Page 11 of Who's that Girl?
“Wait!” I call, several seconds too late. “What’s your name?”
But the girl doesn’t reply. She’s already gone.
~
I thought about the girl from the Christmas tree lot many times, for years, but I never really expected to see her again. Still, whenever I went anywhere where there was a crowd, I looked for her, hoping to spot a pink backpack, a flash of auburn hair. (I learned, eventually, that red hair that isn’t exactly red is called auburn.)
When I started high school, I searched the crowds of new kids from different feeder schools for her face, for those coppery tiger eyes. She was nowhere, which made sense. That tree lot was way outside of town, in the mountains. She could be from out of state. She could be from anywhere.
And then, all of a sudden, in the fall of my Junior year, there she was, wandering the halls of Oakridge, in a little band of Freshman. Watching her drift past me in the hall felt like the beginning of a sort of fever dream. I did a double take.
I couldn’t believe it. She looked different, much older — like a grown up, practically — but it was definitely her. Same hair. Same eyes. She even had the same chubby cheeks.
As my own crew slid past hers in the hallway, I remember some dickhead from the football team gripping me around the neck and his hot breath in my ear.
“Earth to Mason. Come in Mason. Where’d you go, man? You look like a zombie.”
I’d shaken my head, trying to clear it.
“Sorry man. I just forgot something in my locker. I’ll be right back.”
I couldn’t let her get away.
I’d slipped free from his arm, and zipped off down the hall, following the Freshman, but staying a few feet behind the girl and her pack of friends. I could hear her voice. She was monologuing. And it was so weird and so cute. Just like I remembered her being.
“No, but seriously,” she was saying. “Every time I feel something small in my mouth — like a bit of leftover popcorn or whatever — I don’t think leftover popcorn, you know? I think bug. Because it probably is a bug! It’s just the most likely scenario. I’ve researched this, okay? So don’t laugh. And I’m not the only one. The search how many bugs do we accidentally eat a year? has like a bazillion results. And I don’t even think that includes spiders.”
“So,” asked one of the girl’s nameless, faceless friends. “How many is it?”
“It’s really disturbing. Upsetting even. I’m not sure I want to tell you. Are you sure you want to know?”
“Just tell us, Claire!”
Claire. That was her name. Claire.
“Brace yourself,” she said. “It’s more than a pound. It’s one-to-two pounds. Of bugs. Per person. Per year. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of us!” She grinned and just like I remembered, her whole face lit up.
“Ugh. That is disgusting,” replied one of the girls.
The little group had stopped in front of a bank of lockers — in front of my bank of lockers, lucky! — and I’d stopped too. I was staring at them. Like a crazy person.
All of a sudden, they seemed to register my presence, and they did what Freshmen girls always seemed to do in my presence lately. They dissolved into giggles and sort of shuffled together into a clump.
It started happening just after my own Freshman year. After I grew six inches, packed on thirty pounds of bulk, and became the varsity QB. Suddenly, girls would giggle in my presence. Constantly.
I tried to catch the girl — Claire’s — eye to smile and see if she might recognize me, but about a millisecond after she felt my eyes on hers, she dropped her gaze to the floor. She didn’t giggle like her friends, but she clearly didn’t want to look me in the eye.
“Hi, girls,” I said. Lame. But it was the first thing I could think to say.
No answers. Only more giggles.
Claire was staring at her shoes.
I didn’t know what to do.
“Um,” I said, “I just need to get to my locker there,” I said, gesturing to the bank of lockers behind them.
Again, they didn’t answer. They just giggled. And then one of them grabbed some of the other girls’ hands and pulled them away. The clump of giggling disappeared around the corner.
