Do you believe in Big Foot? I do—now.
ME, whose feet rang like the clapper of a bell to the sound of—
No, I can explain better. Start with, it’s dangerous falling in love for the first time, being proud as a peacock with your tail spread in the craziest places—
No, start with today I love you, Jan Steurchen. Maybe the rest will be self-explanatory.
I was walking Jan’s friend Cindy home, I’d volunteered but I didn’t know where she lived, how far it was. Ten blocks is a long way to talk about the weather, or school, or embarrassing stuff like “what you like to do?” when I didn’t want Cindy to think I was walking her home to flirt with her. I mean, it was because she was Jan’s friend and—
“So, how long have you known Jan?” I settled on asking, feeling like I was four hundred, not fourteen, and trying to sound sincere and adult in a dumb way.
“Since second grade.”
“Oh.”
“I think Jan really likes you.”
“What?!?” Where did—? I didn’t— This was something I wanted to know, yes, but like a secret nobody was supposed to tell me, I wasn’t supposed to ask—blurted out on the corner of Manistee and Oak Park Boulevard. Five o’clock in the afternoon. In full sunlight. “Did she say so?”
“No.” And Cindy laughed. If she was teasing me, I fell headlong in the trap.
Cindy stood still, laughing harder. I guess she knew she’d gone too far, now she’d have to tell me how she knew.
Jan’s secret: Jan had a dream about me, she awakened and imagined I was her pillow or her pillow was me, she’d told Cindy, Cindy was never supposed to tell me.
Enough. We’d been playing Four Square, pool on Mr. Steurchen’s table, sitting in the glider and talking about friends and school, feeling more and more urgent because school would start a week from Tuesday; I guess I’d been hanging out, seeing her about every day, learning to dance The Pony and Loop de Loop in the cool darkness of her basement. Not thinking about love, not thinking anything.
And then this. My brain, my face felt like—like an ear of corn I was shucking until all the rows of kernels stuck out like my wide-smiling front teeth. (Yeah, corny as it sounds.)
I had to go back, I had to let Jan know now, while she could figure out who I’d been with and without having to say exactly what or why I was gloating. I couldn’t stop gloating!
See? This is why I dashed back to the Steurchen’s. Even though I knew they’d be having dinner, I was supposed to be going home for dinner too: I had to let Jan know I knew!
Like saying YES! I dream about you too! Without saying a word.
Felt like my face would explode if I gloated any harder.
Stupid way to feel—but what did smart have to do with love?
The setup: Going through the wide chain-link gate into the backyard. Passing the stick on the lawn we’d dropped, we’d been using to “limbo” under half an hour ago. Coming to the side door—open—and hearing the sounds of Jan’s family having their dinner inside. I knew the kitchen window and how the view indoors was through the kitchen into their dining room and I didn’t want them to think I was trying to invite myself for dinner or make them stop eating or have to get up and come to the door if I knocked.
Setup Part Two: The kitchen window, seven or eight feet off the ground. A row of bent-down bricks forming its bottom edge. If I could grab that and hoist myself up and stick my head in the window and say boo or something—
Perfect, to get her sister to gasp, her father to laugh and Jan to—sit there maybe blushing because she guessed why I’d come back—
Setup Part Three (what I didn’t stop to think about): Right under the kitchen window at ground level, the basement window.
Well, you can guess how high I could jump, how long my head appeared to them before I slipped and swung. And how loud the crash was when I swung like a bell’s clapper and put my two feet through the basement window.
You saw it coming; me—I—being in love, I couldn’t see anything clearly.
—
