My entry into the public school system went about as well as you could expect. When my family couldn’t afford Christian school anymore, I started the 5th Grade at Martha Lake Elementary, and I fully expected it to be populated with Satanists, drug addicts, and 10-year-old pregnant girls. None of those things turned out to be true (except for that weird kid Rudy, maybe), but that didn’t mean that I fit in. I didn’t know anybody and I was shy, I had never been in a situation where I had to make new friends, and the other kids weren’t exactly waiting in line to befriend the poor kid in Salvation Army clothes (Macklemore’s Thrift Shop wouldn’t be released for another 25 years). So, I watched from the outside, waiting for an in.
And then I became aware of a girl. Gina Appleton was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. Her dark hair fell to her shoulders in shiny curls, and she had dark, soft eyes and long eyelashes to match. She had pale skin like a new china doll. Gina Appleton was one of the popular girls. She wore Guess? Jeans and a Swatch watch. She wore little sparkly earrings. She took such pleasure in refreshing her pink lip gloss, and with such slow, exacting precision, that you’d begin to wonder what it tasted like. She laughed a lot with the other girls, but it was a classy laugh, not loud and obnoxious like some kind of idiot. She wasn’t showy, but she unwittingly commanded my attention. Gina Appleton was dreamy. I dreamed.
When I’d spend the night at Curtis’s house—my best friend from my old school—we’d stay up late into the night talking about girls. He would enumerate the virtues and extol the exquisite beauty of a girl in his class named Dawnya, whom he’d sat next to on the bus during a field trip. I’d wax poetic about Gina Appleton. We desperately hoped that Fate would smile on each of us.
The kids in my 5th Grade class were crazy about friendship bracelets—the kind woven in patterns from embroidery floss—and I mean just bonkers. The more you had stacked on your arm, the cooler you were. I, of course, didn’t have any. One day while I was walking around at the edge of the playground at recess, I looked down and saw a light blue friendship bracelet. It was dirty and a little frayed, but goddamnit, it was a friendship bracelet. I picked it up as the bell rang, and I went back inside with my treasure.
Our desks were arranged in groups of four, and Gina Appleton was in my group. When I sat down at my desk, I showed the other kids what I found. They all about shit themselves. Gina, Melissa, and Ty jumped out of their chairs, clambering over the desks to get a better view, shouting in a chorus “Can I have it?! Can I have it?! Can I have it?!”
My mind began calculating my next move like a young Bobby Fischer. I could keep the bracelet and join the legions of kids that had them. Or, I could use the friendship bracelet to make a friend. Or, I could present it to the girl of my dreams. If I kept it, three people would be disappointed. If I gave it to one of them, the other two would be disappointed. If I specifically gave it to Gina Appleton, making any kind of romantic gesture, I may get teased by the other kids and suffer hearing her say something like, “Eww, he’s gross!” So, I did what any kid would do. I casually tossed the bracelet onto the desks between them for them to fight over like wolves, but with an extra little flick, I gave Gina the significant if unobvious advantage.
She snatched the bracelet up, waved it above her head and laughed in gleeful triumph as I tried to make eye contact. She slipped it onto her perfect, delicate wrist, and then Gina Appleton didn’t look at me again for a year.
By the middle of the 6th Grade, I had given up on Gina Appleton and turned my attention to Shawna Rowe. Shawna was tall and slender, a little freckly, played basketball like I did, and was nice to me at recess. She was nice to everybody. We would sometimes play one-on-one together at recess, and I’d receive a little electric shock when she’d brush my arm as she dribbled past me to score the winning layup. I didn’t mind losing to her as long as I could be near her, silently worshipping her graceful body as she made jump shots over my big dumb head, or staring at her waistline as she stole the ball from me.
At Curtis’s house, late at night, he would deliver oratories on the attraction and star-crossed soul connection he’d found with a girl named Barbara who he’d met in New Mexico on a family trip. I’d pine for Shawna Rowe. We continued to hope that Fate would smile on each of us.
But that spring, Shawna Rowe suddenly decided that Anthony was adorable. He was a gangly kid that liked to make weird noises, and for a week, she chased him around the playground yelling “We’re gonna get maaarrried!” as he ran away from her shouting, “Yiiiii!” I didn’t know what Shawna saw in Anthony. I wished I was as weird as he was.
On a sunny day in May, our teacher Mr. Watanabe had arranged for us to learn how to make homemade apple cider. We all went outside and gathered around an old-fashioned, wooden apple grinder and what seemed like a million boxes of red apples. The woman who’d brought all the stuff began telling us about the history of apples or something. I wasn’t listening. I’d just heard that Shawna Rowe had convinced Anthony to be her boyfriend. The whisper campaign moved through the group of students like a wave. Shawna and Anthony are going together. I looked over and saw them holding hands. Anthony looked scared.
“Going together” is a phrase that comes in and out of rotation next to “going out” and “going steady.” None of these make any literal sense to a 6th Grader, but the sentiment is clear: these two are now girlfriend and boyfriend.
Fate was not smiling on me. Or was it?
We began grinding apples. One kid would drop a few apples into the top of the grinder, and another kid would turn the crank in big circles. Mechanical teeth would eat away at the apples, dropping small, wet chunks of chewed-up fruit into a press below. I got my turn at the crank, and it was harder than it looked. But the burn in my arms felt good as I channeled my anxiety into the machine. I cranked faster, harder, watching apples disappear beneath the teeth.
After a couple of minutes, I had to give another kid a turn at the crank. I stepped back into the crowd, trying to disappear. That’s when Erika approached me.
Blonde-haired and blue-eyed, Erika was another of the popular girls. When she stepped up next to me and said my name, I was a little surprised.
“Doug, can I talk to you for a sec?”
“Uh, sure.”
Erika took me by the arm and led me away from the other kids.
“Gina Appleton likes you,” Erika told me in a confidential tone, “Do you like her?”
“What?”
I could hardly believe it. Gina Appleton? The Gina Appleton? Gina Appleton never spoke to me. I’d been invisible to her for so long. It didn’t seem possible that a girl of Gina Appleton’s caliber could be interested in someone like me. Maybe it was just springtime, and love was in the air. After all, Shawna and Anthony had just started going together that very day. Maybe they’d started a chain-reaction of infatuation as hearts found each other in empty space under the gravity of amour.
“Do you like her too?” Erika repeated.
I didn’t know what to say. I’d had a secret crush on Gina Appleton for so long, and she’d never noticed me. I’d placed her on the shelf of the unattainable and left that dream to collect dust. I’d spent the last few months hoping that Fate would bring Shawna Rowe and me together because I didn’t think Gina Appleton was even a possibility.
I looked up and saw Gina looking at me over the top of the apple grinder. She was smiling, almost giggling as she waited for her friend to report back. I began to notice, again, how beautiful Gina Appleton’s eyes were. How perfectly sculpted her cheekbones were. How soft her lips were. How luxurious her hair was. And, oh-my-god, this girl liked me, at long last. My skepticism gave way, and all of that pure, juvenile emotion I’d kept locked away came flooding back like the apple juice into the press.
“Yeah, I guess so.” I tried to sound as cool as possible. Steady as she goes, ol’ boy.
“Great!”
Erika ran back to Gina Appleton. I saw her whisper into Gina’s ear, her hand cupped around her mouth. Gina Appleton’s radiant eyes brightened and her angelic smile widened as she heard the news. My knees grew weak.
Erika made her way back to me again through the mob of apple-grinding kids.
“So, Gina wants to know if you’ll go with her.” My heart began to palpitate and my hands began to sweat. Lord Almighty, this was getting real.
“Yeah,” I said coolly, “I’ll go with her.”
Erika navigated herself back to Gina Appleton to relay the news. Gina looked up with a big smile and made her way toward me.
“Hi,” she said with a smile.
“Hi,” I said.
I was now “going” with Gina Appleton. The Gina Appleton. We were now an item. Gina Appleton was now my girlfriend, and I was her boyfriend. It was official. I nearly threw up.
“Do you want to sit down over here?” she asked, gesturing toward the wall of the building.
“Sure, if you want to.”
She guided me by the arm to a spot about ten feet away from the other kids, and we sat down on the ground in the sunshine, our backs leaning up against the side of the school. Mr. Watanabe and the apple lady were still busy teaching children how to make cider, having progressed to the pressing of the mash. But, now that I had a girlfriend, I was a man, and cider was for children.
“Are you having fun today?” Gina Appleton asked me in her musical voice.
“Nah, this is stupid.”
“I don’t know,” she said, looking in the general direction of the cider press, “I think this is kind of fun.”
“I guess it’s okay,” I admitted, “but it’s kind of boring.” The fact was, making cider was kind of fun, and it meant being outside in the sunshine when we’d ordinarily be in the classroom doing multiplication tables. But like many 6th Grade boys, I thought being cool meant acting like I was too good for everything, and I desperately wanted Gina Appleton to think I was cool.
Just like with Shawna and Anthony, the news about Gina Appleton and me began to spread by whisper through the class. I kept seeing people looking over at us, clearly impressed. My chest swelled with pride, and, being cool and all, I had to fight the grin that was trying to overtake my face. What do you think of me now?
I looked back at Gina Appleton. Her pale skin glowed in the sunshine, and I forgot about all the kids nearby. Time stopped, and I lost myself in her eyes while we sat there looking at each other. It slowly dawned on me that I had no idea what to do next. What now? Do I hold her hand? Does she expect me to kiss her? I’ve never kissed a girl before, and is she even that kind of girl? What does it even mean to be going together? I want to impress her and make her happy, but I don’t know what to say or do. How do I act around her? Do we spend all of our time at recess together? Do I pass notes to her? What would I write in a note? Am I now one of the cool kids instead of one of the smart kids? Would Mr. Watanabe be disappointed about that? Should I pick her some flowers every day? What other kinds of gifts should I give her? Will we love each other forever? Will we get married—
“I was just kidding.”
My train of thought derailed as her words arranged themselves in my head.
“What?”
“I was just kidding about going together. It was a joke.” She said it with a smile like I was in on the joke and would find it hilarious. She continued to smile expectantly, waiting for the humor of it all to sink in.
My face tightened. My stomach turned.
“Shawna going with Anthony was just a joke, too. It’s funny,” Gina explained. I glanced over to the other side of the courtyard to see Shawna Rowe laughing good-naturedly among a cluster of kids, Anthony laughing awkwardly with them. I looked back at Gina Appleton, who was still waiting for some kind of confirmation that I understood.
“I know. Pssh.” I said flatly, as if only an idiot would ever have thought otherwise.
“Cool,” she said as she got up.
Gina Appleton walked over to Erika and Shawna, all of them giggling in the way only elementary school girls can.
I remained on the ground, slumped against the wall, with the smell of crushed apples in my nose.
