Carnations

On my first day of eighth grade I wore combat boots, a black miniskirt, and a little black T-shirt with a daisy silk-screened on the front of it. I had spent hours choosing that outfit the night before, picking the perfect baby barettes to hold back my hair so that everyone could see my newly pierced ears, making sure there were no runs in my black knee-high stockings, painting my nails with three coats of iridescent blue polish. At precisely 7:15 in the morning I clomped through the back door of the middle school, my head held high and my nose filling with the slightly musty, chalk-dust-and-body-odor smell of everyone’s preteen years. By the thick orange light that means the end of August, the year was an empty locker between the cafeteria and the special ed rooms, not yet cluttered with nine months’ worth of schoolwork. As I stacked my textbooks in a square-cornered column that I knew would not last the week, I swore to myself: This will be the year that I keep it all clean. This year will be good. This year will be different.

First hour was science class. As soon as I took a seat in the front row, the voices began. “Is that who I think it is?” “Yeah, same old braniac, same old teacher’s pet.” “Oh my God...what is she wearing?” “Is she trying to convince us she’s not really a boy?” “Well, at least now she’s ready for Halloween. What a freak.” The last was spoken by a cheerleader who ran her fingers (green and orange from a botched self-tanning job) through her bottle-blonde hair (brittle from too much mousse) as she walked to the pencil sharpener, only tripping twice in her three-inch-high white plastic platform shoes. I hung my head until my cheek rested against the smooth, cool surface of my desk. And then I saw you, also sitting in the front row but on the other side of the room, briefcase sitting open in front of you, engrossed in a well-thumbed copy of Robert’s Rules of Order. I wanted to speak to you, tell you that this year I’d come back a better person, but I knew it was too dangerous for both of us. The cheerleaders in the back row would draw blood with their words for far less.

You were a short, scrawny kid with limp brown hair. Your gold-rimmed glasses were too big for your narrow face and were always sliding down your nose. You wore button-down shirts, neatly pressed slacks, and shiny dress shoes while the rest of the kids lived in Guess? jeans and No Fear T-shirts. We carried backpacks slung over one shoulder in an aloof slouch we’d picked up from older siblings; you clutched a fake leather briefcase (bulging with pens and books and worksheets neatly completed weeks ahead of time) protectively to your shallow chest. I saw you in the halls every day, striding purposefully to class, eyes fixed on something far ahead of you, never responding to the ridicule that followed in your wake—as though if you ignored the world, it would go away.

We had seventh grade social studies class together. The desks were arranged in a semicircle, and we sat on opposite sides of the room: you in the corner, me halfway out the door. We used to get into screaming matches over issues we thought we understood: politics, religion, philosophy, ethics. After seven years of educational boredom interrupted only by the taunts that broke the surface of my quiet, solitary, smart-girl world of books and words, you were the closest thing I had ever found to an intellectual equal. On good days the rest of the class fell away and it was just you and me, facing each other down, speaking the language of ideas.

But ideas couldn’t save you the day the cheerleaders in the back row noticed you cleaning your glasses—by popping the lenses out, putting them in your mouth, and sucking on them. This was strange behavior even to me, your fellow freak, and of course the cult of popularity jumped at this opportunity. One girl leaned across your desk and shoved her too-heavily-made-up face into yours. She called you some relatively uninspired names, snatched your glasses out of your twitching hands, threw them to the floor, and kicked them across the room. You sat in your desk, half-blind, face turning slowly crimson, your protests overwhelmed by the shouts and applause of our classmates as they batted your mangled glasses across the floor like kittens with a catnip mouse.

And then the glasses came to rest in front of my desk. Your eyes, seeking my outline within a blur of animosity, belonged to a white fish skulking along the ocean floor, so recently risen from the depths of the trenches to a cruel and sun-drenched surface. I was supposed to pick your glasses up and bring them to you with a quiet dignity that would insult the maturity of all present. But you had to know that if I did, it would put me at their mercy once again. How could you ask me to trade my dignity for yours, even if you were asking me to do the right thing?

For a moment I lived in one of those moral dilemmas about which we spent entire class periods arguing. But now, so distant from rhetoric, I couldn’t bring myself to act. So I sat there, sliding your glasses back and forth between my feet while the cheerleaders in the back row watched expectantly, until the girl next to me raised her foot and crushed them. I stared at the floor as you ran out, tears streaming down your puffy face.

That afternoon we had rehearsal for the school play, “Aladdin.” I played the princess’ evil stepmother, and you were my petulant son. Between my scenes I rested on a pile of thick blue gymnastics mats, shrouded in dust, dreaming myself into a place where I didn’t have to worry about what cheerleaders thought of me. You came to me there, full of pride and accusations: I had broken your glasses. I would pay for them. If I didn’t, your parents would sue my parents. I told you I didn’t break them, and you said, “You might as well have.” I knew you were right, so I stopped talking and shoved you into the wall. You threatened to involve your good friend the principal, and I called you a name even less creative than the one the cheerleader had called you that morning. You started screaming for the director, who arrived just in time to see you struggling vainly to escape from me. She called my mother. I was grounded for the weekend and, every day until the play was over, had to obtain the director’s signature on a form created by my mother which would ensure her I had behaved well throughout rehearsal. But my greatest ignominy was your satisfied smile, projected to me every afternoon from across the stage. You always were insufferable whenever you were right.

The summer after seventh grade I saw my first episode of Star Trek. Boredom and curiosity had impelled me to curl up in my basement with a bowl of popcorn and a tape of the Next Generation Marathon, and five hours later I was hooked. I spent the summer watching all the Trek I could get my hands on. But no obsession is complete without others who share it. I’d seen the dog-eared Klingon dictionary you carried everywhere you went, and I could hardly wait for school to start again so I could show you who I’d become, to make you forget the wrong I’d done you.

In Spanish class we were both assigned to a group project with a cheerleader who, by some miracle, seemed interested in me for something other than the punch line to a joke or answers to tough test questions. To her, I was still a funny-looking geeky teacher’s pet tomboy, but a funny-looking geeky teacher’s pet tomboy with real social potential. This was my exit from a world of bullying and name-calling, if I could only stay on her good side for long enough.

And then you had to mention Star Trek. We were working on a poster and you made a reference to Captain Kirk. The cheerleader rolled her eyes and said, “Omigod, that show is so lame. Only losers watch it.” My confession was halfway out of my mouth before I choked it back in a fit of coughing. The cheerleader continued to gaze at me warmly while you hid beneath a constantly thinning veneer of cold, calculating, Spock-like logic. My façade of mediocrity was safe for the time being.

That night I dreamed of wandering through the whitewashed halls of my family’s church, looking for my best friend. I stopped everyone I saw and asked if they had seen her, but none of them could help me. As I passed through the foyer I heard a distant roar coming from outside. I opened the door and stepped out onto the lush green lawn, softly lit by shafts of summer sunlight. Directly in front of the church was an enormous vat sunk into the ground. Hundreds of people had gathered there. They stared down into it, laughing, cheering, applauding. Curious, I pushed my way through the multitude. The sides were so high that I had to stand on tiptoe to see what it contained.

The vat was filled with dark, thick brown mud which stunned my nostrils with its rancid scent of decay. And there you were, up to your armpits in the middle of it all, your crisp dress clothes caked with dirt, your glasses crooked on your pale face. The sides of the vat were too tall for you to reach up and pull yourself out; every time you tried the mud sucked you back in. The more you struggled, the more the crowd laughed. Earlier someone must have taken pity on you and called the fire department, because three firefighters were in the vat with you, but their slickers and boots made them heavy and slow and they were stuck just as badly as you were. I could see it would take someone on the outside to get you out of this mess—someone who could be in the crowd without being the crowd. Someone just high enough above you to reach out a hand and let you do the rest on your own. Someone who knew what it was like to be in the mud.

And in my dream it was so clear what I had to do. I screamed at the crowd to go away. They stayed anyway, laughing even harder—this time at you and me both. For the first time, I didn’t care. I leaned over the edge, calling your name. You looked up, and your blue eyes filled with relief. As I woke I was stretching down into the vat, toward the mud, reaching for your dirty hand.

The next day in Spanish you quoted a line from the previous night’s Voyager episode (which I had seen, of course). The cheerleader rolled her mascara-encrusted eyes, but before she could speak I responded with a quote of my own. She raised an overplucked eyebrow at me, and I said, “Hey, stop it. I like Star Trek too.” I don’t think we ever finished that poster; we were too busy talking about our favorite episodes. And every time I looked at you your face held not disguising logic but surpassing gratitude—the same expression you’d worn in my dream.

That year the school play was “Beauty And The Beast.” You were the arrogant prince. I was the old witch who turned you into a beast after you shut her out of your castle. We still got in trouble during rehearsal, but this time for laughing too loudly while poring over Star Trek books while the rest of the cast was on stage. So we’d move into the hall and talk about our annoying younger siblings and play poker with peanut M&Ms for ante. I always won because you couldn’t bluff to save your life. You owned the entire collection of Star Trek movies, which you let me borrow one at a time. After you lectured me for accidentally scratching the cover of The Wrath Of Khan, I returned The Search For Spock protected by ten layers of Saran Wrap held together with Scotch tape. You tried not to be amused. You showed me the dozens of Star Trek action figures you kept on the top shelf of your locker, hidden under a stack of A-plus book reports, and I was impressed. I showed you the yellow journal of my poetry, which until now I had slammed shut and thrown into my backpack if anyone got close enough to read over my shoulder, and you were amazed. We’d wander through the deserted grey-white halls of the middle school, a boy in a shirt and tie and a girl in overalls and a beret, heads bent close in conversation. And then I’d say something you thought was funny and your laugh would ring like a pebble in the still clear stream of the afternoon.

On weekends you’d call at eight in the morning and wake me up, always under the pretense of a question whose answer you already knew: the names of all the episodes in the seventh season of The Next Generation, the stardate given for a particular captain’s log. I’d lie in bed, clutching your voice to my ear, and wait until the conversation turned into what you wanted in the first place: a good old-fashioned argument, which would continue until the battery in my cordless phone ran out. But in class we still sat on opposite sides of the room, refusing to bend one inch toward the other, wanting so badly to believe that neither of us could ever be wrong.

In May I did the bravest thing I’ve ever done. Before Spanish class I crossed the room and stood next to your desk, wringing my small hands together behind my back. “Yes?” you said, looking up from a book on the space program.

And in a rush I said it. “I was wondering if you would maybe like to go to the eighth grade dance with me.”

You peered over your glasses with eyes like microscopes. I looked away, afraid that if I met them I would discover myself reflected in their faded irises. “I’ll think about it,” you said, and went back to your book.

Three silently nail-bitten and bad-poetry-filled days later, you stopped me in the hall between classes. With a curt nod of your head, you said, “I have decided I would be pleased to escort you to the dance next weekend,” and walked away.

News travels fast in middle school. By lunchtime it seemed like the whole eighth grade had come to me seeking confirmation of the day’s big rumor, and I had given up trying to deny it. All that remained was a week and a half of the cheerleaders’ verbal sniping. “Oh my God, is she really that desperate?” “Yeah, she needs a real man like my boyfriend.” “Is she a lesbian or something?” “See, she really is a boy, that’s why she’s dating a sissy.” “I can’t wait to see the freaks together.” Soon it convinced me that my eight-grade dance experience would be like one of those humiliating-but-true stories in the front of the magazines the cheerleaders tucked inside their math textbooks during class: YM, Tiger Beat, Seventeen. I’d asked you because those magazines told me that if I didn’t have a date to that dance, I’d be even more of a freak. I’d done my part, and now it was your turn. When I opened the door to the gym I wanted you to have been transformed overnight into a ruggedly handsome male model in a tuxedo who would hand me a dozen roses and whisk me off to the Bahamas when the night was through. And then you’d give me a kiss that would transform me, too, into someone beautiful and perfect and normal, good enough to join the ranks of the pretty girls dancing their anorexic waltzes across the glossy pages of Teen.

On the night of the dance I wore a little black dress with spaghetti straps, a grey-and-black blouse, nude pantyhose, and black pumps. I walked into the middle school gym amidst a horde of similarly dressed fellow thirteen-year-olds bubbling over with excitement. I paid my $3 and got my hand stamped...and there you were, waiting outside the doors to the gym, nervousness and impatience creasing your pale brow. You wore a navy blue three-piece suit and a matching tie with a little gold polka-dot pattern. In your arms you held an oblong package wrapped in brown paper. “These are for you,” you mumbled, handing it to me. Inside were three yellow carnations, decorated with a shower of baby’s breath, smelling like newness and spring. They were the first flowers I had ever received. I thanked you, quietly, shyly.

Together we walked into the gym. The student council had decorated it with crepe paper and balloons and tinsel, but all their efforts couldn’t hide the fact that it was the same gym where we’d both been humiliated time and time again in dodgeball. We were both too shy to dance, so we sat on the bleachers. The music was too loud to carry on a conversation, so we stared straight ahead onto the dance floor. All the boys except you were wearing jeans and baseball caps and had congregated in a corner to punch one another and stomp on balloons. The girls danced clumsily in their high heels, pausing occasionally to shoot disgusted glances at their oblivious dates. We were the only couple actually within arm’s reach of one another. We must have sat there for an hour, alone together with our stilted thoughts, until you suggested a trip to the refreshment room.

When I think about the rest of that night, I think about sitting at a cafeteria table next to you, nibbling on a party sub and sipping Hawaiian Punch. There were five other boys at the table, fellow nerds who had been unable to get dates and couldn’t tell me why they’d come to the dance in the first place. We discussed Star Wars and argued about who would win a fight between Batman and Spiderman. My knowledge of geek culture clearly impressed them. I didn’t know it then, but every one of those boys became my friend that night, and would continue to be throughout high school. I think about the way every muscle in your body tensed when, while having our picture taken, the photographer suggested you put your arm around my waist. I think about the way your hand trembled when I brushed it accidentally. But mostly I remember standing in the doorway, staring into the gym, and hearing the DJ announce the last song of the night. And you turned to me, extended your hand, and said, “Would you care to dance?”

We stepped onto the dance floor, staying at the edges of the crowd. You turned to face me and extended your arms, perplexed. “I don’t know how. I’ve never done this before.” So I showed you. I took you in my arms and taught you how to slow dance, swaying in time to the music (“End Of The Road” by Boyz II Men), being so careful not to step on your feet. And when the song ended you hesitated for only a moment, long enough to say, “I had a very good time tonight. Thank you,” before you pulled away, turned on your heel like an Army cadet, and marched out the door.

I have a photograph of us dancing that night, your right hand light on my waist, my left hand perching on your shoulder, your left hand clasping my right hand loosely. There is a gap between our bodies which seems to grow wider every time I look at the picture. Your eyes are fixed on a point above my head, your glasses sliding down the bridge of your nose, your mouth hanging open, captured in the middle of some forgotten conversation. And I am looking coyly at the camera with a soft secret smile on my closed coral lips, a memory sent across years and miles, as though I am saying to myself: Remember this moment, because you will never get another like it.

Even I couldn’t tell you what happened after that. I didn’t see you over the summer, but we had classes together as freshmen, and of course our arguments resumed. But this time, something was different. I finally figured it out when, before English class, I was telling a friend about that Saturday Night Live sketches with Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd doing “Point/Counterpoint,” and how after Jane had given her liberal feminist perspective on a current issue Dan would always start his conservative rebuttal with, “Jane, you ignorant slut.” And just as I got to the punch line, you turned around and barked, “I’m getting awfully concerned about your dirty mouth.” And that’s when it hit me. Before then all the anger and disapproval had been left behind in our discussions. All the respect we’d had for one another had been spent in the clumsy stumblings of our single dance together, the one time we’d tried to meld our bodies along with our minds. The passion was still there, crackling on either side of the gap between us, but the friendship that had bridged it was gone.

But maybe it’s not so simple. Do you think I didn’t see the grin that slid across your face whenever I said something outrageous? Do you think I don’t know about the story you wrote, where you changed two letters in my name and married me to a character with a name two letters different from yours? Do you think I wasn’t there when one of our classmates asked you who your best friend was, and the hesitant glance you threw in my direction answered it? And did you ever think it would be easy to befriend your polar opposite—or that it would be any easier to become more than that?

So for the rest of our high school careers we drifted steadily apart. Our arguments cooled, then finally evaporated altogether. You took classes at the university while I slacked off. You stopped watching Star Trek because your student council work took up all your time; I gave up on it after Deep Space Nine went off the air. I couldn’t get a date for our junior prom. You took a girl you called every three days for the kinds of conversations you refused to have with me anymore. I heard you brought her roses.

The summer after we graduated I worked as a cashier in a discount store. You came through my lane one afternoon, buying razor blades. I said hello as I rang them up. You said my name with a curt nod of your head. You paid in cash and walked away without another word, the sliding doors opening and closing to usher you out into the parking lot, older, changed, away from me. I wanted to scream after you, Is this the way you want us to end? A curt business transaction, with all your debts paid off in the most uninteresting way possible? I had once imagined we would annihilate each other in one final transcendent argument, two great truths trying to prove which was truer until nothing remained but the paradox. But over the years I moved enough to see your side of the chasm, although I never stood there myself. That was how I came to terms with you. Did you come to terms with yourself by forgetting me?

I still have the carnations you gave me, dried and faded now but still intact. I keep them on a shelf over my bed. I don’t want to move them because every time I try more of the petals begin to flake off, falling to my floor in a shower of dead dust. If I touch them too frequently, caress the memories hidden between the tightly folded leaves, soon I will be left with nothing.

You were the only boy I ever liked for whom I worked up the courage to tell him how I felt. But sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t asked you to that dance, if I’d stayed on my side of the room stroking my fear like a freezing kitten, if I’d kept things friendly and platonic and safe. Would you still be calling me every night, lending me your prized possessions, showing me the darkest and most secret parts of you? Would we still wait to be outraged by what the other would say next? I tend to doubt it. Maybe two opposing passions, like the opposite ends of a magnet, can only stay near each other so long before universal forces push them apart again. If that’s the case, I’m glad it ended the way it did. You lingered so long on the edges of my perceptions that for awhile there if I squinted I could pretend you stood right in front of me.

I don’t pretend to know where we go from here. Maybe we’ll learn that our differences couldn’t keep us apart after all, and be drawn to each other once again. Maybe I’ll speak to you again and make the ending of this thing pleasant and perfect and neat in the same way we never were. Or do we simply die, carnations rotting in pieces beneath the dust of my room, common and maudlin, forgotten to everyone but the one who received them and, in some equally hidden part of her memory, still holds them tightly in her sweating hands?

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