by June Gray
“Because Henry is a jerkface,” she said and kept eating.
The colonel eyed me but said to her, “Can you expound on that?”
Elsie shook her head. Jason spoke up. “It was because at the homecoming dance last week, Elsie’s date was touching her inappropriately and Henry put an end to it.” Jason yelped. I was pretty sure Elsie kicked him under the table.
Mrs. Sherman shot me a look of gratitude. She loaded my plate with another slice of meatloaf and another heaping of mashed potatoes. “Well, we really appreciate that, Henry.”
Elsie sputtered. “What? You’re taking his side?”
“Yes. He did the right thing,” her dad said, and her face turned even redder. “Who knows what the boy would have done to you if Henry hadn’t put a stop to it?”
“It didn’t occur to you that maybe I was letting John touch me?”
The colonel’s eyes narrowed. “I should hope not.”
“Oh my God, you’re so sexist!” she shouted and pushed away from the table.
I was pretty miserable by then, my earlier feeling of vindication trumped by how awful Elsie must be feeling. But it was too late. Whatever anger she felt toward me had now been compounded by everyone’s support of me. I had inadvertently turned her entire family against her.
“May I be excused?” she said through her teeth, glaring at me through slitted eyes. Then she fled the room.
* * *
I stayed away for a while, giving her some time to calm down. By then I knew the way she worked: She had a wicked temper but she just needed to be left alone and she’d eventually calm down. Elsie was someone who forgave her loved ones freely; I just hoped I was still one of them.
After two weeks of refusing to talk to me, I’d finally had enough. I couldn’t stand not talking to her so I finally put a real effort into making her forgive me. I’d approach her at school; she’d walk away. I had people give her messages from me; she just threw the notes into the trash. One time, she even pretended to wipe her ass with it before going into the girl’s bathroom, presumably to flush it.
Finally, I knocked on her window one night. She pulled open the curtains and just stood there with her arms folded across her chest, refusing to unlock the window.
“I’m sorry,” I mouthed through the glass.
She just gave me a sassy look and shrugged, then reached to close the curtains.
I made a choking motion across my throat and pretended to punch myself in the jaw. I fell to the ground then jumped back up and punched myself in the gut.
She tried to hide a grin but I saw it, so I beat myself up some more for a good three minutes. That majestic piece of thespian artistry convinced her to open the window a crack.
“You’ve got five seconds,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I’m a dickhead.”
“Yeah you are.”
I smiled at her. “I don’t think you’re easy. I don’t even know why I said that. You’re the opposite of easy.”
She said nothing, just looked me with her big hazel eyes. I swear, sometimes I think she can see into my brain and read my thoughts, and it freaked me the hell out.
“Can we be friends again?” I asked.
“Why? What does it matter if we’re friends again?”
“Because you’re important to me,” I said. It’s weird; now that I look back on it, my most honest moments are almost always with her.
That did the trick. She gave me a hug through the window, and I went home, feeling like a weight had been lifted off my chest, replaced by something else, another little anchor of a feeling that I didn’t yet know what to call.
P.S. I think it was love.
4
Nina noticed the change in me after Elsie and I started talking again. Nina became even clingier. She was one of the most popular girls in school—and I suppose you could say I was pretty popular as well—so I didn’t understand why she was so insecure. She started to ask me if she was prettier than so and so, if she was skinny enough to be a model, if she had what it took to be on the Real World. I always said yes because I knew that if I said anything else, she would argue with me until she was blue in the face.
I just wanted some peace in my life; that’s why I told her what she wanted to hear.
I took Nina to the Shermans’ house one night because Jason’s mom, Elodie, wanted to meet her. Dinner was uncomfortable. Elsie was unusually quiet, just pushing her food around on her plate and not even looking at me. Nina, on the other hand, acted as relaxed as if she were eating at her own house. She talked to Elodie and John as if they were peers and even asked if Elodie used low-fat ingredients when making dinner.
The next day at school, I overheard Nina telling her friends that the Shermans’ house was a mess, and Elsie’s room was decorated like a little girl’s. I disputed the fact, but nobody listened to me.
Then Nina and her friends turned their menace on Elsie. I wasn’t aware of any of it until I started noticing Elsie’s moods when we came home from school. She’d go straight to her room and when she came back out for dinner her eyes were red. Her parents asked her about it but she would just glance at me, then shake her head. Eventually, I figured she must have told them because they stopped asking.
One day, Elodie asked me to help her load the dishwasher. I didn’t mind; I offered to help whenever I could. It was the least I could do since they fed me most nights of the week.
“Henry,” she said when we were alone in the kitchen. “I think you should be aware of something.”
I placed a plate in the dishwasher. “It’s about Elsie, isn’t it?” I asked. I leaned on the counter and prepared myself for the news. “Is she sick?” My heart clenched at the thought.
She shook her head, smirking at my dramatics. “No, not at all,” she said. “It’s about your girlfriend.”
I froze. “What about her?”
“Elsie told me that Nina and her friends have been bullying her.”
“That can’t be right,” I said. “I’ve never seen them do anything like that.”
“Elsie said they do it when you’re not around. They surround her at her locker and say mean things. Last week they trapped her in the toilet stall for fifteen minutes during lunch.”
I shook my head, still unwilling to believe that someone I was dating could be so cruel. “That doesn’t sound like Nina.”
“Apparently, Nina doesn’t like that you’re friends with Elsie. She wants Elsie to stop talking to you.”
I felt sick to my stomach. “I think I’ve got salmonella,” I said, clutching at my middle. “I feel like ralphing.”
Elodie laughed. “Henry, I think what you’re feeling is guilt.” She looked at me for a long time. “Look, I’m not your mother, so I can’t tell you who to date. I don’t know how much you like this Nina girl, but Elsie is my daughter, and anyone who hurts her is automatically on my shit list.”
I nodded, feeling mildly horrified that Jason’s mom had used a swear word in front of a minor. That’s how I knew she was dead serious.
“So if you could talk to Nina and tell her that I will wring her pretty little neck if she messes with my daughter again, I would appreciate it.” I must have looked aghast because she laughed and pinched my cheek. “Now be a good boy and finish loading the dishwasher, please.”
* * *
I really liked Nina, obviously. I mean, we went out for over six months. She was funny and sexy and we had quite a lot in common. Plus the girl could give head like nobody’s business.
I’m sorry, that was crass. But damn.
Anyway, as much as I liked Nina, I just couldn’t stand by knowing she was making Elsie’s life hell. I don’t have siblings but if I had a little sister, I knew I’d be as protective of her as I was of Elsie. So I ended it with Nina, telling her that I’d cheated on her with a girl from another school, throwing in that the
girl thought she might be pregnant.
That did the trick. Nina was a lot of things but she was not the girl you cheated on.
It was a huge lie but at least it took the heat away from Elsie. If I’d told Nina the real reason why I was breaking up with her, she would have made sure that Elsie’s life was a living hell, and I just couldn’t take that chance.
Of course, Nina made sure the rest of the school knew I was a cheating bastard, but since I already had a history of delinquency, cheating was just another notch on my proverbial Bad Boy Bedpost. I think, to some girls, it made me an even hotter commodity. Like maybe they wanted their hands on me so they could try to change me.
I noticed Elsie’s mood lift immediately. Her smiles reached her eyes and she was laughing again. It made me happy to see her in high spirits and it erased whatever lingering doubts I had about breaking up with Nina. That was the first time I realized that I would do anything to make Elsie happy.
I even almost stayed in Monterey, to attend the local university so that I wouldn’t have to be far from her, but the colonel talked some sense into me.
“You know that’s not where you ought to be, son,” he said to me one night. That was the first time I noticed that he called me son and it gutted me and filled me with pride. “You know exactly what your future will be like if you stay here.”
He made me believe that I was bigger than Monterey, that I was destined for adventure. “Do you really think I have what it takes to be in the Air Force?”
The colonel didn’t even hesitate. “Of course I do!” he boomed. The man had such a mighty presence. “I don’t know if you know this about yourself, but you are braver and more honorable than you give yourself credit for. ROTC and then the Air Force will bring that out in you, make you the leader that you were meant to be.”
I’d never actually felt like a leader, but I bought his words. He was a military officer, for crying out loud, only two promotions away from general before he’d retired. If the man told me to jump off a cliff because that’s the kind of man I was, I probably would have done it. I’d never even thought about my future until he welcomed me into his home.
In many ways, John Sherman was the father I had always wanted so I was going to do my fucking best to make him proud.
I was accepted into the University of Missouri with an ROTC scholarship, the same as Jason. The first day of college, I signed the contract stating I would enter the military after graduating, exhilarated and scared shitless.
My fate was sealed.
5
My senior year of high school came to an end. I was graduating with a surprising 3.8 average and was heading toward a prominent university to study criminal justice. The time came to say good-bye to something I’d loved yet abused all these years: my hair.
It was a month before graduation, but Jason suggested that we go ahead and buzz our hair in anticipation. We went in search of the hair clipper in his dad’s stuff but when it came time to use it, we both realized we had no clue.
“How hard could it be?” Jason asked as he held the clipper above my head.
“Don’t you need one of these things?” I asked, holding up a plastic guard.
“I don’t know.”
I panicked and ducked out of the way when the buzzing began. “Oh hell no. There’s no way you’re using me as a guinea pig.”
Elsie swept into the bathroom and promptly took hold of the shears. “Gimme.” She picked up a guard and put one on the device. “You were about to shave him bald, dumbass.”
I remember feeling an outpouring of gratitude toward her, and as I watched her hold the clippers above my head, I felt relieved. Somehow I knew I’d be in good hands. Elsie wouldn’t do my hair wrong.
She ran her fingers through my hair first, massaging my scalp a little, and thank God I had a beach towel wrapped around me because it gave me an instant boner. Then the buzzing began. I watched her face closely in the mirror as she touched the clippers to my temple so gentle and light, the hair falling away quietly. It didn’t even occur to me that my hair was really going to be gone; my entire focus was on Elsie’s face, the creamy skin on her cheeks turning a little pink because she knew I was watching her.
When I first met Elsie I thought she was cute in that pinch-cheeks kind of way, but that day, I studied her face in the mirror and realized she had grown into someone truly beautiful. I saw her almost every day so I didn’t really notice the subtle changes in her face until then, how her face had thinned a little, making her cheekbones more prominent.
I could barely breathe during that entire fifteen-minute haircut. My heart was pounding so loud I was sure she could feel it through my scalp. She did this thing where she bit her lip when she was clipping around my ears and it drove me absolutely nuts. I wanted so badly to bite down on those lips.
After she was done, she rubbed my scalp again, then faced me in the mirror. She smiled, proud of her handiwork, but her expression softened when our eyes met.
That was when I knew I was a goner. This girl—this young woman—in front of me was going to be my happily ever after, and for a kid heading off to college, that was the scariest feeling in the world.
Whatever terror I was feeling was quickly dashed when I saw the look of sadness on her face. “You okay?” I asked.
She swallowed and nodded. “You just look so different.”
I covered my shaved head with my hands. “It’s still me under here.”
“You’re gonna have fun in college,” she said and then took off.
“What’s her deal?” Jason asked, taking me by surprise. I’d forgotten he was even there.
I only shrugged. My heart was still thudding wildly in my chest, still reminding me that I had made a discovery that doomed me forever. So I used the default guy theory for when a woman was acting a little nuts: “Must be PMS.”
6
The weekend before Jason and I left for college, the Shermans threw a huge beach party to celebrate. We dug a huge circular trench in the sand, sculpting seating around the edges, then built a bonfire in the center.
The party was fun, but I was always painfully aware of Elsie, of where she was and what she was doing. When the sun was beginning to set, I noticed that she was missing, so I went looking for her.
I found her by the water’s edge, walking alone with a sweater wrapped around her shoulders.
“Hey,” I said, approaching her with my hands in my pockets. It was getting cold by then and I had on only a T-shirt.
She looked up at me and smiled. “Hey, I have something for you.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, wondering if I was going to get to kiss her for the first time. Spoiler alert: I don’t actually get to kiss her until years later, but at the time, I thought for sure what she was going to give me was a kiss.
“Hold out your hand,” she said and placed a damp pebble on it. Damn it.
“A wonky rock?” I asked, turning it over and over.
“It’s sort of shaped like a star,” she said, touching it with her finger. “I just found it.”
I wrapped my palm around it and stuck it in my pocket. “Uh, thanks.” I didn’t get it, but whatever floated her boat.
She laughed. “I know it’s silly, but I wanted to give it to you so you can remember me when you’re in college.”
“I don’t need a rock to remember you,” I said. “My head could be filled with rocks and I would still remember you. You could hit me with a huge rock and give me amnesia and I’d still remember you.”
She snorted. “Well, if nothing else, you are that rock. You can look at it and know that even though the elements can change your shape, you’re still you at the core.”
I fisted that rock tighter, a lump growing in my throat. “Okay.”
She stepped into my space and wrapped her arms around me. “I’ll miss you so much, Henry,” she said, and th
en, as if realizing what she’d done, pulled away. She was blushing.
My chest felt tight at the knowledge that this was the end of our times together. I decided right then that I’d show her how much she meant to me. As if reading my mind, she closed her eyes and angled her face up as I leaned down toward her.
Jason chose that same moment to come ruin the moment. “Guys, we’re breaking out the s’mores,” he called.
“All right,” I said, jumping away from his little sister. “We’ll be there in a second.”
Jason just shook his head and left.
I looked at Elsie and imagined her life if I kissed her now, then left for college. What I saw was a vision of her pining for me, refusing to date anyone because she was waiting for my return. It was romantic as hell but it gave me a bit of an ache in the pit of my stomach. There it was again, the salmonella poisoning of guilt.
So I decided to make our lives simpler and give her a chance to enjoy the rest of high school. “Elsie, I can’t give you what you want.”
She was taken aback by my words. “Huh?”
“You want me to kiss you, then you’ll want me to be your boyfriend, but that’s not going to happen.”
“Why not?”
“Because!” I said, throwing my hands up. I searched for a reason that would effectively close the door in her face. “Because you’re like a little sister to me.”
Her face fell, and my stomach hurt even more. “Oh.”
I looked out over the ocean, at the orange sun dipping below the horizon. It was such an appropriate symbol for us right then. “But I really care about you,” I whispered, kicking at the sand. I felt like such a jerk.
“Yeah, whatever,” she said through pursed lips. “I didn’t want anything from you, Henry. I just wanted to give you that rock.”