waving.

A faint acquaintance approaches from across the high school campus’s courtyard, her arm outstretched in salutation. Wow. She’s awful friendly, I think. I mean, we haven’t ever really talked much or even gotten along all that well, but, shucks, we did have that science class together in ninth grade. I think we may have even been in the same lab group. Actually, I’m sure of it. I remember how little attention she paid to the experiments and how she copied the answers from the rest of us at the very last second. But apparently, she was more attentive than I thought—not to science, but to me. She’s walking right at me, waving with the concentrated fervor of a New Yorker hailing a cab in a rainstorm. Perhaps the heat of the shared Bunsen burner had fused some connection between us too deep for words, a thing so raw and powerful that it required a few years to sit dormant before manageable enough to warrant mutual and public acknowledgment this way. I can’t believe I was so obtuse to not notice our bond. But she, approaching with a grin and a wave, she didn’t miss it. From the look of things, she’s been waiting for this for a long time. I’d bet that any time she encounters the smell of burnt chloride or happens across the sight of a petri dish, she can’t help but think of our time together, of me. Of course she wants to talk to me.

So I raise my hand, an olive branch extended, and wave. Not too soft, though. She’s waving pretty adamantly. I wouldn’t want her to feel silly. So I match her enthusiasm. I make eye contact, attempting to establish a tractor beam sort of influence that will aid her in her final descent towards the cove of lockers that surround me. But she doesn’t seem to be meeting my eyes. It’s more like she’s fixated on my shoulder. No, wait, above my shoulder. Holy crap.

This is the moment at which I wish for any number of things to happen. The apocalypse, for one, would be welcome. Atomic warfare, earthquakes, a school shooting—all would not only serve as adequate distractions from the humiliating corner into which I have painted myself, but also as vastly more pleasant alternatives. Because now I know. And it will only be seconds before she’ll realize too. I wish a disease, one that makes people feel sorry for you, would instantly infect me, rob me of my hair and make me stick thin. No one mocks the diseased the way they would mock a well person in the same situation. It’s not fair.

I’m quite sure of what’s happening, but I’m still waving and so is she. I can’t just stop. I am acutely aware that behind me and out of view stands another student, the intended recipient of her wave. He or she is probably waving too, but not so unrequitedly as I. I can’t bear to turn and look, but I know it’s the truth. I’m still waving and she’s still approaching. I notice that her gaze has drifted some and is now right upon me, slowly surveying the situation. She cocks her head sideways in bewilderment, causing her ponytail to squirm like a caught fish in its final movements. For one long second, she stays that way—head cocked and eyes curious—and continues to walk forward, except slower, more pensive. I wonder if there’s a chance that she won’t get it, if somehow she won’t perceive me as the imbecile that I am. Crazier things have happened. Gods smile upon the meager inhabitants of this planet intermittently. People win lotteries, stumble across cures for diseases, find soul mates amidst billions and billions of incompatible partners. God flicks his wrist and seas part. Why not for me then? Why not today? Why can’t God extend a finger down into the surface of her brain and scramble things just a little, just enough to keep her from realizing? But suddenly her head snaps back straight and her stride resumes and I know she knows.

She is blond, but not naturally or convincingly so. My eyes are those of a pet on the verge of euthanasia. They whimper. Please don’t tell everyone. But she has averted her stare momentarily. It wouldn’t matter anyways. I’ve seen her standing in a circle with all the other unconvincing blonds. They chatter like hyenas, waiting for just such fodder, like the way African children will make a soccer ball from just about anything. Their cackles haunt me already.

I’m still waving. She’s closer, maybe twenty or so yards away. I now recall one conversation we shared over the Bunsen burner all those semesters ago. She had rambled on and on about a Friends episode. About how Rachel’s nose kept changing and how Chandler was so funny and how she thought nothing would be greater than hanging out in a New York coffee shop, drinking from oversized and pastel colored mugs. Oh how she belabored the subject of those mugs, describing in detail the hypothetical flowers that would decorate her designated coffee receptacle. And how I wanted her to shut up. This was the girl to whom I extended an olive branch? One whose life goals revolved primarily around ceramics? What a fool I am.

My wave is growing tired, flimsy, but persists. I am suddenly incredibly aware of its flapping and how it has cursed me. The bones and flesh and ligaments, typically tools by which I am made able, today work against me. She is looking right at me again, this time fully cognizant and acknowledging with attentive eyes my humiliation. There is no kindness in her stare, no sign of mercy. For one hazy moment, I see myself in third person, as if the real essence of me is levitating in the air above my body, watching the scene unfold. Students, with their backpacks and books and haircuts of which they will be ashamed in fifteen years, scatter in every direction, some engaged in conversation with friends, waiting for the bell to ring. Dozens stand beyond the approaching girl and I envy them. I envy that they were not standing where I was standing, faced with the same confusing salutation that faced me. Why could I not have been one of the lucky ones, one of the many that stand beyond?

That’s when a synapse fires, maybe two. Grey matter crinkles just so, or does whatever it is that grey matter does when an individual is blessed by the advent of an idea. Whatever that process entails, that’s what happens to me, on the surface of my brain—an idea. It’s a long shot, certainly, a full-court overhand huck as the buzzer sounds, but it’s all I have.

She is ten or so yards away. I’m still waving. Taking great pains to appear effortless, I shift my gaze from the general area of her make-up covered, faux tanned face and scan the many students walking beyond her. I lock in on a brown-haired, bowl-cutted sophomore I’ve never met before. Spinning a pen in one hand, he cuts across the lawn in front of the administration building half a football field away. I reinvigorate my wave, infuse it with conviction and direction. This she notices. “Hey Greg,” I yell as I begin to walk directly to him. He doesn’t as much as raise an eyebrow at me. Why would he? He’s no Greg. For all I know, he could be deaf since birth or a Latvian foreign exchange student. But I don’t care. I walk straight at him.

Before passing her, I can see her stride slow some. Her crumpled brow radiates the consternation that has so suddenly befallen her. She blinks rapidly, straining to grasp newly turned tables which had once seemed so sturdy and immovable. I don’t stop. I walk, aware that within her sun-bleached teenage mind the whole situation has been blanketed with a layer of doubt, like fresh snow fallen upon and having momentarily beautified the ugliest ghetto of the most rundown industrial city. I feel delivered—as if seas have been parted this day for me as much as ever they were for Moses. So I accelerate my pace towards the one that I dubbed Greg, propelled by the knowledge that behind me is a blond girl feeling utterly ridiculous to have believed it was she to whom I was waving, when in fact it was someone else entirely.