Her name was Nina “Needles” Rodrigo. She was one of those pretty seventeen year old girls who made you sigh when she passed. Whether it was because you caught a glimpse of her light green eyes staring at you or because your boyfriend had, your breathing pattern changed when she was near. As my best friend and perpetual sidekick, she usually left me gasping for breaths between bouts of laughter.
She had natural beauty that didn’t need makeup and her eyes got her out of trouble when she was caught skipping class. Nina barely graced Mrs. Benitez’s Spanish class with her presence. She wasn’t interested in learning how to speak Spanish, which is ironic seeing as she was the only person in her family not fluent in the language. She had more important subjects to study.
The one who got her in the most trouble was Mike Asesino, captain of the varsity soccer team, Twin Rivers High’s Most Athletic superlative winner, and best friend to Nina’s brother Alex. Nina’s Spanish class coincided with Mike’s gym class and she much preferred to watch him play soccer with the other boys at the field behind the school, usually crouching behind a bush so as to not be seen by any nearby gym teachers.
As a joke, for Nina’s fifteenth birthday I bought her a pair of binoculars and wrote “for bird watching only… use wisely” in her birthday card. I knew she would put them to good use on Mike, but I didn’t know she would end up using them at every soccer game and occasionally during Mike’s gym class for the next two years.
Somehow her brother Alex either didn’t know or didn’t care that she obsessed over Mike ever since Alex’s middle school graduation party. Even though she was only twelve and Mike fourteen, Nina promised me she would marry him. Mike had a golden brown tan, a result of countless hours outside playing soccer, which made his straight teeth look even whiter than they already were. He had wavy dark brown hair that always seemed to remain in place. He was also almost a full six inches taller than Alex at the time.
The day of the graduation party was also the day Nina got her nickname. She had been carrying the knife for her brother’s graduation cake and tripped on a sprinkler head. When she fell, she cut her left palm and started bleeding. She just got up as if nothing had happened, walked over to her brother, and gave him the knife, dripping blood the whole way.
“Uh, Nina…” Alex said. “You’re bleeding all over the place.”
“Yeah, right, Alex,” she replied, “very funny.” Then she looked at her hand and passed out.
Mrs. Rodrigo started screaming and crying and made Mr. Rodrigo drive her and Nina to the emergency room while my mom watched over the party.
“Debbie, you don’t mind, do you?” Mrs. Rodrigo asked between sobs.
“Not at all, Prudencia,” my mother said.
“Maddie, would you like to come to with us to keep Nina calm?” Mrs. Rodrigo asked me.
If anyone needed to be calmed it was her, but I said “Of course.”
With that, we went to the hospital. I found out that a girl with a blood soaked towel on her hand gets treated very quickly in the emergency room, especially when her mother is screaming at the top of her lungs. When the doctor stitched Nina’s hand up she didn’t even flinch.
“You’re being so brave,” Mr. Rodrigo said to Nina as he patted her knee.
“It’s ok,” she said. “I can’t feel a thing.”
The doctor suddenly looked at her with a concerned look.
“You don’t feel anything?” he asked.
“Nope,” she replied. “Maybe some pins and needles like when my foot’s asleep, but that’s it.”
When the doctor finished stitching her hand up he asked to speak to her parents outside for a minute. I couldn’t see or hear what they were saying, but Mrs. Rodrigo started crying again. This couldn’t be good. The doctor took Nina to an examination room and made her stick her right hand in ice water. After 10 minutes, with no reaction to the cold, the doctor took her hand out and pulled Mr. and Mrs. Rodrigo outside of the room again.
“Honey,” the doctor said to Nina when he returned, “we’re going to need to do some more tests.”
After a bunch of tests in large machines that she later told me had lights that circled around her head, the doctor came in with a serious look on his face.
“Mr. and Mrs. Rodrigo, your daughter has Peripheral Neuropathy,” he said.
At the time none of us knew what that meant but the doctor explained that it meant due to some disease, possibly genetic, Nina had numbness all over her body that came and went and it was worst in her arms and legs which meant she couldn’t feel pain. When she hurt herself, like when she cut her hand, she felt nothing or only pins and needles. Alex took to calling her Needles when Nina returned home, and within a week Mike was calling her Needles too. She never took offense to it, especially since it was like Mike’s pet name for her. She ignored the fact that her brother also called her by that name.
By the time Mike and Alex started their freshman year of high school, Mike he had become a regular fixture at the Rodrigo house. He would eat at their house at least once a week and each time he was a perfect guest.
“Need help with those dishes Mrs. R?” he would ask sweetly after dinner.
“No, thank you, Michael,” she would say and smile at him. “Maybe you two could learn something from Michael,” she would say looking at Alex and Nina with a frustrated look. Nina would call me on the nights Mike ate over that I wasn’t there and tell me how he, yet again, was the cause of an hour long discussion on responsibility.
“But I don’t mind cause he’s still so cute!” she would always say afterwards.
With Mike at her house almost constantly, Nina became a little sister to him rather than the love interest she wished she could be. He wouldn’t tease her quite as badly as Alex, but he also didn’t defend her.
It wasn’t until the summer before Nina and my junior year of high school that Mike actually noticed Needles wasn’t a little kid anymore. She was Nina, a curvy, bright-eyed young woman who he was very attracted to. Mike would never tell Alex he felt that way though. He did, however, give hints to Nina about how he felt. He would smile at her when he walked into the Rodrigo house.
“Hey, Nina,” he would say, rather than calling her by her pet name.
There were other things he would do or say that Nina would call me at all hours of the night to tell me about. She told me everything from making eye contact at the dinner table to suggesting they go see the newest blockbuster movie together. Yet, by Christmas, he had still made no real effort to pursue her. Nina’s parents threw their annual Christmas Eve party and Mike and his parents were invited. Nina had been really upset that all through her parents’ party Mike hadn’t talked to her. He stayed in the basement with Alex and their soccer buddies playing video games.
While Nina was outside getting a soda, Mike came upstairs and followed her out.
“It’s, um uh, really pretty out tonight, isn’t it?” he asked her. She looked at him slightly confused. Mike’s stuttering was a little odd.
“Yeah…” Nina said slowly. “The stars look really nice tonight.”
“I, uh, well, got you something,” he said hesitantly as he handed a royal blue box to Nina. She stood frozen for a minute.
“Well, open it,” Mike said.
Nina opened the box. Inside was a pair of small silver hoop earrings and a note. Will you be my New Years kiss? Circle yes or no was written on the paper. Nina threw her arms around Mike’s neck.
“Yes, yes, yes!” she squealed. “Definitely!” She hugged him outside that night until Mike started to shiver.
“I think it’s best that we get you in. You must be freezing,” Mike said forgetfully.
“No,” Nina said with a grin. “I’m not cold at all.” She and Mike laughed for a minute and then went back into the house. They shared their first kiss as promised on New Years at Mike’s house at his New Year’s party. I, of course, received the call at 12:01 a.m. while on the couch watching Dick Clark.
Nina wanted to take things slowly seeing as they were only in high school — Mike whole heartedly agreed. They would go on double dates with Alex and his girlfriend to the movies or out to eat. They would occasionally eat at Mike’s house for dinner. His mother loved Nina and would always make her favorite food, chicken chimichangas, when she knew Nina would be over. She would still call me with every detail of their dates as if each was their first.
At school Mike would hang out in front of her locker before homeroom and take her out to lunch everyday. Nina was met with many envious stares as she walked down the hall with Mike, with his varsity jacket around her shoulders. Fortunately, Mike was also able to convince Nina to go to Mrs. Benitez’s class and she began to get straight A’s in Spanish. I figure it helped that sometimes Mike would refuse to speak to her in anything but Spanish.
Surprisingly, Alex took Nina and Mike’s relationship very well. Nothing seemed to change. Mike and Alex still played Guitar Hero in the basement almost every day and the occasional pick up soccer games outside with their friends. The only difference now was that Nina was invited to watch the games. Her binoculars began to gather dust as a result.
By March things were going great. Nina had helped Mike pick a college, Penn State. Mike’s soccer scholarship would pay most of his tuition and Penn State had a great Kinesiology program so he decided to go into sports medicine. He and Nina had decided that she would follow him the next year and become a Penn State Nittany Lion too.
“So, Mike is going to go to Penn State and he’s going to be a sports doctor and then the next year I’m going to go too!” Nina said excitedly on the phone to me the next day.
“Slow down a minute.” I said. “Are you sure you want to go to Penn State, Nina? I thought you had your heart set on journalism at U. Penn.”
“Well, the school doesn’t really matter that much,” she said. “I’m sure they have journalism at Penn State too, so why not go there? At least I’ll know someone when I get there.”
She had a point. I had been planning to go to NYU after high school so we wouldn’t even be together. I just dropped the subject.
Since Nina knew she would be going to our junior prom in May and Mike’s senior prom in June, we started looking for dresses in April. I found a teal dress that fit me almost instantly.
“Oh, Mad,” Nina said. “That dress is gorgeous!”
Nina found a pale pink dress that was a halter top and had a low cut back.
“Jeez, Nina,” I said. “You really think your mom will let you out of the house with that dress on?”
“Hopefully,” she said. “It’s so pretty and I really like the beading.”
“Well,” I said. “I’m sure if she really objects she can just sew it up a bit higher.”
We couldn’t find her senior prom dress at the store we had gone to so we called it a day and went to our separate houses.
“I found it! I found it!” Nina yelled over the phone to me the next morning at sometime around noon.
“Wha?” I asked having been woken up from a deep sleep.
“I found the senior prom dress!” she said. “Jackie took me to a store up in Firecrest and I found the prettiest red, strapless gown ever. And it fit great!”
It took a minute to register in my dozing brain. Jackie is Alex’s on-again-off-again girlfriend who he is taking to senior prom. She must have picked Nina up and taken her with her to go find a dress.
“Oh,” I said. “Umm, cool.” I tried to hide the fact that I was slightly upset.
“What’s the matter, Mad?” she asked picking up on my tone of voice. “It’s not like we didn’t try to find the dress. I just happened to find it with Jackie.”
I told her I wasn’t upset. I had just woken up and was still groggy.
In the weeks before prom Nina found places to buy purses to match our dresses, get our nails done, and even the hotel we would stay at that night. She called me with the details when she found each and seemed truly excited for us to be going to prom all together.
I won’t lie, she and Mike looked amazing for junior prom. He had found a tie that matched her dress almost perfectly. My date backed out last minute, sticking me with Mike’s sophomore little brother T.J., the short, acne ridden opposite of Mike. T.J. was the constant reminder that the Asesino boys were actually part Jewish. His hair was super frizzy and his nose was twice the size of what would be proportionate to his face. But the way I saw it, he was human and had a pulse therefore he was a suitable date.
When we arrived in the cafetorium, we saw streamers were hanging from every rafter and fake Oscars were greeting the prom goers at each entrance. Our theme, as decided by the junior class council, was “A Night at the Oscars” complete with a red carpet at the entrance. The backdrop used for pictures was a landscape picture of the Hollywood hills with the words “Greetings from Hollywood” sprawled across the screen. Nina was on prom court and, based on looks alone, she should have won. Unfortunately, Jen Shuman, our class president, won the title.
“It’s okay,” Nina said with a shrug. “Maybe next year.”
We stayed for a little while after the crowning. Mike and Nina were dancing out on the floor while I sat and watched. They really were a cute couple and I couldn’t help but be happy for them.
After prom everyone went to the hotel. I wasn’t feeling well so I just went home.
“You sure, Maddie? I don’t want to leave you home alone,” Nina said when I asked Mike to drop me off at my house.
“Yeah,” T.J. said. “You sure you don’t want me to join you?” He said this with a wink.
“No!” Nina and I said at the same time.
“I’ll be fine, just a bit queasy,” I assured Nina.
The next morning Nina called me at 11 a.m. and she told me every detail of the night before while I picked on some toast and a coffee mug of orange juice.
“So, apparently,” Nina said, “someone thought it would be funny to give T.J. some Jack Daniels and he drank a little too much and Mike and I were woken up around 4 in the morning to T.J. puking on our door. It was so gross! Mike took him to the bathroom and kept an eye on him til he passed out on the floor. Joe Sinero supposedly got some really funny pictures of T.J. jumping on beds in sunglasses, his white shirt, and boxers if you want to see. I’m sure he’ll let me borrow them.”
“Believe me,” I said. “As much as I enjoyed Tom Cruise in Risky Business, I don’t think T.J. can quite replicate that scene.”
The month leading up to senior prom went by fast. Nina had found her shoes and purse and had taken to sunning herself in the back yard to build up a tan on her already olive skin. I would join her on the weekends in front of the pool.
“So, Mad,” she said one Sunday day, “why hadn’t I ever met this guy you were supposed to go to prom with?”
“Oh, you never met Pete?” I just said, knowing full well why she hadn’t. “I could swear you met him, ya know, that day we were at the grocery store with your mom…”
I was losing my excuse as it came out of my mouth.
“No, Maddie,” Nina said slightly impatiently. “I don’t think I did.”
“Well, he works at the grocery store in the produce section.”
“That’s funny cause Alex just got a job there and says there’s no Pete in produce. A hot girl named Jill from what he says, but no Pete.”
I was cornered. There was no way around it now.
“Alright, alright, there’s no Pete,” I said.
“But why would you make him up?” Nina asked.
“Well, I figured if I just told you he couldn’t come last minute that you’d just let me stay at home while you all went to prom. Proms aren’t really my thing anyway.”
“What?!” Nina yelled. “Mads, You know if you had given me more notice I could have hooked you up with a better prospect than T.J. Mike probably could have gotten Jeff Wilson to be your date. I know how you stare at Jeff Wilson.”
“That’s exactly what I didn’t want,” I told Nina. “I don’t want to have you deciding my life for me. You and Mike are so happy together and I don’t want to ruin that, so I’ve just kinda taken a back seat.”
“I don’t understand,” Nina said.
“What reason is there for me to go out and do anything when you can just go out there and live life and then just call me about it?”
Nina just sat there for a minute.
“Is that why you sit around the house all day? Cause you don’t need to go out and live life anymore? You can just depend on me to live it for you?”
“Well, I don’t see much of an option,” I said. “Mike’s kinda taken away the person I used to live life with.”
We sat there for about five minutes, not saying a word, just thinking. I hadn’t wanted to make her feel bad, but it was true. Especially in the last year she had been on a Mike obsession of epic proportions. Between the nights at home eating dinner, the varsity soccer games, and the skipped Spanish classes, she was infatuated. She would never tell me when she had skipped class to go watch Mike play in gym class. She would have been ashamed to admit that. I knew that fact because I had been the person in the seat next to her in Mrs. Benitez’s class the whole year. I knew this because her seat was empty on those days much like the seat on my couch, in my car, and in my life had been empty all this time. Her seat had been empty since September and I just wanted her to sit in it again.
“You know I didn’t mean to,” Nina said.
“I know,” I said.
In almost no time senior prom was approaching. Nina went all out for the occasion. She got a manicure, her hair was done at a salon, and she had gone to a tanning booth to finalize her gorgeous tan. All of the money was worth it because when she walked down the stairs in her dress to take prom pictures, she looked amazing. Mr. and Mrs. Rodrigo took at least three roles of film. Nina, Mike, Alex, and Alex’s date Jackie were poked, prodded, and moved in every direction for the pictures.
While taking pictures, a white car pulled up and none other than THE Jeff Wilson stepped out with a corsage in a plastic case in his hand. He was walking toward me and when he got two feet from me he got down on one knee, in his black tuxedo.
“Madison, will you go to prom with me?” he asked.
Mrs. Rodrigo was never an amazing photographer but the picture she took of my face when he asked me to prom was probably the best picture she ever took.
“Umm…. what?” I asked, not sure I had heard him right.
“Nina and Mike told me you had been gypped out of a date to junior prom and I never asked anyone to senior prom so I thought maybe you’d like to go.”
I don’t remember much of that moment. I remember everything just slowing down as I decided what to do. I had lived in Nina’s shadow for so long I wasn’t sure what to do. They were right; I had been cheated out of a good prom.
“But what would I wear?” I asked.
“Your teal dress!” Nina said. “Just cause you wore it to sit at a dance a month ago doesn’t mean you can’t use it again!”
“Well then, okay!” I said.
Nina and I hurried to get my dress and she did my makeup and put my hair into a messy bun and we were off.
The prom itself was tacky but Mike was crowned Prom King. I remember the excitement on Nina’s face when he won. After his dance with the queen he ran over to Nina and picked her up and kissed her. This time around, I really was happy for them.
I also put my dress to good use dancing to such iconic gems as Wild Cherry’s “Play the Funky Music” and Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.” Like I said, it was a tacky prom but we put those dresses and shoes to good use. I even got a few good dances in with Jeff.
“Hey, Maddie,” Jeff said, “are you doing anything next Saturday?”
“Um, well,” I said, losing concentration as I looked into his blue eyes, “No, no, I think I’m free.”
I could hear Nina and Mike laughing a few feet away.
“Well, what do you think of you, me, Mike, Nina, Alex and Jackie going to the lake?”
“I think,” I said, “that would be great.”
We stayed for a few more songs and then went back to Nina’s house and packed to go to Wildwood.
“Thank you,” I said to Nina, feeling a little stupid that I had ever doubted the strength of our friendship.
“Oh, Mad,” she said giving me a hug, “I never meant to make you feel left out. I just got caught up in the whole relationship thing…”
“It’s ok, really,” I said. “After you found Mike I just kinda became numb to the world.”
Realizing what I had just said, we both laughed and finished packing. It ended up being a beautiful weekend which allowed for much sunning on the shore. We lounged, Nina, Jackie, and me, while the guys surfed and I finally began living life.
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