Sh-SHAW- ShuRA

Blue birds flew south for the winter, below the gray clouds and above the heads of high school students. I watched them flying in formation while my pencil tapped pointlessly at the paper on my desk. I tried to pay attention to Mr. Frank and his slide show about the French revolution, but I couldn’t get into it that day. I couldn’t even look like I was paying attention. I’d never tried it before, but that day I was looking for my house through the classroom window. I was hoping on some level that I wouldn’t see it, yet I kept scanning over the trees back and forth. I stayed in this trance until the final bell rang to set us free, like another flock of birds flying home, but without formation. Mr. Frank nodded to me as I left. I nodded back to acknowledge him, and then immediately wondered why.

It’s not that I didn’t like Mr. Frank, and I won’t say that I’m in love with the man either, but the need that some people have to acknowledge others when they see them, or to be acknowledged, had always seemed strange to me, not that I was anywhere beyond that need. Why had Mr. Frank nodded to me? I wasn’t his best student, nor, I’m sure, one that he respected any more than I did him. And then, why did I nod back? It seemed like the kind of thing a person might do if they were met with any sort of eye contact from another individual, but really didn’t have anything to say. If that were the case, I thought, than what’s so bad about simply not saying or doing anything? Was Mr. Frank afraid he might hurt my feelings if he’d simply let the moment pass? And was I for some reason afraid of hurting his by not returning the gesture?

As I made my way down the crowded hallway, I shook the thoughts from my head. They seemed like the inconsequential kind that might be good for those with the spare time to explore them, but unfortunately I lacked the luxury. School had let out and the weekend begun, but I by no means considered myself to be on break yet. Instead, I felt a certain dread for what was coming next, and found myself almost wishing for detention.

See, in less than half an hour I’d be meeting my very recent ex girlfriend, Michelle, for exactly however long it would take to trade boxes full of each other’s crap, and if it were only my things, I might have called it off and told her to burn or piss on whatever she wants, because I really didn’t care about my old sketchbooks or magazines, or the beat up old sweatshirt I’d seen more on her than ever on myself. However, the things she’d left with me were a bit more personal, or some just too expensive to part with. An iPod, a diary, a few pairs of socks and panties, etc. – the kinds of things that, even if she didn’t want them back, she at least didn’t want me hanging on to – and sure there was a time when finding her lost underwear while changing my sheets would have brought out a warm and fuzzy feeling and a hard-on that could shatter diamonds, but having them now folded neatly in a paper wrapped box, in a locker, and in a crowded school hallway no less, I felt only a combination of sadness, longing, and sexual frustration.

Before I had much time to dwell, I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. After the initial ring, I waited a second; if it rang again, it meant I was getting a call, if it didn’t, it meant a text that could wait. It did buzz again, and I knew exactly who was calling. Not Michelle, she didn’t have a cell, and I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be home for another twenty minutes or so. No, it couldn’t be her, so it had to be Sean, a close friend of mine and to this day probably the best I’ve ever had. I didn’t want to keep him waiting too long – he was my ride and all, so I fumbled with Michelle’s big box of crap, trying to free up one hand to find my phone. By the time I did fish it out, though, the call had gone to voice mail. I dialed him back and, as I waited for an answer, Michelle’s big dumb box of crap lost its balance on my hand and went plummeting to the ground in the kind of slow motion that just makes you feel helpless.

It hit the ground with a loud enough crash to catch the attention of the entire hallway, splitting the poorly wrapped paper, and if people weren’t laughing as hard as they could at just the initial display of my clumsiness, they were when they saw the contents that had spilled out of Michelle’s big dumb box of embarrassing crap. Socks meant for women’s feet, a pair of gym shorts with the word “smexy” bedazzled on the ass, and too many panties to count, all in the pastel range of colors and a couple even with polka dots. It was literally my dirty laundry (or I guess Michelle’s, and maybe not all that dirty) spread out for all to see, and all I could do was walk around like an idiot, collecting the clothes and putting them back in the box, only this time not so neatly.

One of the rubber-neckers, a girl with black hair and the kind of round perky tits a man could go blind over, managed to bring her laugh down to a giggle and started to walk over. I tried to pretend I didn’t notice her, because probably the worst thing for me at the time would have been for her to call me out as some low life cross dresser or something. She kept walking my way, and by now her giggles had subsided, her cheeks flushed red for whatever reason, and even her smile seemed like a nervous one. So there I was knelt down on the school’s dark green linoleum tiles, a pair of red polka dot panties in my hand, watching this girl walk over to me and she stops at the pair of socks nearest to her. She bent down and picked them up, as well as an adjacent pair of panties, which couldn’t have been easy for her. She picked those up, walked the extra couple feet between us, and held them out to me in what was probably meant to be some kind of feel good pay-it-forward gesture, but what I saw was her telling me that she had seen me drop a box full of women’s clothing, and that I could never again from this day forward see this girl in passing, this high school queen with the sexy black hair, as someone who hadn’t once seen me drop a box full of women’s clothing. I took the panties.

“Rough day?” she asked, after a few seconds of accidental eye contact. Fuck, why couldn’t she just walk away? Why did she have to fill the silence?

“Not the smoothest,” I answered, because she did help me, whatever her reasons, and because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. “Week’s always longest at the end, I guess.” I tried to think of a way to save face and explain the situation, but the right words just weren’t there. “They’re my girlfriends panties” sounded creepy and ex-girlfriend’s just sounded worse, and anyway I didn’t really feel like getting into it. She knelt down to my level and helped me gather the rest of Michelle’s dropped belongings, which aside from the clothes also included a makeup kit and some eyeliner.

“Well, not to add insult to injury or anything,” she picks up the smexy shorts, “but I really don’t think blue’s your color.”

I couldn’t help but laugh just a little; the ridiculous nature of the situation seemed to hit me all at once, and the comment did seem like a harmless joke. “No,” I said between chuckles, “I guess not.” She smiled, and together we packed the box back full of girly things. “You know, I was actually gonna toss those shorts anyway, they make my ass look fat.” This time she laughed, loudly, and even snorted a little. It was weird at first, definitely surprising, but I think it humanized her a little, and I started to relax more.

“I hate false advertising,” she said. “It’s like those burgers on the restaurant menus – how they look all plump and juicy, but then you get yours and the buns are all deflated and nasty, although I guess you’d have the opposite problem.” She paused for a second with a thoughtful look on her face, and then said, “you know, I actually envy that problem.”

I laughed again. “Yeah, right,” I told her, “I’m sure.”

“No really,” she said almost too excitedly, “I have, like, no ass.” She stood up and turned the opposite way, saying “see?” and practically shoved her perfect round ass in my face. “It’s not there!”

“Looks fine from here,” I said, trying to act casual, as if anything about the current situation was in any way typical for me, “but if you say so.” She turned back around, and with nothing left to look at and Michelle’s things all put away, I stood up to her level. She was smiling, and despite having spent most of the day feeling like the world’s toilet, I was smiling too, briefly…

“Hey, fruitcake, you forgot something.” Terry, or, as his friends called him, “The Terrier”, was one of those guys who spends so much of his time and energy messing with guys like me, that you wonder what they do with themselves when we’re not around. He handed over Michelle’s diary. “Don’t forget to write all of this down.” I’m sure he would have swiped it, but he saw me talking to… to… shit, what’s her name? He saw me talking to Boob Queen and decided to intervene in order to right some cosmic wrong.

He held it out so that the front cover was facing BQ, with the word “Diary” written in big girly letters and a dozen pink Rhinestones evenly spaced around the border. He held it there a few seconds, and then just let it drop toward the box below, catching the edge and once again landing on the cruddy linoleum. I tried to think of something clever to say, a witty response to save whatever face I had left, but I couldn’t, so I didn’t. He turned to Boob Queen, “How’re you today, Roxie?” Roxie.

To my surprise she just ignored him, bending over once again to pick up the diary. Then she looked up at me and asked, “Do you mind?”

Mind what? Before I could ask, she flipped to the back of the book where the pages were blank, and tore one out. I cringed a little, but then remembered that it really wasn’t mine. She took a pen out of her pocket and, using the back of the diary as a hard surface, began to write something that I couldn’t quite see from my angle. “I have to go, bus and all, but here.” She folded the paper once and handed it to me along with the diary. She smiled one more time before walking away. The hallway was considerably clearer now, and I watched her perfect ass walk all the way down the hall and round the corner before turning my attention to the piece of paper resting on the diary in my hand.

It was folded so that the bottom half faced out, and on it, written in more girly letters, were the words “Call me, -Roxy” and a phone number. I held it up for Terry to see. “Like apples, Terry?” Terry just smirked and walked off down a different hallway, apparently he bounces back from rejection quickly, lucky bastard.

I felt my phone vibrate – in my pocket, where I’d shoved it in a hurry when the box fell and I forgot abo—Sean! I scrambled for my phone, hoping he hadn’t left without me. I answered in just in time, and had just enough more of it to tell him, “I’m on my way,” before the battery died on me. In a hurry now, I went to put the diary back in Michelle’s box, keeping Roxie’s number in my hand. Without the diary behind it, the torn out page unfolded itself a bit, showing me there was another half to the note. I straightened the paper out, eager to read the message in its entirety.

If you ever need to talk about – you know, you can always call me,

-Roxie

XXX-345-2357

My smile from earlier disappeared in an instant. I’m not sure if it’s possible to blush and have the color drain from your face both at once, but that’s what it felt like. I sort of did this next thing without thinking it through at all. In increasing volume, I just started to yell, “No, this, you, this, I’m not a draggy! I’m not a draggy!” I spoke and gestured to Roxie as if she were still right there in front of me, but I knew she was long gone. Still, I continued to yell, “I’m not a draggy!” and, although maybe Roxie couldn’t hear it, everyone else left in the hallway seemed to get a kick out of it. I stopped myself before too much longer, and with nothing else to do and a car still to catch, I cut my losses, tore the note in half along the folding line and tossed the top piece in the trash, but I hesitated with the lower part.

I looked down at the box, the cause of pretty much the shittiest day of my life so far, and part of me wanted to just kick the shit out of it and toss it in the trash, but ultimately I decided against it. I had a better idea. I dropped Roxie’s number in the box, in a very obvious spot, where Michelle was sure to see it. I picked the box up and turned around, but stopped, surprised to see Mr. Frank looking right at me from his class room door. We made eye contact (fuck) and he gave me that same stupid little nod, but this time with a new, creepy kind of smile. How long had he been standing there? Had he heard me yelling? “What the fuck do you want, Mr. Frank?” I asked him. The change in his face was so drastically obvious he looked like a cartoon character. His jaw dropped and his eyes scanned me, as if he wasn’t sure if I’d said what I said. Then without a word he turned around sheepishly and disappeared behind the closing door. I smiled.

Carrying the big mischievous box of Michelle’s stupid crap, I walked on down the hallway toward the parking lot, whistling a famous tune I’d never heard before.