Earlier in the summer our church youth group piled into two minivans and took a trip across the state line to "Wild Waters" in Coeur d' Alene, Idaho. It was a water park with four twisty slides, one "deep drop" and a lazy river. It was situated on a fake hilltop near the interstate, in a place one could see from afar and scream at their parents that they MUST GO THERE NOW.

Not that I did that.
I was not a fan of water parks as it was a lot like skiing: You climb a hill, wait in line, speed down like a maniac in a few seconds and then you get up to do it again and again and again.
Such is life.

However, Sam loved the place; I am not sure why. So when we arrived at the waterpark I held onto her hand and grimaced at the sun As it blazed in the sky. We had a small cooler with our lunches in it and maybe one bottle of water; the rest were clear sodas.
Looking back, the lack of sunscreen and the sodas must have been what did me in seven hours later. I was fine during the six hours we were there. I may have looked like I was trying out as a part of a par-boiled lobster but I was having fun. I didn't even loose my swimsuit on the deep dive slide.

We left the park in the late afternoon with everyone in good spirits. No one had a headache but everyone commented that every part of my exposed body looked a deep Crimson, except maybe my left hand, which was holding Sam's for the most part. Thirty minutes into the car ride home I felt a headache coming up. Slow, the ones that creep up right when you need to be at the top of your game.

Four years-five minutes later, there was a slight feeling of nausea. But then, we were back at the church in Medical Lake, Washington and left one mini-van to climb into another: Samantha's mother's.

An hour later you could have submerged me in a vat of liquid nitrogen and I would still say my skin was burning. We arrived at her house and instead of climbing out, I laid on the first row seat, staring at the blue upholstery and begging to my stomach to not throw-up.
Tragically, my stomach still doesn't listen to me.

There were a few seconds of calm when I entered the library but once Nick stood up-
“I had him where I wanted him.”
Nick raised his right hand, shook it and then slammed it onto the table.
“You were going to kill him.”
“Yes, I was.”
“You did hear what you just said, right?”
“Damn right I did.” He slammed his hand down again. “I’ve had to put up with that guy-”
“Paul,”
“His name is Asshole. Royal Asshole.”
“I’m going to agree with you on that, but you can’t-“
“I can’t what?”
“You can’t just go and pick a fight.” I said as I took a small step towards the table.
“Sure I can. And it’s about time I did.”
“What about the power of pen? You know, government changes things.”
“While the government screws the people?”
“Just because I didn’t agree with your ‘bill’ for a lack of better words does not mean that I disagree with you.”
“Eric, I am not going to be your token gay project so you can feel self-righteous.”
“Token gay project?”
“You’re doing this to earn some heavenly brownie points.”
“Okay, first off, maybe—just maybe. I. Just. Want. To. Help. You. There are people out there who don’t like seeing others put down, destroyed, called names or, hey, here’s an idea, being shunned by just about everyone and left by himself in town where he didn't know anyone!”
“You’re not talking about me, are you?”
“No, I’m not. And I’m sorry, you woke up the pissed-off guy in me who normally never comes out but you see, that’s what they,” I pointed out into the hall as the principal, Mr. Cain, walked in the library, “thats what they want you to do. They want you to blow up, make a scene, start a fight…they feed off of that.”
“Gentlemen?” Mr. Cain asked.
“But as you said, it pissed you off.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t go off half-cocked and fall into their trap.”
“You held it in?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “Maybe a bit more than I should have.”
Mr. Cain placed his hands on the table between us.
“Nicholas, can I see you in my office?”

Nick nodded and followed Mr. Cain out the door as I sat down in one the chairs. Maybe I should have gone with him, but I had to allow my own built-up adrenaline to subside before I did anything else. I also had to come to terms that I would have to deal with Paul more than I wanted to; since his relationship with Jeannie. Cooler heads would have to prevail—and at that moment it wasn’t happening.

“Dude, what did you do?” Jason asked as he walked up to my locker.
“What?”
“There is, like, a great explosion that you took a punch this morning.”
“Almost,” I replied as I looked down the hall.
Jason leaned in and whispered, “Nick’s been suspended.”
“And Paul?”
Jason shrugged his shoulders. “Nick threw the first punch.”
“No he didn’t,” I replied as we walked down the hallway.
Jeannie ran up to us and blocked our path.
“What happened?” She pointed her question at me and Jason took a step away.
My thoughts were in a panic. What did she want to know? That I was ‘this close’ to asking her sister out? That her boyfriend was a jerk? Or that Nick was hell bent on proving something that I had no idea about?
“There was a fight between Paul and Nick and I stepped in between them. Didn’t want to see a fight of egos.”
She bit her lip for a moment.
“Okay, I trust your story but not your judgment in this.”
“What do you know of what happened?”
“That Nick had been, well-Can we leave the school?”
I looked to Jason who waved us on and we walked out the door.
“Paul got suspended.”
“So did Nick,” I replied as we walked down the sidewalk and away from the school.
“Paul said that Nick was coming on to him.”
“Oh?” I asked.
“He was afraid and acting in defense.”
“I see,” I replied as Jeannie stopped walking an turned to me.
“He just didn’t know what do and then they got into the fight and her feared for his life.”
“I just didn’t want anyone to get hurt and I know Nick more than Paul so it was better to try and get him to stand down.”
“Thank you. Nick could’ve hurt him; more than he already has.”
“How so again?”
“He sent Paul a few notes. Disgusting notes. Told me all about them.”
“Sorry,” I replied.
“So Spirt Week activities are cancelled for today. We have the football game on Friday though and the Homecoming dance.” Jeannie said. It appeared that everyone else knew what was going on beside me.
“Is Paul able to go to Homecoming?”
“Don’t know. Maybe we’ll just have our own dance.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Anyway. Please don’t say anything about this. You know how people are. Rumors and all.”
“Not a word. I swear.”
Although I wanted to tell her all of what I felt about Paul; but I couldn’t bring myself up to say a thing.
“See you later,” Jeannie said with a sad smile.
“See you.”

After speaking with Jantz and gathering another set of copies to do I walked up to the grade school and tried to get the whole Nick and Paul think out of my head. That was hard to do as I was pretty much right in the middle of it and dissing Nick’s ideas in front of the principal didn’t help his mood. I had to wonder where he lived and maybe try to go and see him or at least try and call and ask if he was okay; as it was the friendly and right thing to do.

I was not going to let Paul or anyone else antagonize another I grew up on the receiving end of taunts and teasing so I knew the traits of a bully; I just wish that I could respond with a punch to the face or a roundhouse kick, Chuck Norris style, to the aggressor but I normally just avoided the confrontation—turn the other cheek if you will—and live with the verbal abuse. Sam never heard about that; I never wanted to let her know that there were days that I just wanted to find something sharp and run it across my wrists or to climb onto the tallest building in Spokane and free fall. No, those aren’t exactly the feelings one would want to go over with someone unless you wanted to scare them away and I didn’t want to scare her, I only wanted her to be happy and if she was happy, I was too.

The copy room, as usual, was empty and spent my forty-five minutes with my mind either blank, simply going through the motions of copying, duplexing and arranging stacks of paper books and the other half contemplating whether to find Rebekah—as the age, her relation to Jeannie, and just the overall situation that was my life made it feel like I was better off to forget about her; or at least forget about her in my life.
Maybe it would be easier to go back to how I was earlier in week; right after the plane took off with the hole in my heart deepening past seven and a half miles. I couldn’t free fall from a building but my soul sure felt like it jumped.

I woukdn’t have to worry about what people would say or react. I wouldn’t want to make a huge spectacle.
No, that was actually false. A lie.
I wanted to slam my hands on the table, throw the papers aside, run out of that room, find Rebekah and tell her I felt-even if it meant I’d never see her again.
I didn’t slam my hands down, nor did I throw the papers aside but instead finished the work assigned to me. I’d try to find her around lunch—with the lack of any spirit week activities I was free, right?
“Hey!”
I had no sooner closed the copy room door when Renee sprinted towards me and dropped a folder note on top of papers.

“Special delivery,” she replied with a wink and skipped away. She probably watched me as I made delicate moves to grab the note without toppling my stacks of boxed paper. I was able to pocket it, luckily it was in that multi-folded form, like a “zip file” in physical form. Usually, notes written and then painstakingly folded into origami-ish art were good news and Renee’s mood while delivering it pointed to that it would be good news or if it was bad, at least it came in a pretty wrapper.

I delivered the stapled bounded workbooks and took a seat in the kitchen area of the Home Ec for the final minutes of class. I fiddle the folded note back and forth in my fingers—not wanting to open it and ruin the good vibes I felt at the time. I decided to let gravity make the decision: name side up, I open it—blank side up, I keep it in my pocket and open it some other time.

I flipped the note into the air and it fell to the table name side up. I carefully opened each fold and wondered how long it took to learn how to compact paper into such a small size. Each fold and untucked corner, the text of the note could been seen in the light reflected off the table. I really didn’t want to open it all the way and my hear raced as I feared what it would say. Good of bad, I was terrified.

“In the days that have passed, I have had an inspiration
This person, holds the key.
The days that have passed, I have had an inspiration
The things that will come to be
This person is my inspiration, If only he did know
This person is my inspiration, and with that, I now close.”

The bell sounded, ending third period, and I took the time to avoid my fourth period class all together and instead walked up to the junior high school wing with my backpack and a stack of papers from one of the stacks I had just copied for Mrs. Jantz and made yet another stack of papers. Fourth period in the high school overlapped the junior high school lunch by at least twenty minutes so I had only to hang out in the copy room for a few minutes.

But, I had forgotten that the copy room also served as a teacher’s lounge in the junior high an elementary wing so I had to limit my time and the space I took as more teachers filed in and talked amongst themselves. I avoided eye contact with them all until had completed the pages. By then, it was 11:35 so I left the copy room, walked down the hallway, left through the front door and walked around the far side of the building.

Time was short...I had, maybe, ten minutes to try and find her and even less time to spend with her as whatever we did would look insanely awkward to anyone who saw us even if we just stood around and talked because even if we did just stood there, impersonating statues and not say a word to each other, that's not how it would be remembered by the people who were not there.

I ran to the upper field and stopped short of of the baseball field gate. I didn't know if she was even up there and if she was, how would I find her? The billowing clouds of self-doubt were rolling in, in a soon to be a tsunami of hurt feelings as I felt I was going being lead into a humiliating situation. One worse than a throwing up over sunburn or from eating a pan of cinnamon rolls.
“Eric!”

I turned to see Renee waving at me and with Rebekah trying to not turn four shades of red. I was sure I looked the same way.
They walked over to me and the three of us stood next to the fence line to the baseball field.
“I wanted to find you so, I-“
“So you came up during lunch?”
“I’m sure Mr. McCall wold have an issue if I hung out in your math class.”
“Yeah, umm, Renee?” Rebekah turned to her friend and Renee nodded her head and walked away, but she looked back every few feet to see what we were doing. She must have assumed that music would swell up, the winds would blow and a scene reminiscent of a John Hughes movie would occur.

“I got your poem.”
“It’s not very good, is it?”
“It’s good. It’s very moving and...even though my friend would tell me not to, I’ll answer it the same way.”
“Okay,” she replied with a slight smile.
“In the days that have passed, I have had an inspiration. A person who gives me my thought line. In the days that have passed, I have had an inspiration. A person who has helped me in my times.”

I moved closer to her, knowing full well what I was doing, knowing that everyone was around us and soon the high school classes would release. We moved our hands at about the same time and interlocked our fingers. Not daring to move any closer at the time.

“She is what keeps me going, and who want I spend my time. She is all I see, in the darkness and in my bad rhyme. This person, she holds the key. She’s more than my inspiration, she is the one for me.”

Rebekah moved a step closer but with every step she looked to her sides.
“Everyone is looking at us, aren’t they?”
“No, not yet, but I like they are.”
“I just wanted to tel you that...hope it doesn’t come across as too much.”
“I thought what I wrote was too much.”
“No, not at all.”

She stopped glancing around long enough to look into my eyes. I could be struck dead at that moment and I would be okay with it as her face would be the last thing I’d see before I closed my eyes.

* * *
I
met up with Jason in the parking lot.
“I haven’t seen you since this morning’s grudge match.”
“Yeah, I just tried to keep out of everything.”
“Jeanie and Paul?”
“More like things with Paul,” I replied as I closed the front door.
“Like what?”
“It wasn’t really my business, I just didn’t want a grudge match in the middle of the hallway.”
“Sure you do. This school hasn’t seen any action since that bull got out of Mr. Springer’s trailer.”
“You forget who had to stand in the middle of road to distract said bull.”
“Nope. I have not,” Jason stated with a smirk as he turned the engine over and looked for cross traffic before pulling out of the parking space.
“I just mean, that it was a stupid argument entirely. Neither should be in each other’s faces.”
“That’s true. Paul does have Jeannie for that.”
“Not what I meant.” I replied in a calm manner, “but it’s okay. It will all come out in the end. Karma, Inner-feelings, silver linings.”
“I’d ask you what you’re smoking but you don’t, so what’s up?” Jason floored the accelerator to get in front of a school bus.
“Nothing. Everything’s fine. In fact, everything is great. I take back everything I said earlier this week."
“Hold it there, Edgar Allen Poe, what’s with the sudden happy outlook on life?”
“Is it a problem that I feel better?”
Jason revered the engine as we sat at a four way stop for our turn. The school bus was pretty much riding our tail.
“Yes, considering the only way you could possibly be this way is either you’re doing meth or you’re going out with someone.”
"It hasn’t gotten that far...well, yeah, unofficially we are I guess."
“What’s the unofficial wording crap for? Either you’re going out or you’re not. It’s like you’re either drunk or you’re not; failed or passed; there’s no freaking middle ground or unofficial-ality or whatever.” We made a turn onto the main highway with a slight screeching of the tires. “What‘s her name?”
“Who?”
“What’s this chick’s name?”
Jason opened the center console, took out two bottles of Mountain Dew and passed them to me.
“Chick?”
I opened one of the bottles and handed it back to him.
“Again, unless you’re sniffing glue, it’s a girl. It is a girl, right?”
“Rebekah.”
"She new?"
"No," I replied as I opened the second soda bottle,
"Goes by Becky?"
"Not unless you want her to kick you in the shins."
“Becky Lewis?”
‘No.”
"Wait a minute. Rebekah as in Jeannie Bettencourt's little sister?
"Yep."
Jason dropped his soda on the floorboard and just about lost control of the car as he turned his head to me. “Are you out of your freaking mind, Stradl? She's like thirteen.”
“Fourteen, well, in two weeks.”
“And...let's make this a short list: She’s. In. Junior high! She's, she's a kid."
“So, if she was in ninth grade, it wouldn't matter? All is well?”
“Ninth grade is the key here--you: high school man versus junior school girl.”
“Is this some sort of high school version of the Code of Hammurabi that I didn't know existed?”
“You do you realize they could expel you."
“For what?”
“I don’t know, they got rid of Nixon, didn’t they?”
“This isn’t anyone else’s business.”
"Since when did that matter? People will make it their business. Just because you think that there's no problem and just because she thinks there’s no problem. There is definitely a big freaking problem because people are morons. Man, you are just asking for punishment, aren’t you?”
“You know, I thought I could at least count on you to say that this is good. I would’ve loved to hear you say: “Good for you, Eric, you found someone.”
“I would if she was in high school or college, like some nineteen year old co-ed.”
Jason shook his head and took another swig from his bottle. He almost had the look of someone who wished the bottle was more than just ultra-caffeinated soda.
“How did you even meet her?”
“Outside on Monday.”
“And you just thought it would was a good time to get to know her?”
“No, I was doing what you said to do: trying to get over Sam.”
“Not sure if I should be happy or terrified for you.”
“I can handle her parents.”
“I was talking about Jeannie.”
“We’ve known Jeannie for a long time and we both know that she’s not known to go out on the edge or scream at people.”
“No one, to my knowledge, has tried to put the moves on her sister.”
“I haven’t placed any on her.”
“And I believe you on that.”
I almost wanted to tell him that maybe we had. Maybe it was like the most explosive-whatever-thing two people can do but he would have crashed the car from hysterical laughter and honesty was the best thing to go with when dealing with friends and having them meet with your girlfriend. I was honest with Samantha about Jason after all.
Perhaps that was not the best example.
“How are you going to spend any time with her?”
“How did I spend any time with Sam? At least Rebekah goes to the same school and lives in town.”
“She goes to junior high.”
“Our school’s collective name is Reardan-Edwall Junior-Senior High.”
“You sound like you’ve been practicing that.”
“I have.”
“Best of luck,” he replied with a whistle.
I didn’t take his comment as an insult, but it wasn’t the Jason Kozlowski seal of approval either.
We arrived at my house and immediately went to the kitchen. I moved to turn the over on, only to see that it was already hot and there was already something cooking in it.
“Eric, is that you?”
“Yeah, mom. What’s cooking?”
“A roast. Is Jason staying for dinner too?”
I looked at him as he shrugged.
“Yes, please.”
“Get going on your homework.”
“How do you know I have any?”
“You always have Algebra.”
“She has you there, Strad.” Jason replied as he walked into the living room.
We got through ten minutes of homework before Jason asked the question that I hoped he wouldn’t ask yet.
“Are you taking her to homecoming?”
“I thought about it.”
“You really love punishment, don’t you?” Jason asked as he flipped through his chemistry book.
“I haven’t asked her yet. Maybe she won’t want to. I can handle that. I mean, no one knows how to dance except for Josh and that’s country swing . So no big loss.” I leaned back against the couch.
“But if she wants to go?” Jason was just not going to drop it.
“Then we go.”
“Pictures?”
“Sure.”
“Pictures of who?” Mom asked from the kitchen.
“Eric’s new girlfriend, Mrs. Stradlin.”
I so wanted to kill him at that moment.
“Aren’t you still seeing Sam from church?”
“No,” I responded with my eyes closed and my head bowed-as if the conversation from a few days ago never happened.
“She was a nice girl.” Mom entered the living room and stood between the two of us.”So, when do I get to meet her?”
“Yeah, when do we get to meet her?” Jason asked.
“Do you want me to invite her and her family over here?”
“That would be the gentleman thing to do,” Mom replied.
“It’s a bit early.”
“He gave her a poem.” I have no idea if Jason either read my mind or just knew I would have anyway.
“Artistic as well. What’s her name?”
“Rebekah,” I replied without any lingering hint of passion. I did not feel like talking to my parents about this.
“Who’s Rebekah?” Dad asked as he walked into living room from the other room.
“Eric’s girlfriend.”
“Is Samantha going by her middle name now?”
I looked to Jason with a death stare.
“No, this is someone new and we’re going to invite her family over.” Mom replied as she performed a small “happy dance”.
“Are they vegetarians?” Dad asked with a bit of disdain.
I spent dinner trying to avoid talking about Rebekah. Jason kept bringing her up and unfortunately he was too far away for me to kick his shins under the table.

“I just think it’s dangerous, once everyone else finds out about her.”
“Dangerous?” I asked as I handed a game controller over to him.
“Okay, maybe that’s the wrong word but I can think of the words that they’ll say: Cradle Robber, perv, pedo.”
If the game we were playing, Moto Roader, an insane to control racing game, wasn’t bad enough, Jason calling out derogatory word bingo made me feel worse. A cross between frustration, sadness and depression. I could kick his butt on Mario Kart, if only we had played that at the time.
“It’s like two years, Jason. Again, Nola’s fourteen-“
“And she’s a junior, not in eighth grade.”
“Okay, so we keep it on the secret and next year, it doesn’t matter.”
Jason fought back a laugh.
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“You’ll have a picture of the two of you in your locker in no time and then she’ll want to come and see you after school and no one’s gonna think you’re her tutor or friend. Jeannie will still kill you once she finds out. You know that, right?”
“And I will not make a sound as she kills me.”
“Why?”
“Because of how I feel about her.”
“Do not say you love her. Please. For the love of Prince and the Revolution, just don’t. Don’t.”