The cashier sets the money on the counter, counts out ten Chick-o-Sticks, returns them to the carton.
The boy’s shoulders drop violently, jerk, and his hands go up.
The cashier takes five Chick-o-Sticks back out of the carton, sets them on the pile, and pushes the can of New Coke away from the pile.
Again the boy’s shoulders drop violently and jerk. His hands clasped together, his head on a tilt, he appears to beg.
The cashier shakes her head.
Three older, fitter boys in dark parkas and watchcaps line up together behind the boy. The boy, seemingly unaware of the others, stomps one foot, brings his clasped hands forward and back to his chest a number of times.
The cashier, still shaking her head, shrugs, and over the head of the obese boy and toward the three fitter boys, widens her eyes in exasperation.
The obese boy says something.
She says something back.
The boy shows her the index finger of one hand while reaching into his parka with his other hand. When the hand that went in the parka comes out, it’s holding a cure. The boy lowers the finger of the first hand, lowers the hand itself, holds it open-palmed over the counter, and sets the cure down on it. The cure lies supine in the boy’s open hand.
The cashier makes a frowny face of appraisal.
The boy says something.
The cashier shrugs. She scratches the cure on the head and smiles. She removes two Chick-o-Sticks from the carton, sets them on the pile.
The boy says something.
The cashier shakes her head.
The boy seems to insist.
The cashier shrugs, sniffs the finger she just scratched the cure’s head with, smiles, adds another two Chick-o-Sticks to the pile. She puts the money the boy gave her into the register, removes five more Chick-o-Sticks from the carton, and picks up the New Coke can. She holds the New Coke can and five Chick-o-Sticks out to the boy, saying something.
The boy nods in emphatic agreement.
As the cashier bags the New Coke and the seventeen Chick-o-Sticks, the fitter boys, who have til now been trading high-eyebrowed glances, puffing their cheeks, and blowing what looks like it must be dismissive-sounding air through their lips, all step forward, two to one side of the obese boy, and one to the other, all three leaning over the counter.
The cashier hands the bagged goods to the obese boy, who tells her something. She holds an open hand beside the obese boy’s. The cure crawls from the obese boy’s hand to the cashier’s. The cure lies on her palm, wraps its arm around her wrist, presses the side of its face to her pulse. She raises it up in front of her eyes and demonstratively sighs, smiling.
The two fitter boys who stand to his right start saying things to the obese boy, to which the obese boy responds with enthusiasm. One takes a Slim Jim from the jar on the counter and wags it in the air. The obese boy nods. Another takes another Slim Jim from the jar on the counter and wags it in the air. The obese boy nods, claps his hands once.
The third boy, in the meantime, reaches over the counter toward the cashier.
The cashier backsteps.
The boy who just reached over the counter backsteps.
The obese boy says a few words to the cashier.
She steps forward again, returns the cure to his hand, and the boy who’d reached over the counter swipes it.
The other fitter boys protest.
The fitter boy who has the cure shows his friends an index finger.
They protest more, whip the Slim Jims offscreen.
The obese boy protests.
One slaps him across the face and he ceases to protest. The other slaps him across the face and he drops to the ground, hides his head in his arms.
The obese boy’s assailants move in the direction of the boy who holds the cure.
One of them trips. The other doesn’t.
The cashier pulls a handgun out from under the counter. She gestures with the gun—down, up, down, up—and is saying things.
The standing, fitter boy who doesn’t have the cure raises his hands, placatingly, then helps the fallen, fitter boy to his feet, and then they both help the obese boy to his feet, and one of them hands him his dropped bag of goods.
The cashier points the handgun at the boy who has the cure and says something.
His eyes remain on the cure, but he nods, begins to extend the loose fist in which the cure is held toward the obese boy.
As the obese boy reaches out for the cure, the boy holding it backsteps suddenly, as if he’s been startled, and smashes the cure, headfirst, into his mouth. He chomps twice and swallows.
The other fitter boys exclaim and point and laugh and stomp their feet and slap themselves on the legs and the chest and twirl their fingers next to their ears.
The obese boy crumples back down to the floor.
The cashier, still pointing the gun, starts yelling.
The boy who just overloaded looks at his friends, breaks into a smile, leaps over the obese boy, and runs offscreen. His friends follow.
The cashier puts the gun away, comes around the side of the counter, helps the obese boy back to his feet. His face is running with tears, his lips and eyes wrinklingly squeezed. The cashier hugs him, patting his head. He stands there stiff-armed, clutching his shopping bag, neither accepting nor fighting the hug.
A Cure for Unrequited Love
University of Chicago Graham&Swords Friends Study
January 23, 1988; January 30, 1988
[5 minutes, 14 seconds]
Fixed overhead shot of a mullet-haired boy sitting in a window seat, writing on a legal pad, while, six or seven feet in front of him, another boy, bright blond with a spike, kneels on the floor, hunching over his own legal pad.
As a large-eyed, freckled girl wearing evening gloves approaches the mulleted boy, the blond boy on the floor looks up, stops writing, straightens his posture, and waves to her, but receives no response.
The girl, to the mulleted boy, says, “Excuse me.”
The mulleted boy, who’s taking up the whole seat, makes himself small.
The girl sits beside him.
She and the mulleted boy play footsie. They say “Excuse me” to one another repeatedly. The intensity of the footsie increases quickly, as does the volume at which the Excuse mes are pronounced. Legs start to tangle.