Angelina Lighthouse..

Despite having failed the next day I am acknowledged.  In PE Coach Simmons is saying that yesterday a FROSH came out of nowhere and just astounded and set a record for laps set in fifteen minutes of running.

“I’ve never seen anyone give that much effort. I never seen anyone blast across the circumference of the gym with as much intensity as this young man.”

He is embarrassing me. I am looking down into my gym shoes. Tim punches my knee informing me good run.

He calls me strictly by my last name, the name emblazoned in thick lettering across the center of my patriotic gym shirt

Every time we switch classes and flood into the hallway it feels like you are being submerged under water. Locker clanging open with reverberating pangs. There is always a rivulet of bodies streaming one direction then another dreaming the converse.  With the exception of cool Joe Thomas’s BIO all of my classes are upstairs. 

I am concentrated on the sight of the blonde headed girl who last name is a nautical a beacon.

I spend the days drooling over, trying to think of something witty to say every timer I see her.

There is a purported freshman mixer where there will purportedly be dancing.

I am trying to accumulate the courage to ask her to go with me.

He tresses looks like it was blow dried with a hair-dried plugged into the socket of the sun.

Somehow Angela Lighthouse seems to walk in slow motion accompanied by her own theme music every time I see her.

The cute blonde girl who sits on her legs as if she is in a nativity scene.

“You know, this class is pointless. He never teachers. He asks us if we’ve read the material and if we’ve taken notes but he never explains it to us in the first place. It’s like this is supposed to be self-sufficient learning.

“And if we do have a question he just reads it verbatim from inside the book.”

When we leave the classroom I am walking next to Angelina Lighthouse. She has her blonde hair pulled back. Her forehead is the size of an imax movie screen and is extremely alluring. Somehow She reminds me about the terse encounter I had last fourth of July with Renae Holdiay.

‘That guy just never teaches, all he does is talk about which buffet he went to last night and how his on-the-side real estate business is doing. She has a side pony tail. She is wearing stretch pants and a sweater that has the words PARIS steroid in the center. She is walking slowly, her books tucked just below her neck as if she is nursing them.

“I have about a hundred pages of notes just from the last week alone and he hasn’t taught anything or informed us what he wants us to know.”

 I try to be witty. I am not sure where she is going. We are walking in a pond of slow motion. I am trying to saying something to make the crevice of her lips part.

 

I am trying to say something to make her smile.

“Maybe he’s just gonna test us on all the bull shit stories about his life he tells us every day. Maybe we’re gonna have to know all about the hot dog eating contest or the whiskey bum with the red nose who grew up behind his house or about how great My Cousin Vinny is.”

 

Angelina laughs.

 

“Or about his coffee mug that has that ridiculous carton of that guy going to the bathroom”

“Or about where the best place is to buy a toupee because obviously when his hair fell out his brain toppled out of part of his skull as well.”

The two of us are laughing uncontrollably. Perhaps this is the creature I was somehow destined to meet. Perhaps this is the elusive mermaid I have found in the sea of high school.  

I stop.

“I’m David,” I tell her. She tells me that she knows.

 

“I  hear your name on the announcements. A friend of mine also saw you running in PE. Everyone says your pretty fast.”

 

I am astounded that she knows who I am.

 

“And you are Aneglina.”

 

I shake her hand. I tell her that I know.

 

Somehow everything is frozen. Somehow I am searching for something to say. The lower hemisphere of my body is transitioning into a scrolled graduation diploma of flesh. I am losing myself in the angelic halo of her blonde hair and her pasty forehead.  Briefly I think about asking her if I can call her sometime and we can compare notes in Mr. Thoams’ Biography-Bio class.

 

We are walking together. We take a right at the edge of the formaldehyde-riddled science hallway, into the hallway lining parallel with the gym. We take a right near the lunch room, hitting the stairs, taking each step in tandem. By the time we reach the hallway on the second floor I am ready to inquire of her number. 

 

Instead I get interrupted by my Best friend. It is Patrick Mcreynolds. He has a cigarette he filched form his mom’s pack of Benson and Hedges.  I am being blurred past the blue lockers, past skittering bodies into what is commonly referred to as the smokers bathroom.

 

A tuft of smoking echoes out the door as it opens like a cartoon bubble ferrying dialogue.

 

“Patrick what the fuck man, I was bonding with Angelina. Finally we had a chance to talk.”

“It’s fucking Aron Rothman man. I just can’t deal with his shit anymore.”

 

I ask Patrick what’s wrong. Patrick informs me that Aron Rothman is full of shit that’s what’s wrong.

“Dude, he’s being telling everyone about my middle name.”

I ask Patrick what’s wrong with that before I remember that his middle name is Aaron, same as our nemesis and that as an acronym his first, muddle and last name spells out the word PAM.

 

“Dude, when I was waling down the hallway three football players I didn’t even know stopped me and called me Pam. I’m sick of this shit he can fucking die.”
 

 

I wave my hand back and forth. I am an athlete. Every sniff could subtract a potential second off my final time.   

 

“Patrick is aggrieved, he kicks the wall several times in a row.

 

“Dude, put that thing down and salvage it for later. We need to get to Mr. Reents class.”

 

 

“Pat fuck him man. He looks like Bert off of sesame street. He has one eyebrow."

 Patrick is taking inveterate puffs. Just let it be. Patrick has a propensity for smoking and stopping and waiting for vicarious theme music before saying something profound.

 

“You know what the one difference between Manual and Christ Lutheran is?”

 I tell him no. I am battering tendrils of smoke from the front of my face.

“At Christ Lutheran we at least had the fucking Yellow Monkey  Bars to take solace on every afternoon. Now we have nothing.”

 I want to tell Patrick that that is not true. I want to tell Patrick that we have each other. I want to tell him that we are in this together.

 

Only I don’t.

 

“Dude, we have to hurry. We are going to be late to Mr. Reents class.”

 

We leave the bathroom. Patrick flicks his cigarette at the mirror without worrying in the slightest if his cherry goes out.