Blind Squirrels (8 page)

“That nigger is not my
girlfriend!”  Johnny was yelling at the top of his voice.

“She’s not entirely black,” I
heard Mason say.  “Her mother is white.”

“In my book, she’s a nigger.” 
Johnny was causing my blood pressure to boil – and I’m not sure I even knew
what that meant back then. 

I could hear a voice inside my
head saying, “She’s your friend.  Aren’t you going to say something?”

I wanted to, believe me.  But
remember, I’m a big coward.  Talking up to anyone was difficult for me, but
talking up to Johnny was impossible.  Luckily, someone else spoke up.

“Johnny!”  It was Mrs. Decker the
bus driver.  She stopped the bus well in advance of the second bus stop.

Johnny ignored her until Max
pushed him out of the seat.  “What, Mrs. D?” he finally asked.

“Get off my bus right now.”  She
opened the door and pointed outside.

“Wha…what?  You gotta be
kidding?”  Johnny had made it to the front of the bus by now.

“I’m not kidding, Johnny Roberts. 
I’ll put up with a lot of things, but you will not use that word on this bus.” 
She was usually quiet about happenings on the bus.  She let the kids smoke, and
she rarely chastised anyone for anything.  But she was letting Johnny have it.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. D.  I’ll never
say it again.”  Johnny couldn’t have sounded less sincere.

Mrs. Decker was having no part of
his apology.  “If you want to apologize, you need to tell it to Dominique –
then you can ride my bus again.  If you don’t tell her you’re sorry, I’m not
letting you back on.  Now get off.  Otherwise, I’ll have Max throw you off.”

Max stood up, and I believed he
would really throw Johnny off the bus.  He looked very angry. 

Johnny didn’t give him a chance. 
He got off on his own.  “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I apologize to that
mulatto bitch,” he yelled.  “I don’t have to ride your bus, Old Lady.  I don’t
ride with nigger-lovers anyway.”  Johnny flipped Mrs. Decker a bird,
turned around, and walked away. 

From that day forward, things
were different.  For one thing, Johnny never rode our bus again, and I never
saw him hang out with Max again.  I was never able to tell Dominique or Aurelia
about the event – I couldn’t bring myself to hurt their feelings like that –
but I promised myself that I would somehow make up for the cruel words Johnny
said.  Even if Dominique and Aurelia never knew.

The biggest impact was on my view
of Johnny and Max.  I now detested Johnny for his asinine bigoted behavior,
and, because Max put his principles above his friendship with Johnny, I loved
him even more than I had before.

Another plus: this was the
closest thing to a race riot that ever happened during my years at WMHS.  My
worries and fears began to alleviate when I discovered that most of the kids on
my bus were not racist at all, and I felt that was a good representation of the
school.  WMHS was beginning to look like an okay school after all.

Olivia and I decided to go
shopping for Max’s gift.  We took a city bus to the mall and spent most of the
day just looking around.  We tried on expensive clothes in exclusive shops and
pretended to be rich girls planning for a weekend yachting trip.  We dined on
free samples and “Beef-on-a-Stick” at Hickory Farms, and then we had a
refreshing Orange Julius to quench our thirsts.  Afterwards, we window-shopped
the jewelry stores and pointed out which engagement rings we wanted our
imaginary boyfriends to buy us.

Suddenly, Olivia let out a little
squeal.  Rushing to her side to assure myself that she was all right, I saw it
out of the corner of my eye.  Olivia had found the perfect gift for Max – a
sterling silver ID bracelet.  We rushed inside the jewelry store and quickly
rushed back out when we heard that the price was sixty-seven dollars.  I felt
deflated, but I didn’t have twenty dollars, much less sixty-seven.

“Let’s look around for other
stores that have jewelry.  Maybe we can find something cheaper.”  Olivia was
always full of good advice.

We visited all the jewelry stores
first, and then we tried the department stores.  The cheapest bracelet we found
was in National Jewelers, and the price was still forty-seven dollars.  Just as
I was about to give up, Olivia remembered that there was a Montgomery Wards
just across the street from the mall.   I pinned all my hopes on that store,
and we headed over there.

We headed straight to the jewelry
department.  I saw a young man shifting jewelry pieces around inside the
jewelry counter, and there was an old woman standing next to him.  He was quite
handsome – jet black hair, blue eyes, and a firm jaw – but his immaculate suit
and matching tie intimidated me.  I guessed that he was some sort of manager
and that he’d try to get rid of a kid that probably had no money.  On the other
hand, the woman was wearing a slightly wrinkled flowered dress, and her glasses
were hanging around her neck so she wouldn’t misplace them.  From these
shortcomings, I promptly inferred that she was not perfect and that helped to
put me at ease.  Her frosty white hair and plump face gave her a pleasant look,
and she smiled brightly as I walked up to her.

“I’m looking for ID bracelets,” I
told her.

“What?  Oh, I’m sorry.  I don’t
work here.  This nice young man was just showing me some watches.”  Great.  The
old bat was passing me off to the shark.

“I’ll be right with you,” he said. 
“The bracelets are in that case to your right.”

Olivia and I stepped in front of
the case and started browsing.  In a few moments, the man came over.  He opened
the case and pulled out a tray of ID bracelets.  Some were silver; some were
gold.  All of them looked expensive.

“I might as well tell you that
we’ve only got twelve dollars,” Olivia said to him.

He quickly returned the tray to
the case.  Directing us down an aisle opposite the counter, he said. “You might
find something down there.  There are some leather bracelets with names and
designs on them.  They are more in your price range.”

I headed down the aisle to have a
look.  The bracelets were not exactly what I wanted, and none of them had Max’s
name.

Olivia was still up by the
counter.  She turned towards me and said, “Well, do you like them?”  I shook my
head.  “Come here and take a look,” she said.

I joined her at the counter and
she was pointing at some key rings.  “What about one of those?  You could get
Max’s name engraved on one.  Or your name.”

“I don’t need a key ring,” I said
tediously.

“You are so dense sometimes,” she
responded.  “I meant give him a key ring with your name on it.  Look, there’s a
heart-shaped one…”

“I really don’t think Max would
carry a heart-shaped key ring.”

“He probably won’t carry any key
ring that
you
give him, but so what?”

I was starting to wonder why I
had friends at all.  Every one of them made cracks about my chances with Max.

I asked the man behind the
counter to let me see the heart-shaped key ring.  It was gold-plated, but it
wasn’t too bad.  “Can you engrave it?” I asked.

“We have someone who can.  Let me
locate him.”

An hour later, Olivia and I were
on the bus and headed home.  The key ring looked very nice in its little gift
box.  Max’s name was on the front and mine was on the other side.  He would
love it, I was certain.  If he didn’t, I would die.

At home, I began doubting
myself.  I kept envisioning the moment that I would give Max his gift.  One
scenario had him showing the key ring to all his friends.  Most of the time,
however, I pictured him throwing the thing at me.  By the next morning, I was
questioning whether I should give it to him at all. 

I finally decided that I would
let Alice deliver the gift to him.  Then, if he didn’t want it, he couldn’t
throw it at me at least.  He would either have to keep it, or he could throw it
in the trash.  Hopefully, he wouldn’t throw it at Alice.  No matter what he
did, it wouldn’t embarrass me.  It was a great plan.

Monday morning, I told Alice. 
She was very agreeable and even willing to do it that day.  I told her that
Friday would be the day – then I wouldn’t see him again until after Christmas. 
In the meantime, I planned to compose a letter to go along with the gift – sort
of explain why I was giving it to him.  I started on it right after homeroom.

Four days and ten pages later, I
tried to stuff the letter and the key ring into a business-sized envelope.  I
finally succeeded with the help of some Scotch tape.  Luckily, I had written
Max’s name on the outside before I filled the envelope.  I didn’t want my
envelope getting mixed up with someone else’s.

As the lunch bell rang, I
presented the envelope to Alice.  We walked out to the lunchroom together, and then
we parted.  I joined Olivia and Aurelia at our favorite bench, and we pretended
that it was a normal day.

In a few minutes, Max appeared
from the side of the cafeteria.  He looked great in my favorite pair of tight black
pants – the ones that emphasized his round perfect little butt – and shiny
black platform shoes.  His black hair fanned out on the back of his blue jean
jacket and set my heart thumping.  He walked past – totally ignoring me – and
went into the cafeteria.  Alice followed him inside.

Alice reappeared in three
minutes, although it seemed more like three hours.  She motioned for me to come
over, and I rushed to where she was standing.

“D…d…did you do it?”  I couldn’t
believe how nervous I was.

“I
am
Alice Lawson...Of
course I gave it to him.  What’d you expect?”  Alice was the epitome of smug.

“Well...What did he say?”  Would
I have to drag every detail out of her?

“Say?  Um – well, he said, ‘Thank
you.’”

“Is that all?  What did you
say?”  Every inch of my body was tingling.  My nerves were shattering.

“Before he said, ‘Thank you,’ I
said, ‘This is from Katrina.’  He took it.  He didn’t even say, ‘Katrina Who?’ 
He just said, ‘Thank you.’”

“Then what?”

“He started opening it, and I
left.”

“That’s all?  You didn’t wait to
see if he liked it?”

“Look, Kat – cool it!  You said
give it to him.  You didn’t say anything about watching his every move.  If you
want to know if he liked it, you’re gonna have to ask him yourself.”  Alice
walked away.

I turned to go back over to Olivia
and Aurelia, and Max was coming out of the lunchroom.  I didn’t see the key
ring, but the letter was in his hand.  He gave me an amused look, and then he
sat on a wooden bench.  He held the letter in front of him and began reading
it.  I swallowed my heart as I walked past him to my friends.  When lunch was
over, Max was still sitting there reading the letter.  He didn’t look up or
anything as Olivia, Aurelia, and I walked past.  Perhaps I had made an
impression – maybe he would speak to me on the bus that afternoon.

I nervously anticipated the bus
ride home.  Part of me wanted him to talk to me; the other part of me wanted to
vanish off the face of the earth.  I had confessed all my love for Max in that
letter, and I had no way of knowing if that impressed or repelled him. 

My stomach did a whole gymnastics
routine as I trudged towards the bus.  I felt like a prisoner walking his last
mile.  I stopped in front of the bus door and took a deep breath.  One step up,
two steps up, three steps up.  I saw that the bus was empty; I had my choice of
seats.  I sat down in the front seat, and then decided the middle of the bus
might afford me more protection.  If Max wanted to talk, it was more obscure. 
If Max wanted to yell, I could slip down unnoticed in my seat.  If he wasn’t
really hunting me, I’d blend in with everyone else.  I quickly moved to the
safe harbor of the midpoint region.

The bus began
filling up immediately, and time seemed to speed past at an alarming rate. 
Soon, Mrs. Decker was closing the bus doors and driving away from school.  Max
was not on board.  I didn’t know whether to feel relief or pain.  I just knew
that Christmas vacation was starting, and I wouldn’t see Max again for two
weeks.  The teenage years are full of angst.

Chapter 7

Brad was snoring loudly, so I
slipped on my shoes and sneaked out his front door.  He didn’t mean to be rude;
the beer did him in.  We might finish our talk sometime, but it wasn’t
important.  Brad and I would always be friends, and we didn’t need Max to
ensure that.

As I drove home from Brad’s I
thought about my life – past and present.  I had been talking about Max a good
bit in the past few days, and it felt good to remember the crazy things I did
in school.  Friends like Olivia and Aurelia shared many of my experiences, but
other things were mine alone. 

Some things I could never tell
anyone.  Most of my friends thought I was insane to carry a torch for
twenty-four years, and maybe they were right – but I don’t think so.  Those
people were realists – people who accept that life is not romantic and that
dreams usually don’t come true.  These friends couldn’t understand my kind –
the hopeless romantic that believes in destiny and true love, adventure and
dreams-come-true.  With these friends, I could never convince them that I
hadn’t wasted my life.