As I crawled into bed,
my open spiral notebook caught my eye.
Near the bottom of the page, I saw my name, signed “Jay C. McGee.” I paused.
The first clear thought of the afternoon shot through my mind: Did I really sign my name using my INITIAL?!
The fog began to dissipate quickly as I remembered what I
had done. I remembered being so proud of
it, but I struggled to remember exactly what I had written. With a shaky hand, I reached for the notebook
and began to read.
The first time I
saw you was in the sixth grade. I bumped
into you in the lunch line and you looked back at me and smiled. I was hooked.
Hooked? My heart throbbed in my chest. That’s
exactly what you want to do, Jay, set yourself up as a deranged, addicted
psychopath in the very first sentence.
My eyes frantically skimmed down the page to the next
section of the letter. I could feel
every follicle on the top of my head, and a tingle crawled down the back of my
neck. Another sentence caught my eye.
I have learned
that you are just as beautiful on the inside as you are on the outside.
I gasped for air.
I could feel my sandwich threatening to come back up my throat. Now
you’re not just a psychopath. You’re a
psychopath who writes like you were fired from Hallmark. I could see my infant social life flashing
before my eyes.
I read the next sentence.
I’ve got an idea
for a day that will be fun for us both no matter what.
NO MATTER WHAT?!! I threw the notebook across the room.
“FffsshhjyaaAAA!!” I screamed, in too much anguish to
manage an intelligible profanity. I
buried my face in my pillow. “What have
I done?”
Tears were in my eyes when I raised my head from my
pillow. But through the tears—and out
the window of my bedroom—I could make out the shape of the mail truck driving
by my house.
I tripped over my own goofy long legs as I leapt from my
bed and out the door of my bedroom. I
skipped the last half of the staircase, landing hard on the foyer tile before
nearly breaking the front screen door as I burst through.
As I sprinted down the block, the strap of one of my
sandals broke, propelling the shoe end over end onto a neighbor’s lawn. But I kept my eyes fixed on the mail truck,
driving slowly down the street ahead of me.
And despite the burning on the bottom of my bare left foot, I was
gaining on it.
Finally, the truck pulled to a stop at the mailbox for
the next block. I caught up to it just
as the mailman was stepping out of the door.
As I stood there, doubling over and gasping for breath, he scowled at
me. Wisps of red hair escaped from all
sides of his U.S. Postal Service hat. He
cheeks were cratered with acne scars.
When he opened his mouth to speak, I could see a full half-inch gap
between his two front teeth. “So what do
you want, kid?” he grumbled.
“I need…” I swallowed hard to regain my breath. “Can I get a letter back?”
“Nope.”
I couldn’t help but whine. “But it’s my letter and I don’t want to send
it anymore.”
“I can’t do it,” the postal worker said flatly. “I could get into trouble.”
As I gasped for air, I couldn’t help but despise the
man. He was built like bean bag
chair. I closed my eyes to collect
myself and be polite.
Slowly and quietly, I lowered my voice and stated, “You
don’t understand, sir, how important it is that I get this letter back. Could you please help me out?”
The mail carrier pulled at his stubbly second chin as he
stared back at me as I pleaded with my eyes.
“I’ll give you a second to look in there and find it, but I do need to see
some ID from you.”
“Why?”
“To match it to the name on the return address, of
course. You did have a return address,
didn’t you?”
The long walk back to the house felt like a death
march. I opened the front door
slowly. Roger was there waiting for me. I just walked past him and started up the
stairs.
“What was that all about?” Roger called behind me as I moped up the
stairs. “Hey, who died?”
“Me.”
“What? Jay! Why were you chasing a mail truck? Did you do something stupid last night?”
“I gotta get ready.”
I closed the door behind me and picked up my summer basketball
jersey. My weekly game started in two
hours.
* *
* * *
That game was the only public appearance I could muster
that week. As the days passed and I
became more and more certain Nicole Ellis had read the letter, the sickness in
my stomach grew.
I only decided at the last minute to even go to my next
game. But when I walked into that gym
and that smell of rubber and lingering sweat hit my nose, I knew I was ready to
play.
On rested legs and newfound energy, I cut through,
stepped around, and shot over the defense with deadly accuracy. The clammy self-consciousness that had
covered my body all week melted away under the warmth of my sweat and hot
shooting touch.
With nine seconds left in the game, I took the ball with
my team up by two. I was fouled quickly
and went to the foul line with the chance to put the game on ice. Cool and collected, I stared down and nailed
the first free throw. The next one would
seal the game.
After spending way too much time of my summer league
games with one eye in the bleachers, I focused completely on the rim. I had tunnel vision. Nothing could break my concentration
now. Nothing… except Nicole Ellis
walking across the baseline. She had
just entered through the door near the left corner of the floor and was walking
over to join people sitting in the right bleachers. The ball bounced off the left side of the
rim.
I didn’t hear a word of what Coach Mike said during the
timeout. The self-conscious feeling came
back, now aided by my perspiration to make me feel cold and slimy all over.
When the other team’s desperation three-pointer bounced
off the back iron and the game ended, I just stood at midcourt. For the first time all summer, I longed for
the hour-long postgame meeting that would follow a regular season game. Instead, all I got from Mike after the game
as a pat on the back and a “Nice game, McGee.”
I lingered as long as I could at midcourt and around the
bench, making small talk with my teammates and helping the equipment manager
pick up water bottles. I made sure to
keep my eyes away from the doom that awaited me in the stands.
Eventually, all the water bottles were put up and all the
towels were gathered, and I finally turned to face the bleachers. They were empty. I turned my head wildly, scanning the gym,
but she was nowhere to be seen. I jogged
out to the parking lot in time to see her drive by with two other girls. She smiled and waved. I waved back and watched her drive away.
As I drove home, my head pounded with confusion. She had to have gotten the letter by
now. It had been a week. My thoughts flooded on the way home…
Why didn’t she say
anything?
Maybe she was just
being nice.
Maybe she gets so many
love letters she just throws them out without reading them like junk mail.
No, that’s stupid.
She must have read
it.
But she acted the same
as she would have otherwise.
Maybe she decided to
ignore it.
“She probably already knew,” I said out loud as I
searched for the key to unlock the door to the house. I stopped and smiled. She had to already know I liked her. I wasn’t exactly smooth or subtle. That’s
why she acted like nothing was different.
A lightness came over my body as I felt the freedom of my
revelation. She knew I liked her all
along. She was nice to me anyway. Why would that change now? But I had taken my shot. The door was finally shut on Nicole
Ellis.
I practically skipped into the kitchen.
Roger was there, smirking and holding a stack of
mail.
His smirk building to a laugh, he tossed something onto
the table. A familiar white envelope
skidded across the table toward me.
“You might want to wear your glasses the next time you
try to read in the dark, you near-sighted dork,” Roger laughed.
I held my breath as I flipped over the envelope. On top of the handwritten words “Nicole
Ellis” was a stamp from the post office.
It was a red stamp of a pointing hand with a message printed below.
RETURN TO SENDER.
NO SUCH ADDRESS.
No comments:
Post a Comment