Georgie always had a thing for Winn. She was a grade below Winn and me, but once they kissed in the storage closet at the end of the school day. Winn denied it, and Georgie came to school the next day with red, puffy eyes. Nobody talked to her much that day. Everybody knew what happened, but somehow Winn came out as the credible.
***
My teacher yelled at me one time. Teachers don’t yell at me a lot; however, they are often frustrated if I don’t know something like my letters and sounds. I once got in a fight with my second grade teacher who had long, unpainted nails and graying, short-cut hair. She said drop the e and add -ed for words like bake and fake and bike and like. I told her you’re really only adding d; no need to drop the e since it’s already there. She couldn’t let me have that one.
In kindergarten, I was the girl who loved purple and had a crush on a boy named Cole. I used to lay on my frog towel burning naptime, staring at him. My teacher with the yellow hair didn’t know about Cole, but she knew about the color purple. One day, I was sick, and she handed out pinwheels. The kind you stick in your mother’s garden so that they can spin with the wind. She saved a purple one for me even though I wasn’t there and made a huge announcement about it to the class the next day. It pays to have a favorite color. It doesn’t pay often to have a favorite boy named Cole.
That’s how my relations with teachers usually were, though. They knew my favorite color and not much beyond that. I was average, so it was worthwhile to point out when I’d done something beyond that. My love for the color purple must have been beyond that.
***
But my teacher yelled at me one time. This teacher has gray hair and trains for marathons before school. He doubles as my godfather, so he comes over for my birthdays. I also see him in the pulpit every Sunday morning and shake his hand as I’m leaving church. He’s my pastor and my teacher and my godfather and my dad’s cousin’s husband. He yelled at me today as all these things but mostly as my teacher, I think.
He yelled at my friend, Georgie, too. We were sitting together in class with a boy named Winn in the middle of us. There’s always something in the middle. He was making us laugh, although I don’t remember how exactly. Is there always a how? My teacher kept telling Georgie and me to be quiet, please. He paid no attention to the something in the middle. Then the something in the middle started shaking our chairs by the legs. Georgie and I lost it. I don’t remember exactly why we thought that was funny. My teacher lost it and kicked us out. I’m not sure why that did it for him. I’m not sure why he didn’t notice the something in the middle with his hands beneath the table causing Georgie and me the trouble which was usually not ours.
Winn was always smart– knew how to wiggle himself out of any situation before it was even coming. So, did he know he’d be 32 before he got a second chance to rebound from the situation he couldn’t wiggle himself out of? It’s hard to ignore ankle monitors bulging out of straight-cut jeans hemmed just above an ankle sock at the tongue of a yellow Van.
That’s how I’ve seen him lately. His parents drive him to church in a black Dodge Charger. His mom always says hi, but he’s not allowed to. They leave five minutes before the service ends because he only has an hour and a half before the ankle monitor detects nonsense or whatever. One time, his parents were gone, and he drove the black Dodge Charger himself. That day, he and his brother left ten minutes early instead of the usual five.
Usually he takes bathroom breaks, too. Then, he’ll walk down the hall in jagged lines with his eyes dancing in their sockets. I passed him once. I walked close to the wall because I knew he wouldn’t make me laugh like he did in eighth grade.
***
In eighth grade, a majority were weird. I was weird, too, just not always too weird for him. I stayed at his house a lot since I was friends with his little sisters. We’d all play hide-and-go-seek in the dark. He’d hide in corners and pull us down by the ankles. I’d scream and act like I wasn’t expecting it. We’d play tackle football since we weren’t allowed to at school. I’d always guard him; he’d always guard me. He taught me how to play Call of Duty on his PlayStation by putting his hands over mine on the controller and pushing my fingers down with his. We’d jump on his parents’ bed and push each other off. The stakes were more since the king-size was extra high off the hard wood. We sat in their hot tub and talked the talks we couldn’t at school. We went to the Princeton Club where we’d slide and dance in chlorine. After, we’d get Subway with pepperoni and cucumbers.
We ran cross country together at school. We’d ride in teachers’ cars down to Lake Michigan and run on paved trails along the rocks as the sun was setting. We were the same pace, so we ran together. I always thought he should’ve been faster than me.
I remember how the game changed once we all got phones. Opposable thumbs in our backpacks so the teachers wouldn’t see. Hiding them under our shirts while grabbing the hall pass. Then, we’d go home. Calculator on queue so that parents thought they were being used for homework. Charging under twin-sized bed sheets later than the night we’d known before them. Keyboards whispering secrets through the holidays and weekends.
We performed in the end-of-year play together. He was James, another guy was The Giant, and I was James’ mom. Winn’s real mom was directing the play. She made me pet his hair and squeeze his cheeks. During the standing ovation, we held hands and bowed together.
At the eighth grade graduation party, we took a picture together. It’d be funny to see that now. He put his hand around my prepubescent waist even though he had a girlfriend. When he let go, we were in high school.
***
We went away to boarding school for high school. When I’d see him in the new, unfamiliar classrooms on campus, we’d magically fly back to eighth grade where our desks were pushed together in a pod. If I saw him in the long cafeteria line, somehow, we’d suddenly be back heating up Easy Mac in the elementary microwave. Wherever I saw him, he somehow gave me this unsettled feeling, like an eerily, not-so-distant memory, of home. My new friends would ask me about him. I must’ve hit my head when he pulled me down by the ankles because I didn’t remember much for them.
***
Soon enough, he got a girlfriend. The prettiest girl in our class. She wore a lot of makeup and name-brand clothes. She was nervous before she met his mom, so she asked me what his mom was like. I remembered a lot about his mom for her.
***
Eventually, I got a boyfriend, too. He was something of a toothpick with blonde hair– opposite of what Winn looked like. Winn and my boyfriend were friends, so we’d go on double dates sometimes. I knew his new relationship was bullshit. Winn and I played trumpet in band together, and I’d watch him flirt with one of my other friends. Eventually, the two of them got caught sneaking out of the dorm together. They were both suspended for a week. Apparently, a week doesn’t teach someone much. ***
Junior year, his parents bought a house a block from campus, so he didn’t live in the dorm anymore. He’d come to volleyball games with red eyes. He and his friends would wear sunglasses to cover it up, and this worked for a while. Months later he was suspended for three weeks. Class was quieter without him. We got in less trouble, but the brains went with him, too.
***
Then, his girlfriend broke up with him, and my boyfriend broke up with me. We heard about it through the grapevines. To this day, I don’t know if he was really sad or just playing the puppy dog eyes. We began texting through the night again. Still hiding phone screens under twin bed sheets since phones in the dorm weren’t allowed past 10:30.
We’d fallen apart by then– only knew each other through mutuals and that unsettled feeling of home. We laughed about grade school: all the times Howie fainted during Junior Choir and that one time Stacey punched me in the face and gave me a bloody nose. I told him Stacey always had a thing for him; we laughed about that, too.
He told me he had a car– a Dodge Charger. I wanted to say, “That’s your dad’s car, not yours.” But I didn’t. I just said “Cool.” He asked me for a ride in my car to a baseball game one Saturday morning. We ignored each other until we got in the car. Then, he talked like we were running along Lake Michigan again– too young to know better and somehow the same pace.
That night, I snuck out of the dorm for him. I didn’t tell anyone except my sister. She laid in my bed during bed check so that I wouldn’t get caught. I snuck in through his bedroom window. We sat on his bed watching TV– still talking and laughing about childhood as if it was funny. As if we wouldn’t someday want to go back to that. For a moment, I thought that was it. All we needed was to remember and be two people who grew up together. I was relieved, but then I let myself be less than that. He tried to go too far. I said no and crawled back out his bedroom window.
***
The school year went on. Sometimes his name would pop up on my phone, but I made sure mine never spelled its letters on his. Because the truth started to unravel. By summer, my sister called to tell me about the trial, so I wrote a character analysis for him. Told everyone he was smart– too smart. I defended him more than I should’ve. But what some people were saying he’d done didn’t define him for me. He
had let me climb back out his bedroom window instead of forcing himself on me. And he’d run the same pace with me along Lake Michigan. Our childhood was still the same—I didn’t understand that we were already old enough to be defined by our choices.
But there were other girls who didn’t get to climb back out the bedroom window without bruises on their hipbones and thighs. Some people tried to convince me that I’d been one of those girls, too. Just to make sure that what I said was true. Just so that I understood that I really could have been one of those girls. I really wasn’t bruised on the outside.
My friends went to the trials. I just heard about them through the grapevines. My roommate told me she cried when she saw him dressed in orange.
But he wiggled himself out of the first trial like a magician—so excellently that I still believed him, too. I had a year of college behind me by the time I heard about the second. My cousin handed me a newspaper. I didn’t make it through the article—like he was standing in orange right in front of me slapping everyone who ever cared for him in the face. The victim said she woke to his voice: “She’s not gonna wake up” to the other boys in the room who encouraged and laughed. Now, I cry for her because I’m not sure she’ll ever fall asleep again, and she couldn’t have known because he’s charming, and likeable, and smart—too smart.
***
I, on the other hand—should I have seen the ankle monitor bobbing down the sidewalk along Lake Michigan’s shore? Should I have heard it as his foot bounced restlessly in the desk next to mine? Should I have felt it when he pulled me down by the ankles during hide-and-go-seek?
I didn’t see it, and now I wonder, is it my scar to wear even though he let me sneak back out his window without thighs painted black and blue? I cry to think of him sitting darkly in orange as all the lights of the world bounce off me. I shudder to think of the two of us so connected– so together still. Because I was right, we shouldn’t have been the same pace at all. I should have told him to run faster and be better, so I blame myself. I blame myself and wonder if it’s my story to tell.
***
If I could pick a color to be, I’d pick purple. It was the last I loved so innocently. The last I let the wind spin me about willing and wanting to be more than forgotten memories and a distant, once lovely friendship. Now, I walk close to the wall as he walks by too intoxicated to notice. I wonder why he threw away the childhood we shared.
