Ironically the first twenty thousand words of this fell out of me in about two, three days while I didn’t even crack 10,000 in all of NaNo. Go figure.
Come and find me all across social media, randy readers.
Three Boys, One Crush
Jane
Once upon a time, there were three guys who met as a mismatched trio of eleven-year-olds, and grew to love each other as brothers from other mothers.
There was also a girl who, at the same age in a different school, had almost no one. She was too weird, too insular and bookish… too naive.
The boys grew up fiercely close. What one wanted, the others echoed, and they protected each other, doing the same for their peers. They were popular, they were smart. They had cool clothes and pretty great childhoods with lots of happy times. One was a jock with straight As, one was pretty and kind, and one was sharp, who laughed easy- but this doesn’t even begin to cover what or who they were, nor all their struggles. It’s just important to know that for three bros, they couldn’t be more different yet united by common dreams.
It wasn’t that the girl never wound up making any friends- it just took time, until she met people who could see her uniqueness and embrace it. She eventually blossomed enough to open up and find her place in the social hierarchy of high school hell. By then she was a proud freak, having made herself exactly what she wanted no matter what anyone else thought she should be. She befriended the other freaks, nerds, outcasts, losers, and geeks- a solidarity against loneliness and social order.
As fate would have it, the boys and the girl wound up thrown together in proximity close enough to acknowledge each other’s existence by their senior year. Second semester, halfway through.
Little did they realize what it would mean for each of them.
The girl was about to have her world shaken up and turned on its head. The boys were about to find their missing piece.
She never would have believed them had it not been for that pretty little parcel on her desk one morning. So innocently wrapped, with a fluffy little bow. High-quality wrapping, bright rainbow colors. Plus a box of freaking Godiva.
Godiva! The most prestigious chocolate brand she could think of at that age, in its distinctive gold box and its gorgeous marble-countered store in the local mall. It could’ve been a horrible joke. It could’ve been, but her mind would never have given her the peace of not knowing for sure what was inside.
After all, who could resist a present that looked so enticingly theirs?
***
M
12th grade, new English class, same trio; this year me and the guys agreed to take some electives together, one of which was Brit Lit. I was so excited to be spending the time with them and enjoying a flavor of books I loved and wanted more of. Cal and I often took the same electives because he was open to many subjects and we liked to stay close. Randy, though, was not strong in English (taking far more extra math classes and science), but had opted to do senior year with us so he had study buddies. A perfectly elegant solution that had gone well, with us already getting through “Contemporary American Lit” together.
We took seats on the back left, Calvin taking the absolute last desk in the row, cramming himself into the seat. I tutted. Classroom standards were one-size-fits-most at best. I took the desk in front of him, and Randy seated himself at my immediate right. After that it was just a matter of waiting for everyone else to shuffle in, take seats, and get started. The teacher wasn’t even there yet, but as students arrived I recognized a few faces. The guy who wound up sitting behind Randy was a friend-of-a-friend and he joined us chatting before class.
It wasn’t out of the ordinary at all, and relatively sedate for a first period class. No one was awake. Everything was quiet.
“Whoa,” I hear Randy chuckle. “Who’s the Jedi Knight?”
Looking up at his sudden interest I see this figure striding through the door. Everyone else is bundled up in thick coats and sweaters (as we’re dead in the middle of an east-coast winter), but this person is covered in a brown… cloak. Like Aragorn son of Arathorn just entered the place. The hood goes down and I see a spill of long brown hair. She moves toward our side of the classroom and marches to a desk one row over, closer to the middle of the room. Still standing, she undoes a button and the brown swath falls away from her shoulders. I become fixated on her hair as it shakes free.
But soft! What light through yonder doorway breaks? It is the East, and this girl I’ve never seen before is the sun. (In our defense, it was a huge senior class. Upward of six hundred.)
Underneath the heavy drape, she’s dressed in the most outlandish burst of color in the room. A purple and cream-colored tie-dye pattern on her short-sleeved top. Dark green parachute skirt? Black- what looks like laced boots- below. To cap it off, she’s got purple lipstick on, and after she bundles her winter-weather gear into the chair she’s chosen, she straightens her glasses. It’s only been a moment since my friend’s question, but I feel like time has slowed down.
“Wait a minute- I think I’ve heard something about a chick who walks around in a cloak in the winter.” Cal says, and our acquaintance looks over.
“Her? Yeah that’s Jane Callahan,” he tells the two of them. “I keep forgetting you guys didn’t go to Smithfield Middle.”
“Who is she?” I ask, trying to surreptitiously hide the fact that I’m staring at her. Jane seems totally oblivious to anything but dropping her backpack on the desk, and she unearths a book before sitting down. Oho. Wonder what she’s reading, even prior to starting an English class? She definitely wasn’t in American Lit.
“One of Smithfield’s most famous freaks. I’m surprised this is the first time you’re hearing of her, even if you’re from another district. She’s not subtle.”
“Yeah no kidding,” Randy rumbled, obviously intrigued. He was looking her up and down with a huge smile on his face. Hurriedly, I looked to Cal. His eyes were wider than usual; by itself that wasn’t very telling, but I could see tension in his body language. Something fought to remain supressed on his face. More info needed. So I prompted Nick, the FOF, for deets.
“Dish, man,” I said sweetly. “A girl with style like that has got to be interesting.”
“Oh, she’s a total weirdo,” Nick admitted. “Runs with the theatre kids, nerds, geeks, and of course freaks. Reads continually. Stopped wearing pants two years ago. Overall quiet and unobtrusive, but if pushed, she goes off.” He leaned in to keep things more covert. “Rumor has it she shouted down an entire film class at the end of last year because there were a few assholes bullying her friends and the teacher. Someone pissed her off and she just snapped. No one acted out afterwards, and no one could even hate her for it. That’s kind of the thing…” he half-laughed to himself, glancing at Jane out of what looked almost like scientific interest rather than sexual. Like she was a puzzle to figure out. “People who know her say she’s the sweetest person they’ve ever met, but at the same time, if you fuck with her or someone close to her, you can set off a beast. She used to be bullied a lot back in the middle school, but just became weirder and weirder, like a big fuck you to everyone. You know Jeffrey Spirano?”
“I do,” Cal rumbled, leaning over with his arms on the desk and supporting his chin. He was watching the girl with this gleam in his eyes. Studying her as she opened her book and proceeded to block out the classroom around her. “That guy is a major dickwad and just such a loser.”
I glanced at the clock. Still twenty minutes until class started.
“Well back in ninth grade he used to fuck with her. Stole her stuff, made fun of her, all that. One day he comes out of their class together all freaked out. He was trying to get under her skin, apparently, and showed her this nasty cut on his finger. Well, she turns around and shows him this picture of a cut-up dead body in a book she was reading.”
I gasped. Randy’s eyebrows shot up. Cal sat up straight in a jolt.
“Really?” My best friend asked, shocked.
“If he was telling the truth.”
“He stopped fucking with her after that, didn’t he?” Our dirty nerd asks, his voice amused. I heard the tell-tale rasp. Randy likey.
“Yeah, he did. Immediately. Most everybody did after ninth grade, because she never stopped being… weird. And she didn’t engage with people teasing her anymore either, as if they just didn’t exist. At the same time… no one can ever get close to her. No one who’s not already been labeled one of our resident freaks or geeks, anyway.”
“What book was it?” I asked, stunned and at the same time, deeply deeply attracted. Look at this girl. Her own sense of style, a secret core of strength. Sweetness. Book-lover. My friends were clearly intrigued, even if Cal wasn’t ready to admit it to himself yet. Nick looked my way as I took my eyes off Jane and glanced over.
“Oh… I have no idea. I doubt Jeffrey knew.” Nick shrugged his shoulders and relaxed in his chair. “What’s up with you guys? You into her?”
“Time will tell,” I took the liberty of answering. “She sounds like an interesting person, and she sure stands out.” Nick snorted.
“That’s an understatement. The senior class is buzzing about the awards already, and everybody I’ve talked to is voting her ‘Most Likely to be Remembered’ at the end of the year.”