That’s really important stuff. Graduating means, I’ll go to high school in September. Getting my first pair of glasses means, I won’t have to sit in the front row anymore to see what’s on the blackboards. Also, my real father and my mother won’t be fighting any longer over whose going to pay for them. Going to work for The Ranch and what that means, is more than I can possibly imagine right now.
There’s one thing that I haven’t told anybody about. It happened at Robert’s party a couple of weeks before graduation. I’d never been to a real party like his before and was looking forward to going, and nervous about it too. There’s this one girl I liked and I’d told myself I’d ask her to dance. When I got there, everybody was kind of standing around just talking, eating potato chips and dip, drinking cokes and stuff, and trying to act big. The boys were with the boys and the girls with the girls. It was like nobody really knew what to do.
After getting a drink and some potato chips, I walked around saying “Hi” to everybody. But what I was really doing, was looking for her. She was one of the new girls who came to the school last year. She’s beautiful and tall and has beautiful hands with long fingers and she wears nice dresses, and she has breasts … and well, I just really liked her.
When I finally found her, she was sitting alone on a small couch, in a small dropped down area at the far end of the living room. I stopped and stood where I was, wondering what to do next. That’s when Robert came over to me and said “Why don’t you go sit by her?”
“Nah, I can’t do that.” But that didn’t make sense because I wanted to. Then he said, “Do it, she won’t bite you.”
After he’d gone, I quietly went over and sat down next to her, as I did my arm and shoulder touched hers. All I said was, “Hi” and then we sat there with our shoulders touching for a few moments, without speaking.
I saw her hand resting in her lap. I don’t know, I just reached over and took it, and as I did she just softly gave it to me. I sat there for a moment … without the faintest idea of what to do next. I knew her hand was in mine, that was for sure. Then it happened, she turned towards me and we both knew what the next thing to do was, kiss. So we did. The moment our lips touched, thousands upon thousands of things happened − inside, was no longer the inside I knew. It was an overwhelmed mass of explosive new sensations − unfamiliar, and somehow oddly known.
From then on, until the party ended, we kissed, one very long kiss. We had to keep experimenting and taking chances to keep this new, and extraordinary experience alive. I knew this, but what was so out of this world, invigorating and inspiring was, she did too.
Once, I had the idea to put my hand on her waist, but I couldn’t, it would have spoiled everything.
After … I don’t know how long, the other kids came over and started making noises, jokes, and saying things, desperately trying to get us to stop. They had no idea that the only thing that mattered to us was what we were doing. Their words quickly became sounds in the background like the music, they finally left, with nothing.
Later, as the air around us began to cool down, we slowly ended our kiss and sat there holding each others hand without saying a word.
The party was over. Robert came up to us, and with him that empty moment when I had to let go of her hand. The first thing he said to me was, “Do you know, the two of you sat there kissing for over two hours?” As if it had been a contest of some sort. I stood up as I said, “Wow, really two hours.” It was so awfully wrong to say that. Like when I lied about stealing that pocket knife last summer. I turned to look at her, but she’d already gone. She was with the girls.
That night, in bed, I laid there wide awake, unable to sleep. Sometimes laughing, astonished at what we’d done. Sometimes finding it hard to believe that we even had. I’d never held a girl’s hand before then and kissing a girl was the furthest thing from my mind. So, how did I know how to kiss with her like I did? How did she know? How did we know how to do all that we did together?
The next time I saw her was at school. I didn’t know how to act with her. So instead, I acted ridiculously.
The next week, there was a swim party at a private pool for the eleven us graduating. I did something then that I wish I hadn’t. Some of us were laughing and playing around the pool. She’d stopped to adjust the neck strap of her bathing suit. It was the boys, we saw her and tried to push her into the pool. I saw an opening and took it. The moment I did, I wished I hadn’t. I’d pushed her into the deep end. In the pool, in front of all of us, her top came down. She tried to pull it up but the water was too deep. Some of the girls dove in to help her. I saw her and then turned away, but not before I saw how much she hated me. I went to the locker room, put on my clothes. Then, called my mom to come and get me.
We still haven’t spoken, not even at graduation. But, maybe we will, after this summer, at high school. I hope so.
