She was flyy. Flyy like you don’t see these days. No nail polish. Little perfume and she attracted men wherever she went. Through her I learned people can be jealous for no real reason.
I never really understood why dudes in school went so crazy over her. They would relentlessly try talking to her and get rejected. Yeah, she was fine, no doubt. She was an extremely attractive young woman. The head cheerleader on top of that. Which means she was very popular and well known. To me there were too many other girls in our high school for so much attention to be given to just one.
Then came the day we began to get together. It was just another ordinary day at McKinley. We had two classes together…English Lit with Mrs. McCoy and Geometry. In geometry the teacher told us to take out our homework so we could go over it. She went down the list of problems waiting for our answers. Parallelogram…Isosceles…obtuse…90 degrees… When the teacher told me to let somebody else answer some questions I decided to coast for the rest of the class. Did not say another word.
At the end of class she was standing outside the door of our classroom. Another ordinary day in high school suddenly became extraordinary. When I walked out the door she called me by my name. That was music to my ears. Who could say no when she asked for help her with her homework? I did not let myself imagine anything other than that even when she asked me for my phone number, either.
Had completely forgot I gave her the number when she called. The phone woke my father up. He worked nights as a supervisor at Washington, D.C.’s Main Post Office. Usually, he slept until about seven or eight in the evening. This time he was awakened at five p.m. Not a happy camper. He called me to his room and told me the phone was for me.
He handed me the phone. Hearing her voice on the phone while wondering who would be calling me was unbelievable. Forgot all about her asking me for the number. Maybe I was a little out of my head. That might explain what happened next. She asked me what I got for the first answer. Don’t know what came over me. Before I could think I told her, “I said I would help you with your homework, not do it for you.” Silence. The flyyest girl in my McKinley Tech asked me for my phone number. When she actually called, what do I do? Make her mad as soon as we started talking. In the silence all I could do was say, “hello?” She in a very timid and uncharacteristic manner said, “I want to be with you.”
Was my mind playing tricks on me? Did I my imagine something that would embarrass me if I said the wrong thing…again? I asked her, “what did you say?” Hearing her say, “I want to be with you” again put me in a totally different mental state. Geometry was no longer on my mind. In fact I couldn’t speak. Not that I didn’t know what to say, a lot of things quickly came to mind. None of which I could say with my father was sitting right next to me on his bed. “Okay, I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” was my response and quickly hung up the phone.
My father asked me about the caller. I told him she just wanted me to help her with her homework as I rushed out the room. And that was that.
At school we sat together in class. It was a little strange. Suddenly, I became a minor celebrity. People who never noticed me before suddenly started paying attention to me. Not such much me, just that I was with a young woman whose sphere of influence now included me. The attention was not always a good thing.
One example was when she saw me in the hall between class and told me to meet her at her locker after third period. Her locker was on the third floor near my homeroom. Third period was French class for me on the second floor, just under the library. It was nothing to walk a flight of stairs to her locker. Entering the third floor hallway I saw her walking towards me. “There goes my baby,” I thought. As she approached the effect on our male classmates was unbelievable. No one could let her walk past without having a good look. It was as though she was a ship leaving a wake in the ocean as she passed. Energy seemed to ripple off her in waves. Other girls noticed her too. The way she carried her purse on her arm said something defying words. All of which was effortless. She had this indefinable “thing” and she radiated it wherever she went. Most remarkable was she had no airs about herself. She was just being herself, one of the most popular and well known young women in the building. She was all mine.
After reaching where I stood, I noticed a classmate of ours across the hall from her locker. He played on the basketball team. We were also in biology together. I had no problem dissecting the frog and telling him and the other member of our table what to write.
Seeing the look on his face as I leaned against the locker while she got something out perplexed me. Jealousy? Envy? Why? I suddenly had a problem.
I had absolutely no idea what to make of it. Here I was in a state of ecstasy for no other reason than this girl would even talk to me. Now this dude seems to be something other than happy about it.
A little while after that we were in geometry class. She told me she wanted me to come to one of her other classes. A dude in the class was bothering her. He was wouldn’t leave her along. It was to the point she needed something stronger than “I don’t want you” to get him to stop.
What started out being an unbelievably good thing began to require high maintenance. Something I wanted nothing to do with. Bad enough I had one of the finest girls in my high school at my disposal with basically no effort. I didn’t even know what made that happen. Now people are starting to take unwanted interest in her. As mentioned before, there were too many women in the building for me to fight over one. Having considered telling her no, for that simple reason, something got the better of me. I walked her to her next class.
Waiting outside the room for the interloper to arrive we stood together talking. Maybe I just wanted to spend a few more minutes with her before it all came crashing down due to unwanted violence. Not knowing what I would do when the challenger showed up was a strange feeling. Then she said, “that’s him right there.” A wave of peace washed over me. Suddenly all was right with the world again. So calming was the sight before my eyes I couldn’t even sigh with relief. Of all the people in the school it turned out to be the one person I had known longer than anyone else in the building. The closest thing to a brother in that school almost brought a smile to my face.
Walking across the hallway, I walked up to him with a customary, but not to friendly, “what’s up?”
Trying not to seem like I knew him, I told him what she told me. I let him know she wanted him leave her alone. It seemed almost like she wanted me to hit him. He was apologetic though he shouldn’t have been. Surprised can only begin to describe his reaction to her being my girl. He couldn’t believe it. Later when he asked why I never told him, only I could think to say was it seemed to good to be true. If it were him in that situation, he would be telling everyone he knew she was his girlfriend.
She continued to give me much happiness for the rest of the year. We shared a number of experiences together that made me a different person.
Fall turned to Winter which turned to Spring which turned to Summer. After that school year ended we drifted apart. Living on two different parts of town didn’t help. Graduation didn’t make it any better. She called me early into the summer and told me she was pregnant. She asked me what should she do. My seventeen year old mind didn’t have an answer.
I didn’t see or here from her again.
