Christine - Stephen King [71]
But Leigh Cabot was just beautiful, with no qualifications. Her skin was fair and perfect, usually with a touch of perfectly natural colour. She stood about five feet eight, tall for a girt but not too tall, and her figure was lovely - firm, high breasts, a small waist that looked as if you could almost put your hands around it (anyway, you longed to try), nice hips, good legs. Beautiful face, sexy, smooth figure - artistically dull, I suppose, without a too-long lower lip or a sharp nose or a wrong bump or bulge anywhere (not even an endearing crooked tooth - she must have had a great orthodontist, too), but she sure didn't feel dull when you were looking at her.
A few guys had tried to date her and had been pleasantly turned down. It was assumed she was probably carrying a torch for some guy back in Andover or Braintree or wherever it was she had come from, and that she'd probably come around in time. Two of the classes I had with Arnie I also had with Leigh, and I had only been biding my time before making my own move.
Now, watching them steal glances at each other as Arnie found the assignment and she wrote it carefully down, I wondered if I was going to have a chance to make my move. Then I had to grin at myself. Arnie Cunningham, Ole Pizza-Face himself, and Leigh Cabot, That was totally ridiculous. That was -
Then the interior smile sort of dried up. I noticed for the third time - the definitive time - that Arnie's complexion was taking care of itself with almost stunning rapidity. The blemishes were gone. Some of them had left those small, pitted scars along his checks, true, but if a guy's face is a strong one, those pits don't seem to matter as much - in a crazy sort of way they can even add character.
Leigh and Arnie studied each other surreptitiously and I studied Arnie surreptitiously, wondering exactly when and how this miracle had taken place. The sunlight slanted strongly through the windows of Mr Thompson's room, delineating the lines of my friend's face clearly. He looked older. As if he had beaten the blemishes and the acne not only by regular washing or the application of some special cream, but by somehow turning the clock ahead about three years. He was wearing his hair differently, too - it was shorter, and the sideburns he had affected ever since he could grow them (that was since about eighteen months ago) were gone.
I thought back to that overcast afternoon when we had gone to see the Chuck Norris Kung-fu picture. That was the first time I had noticed an improvement, I decided. Right around the time he had bought the car. Maybe that was it. Teenagers of the world, rejoice. Solve painful acne problems forever. Buy an old car and it will -
The interior grin, which had been surfacing once more, suddenly went sour.
Buy an old car and it will what? Change your head, your way of thinking, and thus change your metabolism? Liberate the real you? I seemed to hear Stukey James, our old high school math teacher, whispering his oft-repeated refrain in my own head: If we follow this line of reasoning to the bitter end, ladies and gentlemen, where does it take us?
Where indeed?
'Thank you, Arnie,' Leigh said in her soft clear voice. She had folded the assignment into her notebook.
'Sure,' he said.
Their eyes met then - they were looking at each other instead of just sneaking glances at each other - and even I could feel the spark jump.
'See you period six,' she said, and walked away, hips undulating gently under a green knitted skirt, hair swinging against the back of her sweater.
'What have you got with her period six?' I asked. I had a study hall that period - and one proctored by the formidable Miss Raypach, whom all the kids called Miss Rat-Pack but never to her face, you can believe that.
'Calculus,' he said in