February 3rd
On ANNIVERSARY
Chet opened his locker with some difficulty. He still hadn't gotten used to these combination locks, and even though he thought it was great to have a locker, he could never remember how many rotations and in what direction he was supposed to dial his standard lock, even though it was October already. On his fourth try, after looking around self-consciously, he finally hit upon the right combination and opened his locker. On the inside was a picture from the Toronto Star of the Toronto Maple Leafs losing their first game of the season to the New York Islanders. In the yellowing photo, a hapless Maple Leaf was in mid-pratfall, and Chet had scotch-taped the score of the game (Isles 3, Leafs 1) diagonally over the corner of the photo. Originally, Chet's plan was to tape the photo and score of every Leafs game as the season went on, but after the first game he kind of forgot, so his locker accidentally became a shrine to that season-opening ignominious loss.
Chet was considering whether to abandon the project when Marianne Goldstein approached. His face went a little red, and his breathing a little more controlled.
"Hey Chet, do you know what day it is today?" Marianne asked.
"No, what day is it?" said Chet.
"It's our anniversary," said Marianne.
Chet blushed, and was confused. He didn't know quite what Marianne was talking about, but he did remember that it was around this time last year that Marianne had decided to make Chet into some kind of project. She would come to his locker every day and talk about other girls in their class that she hated. He had gotten the sense that she was sort of interested in him, but instead of expressing it directly, she would eliminate the prospects of other girls through slander, leaving herself alone as the only one worthy of any attention.
"I don't know what you mean," said Chet weakly.
"Yeah, I think you do," Marianne said mysteriously. Marianne had been one of the more popular girls in Grade Five, and wasn't bad looking, with her long blonde hair, dimpled cheeks and slim figure. But Grade Six, with its move to a new school and a reshuffling of the social order, had not been kind to Marianne's social status. Puberty had thrown all sorts of different factors into the mix, and Marianne was now short and flat-chested compared to a lot of the other girls. She had fallen way behind, and still wore last year's fashions too. Chet had never been popular by any stretch of the imagination, but when you had few prospects, as Chet had, you ironically got unrealistically high standards. He was conflicted between being completely desperate for female attention, and having developed detailed opinions on what made a Grade Six girl hot, and Marianne didn't qualify.
"Remember," continued Marianne, "when you said I was your girlfriend?"
"That was just to get those Grade Threes to stop bothering me at recess," rebuffed Chet. The origins of the incident were murky, but it was true that he told a gaggle of Third Graders that he and Marianne were going out, in response to a deluge of taunting.
"Anyway," he explained, "You told everyone afterwards that we weren't."
"That was just damage control," said Marianne.
"Well we never went on any dates," Chet said. "People who are boyfriend and girlfriend go on dates." The longer this conversation continued, the more uncomfortable Chet got. It wasn't like Marianne was asking him out, and he could think about it and say yes or no, he had to re-evaluate what had happened last year, and it really sounded like he didn't want to be dating anyone, which may not be the case. Why was she even bringing this up now? Why had she kept track? What was the game here? Was she making fun of him?
"Well, whatever," she said, "Here's this heart I made, you, I don't know why, I guess you don't want it. Good day." And then she left, walking down the hallway in her crocs. Chet looked at the heart - pretty simple, it said "Happy Anniversary Chet" in black marker on a red construction paper heart, with no embellishments, as if to make sure it communicated nothing more or less than what it said. He placed it on the top shelf of his locker, closed and locked it, re-opened it, grabbed his math text, re-closed and locked his locker, and walked to class.
Monday, March 9, 2009
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