He came into school like a little boy, eyes going everywhere, I remember. High school was made for kyle with his brown hair in his eyes and his cheekbones, but he lingered by the juice machine way too long on the first day. People didn�t remember him; girls discovered him in the backs of science classes, asking their friends in the hallway if there was a new boy. Girls were surprised when he wasn�t an exchange student.
I saw him, of course, saw him come home on the bus when my mom�s car pulled into our driveway and looked away when I went to get my backpack from the back seat. Kyle was too much work to befriend, and my mother preferred avoiding Beth Strauss, all casserole recipes and fat black braids, offering to baby-sit.
Something changed in him junior year and made him better, easier, more of a person. We appreciated it immediately; rob found it easy to ask him over and taught him the names of particular video games, got surprised at kyle�s taste in music. I still wondered sometimes, when he was half-squished under me on gretch�s couch watching horror movies, what he had done all those days at home. I was too shy to ask.
From the parking lot we pulled out squealing and drove to the liquor store two towns over, the dingy one. Gretchen pulled her hair back and pulled a face. ��Ow do I look?� she asked laughing, putting on the torch-singer French accent she used invariably on these kinds of trips. gretch�d inherited her cousin�s old learner�s permit, on which the girl wore dark-tinted glasses, obscuring half her face. No one knows how the picture passed, but legends have been made about this ID. Now twenty-three, Rebecca-with-the-glasses has access to everything necessary and everything alluring. I used it all of once, buying two six-packs, and I can still remember the woman behind the counter and her faded brown glance at my face. My Coronas clanked as I left, and gretch confessed on the ride home that she didn�t think it would work.
�Thanks for the faith,� I had said, legs still twitching, and handed the damn thing back.
Kyle looked at gretchen retreating into the automatic doors and flicked some hair from his eyes with exaggerated calm. �What are we getting again?�
�I told her to grab what she wanted,� I said. �We�re spending some of the manatee money, so it�s up to gretch.�
Last month gretchen ironed-on a picture of a manatee to a green t-shirt and went from door to door telling people she was raising money for the manatee fund, and would they please donate? She got four hundred in a week.