by Sarah Bannan
We looked at each other, wondered what it would be like to shop with Taylor and Tiffany and Carolyn, if they would make fun of our untoned stomachs, our slightly too rounded thighs. If they would laugh at stuff we thought was cute, or worse, tell us stuff was cute that wasn’t.
“I think we’re about to go home.” Jessica said this with her eyes lowered, her hand in front of her mouth, her long brown layers covering half of her face. She sucked at lying.
“Oh, totally. I should go home, too . . .” The phone lit up again, with Shane’s face. Carolyn put her finger in the air and mouthed “one sec.”
She picked up the phone. “Can I call you right back? I’m shopping with the girls.” And then we heard his voice, all muffled, on the other end. She laughed. And then said, “Totally. Call you in a sec.”
We said later that we wished they had talked for longer, we wanted to know what he needed from her, what they talked about and if he texted or if they did iChat or what. We wondered if we were part of “the girls” and if she ever talked about us, whether Shane even knew who we were. We talked about how cool she was with him, how it was awesome that she was able to reject his calls, wasn’t sitting around waiting for him all day. We wondered if that was why Shane liked her so much, ’cause she was so cool, so laid-back.
Carolyn looked at us and smiled. “Sorry.” We shook our heads, were quick to say not to worry. “But you’re coming to the big game tonight? And to Skate Night?” She did air quotes around the words “big game” and “skate night” and we thought it was funny. People sometimes forgot about that later – how funny she was.
“Uh-huh.”
“Cool,” she said, walking backwards. “And if you’re buying foundation, try it on in natural light.”
She said this in a nice way, not in the way that Brooke or Taylor would have, with a laugh and then an insinuation that we looked all trashy, too made up. “I only ever buy foundation after I’ve looked at it on me in daylight,” she continued, almost skipping. “Otherwise I look like a gypsy.” She turned around then and ran toward Taylor and Tiffany. We smiled when she said this, thought it was cool of her to tell us something like that, even if it was only small.
We went to the game. Stood halfway up the bleachers, in front of the fifty-yard line, all in a row, cheering and clapping and stomping our feet and looking around to see who else was there. It didn’t matter who we played, not to us, and even though we would say it didn’t matter if we won: it did. We didn’t understand all the rules in football, not really, but we watched our boys and we watched the scoreboard and we watched the cheerleaders yell and dance and sparkle.
We painted our faces before we went: bear paws on our cheeks and glitter on our lips and orange and black ribbons in our hair. We slipped Absolut into our Gatorade and we snuck sips of beer from cans hidden in the trunks of seniors’ cars. We watched the boys play their hearts out, watched Coach Cox scream for them to do better. And we watched Carolyn Lessing come to the bleachers halfway through, smiling and waving and stopping to talk to every other person she passed.
Usually, we won. That year in October, we won every home game we played. The guys were thrilled, the coaches ecstatic, the faculty delighted, our parents beside themselves. We were glad: winning made everything more fun, made everything feel better.
After every home game, we had Skate Night. Organized by the PTA or the coaches or maybe it was just some money-making thing from the Adamsville Bowl – it didn’t matter to us, not really, ’cause it was something we did. There weren’t many of those things, not in Adamsville, and Skate Night was fun, no matter what we said about it out loud. After the game was over, after the team had showered and changed, after we had gathered our banners and reapplied deodorant and put the GHDs through our hair one more time, after the band had locked away their instruments and after our parents had kissed us and told us not to stay out too late, after all that we got into our cars and we drove the four miles across town to Adamsville Bowl, where our school had the place for the night.
We followed Blake Wyatt’s mini-van into the parking lot, got a space around the back, and as we pulled in, we watched football player after football player hobble across the lot; we watched the cheerleaders run up behind them, grab onto their shoulders, pull themselves onto them, lighter than a backpack, prettier than anything.
We took our ribbons out of our hair, pulled out our mirrors, wiped off our face paint, tried to make the glitter look more subtle. And we remembered what Carolyn Lessing had told us earlier that day, but it was impossible to find natural light in the car at night.
Adamsville Bowl was just off the Stripline but behind it was a mile or two of farmland. When you parked around the back, you could see hay bales and cotton and corn or whatever, and there was hardly any sound – the Bowl was so big it blocked out the noise of the Stripline. Around the front, it was all lights and highway and trucks and cars, the odd ambulance or police car, the occasional lowrider blaring the Black Eyed Peas. We preferred to park around the back. Plus, you could sneak cigarettes there before you went in to skate.
Inside, the lights were dim, a strobe flashed across the rink and we watched as about half of our high-school class lined up to rent skates and put them on and gradually made their way to the center of the rink, where people had already started circling, the weirdo skate-freaks whipping around at a speed that made us dizzy.
We handed over five dollars to Miss Simpson, who was standing by the rental desk with a cash box and taking our names. She was wearing a sweater with a turkey on it and Jessica took a picture of it with her phone, uploaded it onto Instagram and let the comments start pouring in.
Miss Simpson smiled at us. “You girls look great.” She nodded as she spoke. “Just really, really great.”
“Thank you,” Lauren said, and she tucked her hair behind her ears, ran the other hand over it to make sure it had stayed smooth since we walked from the car.
“New make-up, maybe?” Miss Simpson squinted her eyes, as if she were really trying to figure out what was different.
We nodded and turned and rolled our eyes and wished we could go home and shower and change. What a loser.
We stood in the line for skates and we made jokes about how old and gross Adamsville Bowl was, how lame it was that our parents had had Skate Nights back when they were in school, how embarrassing it was that we’d had birthday parties here back when we were twelve. We laughed and we made fun of the owner, who was the son of the original owner and some kind of low-level alcoholic who was too stupid to realize that a place called Adamsville Bowl should really be a bowling alley, not a skating rink.
We laughed and rolled our eyes and looked around and then we saw Shane and Carolyn come in together, holding hands. People whispered and then people called Shane’s name and then Carolyn’s: the king and queen had arrived. We looked and then we stared. Shane was anti-PDA, everybody knew this, but he was walking so close to Carolyn, his tanned body all over hers, his size dwarfing her, making her look even skinnier than she already was.
We took our skates – orange and brown and crappy – and we sat on a bench and laced them up, but we didn’t take our eyes off of Shane and Carolyn. Nobody did.
They sat down on the bench next to us and, up close, we thought Shane was even hotter than he was from far away. His hair was long with little curls on the end and, when he bent down to take off his shoes, every muscle in his arm showed; he even had definition on his back. Jessica said she could see a little under his shirt and that he had a genuine six-pack, and that his body was completely smooth, like Brad Pitt’s or Ryan Gosling’s or someone.
Carolyn had her own skates. We watched her slide them on: low-tops, black with a turquoise stripe along the side, and we asked her where she’d gotten them.
“Some random store in the Village.” She smiled as she said this, and she finished tying the aqua-blue laces, bow and knot, bow and knot.
We looked down at our rented high-top skates, all brown and
abused.
“I did roller derby a little back home,” Carolyn said, standing up in her skates now, gliding back and forth as she talked. Shane didn’t say anything, but he put his hands around her waist, and we imagined what it would have felt like to have him that close, to have someone so not embarrassed to be near you.
“No way,” somebody said. We had seen that Drew Barrymore movie, but we didn’t know that this was something girls our age actually did. Like in real life.
“It’s no big deal.” Carolyn said this and we felt grateful toward her. She never wanted to make people feel bad. “I’d say you guys are much better skaters. I’m such a klutz.”
“Doubt it,” we told her. Shane looked back at us and mouthed “Doubt it.” It was the first time he’d actually spoken to us, and that was ’cause of Carolyn. Brooke would have never let it happen.
Carolyn said ’bye and gave a small wave and pushed onto the rink, waving to us and to other people as she began her first lap. Shane trailed behind her and then caught up, grabbing her from behind and nearly knocking her off balance. They laughed.
We looked around. There were already sixty or seventy people there, mostly juniors and seniors, but a few underclassmen too. Guys dressed in jeans and polo shirts that had been found by their mothers in the Birmingham Outlets, girls in Gap miniskirts and opaque tights and skinny sweaters.
On the rink, Carolyn skated like she really knew what she was doing but not like one of those losers who spent every free second doing laps and spins or whatever lame-o tricks they teach you in private lessons. She looked natural, relaxed, like everything was easy. She wore short denim shorts with gray patterned tights underneath, an over-sized Ramones sweatshirt, which we heard she had found in the Salvation Army. Under the strobe light her hair looked so shiny it could have been crystal and the height of the skates made her look like a model, she was that skinny. Her outfit was amazing, everybody said it. To her and to each other. And then there was Shane, in old jeans and a white t-shirt, and under the light he looked even tanner and stronger and better than usual. They were beautiful.
We never saw Brooke and Gemma that night, maybe they didn’t come, but that was weird, ’cause they were both really good and they went to almost everything. Andrew Wright came late, wearing distressed black jeans and a nappy gray hoodie that he never pulled down from over his head. He sat on one of the benches and he talked to some of the football players and we thought we saw Miss Simpson trying to talk to him at one stage too. He didn’t ever get on the rink. Andrew never did stuff like that, he always just sat around watching, waiting. Waiting for what, we didn’t know: to meet up with Shane or looking for Gemma or just trying to stay out of the house.
When the slow skate came on, only the couples stayed on the rink, and they would hold hands and, if they thought Miss Simpson had looked the other way, the guys would put their hands under their girlfriends’ shirts, the girls would kiss their boyfriends’ necks. We watched them, the golden couples, skating to “Love Story” by Taylor Swift and we felt sad watching them, most of the time, ’cause it was never us up there: skating, holding hands, prized.
There were only a dozen other couples on the rink at that stage and Carolyn and Shane were the most beautiful, the most perfect, of them all. They looked happy, we thought, like they had been together for years, like they would be together forever.
Jessica took a picture of them, skating close together, arms around each other’s waist, and later that night, Jessica sent it to Carolyn.
She replied: Tnx.
And, minutes later, she changed her profile picture on Facebook. Within twenty-four hours, it had 87 likes.
NOVEMBER
Honors English – Miss Simpson
Carolyn Lessing
1 November 2010
Romeo and Juliet: Contrasts
Question: Please analyze the following section from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, outlining the meaning of the piece and also how Shakespeare uses language to express the meaning. You might wish to detail how the piece is relevant today (if at all). In the final section, please outline any areas you would like us to further explore in class.
Romeo and Juliet, III, v
Juliet:
Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day.
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear.
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree.
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
Romeo:
It was the lark, the herald of the morn;
No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.
Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
Juliet:
Yon light is not daylight; I know it, I.
It is some meteor that the sun exhales
To be to thee this night a torchbearer
And light thee on thy way to Mantua.
Therefore stay yet. Thou need’st not to be gone.
Romeo:
Let me be ta’en, let me be put to death.
I am content, so thou wilt have it so.
I’ll say yon grey is not the morning’s eye;
’Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia’s brow.
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads.
I have more care to stay than will to go.
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.
How is’t, my soul? Let’s talk. It is not day.
Juliet:
It is, it is! Hie hence! Be gone, away!
It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
Some say the lark makes sweet division.
This doth not so, for she divideth us.
Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes.
O, now I would they had changed voices too,
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunt’s-up to the day.
O, now be gone! More light and light it grows.
Romeo:
More light and light: more dark and dark our woes!
In the above passage from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the visual contrasts that Shakespeare evokes work to emphasize the contrasting feelings of euphoria and dismay that the title characters will experience throughout the play. While the exchange between the two characters is light-hearted, the use of light and dark, day and night, life and death, all highlight the main conflict of the play.
This passage begins after Romeo and Juliet have spent the night together, and the text shows that Juliet does not want Romeo to leave. She feels full and complete when they are together, and will make up any story to encourage him to stay. Romeo would also like to stay with her, but reminds her of the reality of their situation: “I must be gone and live, or stay and die.” Juliet continues to encourage Romeo to stay with her, and is so deeply attached to him that she imagines the world and the heavens are working to keep them together. She explains that the light they see is not the dawn, but “some meteor that the sun exhales.”
When Romeo begins to play along, however, Juliet starts to understand their situation more fully. He tells her that he would die for her: “Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.” While it is clear from the tone of the verses, and from the scenes that immediately come before this, that the words are said as a joke, this provides important foreshadowing for the play. When the couple stay together, they are endangering their lives. Juliet realizes this, no matter how she may have pretended earlier: “O, now be gone!” The final line of this piece reinforces the danger that the couple are in again: “More light and light: more dark and dark our woes!”
The contrasting images within the text also underl
ine the differences between Romeo and Juliet’s families. Everything is one thing or the other, there seems to be no middle ground: “It was the lark, the herald of the morn; No nightingale”; “Yon light is not daylight.” Yet the fact that Romeo and Juliet can have such a debate, light-hearted though it is, about the subject, shows how vague and complicated these definitions can sometimes prove to be. They are not as different as they might seem.
Shakespeare dramatizes the feelings that most young couples have: the pressure to date those who are from one’s social group, to be accepted, to fit in. Equally, he captures the intensity of our feelings for one another: when we fall in love, we do so fully and it is impossible to feel complete without the other person. While we have had some discussion in class as to whether Romeo is in love with Juliet (as opposed to lust), I would like to have further discussion regarding Juliet’s feelings for Romeo, which I regard as true and meaningful, and reflective of how a young woman might feel when falling in love for the first time.
Grade: A-
This is really excellent work, Carolyn. Nice control/grasp of the text and insightful analysis. Very well written and neatly structured. Slightly heavy on quotations, and could use more of your own writing in the next essay. All in all, though, very good. You have a flair for Shakespeare! Keep it up.
Chapter 13
Every morning, we listened to “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the daily announcements over the loudspeaker. We heard about contests or drug awareness or club achievements or some other issue of the week. Mr Overton asked us to type them up for him every morning and put everything in 16-point font, so he could read it. We wrote students’ names phonetically so he wouldn’t mess up, but he always did.