DISCLAIMER: This is mostly John Neufield's dialogue and James E. Reily's characters, I'm just put the two together for everyone's enjoyment.
We have a new high school in our town. It was exciting leaving our old dirty brick wreck with its broken windows, torn screens, no air-conditioning, broken hall lockers, and tuna fish sandwiches every Friday. Then we got to the new place.
It has green blackboards, indirect lighting, air-conditioning, a new gym, clean halls with lockers that really lock, an enormous cafeteria--and tuna fish sandwiches every Friday. I guess it doesn't matter how you wrap some packages.
School was where all of us met. It's where Kay and Miguel fell madly in love. It was perfect. Kay was the kind of girl who couldn't have been called beautiful, really; everything just seemed to fit. She was alert and had a mean sense of humor, and she seemed more grown up than the rest of us. She had an air which said she'd seen more of the world than we had. She had great style, a marvelous but not too full figure, and fantastic legs--the kind of girl who is usually secretary of the student of council, not because everyone who knows her likes her, but because it seems the office is hers by right.
This was great in the tenth grade, and even better in the eleventh, when Miguel Lopez got to be president of the council. This was unusual, because ordinarily the office goes to a senior. I think everyone just went wild over the idea of Miguel and Kay together that way. It happens, sometimes.
I really didn't know Kay too well then (I still don't, honestly). She was Simone's friend, not mine. I wasn't dating or anything like that, and in our school people run pretty much in groups. I mean, if Miguel and Kay wanted to do something, they would do it with other couples, not with people like me. Simone, at the time, had a thing going with a senior almost as hot as Miguel himself. This one was a blond tennis player--the kind who goes to Yale or Princeton and winds up on Wall Street, joining lots of clubs. Anyway, that was how Simone spent some much time with Kay and Miguel, and how I got to hear about everything they did.
Of course, there were a lot of things Simone told me about I didn't pay much attention to. When one person always seems to be doing marvelous, cool things, and all you get to do is hear about them, you can get a little depressed. So you learn to listen, or seem to be listening, and to figure out when and how to nod at the right time, when to ask questions, when not to, and finally when to say you agree. This is called the art of conversation.
Or selective inattention, as my father says. Choosing what you want to hear and concentrating only on that. It was about six months ago that I began listening to Simone when she talked about Kay. Even being told about Kay by a third person gave you the feeling she was undependable sometimes, a little strange.
The first thing I remember hearing was Simone's story about the night Kay and Miguel celebrated their first anniversary. A group of kids had gotten together for dinner and a movie, and then gone back to Simone's house. Kay and Miguel got funny presents, and there was dancing in Mr. Russell's study. In the middle of dancing, Kay suddenly turned odd.
"Stop it!" she shouted, startling everyone. "Just stop it!" Then she turned and ran out of the room.
Simone and Miguel followed, neither knowing what they were supposed to stop. Miguel help Simone back and went to Kay in the living room. Simone, of course, stayed within earshot.
"What is it, honey?" Miguel asked Kay, putting his arm around her shoulders. Kay stared at him without speaking. "What's the matter, Kay?" Miguel asked again. "What's wrong?"
After a minute, Kay answered in a bitter voice. "You're no better than the rest of them," she said, cutting her words off so that she sounded almost English. "Why can't you all stop it, and leave me be?"
"But what have we done?" Miguel asked.
"Oh, really," Kay sighed as though she were suddenly very tired. "Why can't people stare at something else for a change?"
Miguel said nothing.
"Really, Miguel," Kay went on. "Your friends are about the rudest people I've ever known. I should just like to be left alone. if you don't mind."
Simone walked into the living room then, and saw Kay shake Miguel's hand off her shoulder and turn away sharply, heading for an easy chair in a dark corner of the room. Miguel watched her go, letting her settle into the chair. Then Simone took Miguel and led him back to the study, explaining that maybe it was "that time" or something and that Kay was probably just a little depressed.
Which may have seemed true, for about ten minutes later Kay was back with the crowd, dancing and laughing and her usual self. And that was that. I thought it sounded pretty weird, but I guess everyone (except Simone) went back to normal, too, saying nothing more about it.
Simone remembered her dinner at the Bennett's. She began to think that what she had thought was a great put-on might be real after all. She began to talk about it, to me.
Which was fine, and it interested me like crazy but it wasn't the best thing to do. For we both should have talked about it--to other people. We shouldn't have been so cautious and polite. We could have tried to do something for Kay even then.
Hindsight, that's called.