When she was twelve she was in love with a kid in her class. He was funny and popular, attributes so vital to a twelve-year-old, and slung his clothes around his skinny body like he knew something about the hard life. She was silent and shy and tucked behind a book studying faces as though they were not the same species of human as her, as though a great glass wall separated them and her.
When one is twelve the natural desire to be accepted by others is totally overpowering; it can eat away at everything. The meaning of life is nothing deeper than this – they like me, they hate me, they don’t even see me. And nothing can be done about it, really, to earn that place; perhaps it’s similar to the adult hierarchy, or like karma that you’re born into and are enclosed by until you’re old enough to step outside yourself and question it all, or at least old enough to rebel. To some extent the same rules apply in the workplace, only we call each other “colleagues” and “adults” etc.
The boy sat next to her and shared her classes, he drew on her notebook. For a few seconds she could even earn his attention, and the sensation, like for a few seconds the universe centred around her, caused both euphoric and nervous excitement and nauseating fear of scrutiny. He made her laugh but she didn’t dare make him laugh in case something rather stupid was said and it all fell to pieces, surely that’s how fragile these things were.
At his other side was an odd-looking long-haired girl who had been fortunate enough to be born in the middle, as it were, able to drift in and out of these arbitrary circles and cliques, earning her place with her smile or her cleverness, or should it be lost over a dispute over brand-names, bargained back with tears.
These rules, it should be pointed out, didn’t apply to such ones as the first girl; for her, you kept your friends solely on the basis of being fast enough to get your shoes on and chase after them. There was no question of bargaining, you were just expected to keep up.
They trudged through the snow, the three of them, on a class-assignment to stretch their measuring tape out over the soccer-goal and scribble down various mathematic results. The sky was purple and the snow up to their knees. Their breath was clouds of fog and their voices muffled by the cold air, chins hidden in wool scarves and hats.
The middle-girl fell behind a little, scooped up snow in her mit and threw a snowball at the boy’s back. He turned around, whiplash fast, and returned fire, both of them grinning, eyes alight. They warred until he fell over into the thick snow.
The lower-girl, the first, clutching her mittens together, aching to join in, watched him get to his knees and wandered over. She pushed him, perhaps a little roughly, back over.
Evidently this was wrong. One very strong twelve-year-old male arm lashed out at her, and he got to his knees again. He shouted curses in her general direction so she backed away, walking a fibre-thin line between the pleasure of play and dark, concrete fear. Two large mitted gloves over a set of narrowed, angry eyes pushed her with all their force roughly to the ground. He shouted and spat, kicked clouds of snow at her and generally hurled as much abuse as his hip-hop-trained vocabulary could muster. Then he marched away, leaving her terrified and rather heartbroken at his feet.
In the aftermath of this tiny and insignificant earthquake inside the lower-girl’s chest, the middle-girl gave her one last glance, decided her reputation was more important, and left. The boy stood some way away near the gymnasium with a crowd of friends, so small a figure from here you could almost squash him between forefinger and thumb – now suddenly he was a looming mountain and she was an incredibly small pebble. He pointed at her, mouthing, “She pushed me, crazy,” they shook their heads.
She picked herself up, dusted herself off, trembling, hiding this, deciding not to bother anymore with trying to attract too much attention, supposing boys were generally this way inclined. Later, she asked to change seats; denied, she wrote a letter and asked again, explaining why, and was moved, without a word said to the boy. They didn’t speak and when they did he taunted and blamed her, but to teachers this really is beyond their jurisdiction and why should they waste their time with playground politics, anyway?
I wonder if it changed anything, in the long run? Does it pursue her with childish insecurities when she sleeps? Is she the same timid girl or did she succeed in chasing her away? I guess it doesn’t really matter. They were only kids, after all.
Indie in a blur 