And we still love each other. I remember fondly the first time I met her at school. She was talking with Adam Jacklin, a tall, pale kid with one withered arm, and a mustache. He just so happened to be my friend, he was also the only kid in seventh grade with a mustache, and he was trying to make a move on Savannah at that moment. I saw the hesitation in her eyes and I could see she didn't enjoy the thought of being anywhere within touching distance of Adam. She started rapidly searching about for some sort of distraction. She turned towards me ever so slightly and caught my eyes, then gave a hint of a smile. I smiled back, and felt as if I had just experienced that thing some people would talk about: "Love at first sight".
I looked at Adam, still trying to keep one eye on Savannah, and he looked at me. His grey eyes locked on mine, as if in a daze. I think he was having a seizure, lost in some distant world of darker things than the common man may dream of. I noticed that his hand was starting to take off his shirt, gradually revealing his rib laden, white sack of a body.
Then after getting the shirt nearly all of the way off he drifted back into consiousness and looked around for Savannah through the thin transperancy of his shirt, but she was gone. He straightened himself out and ambled away like some idiosyncratic species of primate. I left and then walked around the corner of a "cube-class", past the entrance to the the special-kids class, and bumbed into her.
There she was, right before me, this beautiful girl, this dream-like figure which pounced on the girls of my imagination. We said sorry to each other and then I found my self stuck in that one spot; some immoderate paralysis freezing my limbs.
Surprisingly enough, she was the same way: stuck there.
I shuffled my feet and said, "Hi . . . I'm Mike."
She smiled even wider and said, "Where are you going right now?"
"Um . . . uh." I gulped. "Mrs. Carr's class, for math. What about you?"
"Same."
It struck me then that she was in fact in that same class as me---and I knew that---I had been staring at her for the past week in a daze from my seat across the room. I wondered what made her want to turn away from math class if it was there that she needed to be. "Cool," I said. "I just saw you over there talking with my funny looking friend. You kind of looked at me and then took advantage of Adam's seizure and ran away." I chuckled and tried to get comfortable by putting my hands in my pockets. It turned out that we only had about two more minutes until class started so we had to get going. Not much time to get comfortable.
As we walked . . . we talked.
"So," she said. "Adam's your friend?"
"Yeah. I just met him last year. Funny kid."
"Oh. Cool. What street do you live on?"
"Oh, I live on Conical Avenue 'n' 132nd."
"Really." She seemed excited. I know I was excited. "I live on that street too."
I felt overencumbered with happy thoughts. She lives on the same street as me, I thought. I wonder how many houses down she is from me.
She asked me one more question. "Do you know where the brook is in the woods"
"Yeah, I do, actually. But what part of it are you talking about?"
"The part were the trees look like a hallway and the branches make a sort of roof."
"Yeah. I do. Why do you ask?" I took a quick glance at the cone-like trees stabbing the blue sky outside of the school limits.
"Oh, nothing. We can talk more later."
We ran from there. The one minute bell rang, warning us to get to class. We got there on time and took our seats on the completely opposite sides of the room. That was a major bummer considering how comfortable I had been being close to her.
The rest of the class seemed to go by at an extremely slow pace. I fell asleep on my desk, absent mindedly chewing on a pink block of eraser, dreaming about Savannah.
A line of kids gathered at the blue basket to drop off their work towards the end of class. I looked up at them, awaking from my odd dream in which I was lodging a giant candy cane down a kagaroo's throat while Savannah watched me dreamily on a swingset in the desert. The swingset chairs reached up into the heavens, possibly holding onto an angel's body for support while Savannah swayed back and forth on the seat below. From across the room Savannah had been watching me rather anxiously, waiting for me to wake up. I got up and walked to the blue basket, and she did the same. Her work was all finished, unlike mine.
She slipped me a small peice of paper while I put my work in the basket. With sly haste I slid the note into my pocket and smiled at her. She was walking back to her seat, not looking back at me.
I noticed Neville, a small and hideously fat black kid staring at me with accusing eyes, under a wrinkled forehead in the second row. He saw that I had been passed a note and I could tell he was deciding on wether or not he would tattle on me. He never did. I think he fell asleep. I didn't care, my mind was too occupied with what the note said.
I bolted to my seat and pretended to rummage through my backpack. I reat the note. It said: MEAT ME AT THE BROOK AT 4:00 P.M. AFTERSCHOOL. I laughed to myself about the spelling error, and the potential sexual connotation it had: "Meat me."
. . . Funny. Ha-ha: Funny; a rather "woody" sort of word.
After class she was taken away to lunch by her friends and I was left to hang out with Greg, Jacob, and Jake. The rest of the day I didn't see her. But I started making a goal of figuring out were I could find her in between classes.
After school I quickly threw my backpack onto my bed and then brushed my teeth, washed my face, and combed my brown hair. I changed into a bright blue V-neck and then rushed out the front door, telling my dad that I would be back in three hours. I was to going to hang out with Jacob and Greg. Dad didn't really care, as long as I was safe, I had my phone, and I was going to be with friends.
I took my bicycle off its chain in the shack out front; gave Muska, my pitbull, a couple pit-pats on the head; and sped off down the road, east, toward the dark woods of Stranded Line, leaving the door to the shack open for the leash-bonded pit to stare at me while I depart with calm incomprehension of the thoughts which were burning at my mind like a manscript aflame.
I made a previous version of this story for my girlfriend which was far less detailed before. All the names in this are the names of people I know, taken out of life and put into a fantasy world which will unfold later on. Me and my girlfriend never grew up together as little kids and I decided to make a world in which we did. I took her ex, Adam, and gave him a mustache and a withered arm for fun. Anyway, I could go on for while as to how all this relates to my life and other peoples lives but I'm afriad I may bore myself.
Hope you liked it.
