THREE TIMES A CHARM.
Short story from Creative Writing Class.
Adrianna Leanne Willis has been in love three times. In the first grade, Matthew Leon was the one to catch her eye. Sure, he may have stuck gum in her hair and spilled his soup in her backpack, but that meant nothing to Adrianna. His gummy smile and those freckles that were enhanced by his reddened face made her want to make him laugh all the time, even if it was at her expense. So she made sure to trip in front of him and let her hair dangle onto his desk so he could chop it off. For him, she was easy bait. Adrianna just wanted his last name. He’d get in trouble with their teachers--once went to the principals--but Adrianna never complained.
Adrianna swore that Matthew felt the same way about her. He would stare at her for longer than the other girls in the class, even if it was followed up by a retort about how her large front teeth make her look stupid. Love is hard and tough, which Adrianna knew from the Spanish soaps that her grandmother loved to watch. The worse his comments, the more she knew he loved her.
Adrianna finally built up the nerve to ask him out on the last day of school. She slid him a note, bearing the question:
“Do you like me? Yes or no?”
Instead of replying, Matthew laughed so hard he fell out of his chair. Adrianna loved how elated he was to get her note. She watched him with a smile, her pudgy cheeks tinged pink. Matthew walked away, wiping tears from his eyes and Adrianna knew he was just playing hard to get.
Matthew moved to Orlando two weeks later. Adrianna supposed he didn’t ever reply because he was saving her from heartbreak. How could they last if he was completely on the other side of the East Coast? Adrianna kept the note that she gave him. She never got his number. She never got an answer. She would never see him again, yet she cherished that note like it was the final letter from a late, wartime lover. She knew he did it for her. He was kind to her like that.
Adrianna moved on after that. The heartbreak did stain her pillows with snot and tears, but she was a strong woman. Her grandmother helped. She slipped Adrianna a tube of lipstick and told her it’s what makes the men swoon. Adrianna walked into second grade with a smear of purple-pink around her mouth, looking more like she had missed her target while eating ice cream than trying to look good.
There were many boys that Adrianna was interested in, don’t get me wrong. There were many nice boys and pretty boys and sensitive boys, but none pulled her in as Matthew did. She once thought about asking the school if they had his new address so she could update that school directory they always get, but then again, Matthew loved her. He did what was best for her.
There was a void inside of her elementary-aged heart. She didn’t know if she’d ever fill it. She walked around in a haze while the girls around her flipped their hair and giggled at the other boys.
“How trivial”, she would think, “Do they know what I know? The heartbreak that comes with it all? The trust, the dedication?”
Adrianna was forever glad that Matthew chose her out of all the girls. It made her feel special. It made her lonely lunches feel worth it, because, for a fleeting moment, she was the most important person.
That hole stayed as it was, growing cobwebs and gathering dust, until she met the lanky, 6’7, dark-skinned, and deep-voiced man named Greggory in her freshman year of high school. His teeth were quite large and his glasses kept slipping down his nose, but he towered over Adrianna and she liked that. She always had felt so large around all the other girls, fitting into larger sizes than the rest, so the idea of being smaller was more than appealing. Greggory had one of the deepest voices she had ever heard, smoother and more comforting than Nat King Cole’s Christmas Album. He was in her English class and she loved hearing him talk about the complexities presented in The Giver. She always wanted to find another boy, but instead, this time she had found a man.
