Francine & Earl

Earl the Girl*

"You seriously thought this was a date? I'd never be on one with you."

Earl Rivera fell to the ground as he tripped over his feet, walking backwards from a red front door. The blank boards in his hands hit the concrete beside him, and he winced at the pain in his backside.

In front of him stood the only girl he knew at Layton High, a school not far from Dempsey. This was his last chance to ask someone out that hadn't already heard about his lack of game from someone's grandmother in the supermarket of his small town. With her dark hair pulled up into a tight bun and glasses perched on her pierced nose, Ruma Patel looked down at him with a furrowed brow. She was kind, nice enough to invite him over to watch a movie as they worked on posters for the community bake sale, and Earl liked her.

The feeling wasn't mutual.

"Can you tell me why?" Earl questioned, although he already knew the answer. It had been repeated enough times that he could quote it verbatim.

"You're too short. My momma says short guys have a 'complex.' I don't know what that means, but I don't want to find out."

Lindsay Honeycutt said that to him when he asked her to be his Valentine in fifth grade, absentmindedly glancing around their classroom and ignoring his presence almost entirely.

"You're thinner than me. How can you protect me from anything with those chicken legs and noodle arms?"

Said Shauna Porter, who placed one hand on her hip while using the other to wave his limp arm through the air to demonstrate during class in ninth.

"Your hair is longer than mine. My dad says real men don't have hair that passes the tip of their ears."

Kelsey Reeves said that to him while staring at the wavy brown strands Earl had painstakingly pulled into a neat ponytail for this occasion, as she quickly shut the door in his face after he tutored her for free.

"You're curvier than me. But cute though, just not my type."

Queenie Gonzalez said with a wink, and patted him on his generous behind after he walked her to her door after driving her home from their Honor Society meeting.

"You're just . . . just too girly for me, I'm sorry."

He didn't know what wounded him more, the fact that it looked like Ruma was actually genuinely sorry, or the insult itself. Earl added her to the already long list of those who had rejected him as the door softly clicked closed, the reflection of the streetlights on the golden knocker blinding him for a moment.

He pulled himself from the ground, brushing the seat of his khakis before picking up the now dirty poster boards, resigning himself to decorating them alone tonight. He didn't know why he still tried. As he walked down the street, the autumn air cooling the embarrassed flush on his tanned skin, he struggled to think of anything that could help his case. He was short, maybe he could wear those weird heeled shoes his father thought were cool. At this point, he had to try something because he had no clue.

Earl almost wondered to himself if he fell for other people too easily. His best friend always told him that all it took was for a girl to glance in his direction for a love-struck expression to cross his face. It didn't help that he seemed to fixate on confident girls, with loud voices and even louder personalities, who knew what they wanted and weren't afraid to tell him he didn't meet their standards. Maybe one would be the person that would look past his ultra-feminine features and sweep him off of his feet.

He rolled his eyes at the thought, shaking his head and gripping the boards tighter as he turned a street corner and ended up on his block. The day something like that happened would be the day the world would cease to exist.

* * *

Walking into school later that week, Earl sighed when he heard the topic of conversation. It was the same every time the football season began.

Their team sucked.

It was as simple as that.

After spending the past two and a half years as the undefeated champions in their district, the team imploded in on itself. Four of their star players quit right before their senior year started due to undisclosed reasons, and the team never recovered. They rushed to replace those who left, but morale was never repaired. The team lost almost every game they played, and the ones they did win were against the worst teams in the area. It was like winning a race with no participants.

Sighing, Earl continued to his locker. The late bell had rung a few minutes before, but he wasn't in any rush. His first period didn't begin for another forty minutes. People shuffled past him, jostling him on the way to their classes with talk of losing more games this season, and he tried the best way a short, skinny kid could to get through without resorting to "accidentally" elbowing people.

Digging in his bag, he searched for his key. Combination locks and him did not get along, and there was nothing of value in his locker, unless he counted the gum he couldn't fully remove from the back of the hunk of blue metal. Finally grasping the key and his plethora of attached keychains, he pulled it out triumphantly into the air, arm raised high.

"This could really hurt somebody if they ran into it," Earl thought to himself absently, and realized his mistake when he jinxed himself not even a minute after.

"Ouch!" a voice bellowed as the person attached to the sound bumped into him from being jostled in the sea of teenagers that didn't know how to walk properly in a hallway, pressing into his side as Earl fell to the ground for the second time that week.

Groaning, he stayed on the floor, trying to gather his breath and avoid being trampled by late-comers. It was as if the wind had been knocked out of him. Taking in another unsuccessful gulp of air to soothe his aching lungs, he opened his eyes to see a giant who definitely did not belong in highschool leaning against his locker.

With a very manly squeal, he shot up to his feet. The person propped against the lockers gave him an unimpressed glare as they gripped one half of their face, and Earl almost fainted at the sight of blood.

"Oh my gosh. Ohmygosh. Oh. My. Gosh! I just ripped your face open. I just ripped someone's face open. Please, Lord, forgive me. Don't send me to jail! The jumpsuit won't even fit me."

Rushing over to the person he injured, Earl's hands fluttered near their face but not on it because, despite being book smart, he had no clue what to do in this situation except runaway in fear of being punched in some vital place. With a sigh, they removed their hand, and Earl died on the spot.

Sort of.

"You seriously did not just faint on me," he heard the person say in shock, their voice softer and higher than he expected, and Earl could imagine them looking down at him like the weakling he was as he held onto the edge of consciousness.

"Umm. . .? Lady, I think? Ugh, now I have to carry you to the nurse's office, and you're the one that cut my face open," they muttered, and Earl could hear the sound of fabric rustling as they presumably bent down to pick him up.

He wondered if he should open his eyes and show that he was now okay enough to walk, but the humiliation of being toted around in this person's arms was already enough to make him want to go to sleep and stay that way until the end of time.

"I can't wait to drop you off," they continued, heavy footsteps cutting through the waning noise of students rushing to their first classes of the day.

Earl just wanted to cower away from the irritation in their voice, probably from the morning of being pushed around by other teenagers being added onto by the stinging pain in their face from him being an oblivious idiot. Hopefully, he would never have to run into whoever this was again, Earl thought, while settling his head more firmly onto their collarbone.