conversation, nor did she believe in God, or a god. She was Californian in that way, as her classmates called it.
She laughed freely. No, it isn’t what I meant. I meant that it’s pretty, that’s all.
Oh, okay.
No one had been home by the time they walked up the brick walkway. Little Lady’s father would not arrive with her siblings until dinner, some couple hours away, and her mother was away for business. Somewhere in the house, Little Lady’s exotic fish were growing excited.
Kid held her backpack up as she searched for her keys, buried somewhere beneath a wreck of textbooks, loose leaf papers and post-its. She was a mess in that way and Kid had somehow found it endearing. They stood beneath her doorway, watching the rain cascade along the street before Kid decided to leave.
Little Lady played with one of her dangling earrings as Kid awkwardly proposed they do it again sometime. The tips of his shoes were on the bottom step, and her readers were beginning to grow confused.
She shrugged. It’s not like it’s a date. You don’t have to make it so official.
Upstairs, Little Lady’s exotic fish blew bubbles at each other as if to say, “It’s all happening now. You see?”
Kid bit the inside of his lip and let out what sounded like a chuckle. I’ll try to remember that. She rolled her eyes jokingly as she handed him his jacket. The droplets that fell down their ears and hair made small noises as they hit the ground. The sound seemed to echo throughout the house as Little Lady watched him walk towards the street.
Little Lady’s readers could not understand where she was going with her plotline. They had waited for Kid and Little Lady to meet and they finally had, but something seemed to go wrong. Somewhere, in an apartment off the Pacific, a friend of Little Lady’s called to tell her he was confused. He was waiting for the two characters to fall in love; he could’ve sworn there would be an obvious ending, a technical execution. Little Lady called him darling and told him to continue reading. They hung up and in a small, repainted house in Harris County Kid read reviews on her new novel. His wife slept in the master bedroom, under the impression that he was gambling online. She was right.
Kid looked back at her as she waved. The readers reached up to doggy-ear the page. And the fish upstairs shook – anxious and expectant – their small fins gliding through the water in a way that seemed to say, “I told you so.”
”Against the Night” excerpt - 2007 (unfinished)
