After I return from the Conference meet I place my cousin's State meet number in my desk with the Z slashed across the top. I call Renae. The phone sounds like a bruise as it rings and no one picks up. I remember Renae telling me that on Weekend mornings she likes to sleep in until noon. My leg still hurts. I am icing it one hour on one hour off for 12 hours straight. Coach has told me not to run on it until the Regional meet next week because that’s the one that counts. I ice my leg until it feels like an eskimo pop. I stretch. I put on DEPECHE MODE and let the autumn light drape into the window so that the dust motes look like constellations.
I think about Renae last night. I think about how hot all her friends were and how just down right accepting their group was of me even though I go to a different school.
I get down on my knees. I am praying for a cross-country miracle. I am praying for health. I am praying for the recalcitrance of my leg.
It is like the marrow bedded inside my femur is chipped splinters from the cross Jesus once lugged.
I am addressing a bearded inward deity as if he were a camp counselor. I am trying to barter. I tell him that I will quit my visual reconnaissance espial mission with the college girls next door if he heals what feels like the San Andreas size fissure on my bone. I tell him that I will be a gentlemen and that I will be polite. I tell him that I will have the palm-sized Gideon bible lodged in my pocket at all times to curtail me from what is referred to in Lutheran circles as the sins of the flesh.
I am supplicating for me. I sick of hurting all the fucking time.
I am sick of being broken.
I am supplicating for me. I sick of hurting all the fucking time.
I am sick of being broken.
The second time I call her hot mom picks up.
“Mrs. Howard?”
“Debbie please?’ I can feel her grinning on the opposite end of the phone. I am about ready to inquire if her daughter is around when she breaks into conversation.
“Did you enjoy the hockey game last night, Dave?”
She knows who I am. I have never had an adult just want to talk with me when I phoned up any of my friends.
“Yeah, it was really cool. I have never been to a Rivermen game before.”
“Well, I know Renae had a good time. She said she really enjoyed introducing you to the group.”
“They are really cool kids.” I say, unsure of how to respond.
“Well, obviously you made a big splash. They all seemed to think you were pretty cool.”
I nod. I wonder if Renae will look like her mom when she is older. Before I can ask where her daughter is Renae’s mom intervenes.
“Hey, I met to ask you—how’s your leg? Renae said that you got injured because you were running so much.”
I can’t believe it. Her hot mom is inquiring about my physical impediment.
“I was supposed to have a race today only I sat out. I have a race where I possibly advance next week. Coach has me icing my leg three times a day and doing laps in the pool.”
There is a maternal pause.
“Dave, I really hope you get better. I know how much cross-country means to you and I know how hard you have worked at it. I really hope your appendage heals and you are able to compete at the next level. You’ve earned it.”
I feel like crying. I stutter when I tell her thank you. I ask her if her good looking daughter is around.
“Actually she’s in the shower. You always seem to call when she’s all wet.”
“…..”
I wonder if Mrs. Don’t call me Miss Debbie Holiday gleaned the irony in her statement.
“But she should be out in twenty minutes or so. I’ll be sure to have her call you. I know she’ll be happy you called.”
I am smiling when I say goodbye and hang up the phone.
I don’t know who I am in love with more. Renae or her mom.
***
I am unsure how to ask Renae out. I am practicing. I am looking at myself in the mirror with my glasses off. I am echoing words that fog into a pond of opaque ice on my parents mirror. I am telling her that I really like being with her. I am telling her that I love her cool friends. I am telling her that I think about her all the time and that I really want to see her again sometime soon.
I am envisioning us holding hands. Mentally I am living in a cloud of her scent.
I am seated on the desk in my parent’s bedroom where I will one day write poems. As the phone rings I do a high dive off the front of the desk, it feels like I am pack in centerfield and diving for a catch with the hopes that no one downstairs lifts up the phone before I pick it up.
I answer with a hello. Renae says hey!!!
I can feel her smile. I ask her if she is clean.
She is playing music
“I had a good time last night. I really enjoyed meeting all your friends.”
“They really enjoyed meeting you. I think Tim was upset because he noticed that we were paying more attention to each other than to the hockey game.”
“I like that music. What are you listening to?”
It’s sounds like the stereo is offering pre-coital synthesized hiccups
“It’s the CURE.”
“What album?”
“Mixed-up.”
Only I don’t hear the words Mixed-up. I hear the words Mix-her.
The cure close to me.
“I bought WISH last summer. I couldn’t stop listening to it. It was my first introduction to the CURE.”
Renae says that Friday I’m in love is alright but that she really doesn’t care for their new stuff.”
“Check out Disintegration. It’s a beautiful album. It’s goth and poetic. It will change your life. Just beautiful.”
Across the opposing line of the phone I nod.
“I’ve been listening to Depeche Mode all autumn. When I purchased my CD player a few weeks ago CONSTRUCTION TIME AGAIN was the first CD I bought. David’s brother Ben got me into the band two years ago. He has really cool taste in music.
Renae smiles. She says she agrees. Ben is really cool.
“So,” I say, followed by a gravid still-life with a skipped pulse pause.
***
I am going to do it. I am going to finally evince to her the swill of my emotional salt. I am going to tell her what I should have told her last night at the hockey rink.
I am going to ask her to be my girlfriend.
I am going to tell her just how I feel.
***
I am holding the phone to my ear like a conch, like a little kid and a sea shell trying to hear the throb. I am telling her that I think about her all the time. I am hurdling over my sentences. I tell her that I enjoy being with her.
I say the trite valley-girl bromide and state that we have so much in common.
“So, I was wondering if you,” I pause and stutter over the words as if I am trying to get her to verbally espouse the correct answer in Pictionary.
“You know, maybe, go out sometime?”
I say, with a dangling question mark that looks like an old-persons earlobe.
***
I want to run only I can’t. I have just chronicled another fast time yet coach has ordered that I take it easy. I grab my collection book. I am limping as I exit the door, walking down the crinkly dead leaf-riddled side street of West Peoria.
The tree in front of Tina’s house looks like a burnt peach.
I have one more race left. I have a beautiful creature I am adolescently committed to. I have discovered music. I excel in History, English and francais yet suck ion Biology and algebra.
I have a beautiful girl who has finally said yes who confessed that she thinks about me as often as I think about her.
I have a beautiful girl who has finally said yes who confessed that she thinks about me as often as I think about her.
Finally I am in high school.
Finally life has begun.
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