A Symphony of Cicadas (24 page)

It wasn’t until my
f
reshman
year of high school when I
began
to feel the pains of Sara’s beauty and popularity
.
I’d already experienced what it felt like to stay home while she attended party after party
.
But I was glad to stay home
.
Parties full of people drinking, making out, or whatever else they were doing
behind their parents’ backs
freaked the hell out of me
.
The one time Sara had asked me to come with her, I was ready to leave within the first
five
minutes
.
I ended up sitting on a couch and pulling out one of my books I carried around, sandwiched between a guy who kept offering me a doobie despite my insistence that I didn’t
smoke weed
, and a couple who appeared to be trying to find something down each other’s throats with their tongues
.
On the way home, Sara lambasted me for embarrassing her
in such a heinous manner
, for having the audacity to nerd out at one of the
coolest parties of the century
.
From then on, I was excused
from
any other social obligation with Sara, as far as she was concerned
.
And I couldn’t have been happier.

But in
that same
year of high school, I met
him
.
And everything changed.

****

His name was Eric
.
He
had the dreamiest blue eyes I had ever seen
and was
on
e of the few s
ophomores in our advanced English class
reserved for
freshm
e
n
.
But h
e read from Ernest Hemingway as if he were right there in the
twentie
s
,
attending a bash with Daisy on his arm
.
Once he even caught me staring at him as he stood in front of the
class, taking his turn to read from
the chapter of
The Great Gatsby
, and he caught me smiling like a dope from my seat in the third row
.
I had blushed something fierce when his eyes met mine, and smoldered in my seat when he didn’t look away
.
I
almost
died on the spot when, instead of glaring at me or calling me out in front of the class, he
just
gave me a private wink, smiling at me from the corner of his dimpled mouth before diving back into the messy triangle
of romance
that existed in a book I’d already read three times through.

“What are you doing this weekend?” he asked me after class, and it took everything I had not to run to the bathroom and vomit from the caffeinated butterflies that attacked my insides.

“Nothing real
ly
,” I managed to squeak out, and he got my address so we could hang out.

The weekend came, and for the first time I had nothing to wear
.
All of a sudden, my
crumpled t-shirts were too tomboyish for such an occasion,
my
jeans c
ut way too high unlike the low-
waisted fashions my sister and all her friends wore.

“Let me borrow something!” I pleaded with my sister, who held her ground as she lay on her bed with a magazine.

“You’ll stretch out all my clothes,” she told me, snapping her gum with impatience
.
“Besides, what do you want to borrow them for?  You’re just going to get them all dirty outside.”

“Eric is coming over and none of my clothes look good enough,” I said, praying that the mention of a boy would
jump her into high gear
.
It worked
.
She leapt off her bed and started rummaging through her closet.

“Why didn’t you say so, Rachel?  How exciting!  Tell me
everything
about him!” As she searched her closet for the perfect outfit, I described how his eyes were the perfect shade of blue forget-me-nots, how he loved to read in his spare time, and that his hero was Ernest Hemingway
.
I made up most of this, of course,
since
I still knew nothing about him
.
But because that
description illustrated
the perfect guy for me, it on
ly
made sense that it
defined
him to a
T
.

“Sounds boring,” Sara said, wrinkling her nose
.
“How’s this?”  She pulled out a light colored dress with pink flowers and an empire waist
.
I grimaced at the prettiness of it, the exact opposite of everything I ever wore
.
She caught my look and explained
.
“It will fit you up top and hide your bel
ly
, and you can wear jeans underneath to jazz it up and make it less gir
ly
.”
I took it from her with caution and slipped it over my head
.
I pulled on a pair of jeans, and she bent down to cuff them so they landed between my ankles and knees
.
Afterwards
,
she showed me how to app
ly
a little mascara and lip gloss
, offering a natural look under a hint of femininity.
Then
she pulled my long
auburn
hair into a loose bun at the base of my neck
.
“If it looks like he’s getting bored, take your hair out of the bun and shake it out
.
He won’t be able to look anywhere else
.”
I blushed with embarrassment, though I was memorizing every single thing she told me.

The doorbell rang, and we both squealed with excitement.

“Oh my god! 
How do I look?” I asked her. I hated the way it sounded, like the dress had turned me into one of her ditsy friends
.
But i
n the moment, it
mattered
more than ever
.

“You look great,” she told me
.
“Now don’t keep him waiting too long.”

I bounc
ed down the stairs
, shooting like a cannon towards the door once I reached the bottom step
.
But j
ust before I
got there,
I stopped
to catch
my breath
.
After a few seconds, I opened it
.
There he was
.
He was looking over his shoulder when I opened the door, and then turned back towards me at the sound
.
The sight of his grin made me
breath
less all over again
, and I couldn’t help but let a goofy smile fall from my lips and drown out any coolness I might have possessed
.
I was grateful when
he didn’t notice.

“So what do you want to do?” he asked me, and I started to shrug
.
“Now come on,” he laughed
.
“I made the move to ask you out
.
Now it’s your turn
.
Plus, this is your turf
.
Next time we’ll hang at my place and I’ll decide what to do, I promise
.”
Just the mere mention that there would be a next time when the first time hadn’t
yet
happened made my heart soar into my throat.

“Well, we could look through my library for a book to read,” I said, forcing a laugh when I saw the awkward look on his face
.
“I’m total
ly
kidding, of course,
”
I said quick, covering my tracks
.
He laughed with me.

“Funny,” he said
.
“What else you got?”

“Well…
I know
.
We could take a hike up into the hills and then come back and watch a movie,” I said
.
His eyes lit up at the suggestion, and I grinned
.
“I just need to let my
mom know I’m going
.”
I called into the house
to
my mom, who insisted
on
com
ing
out
to
meet Eric right away.

“So you’re from Rachel’s class!” she exclaimed, as if she had thought I was the on
ly
one who even took English in high school
.
“That’s great!  Have you lived in Sonoma long?”

“All my life, ma’am
.
I just went to a different school until this year,” he said.

“Oh?  Did you all move or something?” she asked.

“Mom!” I exclaimed
.
“You don’t need to ask him
his life story
!”

“It’s
all right
,” Eric offered
.
“No, we didn’t move
.
There were just some mean kids there and it was getting
too
hard to stay
.
My parents final
ly
caved and let me come to this school.”

“Ugh, kids can be so cruel,” my mom scoffed
.
“Well, are you happier here?  Are the kids nicer to you?”

“Much nicer,” he said, looking straight at me. I blushed under his gaze, looking down at my shoes
.
The look wasn’t lost on my mom
,
who
hid a smile behind her hand.

“Well, it was nice to meet you, Eric,” she said
.
“I have to get going
,
though. I’m baking bread, and if you know anything about the rising process you know how finicky it can be
.”
I did know about rising bread, and I knew that it wasn’t that finicky
, and in fact needed no attention
at all
.
I
gave her a grateful smile before she turned to leave.

“Nice to meet you, ma’am,”
he
called after her.

“Please, call me Maureen,” she shouted back through the screen door, disappearing inside and leaving us alone.

“Your mom’s nice,” Eric said.

“Seems that you’ve charmed her,” I
teased
.
He laughed.

“Well, I guess that’s a good thing if your mom likes me.”

We took off for the hills, climbing through the barbed
-
wire fence that did little to keep anything out
.
His stride was long, and I had to
jog
to keep up with him. I was glad that I had worn jeans under the dress, and tennis shoes instead of the sandals Sara had suggested
.
I raced alongside him and we made a game to get to the top first
.
I beat him by on
ly
an arm’s length, of which he grabbed me and pulled me back towards him. My mouth was open in laughter when he placed his lips against mine, res
ulting in an awkward first kiss.
I almost bit him when I pulled back in surprise
.
He
laughed
.

“Should we try that again?” he asked
.
I was too embarrassed to speak, so I
just
nodded in wide-eyed silence, closing my eyes as he put his lips against mine once more
.
I could hear the echoes of the cars racing on the country road at the bottom of the hill, the call of the birds as they soared overhead, and the song of the cicadas within the gold of the weeds
.
I could feel every single wisp of
my
hair dancing against my chee
ks, the wind moving them from
the safety of the bun at the base of my neck
.
I could feel his hands on my hips, my arms around his neck, his tongue pushing though my lips, the strange softness that entered my mouth
.
Everything was happening all at once in this amazing first kiss with a boy I liked who
also
liked me back
.
He pulled away
to smile
down at me
.
I looked up at him and saw a
glimpse of something sad and distant, the moment lasting for
just
a second before he relaxed
back
into his smile.