Almost Perfect - Brian Katcher [3]
I smiled as we paused in front of Scott Henderson’s cornfield. That was where we’d made out for the first time. The first time either of us had made out with anyone.
I was about to ask Brenda if she’d like to revisit that old memory when she suddenly turned and hugged me, burying her face in my shoulder. I stood there, enjoying the moment. She didn’t usually care for public displays of affection. When she pulled away, I noticed the glint of tears in her eyes.
“Brenda? What’s wrong?”
Brenda snorted, then wiped her eyes and gave me a real smile. “Nothing, Logan. Just, um, girly stuff. I’m okay.”
Hand in hand, we walked back to the trailer. I’d smiled inside, thinking that Brenda had teared up because she was just so overjoyed to have a boyfriend like me.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
chapter three
THE NEXT MORNING, I sat on a bench in the school commons, watching my few dozen classmates file in. The walls were lined with class photos, beginning with the twelve students of the Class of 1939. If you took the time, you could find graduating pictures of your teachers, your older siblings, and your parents. In fact, the Class of 1986 picture was the only place I could look at a photo of my father.
The second of three buses pulled up to the school and began spitting out students. I knew them all, even the eighth graders who, due to space limitations in the neighboring middle school, had classes in our building. I’d see all of them every day. The same people. In twenty years, their kids would be coming here.
I used to think I’d avoid that. Last spring, I’d been so damn smug. I was going to leave Boyer, go to college. I was going to get a good job and never come back to this shit hole. And I was going to do it all with Brenda. We were going to go to MU together.
Now she was gone. Did I even have a reason for leaving town anymore? Why go to Columbia and be alone when I could do that at home?
“You’re not doing yourself any favors, you know.”
Tim Tokugowa was in my first-hour biology class. He was the only Asian student at Boyer. In fact, aside from a couple of Mexican kids, he was the only minority. As such, he felt he had certain obligations. Namely, he wanted to destroy the stereotype of the clean, hardworking Japanese.
Tim had thick black hair, great teeth, and a smug way of looking at you that made you want to admit that he was right, even if you weren’t arguing. Tim’s weight, however, was really starting to get out of control.
His eating exploits were legendary. I once saw him eat a thousand M&M’s on a bet. Even now, at 7:50 a.m., he was cramming down fistfuls of Fiddle Faddle from a jumbo box. He flopped his ponderous body onto the bench next to me.
“Hey, Tim. Did you see the Rams game last night?”
Tim ignored the question and stared at me with his narrow brown eyes. He would have looked rather mystic and serene had it not been for the flakes of caramel popcorn stuck to his cheeks.
“You’re waiting for Brenda’s bus, aren’t you?” Tim could have accused me of shooting heroin and made it sound like the truth. Every year, the Boyer debate coach would beg Tim to join the forensics team.
“Of course not.”
“Yes, you are. You’re out here every morning waiting for bus fifteen. It’s not healthy.”
I turned and faced the dusty trophy case, enraged. It wasn’t that Tim had been so dead-on correct, it was that I hadn’t even realized what I was doing. I’d convinced myself I was just resting, and if Brenda just happened to pass by …
“Look, Logan, I know she hurt you. But you can’t sit here every morning panting after her.”
I resented Tim for his insight, just like I resented Jack for not realizing how much pain I was in.
“I’m not panting …” That was as far as I got. Brenda had arrived.
Brenda didn’t turn heads. She was too skinny, too mousy for most guys to notice. But she had a willowy figure, with long, shapely legs and delicate arms.