I stared at the floor in anticipation. She was late, damn fucking late. She’d obviously changed her mind. What was I thinking. How could a girl like her possibly ever like a boy like me. I looked down at my scuffed leather boots and clicked them together with impatience. A sort of sharp nervousness ran through my veins as I folded my arms. Body language. We’d been learning about it in psychology. Closed arms meant nervousness, and by heck I was fucking nervous.
Ever since eighth grade, Sailor White had been the girl of my dreams. Blonde curls, freckled face and pink lips. She had this thing where each time she laughed; her forehead creased and her nose wrinkled. I distinctly remember studying her every movement, how her foot caved in with each footstep and how every day her nails were painted a different colour. Looking back, I think I was the only person that ever noticed her at all. Sailor kept to herself most days, clutching a pink paged paperback notebook, dotted with yellow stars. There was this joke in the ninth grade where people used to sing ‘a sailor went to sea’ as she stepped onto the bus each night.
The day Toby Knickson poured a bottle of water over her head on the bus, claiming she had gone ‘overboard’ was also the very same day in which Toby acquired a black eye on his left. In fact it was very much the same day I was given a two week detention and also the day Sailor White smiled at me. December 2nd 1988. One of the best days of my life. As time progressed, I noticed change. My father Harold Pearson had been offered a promotion and along with promotion came moving to Alabama. So it was goodbye Montana, and goodbye Sailor.
On my last day of school at Kingston High, I remember Mr Clarkson our biology teacher call me up in front of the class to announce my leaving. I never really was fond of Clarkson, yet then again neither was he fond of me, this had been confirmed when I watched him erasing my name ‘Oliver Pearson’ off the register, the second I had returned back to my seat.
At 2pm that day, I recall being picked up from school by my father, sister Milly and mother Verity for our drive toward Alabama. As I clambered into the back of our rusty Volvo, something crinkled in the back of my pocket. When I pulled it out of my pocket, I noticed. Pink paper with yellow stars.
