1
She was the gorgeous blonde with the radiant smile. That was how he remembered her. She was the girl that made his heart do a hiccup in his chest, if ever so slightly, when she passed by him in the sun-washed corridors of Madison High. Most of the time she’d be flanked by her lady friends, and usually when she was laughing with them—presumably sharing a joke or a funny story—her smile was the most radiant, the broadest. And the sound of her laugh, well, that was simply music to his ears, like hearing a complex, melodious arrangement of symphonic instruments, creating the classical sounds that are destined to live on for thousands of years. The girl’s name was Sara, and what Mathew guessed he wanted to say, was that her laugh was etched into his mind, like a classic.
Taking Sara out was a basic fantasy of his; the thought occupied a number of daydreams he had in his senior classes, and they were partly to thank for the ease of which he was able to get through the more boring sessions. The thought of taking her to Chili’s didn’t come to mind until later; by chance, he had ended up making love to her as they had both been drunk at Richie Dermont’s house when Dermont’s parents had been out of town. That night, Mathew, considered shy by most, lived up to the title when he took a seat on a living room chair, away from most of the students, holding a red plastic cup of Bud light that had been shoved into his hands the minute he had walked through the door.
He took small sips and surfed the web on his smartphone, trying to get news on the Colorado Avalanche, the hockey team that he lived and died for. This was something he did to pass the time, everything that he needed to know about the Avalanche, he already knew. The fact was, he was at this party because he was invited. Okay, it was really because he knew that Sara was going to be here, and though he wasn’t sure he was going to make a move, he figured that anything could happen at a party. Girls sometimes opened up in ways you didn’t expect at gatherings like this. Rock and hip-hop, the genres of music alternating from track to track, played on the speaker system, and some of the guests jumped around, passionately playing air guitar with some of the riff-heavy sections of the rock tracks. A number of guests rapped along with the lyrics of the hip-hop songs, moving their arms up and down, the movements similar to that of a rapper in a cypher or on stage in front of a packed house. The drunker the boys and girls became, the more they played air-guitar, the more they sang the songs, the more they rapped the verses.
Mathew, his head cocked over his shoulder, smiled as he watched this, his cup two-thirds empty in his hand. Students were taking shots at the counter now, under the bright fluorescents of the modest kitchen. When Mathew finished his first cup of beer he didn’t get his second one until Sara, who had been in the basement of the house, gave him one.
“You’re in my class dude,” she’d said casually, handing him the cup of beer and then taking a seat on the living room sofa, on the side nearest to his chair. “Mathew, right? You don’t talk much at all, huh? What in the world could’ve brought you here?”
When he was able to get over his surprise, he knew right away, that Sara had had a few. She was handling it well, but he could pick it up in the slight droop of her eyes and the high level of enthusiasm that seemed to lace each word she spoke.
“Nothing to do,” he said, trying to sound cool and taking a drink from his beer the same moment that she took a drink from hers. She was looking pretty tonight (the norm) in her blue, zip-up hoody, and her blonde hair was untied and hanging down below her shoulders. He was surprised she was interested in anything that he was doing. Why wasn’t she talking to the jocks? Why did he, of all people, matter?
