A Murder in Mayberry

Part1/2) Magdalena Verismo Dejesus Wall and Daisy Delaney Meet a Boy

Third person- telling the story using pronouns like he or she. Third person allows freedom in how a story is told. I was hoping it would give me a little objectivity too. I wanted to be a reporter and reporters must be objective.

Magdalena met a boy, an annoying boy named Ren Callahan, in the 9th grade in her 3rd period Food Service class. She and her best friend, Daisy Delaney, hated him and his buddies, they called his "Turd Buddies", immediately. It was an instantaneous dislike made all the more severe by Ren and his Turd Buddies who did not dislike the girls at all. In fact, they thought the whole feud humorous and seemed to enjoy the banter back and forth and on occasion even flirted with the girls who declared the flirting disrespectful, demeaning, and infuriating. The feud between the girls and Ren and the Turd Buddies started over a fan.

Food Services class was hot and stuffy because of the stoves used for cooking classes and the less than perfect ventilation system and air conditioner that served the 50-year-plus old school building. That August, when the girls decided they hated, really hated Ren and his buddies, was a record setting month for scorching hot, high temperatures which did not help the mood that permeated the sweltering hot classroom.

Fact: Murder rates rise in summer months when temperatures soar. This is not too hard to believe if you have ever been in the south in the summer. Hot weather breeds discontent, and discontent and teenage angst are ready to erupt on a good day, much less on a 1000 degree day.

It was not really a 1000 degree day as Ren called it, but it was 94 degrees inside Miss Church's third period classroom. Miss Church, all 215 pounds of her, was sweaty and hot. Her carefully sculptured, auburn curls had gone astray and were now fuzzy little tendrils that made her look like she spent the night in a wind tunnel. Like most teachers, she knew she couldn't count on the man to solve her problem, so she improvised. She bought in two fans from her house to help out the situation and circulate the stifling hot air around the room. One fan Miss Church pointed directly at herself, it was her fan she said, and the other she left for the students to use as they chose to use. Mistake number one.

Mistake number two, letting the first ones in the room decide where the fan pointed. The next two weeks of record high temperatures became a battle of wits and athleticism. Daisy and Magdalena and the girls versus Ren and his thug buddies. The girls won the first battle. They tricked their 2nd period teacher, a male teacher, and said they had to leave class early to go to the bathroom for "personal reasons" because they knew this worked on all male teachers who just looked embarrassed and shooed them out the room. The boys were pissed. No fair, they said, though they never played fair.

The boys were imaginative and devious and downright criminal in their efforts to be the first to the fan. They had the fan for a week when they came up with ingenious diversions including pulling a fire alarm once and on another day yelling "fight" in the cafeteria so they could beat the girls back from lunch. The girls would rush to the room only to find Ren with his feet propped up on his desk with the fan blowing his long hair saying some smart ass remark like "Where you been ladies?" Or "Man, it's chilly in here. I'm going to have to go get a sweater."

The boys deserved their turd moniker. They were ruthless in their efforts. They were also fast, fast runners who could even beat Magdalena down the hall in a dead sprint.

Magdalena and Daisy hated those boys.

And then one day, the temperatures dropped as suddenly as they had spiked and the fan became no longer the most important part of the day in their teenage universe.

Anyone who has ever watched a romantic comedy or read a less than appropriate romance novel knows the best love stories start with conflict. The conflict ignites a spark and the spark ignites a fire. Love and hate are intense emotions and barely separated by a thin thread on a pendulum that can swing either way. As temperatures in the room literally cooled down, hate became love and flirtations, and all was forgiven.

Magdalena fell hard for Ren, but there was one problem, Daisy fell hard too. Ren knew something was up. Both girls were friendly to him now. Could it be one of them liked him? He was unsure because they gave him mixed messages. He liked them both, but neither girl ever professed anything other than friendship, so they all became inseparable friends. They were there for each other, and initially lines were not crossed between friends for fear something could be irrevocably changed.

Freshmen year flew by until it was May and spring and teenagers became restless. Daisy's life had improved a little with her mom working two jobs, but she was lonesome for her mom even though Nana was around. Nobody ever truly replaces a mom.

Magdalena's home life was less than ideal even with her evil father dead and in the ground, but Ren's home life, in his opinion, was even worse. Ren decided to run away to Florida for a job near a cousin that was waiting on him there, and a girl decided to follow. Just for support she told Daisy, just to make sure he got there ok. She'd catch the next bus back. Daisy tried to convince her it was stupid, though if she could figure out how to get by her mom, she'd go too. Magdalena knew it was stupid but was worried about Ren and thus was not thinking about practicality or the dangers of a fifteen and seventeen year old traveling from North Carolina to Florida alone. Daisy was worried about Ren too so she gave them all the spare money she had stashed. All 28 dollars and 63 cents. There goes the cell phone, she thought.

They left on a Tuesday and Magdalena and Ren were supposed to arrive in Florida by the weekend and call Daisy.

They never called. They never made it. This was not like Magdalena at all. Daisy was certain that something bad happened to them both. Something real bad.

Daisy was half right.

Author's Insight: The teenage fan battle and the two best friends, who like a boy who can't figure out which one likes him, are both based on true stories. One ended in a marriage and one ended in a friendship that never faltered.