Apples to Ashes

I can’t remember where I went after I left our table in my state of fury and incredible sadness, but I suppose it doesn’t matter in the end. All I know and all that matters is Kenley and I eventually made up as we always did, because Jasmine had forced us to as she always did, and our routine went on as if nothing had happened as it always did. Still, something about that particular September day stuck with me. Although we’d had that argument too many times to count, it took longer than usual to shake it from my mind this time around.

With age I had grown more vulnerable to temptation rather than fortifying my resistance to it. I’d often catch myself gazing at an especially irresistible member of the opposite sex, pulling my eyes away with great reluctance and forcing myself to focus on my studies, but not before I had planned out what our kids would look like and to where we would move when we had retired. “Short-term relationships” and “one-night stands” simply did not exist in my vocabulary; I’d been trained from birth to seek and to forever keep one true love. As clichéd and unattainable as that seemed, holding on to that ideal was all I knew how to do. And so, even in my most fleeting daydreams, I’d complete a future with a lovely boy whose hand I’d never hold and whose name seemed to change with increasing frequency.

It wasn’t Kenley’s fault that I was having a harder time than usual accepting my strict limits in love. It was my own for I knew that I was slipping. I was losing my grip on my will to wait for some mysterious knight in shining armor who might not even exist.

September gave way to October as the late summer heat gave way to mere warmth and the leaves’ green shades gave way to brown and golden hues. Kenley had long since claimed Thomas as her own. Even Jasmine, with all her quiet charm and subtle ways of courtship, had managed to snag a green-eyed boy named Dylan whom she had apparently been eyeing since the first day of school. They were all so happy, which only made me feel bitterly jealous and lonely. Whenever I’d see Jasmine holding hands with Dylan, or Ken gazing at Thomas while he ran his fingers through her hair, I’d feel slightly nauseated and enraged. It wasn’t just them, though, it was everybody. I was surrounded by love, and I couldn’t have a single bit of it. I was feeling the vicious pangs of lovesickness.

One day in mid-October, Kenley finally caught wind of my state of despair. I was struggling to focus on an impossibly hard math problem when I felt someone nudge my left shoulder. I turned my head to face the offender. “What is it, Ken?”

“You tell me,” she replied. A wrinkle formed between her brows when she said, “I know something’s wrong.”

Our algebra 2 teacher, an unbelievably mean and shriveled creature by the name of Mrs. Blanchard, hushed us viciously. “No talking,” she said coldly.

Kenley lowered her inquiries down to a whisper. “Trina, just tell me already. What’s up?”

“Ken...” I paused to suck on my lower lip, as was my habit during times of great anxiety. “I—oh, forget it.” I knew it was a mistake to even begin to answer my best friend’s questions, but it was an even bigger mistake to leave the beginning of the answer dangling in the air with no plan of finishing it. I knew I would never hear the end of it. If Ken was anything, she was persistent.

“Trina, now you know you have to tell me,” she scowled. A second warning from our teacher effectively shut her up, but I knew I wasn’t safe. “During lunch,” she whispered, “you’ve got to tell me exactly what’s going on with you.”

I nodded as if I was actually going to, but only I knew that wasn’t my plan. After all, how could I? How could I tell my best friend that her happiness made me miserable? How could I tell her that with every day that passed by I could feel my immunity to the desire to pursue love grow weaker and weaker? I couldn’t—I simply couldn’t, and I wasn’t going to.

Later that day both Ken and Jasmine questioned me about my moodiness and my sudden withdrawal from the world. I told them it was just a bad case of PMS and warned them to leave the matter at that.

“PMS? Are you kidding me?” Ken stared at me with a mixture of disbelief and frustration. “That’s the best you can come up with? Trina, there is nothing that can be so bad that you can’t tell us. We’d love you if you were gay, or hooked on crack. Hell, we’d love you if you were a fucking...serial killer. Now what is it?”

“Ken, maybe we should just let her tell us when she’s ready,” said Jasmine. I was so grateful for her defense that I wanted to kiss her feet but I settled with a smile and murmured, “Thanks, Jasmine.”

The following weeks were tense. Our routine had resumed its normal pace once again but all was not well. Oftentimes I’d catch Ken eyeing me distrustfully as if some perpetrator had taken over me and everything I did and said masked some deeper, darker truth.

Conversation grew stale when she and Jasmine realized that I’d become nonresponsive whenever a sentence started with “Today Thomas said the funniest thing” or “Dylan’s just the sweetest guy.” A change was coming, that much was certain.

_____________________________________***

My Spanish teacher was big on socializing. He’d encourage us to sit in a different seat every day, so we could “get to know each other.”

I wasn’t big on socializing. I sat in the same seat for as long as I could get away with it, which turned out to be for the entire first month of school. One day, though, Mr. Romero approached me and said, “Katrina, you’ve been in that seat since the first day of school. I’m going to have to ask you to move,” and that was the end of hiding out in the corner. I moved to the only available seat on my side of the room: the very first seat in my row. No one paid me any mind—or so it seemed. As I settled in, I could feel a single pair of eyes burning holes into me, but from where I wasn’t certain. I glanced to my left as subtly as I could. The girl sitting there was too busy trying to hide her phone from Mr. Romero while she texted to even notice me. I glanced to my right just as quickly and nonchalantly, and all I saw was a gawky boy with thick glasses reading a graphic novel. Then I looked straight ahead, and saw him.

The room was divided with one half of the desks facing the other. Directly across from me was the owner of the burning eyes.

The boy, afraid he’d be caught, had quickly cast his eyes down to his textbook. I did the same, while allowing myself a stealthy peek. He was nothing extraordinary. His hair was dark and rather messy, and his nose was just the slightest bit crooked. He had a lean build—neither skinny nor muscular, but somewhere in between. What really struck me, strangely enough, were his eyelashes. They were weirdly long and thick for a guy, and with his eyes looking downwards they looked like little fans sprouting from his eyelids. I didn’t dwell on much else, though. Within a minute I’d sized him up and written him off as nothing special.

Class went on as usual. We had to mingle with everyone on our side of the room, practicing “¿Como te llamas?” and “¿Que dia es hoy?”* The boy with the curiously long eyelashes stayed on his side of the room and I stayed on mine.

Later that day as I power-walked across campus to my final class, I found myself in dangerous territory. Although Spanish had been over for nearly two hours, that boy had somehow managed to find a way into my mind. I couldn’t help but wonder what his name was, what color his eyes were, and why I hadn’t noticed him before.