I’d been kind of a big deal at school—a jock, but smart too, good-looking with plenty of girls after me. I was the all-American high school cliché. Popular with everyone except this chick. Clearly she hadn’t gotten the memo, and that was refreshing. Disturbingly so, in fact. I liked it. More than that, I’d been totally floored by her beauty. She was fucking breathtaking.
The combination of her attitude and looks had totally put me off my stride. “Are you looking for someplace?” As soon as the words were out of my mouth knew I’d set myself up for a tongue lashing but there was nothing I could do to retract them. I braced myself for the worst, and she hadn’t disappointed.
“Actually no, I’m not. I’m here on day release from the local insane asylum. It’s a program called ‘Ten Thousands Steps to Sanity.’ I’m going to pace these halls for the rest of the school day, and by the end of it, I should be cured of all madness. Wanna walk with me?” I was pretty sure I had never met anyone like her, and little did I know, I never would.
For a split second I hadn’t been able to decide whether I liked her or hated her—it really could have gone either way. Who was I trying to kid? With a tongue as sharp as tha- and clearly the brains to match, what was not to love? The fact that she was officially the hottest girl I’d ever seen sealed the deal. Laughter tore from my throat spontaneously, and completely unexpectedly. When I could breathe again, I’d questioned her further.
“Okay wise-cracking crazy-ass lady. Can I help you find somewhere?” She’d studied me for an extended moment, clearly deciding whether I was worth the time of day, despite the obvious fact that she was the one who had needed my help, not the other way around. I, on the other hand, just needed to pee. Real bad. Not that she knew that, or seemed to give two shits about me, either way.
I’d liked that about her straight away—she didn’t apologize for who she was, and she certainly didn’t seem impressed by who I was. Not even close, in fact. She must have decided I wasn’t a total jerk off, though, or at least that I might be useful enough to get her to her class, because instead of telling me to fuck off, she’d softened her tone a little when she spoke again.
“Sure. That would be nice. Thanks.” She showed me her schedule, and as luck would have it, she was heading for the same Chem. class I had just been excused from. I walked her there without hesitation. It was only when I reached the lab door that I remembered the reason I’d left the room in the first place, but by then I’d been gone so long that I couldn’t excuse myself to go to the bathroom again without the whole class thinking I had diarrhea. I sat out the rest of the class unable to concentrate on anything except the new girl and trying desperately not to pee my pants. Turned out this was to be an unfortunate metaphor for our relationship.
Beck
“I don’t know how or why I knew, but bumping into you in the hall like that felt like the most significant moment of my life. I remember so clearly looking into your eyes, and seeing my future reflected back at me,” Mel continued.
I’d felt the exact same thing, and even fucking weirder, I felt it right now, too.
“I guess that threw a spanner in my father’s plans. Being with you was like handing me the keys to the school—I felt more at home there, more quickly than at any of the innumerable previous schools. For pretty much the first time in my life, I felt like I fit in, like I’d finally found my ‘people.’
My mother and I were both over moving, and were hoping that Allentown would be the place we finally settled down and called our forever home.” I rubbed the back of her hand absently, enjoying the feeling of her super-soft skin sliding beneath my thumb.
“As Junior Year ended and faded into Senior Year, with no mention of moving on, I began to believe that it could really happen. I fell deeper in love with you with every passing moment, and stupidly, I allowed myself to make plans with you. For the future. For us. Because a small part of me really believed those dreams could become a reality. We’d graduate, you’d go to Yale, I’d be at Colombia, and my father could be in the pit of hell, for all I cared.”
That had definitely been the plan, but why was she telling me all this? I was looking for new information, not to rehash what little I already knew. I bit my tongue, determined to hear her out.
“I’d finally be free of him except for relying on him for university tuition. More importantly, I’d be free to be with you like a normal couple. I couldn’t wait to be able to be open and relaxed with you and not have to hide the fact that we were together. What kind of a father forbids a seventeen, almost eighteen-year-old girl from dating anyone, ever, and why? What kind of lunatic doesn’t want their kid to have a date for their senior prom, for chrissakes?
“Our graduation day was supposed to be one of the happiest of my life, but instead it was one of the most stressful. I know it was the same for you. I was on tenterhooks worrying that somebody would make a passing comment about us as a couple and accidentally let the cat out the bag to my father. I think I just about gave myself an ulcer with worry.”
That made two of us. I remembered that day like it was yesterday, especially how angry and frustrated I felt not to be able to share my special day openly with my girl like everyone else. Looking back on it now, there had been so many red flags, but I chose to overlook them despite my mom repeatedly emphasizing that Mel’s situation wasn’t even close to being normal and that maybe something was seriously wrong in her household.
I had rationalized it by focusing on the fact that her father was a controlling military man, and maybe just a little heavy-handed on the discipline front. I didn’t have a father figure in my life, so I didn’t have personal experience to compare it to, but I had seen how my friends interacted with their fathers, and even those who didn’t necessarily get on with theirs weren’t going through anything like Mel’s situation. I should have dug deeper, found out more, but I was young, arrogant and deeply in love. It was a potent combination—one that blinded me to the truth.
She looked pained. I knew the feeling. In fact, I’d raked over every detail in my mind with a fine-toothed comb, looking for clues—something that might have seemed insignificant at the time, but which with hindsight took on special meaning that would explain Mel’s abrupt disappearance from my life. That didn’t make it any easier to hear, even all these years later.
Our hapless server might have had the worst timing in history. She chose that exact moment to bring out our pancakes, amid death stares from me a second time. I knew it wasn’t strictly speaking, her fault that in the course of her job she was getting in the way of my closure, but that didn’t prevent me from being mighty pissed with her general existence. To avoid further interruptions, I tipped her generously to stay away. Job done.
Mel and I stared at the pancakes as though they held the secrets to the survival of human civilization, but neither of us made a move to taste them. If she was even half as churned up as me at that point, there was no way she would be able to stomach eating the sickly sweet confection.
“I shouldn’t have dared to believe I could get to the pot of gold at the end of the monochrome rainbow of my life. I had really only willingly agreed to go on our European vacation that summer for the sake of my mom—don’t get me wrong, he would have dragged me on it whether I’d wanted to go or not—but I didn’t even put up a fight.” She paused, seemingly lost in the memories.