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Sparkle (0)
He loved her, had for ten years. And now, maybe, just maybe he was getting his chance. His second chance, really, but his first chance now that they were all grown up.
He remembered the first time he ever saw her. She was the new kid in his fifth grade class. She showed up one spring day sitting two desks over from him. He remembered her vividly because she was so different from the other girls in his class. And he should know because he was just beginning to get interested in girls and none of the ones he currently knew were anything like her.
As it turned out, she lived only two blocks over from him and soon they found themselves walking home from school together. Eventually she invited him to come over to her house and go swimming in their pool. He pretty much spent that magical summer between fifth and sixth grades in her pool. Much to his disappointment, he was never alone with her during these times. The pool was always full of friends and neighbors.
School started up and he was disappointed once again to find that she was in a different class than he. Recess and lunch made up for this in the form of freeze tag. Ah, freeze tag, the first fumblings of interaction between the opposite sexes.
And he spent the first half of the school year walking home with her. Sometimes when they would reach the corner where their paths diverged, they would stand on the corner until the light faded out of the sky and the streetlights came on, talking. He fell in love with her on that corner, his heart becoming her property forever.
Almost a year to the day he first saw her, he asked her to be his girlfriend. What a crazy day. He had mentioned his plan to a buddy of his who had managed to spread the word all over the entire sixth grade class by recess. At the end of the school day, when it was his plan to ask her, the entire class of sixth graders was gathered at the top of the ramp leading to the lower grass playing field, waiting, watching. It was overwhelming, terrifying.
Finally his friends shoved him forward while her friends did the same. Together they walked down the ramp, away from the crowd, settling on the railing next to each other. Having never asked a girl to be his girlfriend he simply said to her, “So, what do you say?” She was very quiet and then her answer, “Okay.” And that was it. They walked back up the ramp together, holding hands this time.
Strangely, their relationship didn’t really change all that much. They still played freeze tag and walked home together, standing on the corner talking for hours. Until sixth grade camp. He wrote her love letters every day while they were at camp, pouring his heart out to her. She never wrote back but he could see her sitting under a huge oak tree, smiling, while she read and reread them.
In his last note, he got bold, asking her to sneak out of her cabin on the last night and meet him under that oak tree because he wanted more than anything to kiss her. He was surprised when her best friend showed up at his cabin, holding the baseball cap that he had given his girlfriend as a token of his affection. Her friend didn’t say anything to him, just glared at him and thrust the hat out to him. He took it and she stalked away without saying a word. Inside the hat, he found tiny shreds of paper, every single love note he’d written to her, torn up. At the bottom of the scraps was a small blue piece of paper, folded in half. He dug it out, chest tight with tears, and opened it. It simply said, “I’m breaking up with you.”
That night after everyone was asleep, he snuck outside, the small lopsided, heart-shaped metal charm he’d made for her in one of the camp workshops clasped in his sweaty hand. He stood under the oak tree in the very spot where he’d seen her sitting and reading his letters. Eventually, he pulled his arm back and threw the little charm as far as he could out into the darkness. It landed somewhere without a sound.
Mercifully, summer came and with it school let out. He didn’t see her at all that summer, didn’t do much of anything really. His
