Unrequited Love - or something like that

               Becky quickly twisted the dial of her combination lock back and forth and jiggled the handle until it opened with a metallic clang.  “Oh, sweet locker!  How I missed you!” she thought sarcastically to herself as she shoved her textbooks onto the narrow shelf.  It had been a long summer of babysitting her little brother and sister, and Becky was ready to start her senior year.

                “Whatcha’ doin’?” came a voice from behind her.

                Becky turned to find Jenna, her best friend and confidant since second grade.

                “Just reestablishing my domain,” Becky said, pulling a small mirror from her book bag and hanging it on the inside of the door.

                “I think you might need some fine art,” Jenna suggested and started to rummage through her oversized purse.  After a minute of shuffling through papers and pushing past cosmetics, Jenna handed Becky a page cut from the latest teen heart-throb magazine.  “This should suffice.”

                “Oh, sweet Cindy Lou,” Becky whispered in awe, taping the shirtless hunk next to her mirror.  “That is just what this place needed.”

                Becky grabbed a couple of books for her morning classes and shut her locker door.  The girls started walking down the hall, pushing through the mass of students milling about.

                “So, what’s first on the agenda for our last year of high school?” Jenna asked chipperly.

                Becky stopped dead in her tracks.

                Jenna stopped and turned to her.  “What’s wrong?”  Her freckled face was concerned.

                “It is our last year; isn’t it?  I guess I hadn’t really thought about it.”  Becky started walking again but slower this time; each step was like trudging through a swamp of desperation.

                “Unless something goes horribly wrong.”  Jenna pulled at Becky’s arm to get her to speed up a little.  “What’s wrong with that?”

                Jenna followed Becky’s glance across the hall to the brown-haired hunk in the letterman jacket.  Becky had crushed on Jimmy since freshman year, and she was always aware of his presence.  It was like she had a built-in Jimmy radar.

                Today, Jimmy was talking to Patrice, the stereo-typical blond cheerleader.

“What could he see in her?” Jenna asked, trying to sooth Becky’s sore feelings.

“She’s got b***s; she’s blond; she’s pretty, and did I mention she’s got b***s?”  Becky looked down at her own barely B-cup chest.

“She’s also not that bright.  After five minutes, she runs out of conversation and starts twirling her hair and laughing.”

As if on cue, a fake sounding laugh echoed off the wall, and Jenna and Becky turned to see Patrice with one hand on Jimmy’s shoulder and the other twirling her hair around a finger.

Becky rolled her eyes, and Jenna said, “You know what you have to do.”

“What’s that?” Becky started walking down the hall, trying to distance herself from such a disgusting sight.

“You need to go after him.”

“How am I supposed to do that?  Have you seen me lately?  I am probably the only girl in this school that didn’t go somewhere fun and get a tan this summer.  I am as pale as a ghost.  My hair looks like someone dipped it in ink and teased it out like an eighties rocker.”

“Don’t forget the uni-brow,” Jenna mumbled to herself.

Becky glared at her, and Jenna lifted her hands in surrender.  “I kid; I kid.”

Becky rubbed between her eyebrows self-consciously.  “My point is I could never in a million years compete with the likes of Patrice, even if she can’t read the back of a cereal box.”

“Sure you could.”  Jenna put her arm around Becky’s shoulders and steered her down the hallway.  “This is going to be the best senior year ever.”

 

Two weeks later, Becky was no closer to putting the moves on Jimmy.  She stared at the back of his head from across their math class, wondering how he got his hair so shiny and flake free.

“Now, I need you to pair up,” the teacher announced, breaking Becky out of her trance-like state.

Students were starting to partner up, but Jimmy was still doodling on some notebook paper.  Becky stood, gathering her nerves, and approached her future husband, her heart thumping in her chest and her legs turning to Jello.

“Hey,” she said when she reached his desk.

Jimmy looked up from his doodle in surprise.  “Hey.”

Suddenly, another jock from the football team was on the other side of Jimmy’s desk.  “Dude, help me with this.  I have no freakin’ clue what to do.”

Becky hurried back to her seat, embarrassed and relieved at the same time.

 

Jenna wound Becky’s hair into a bun and clipped it so that it wouldn’t fall and drip dye on Becky’s clothes.

“Are you sure this is going to work?” Becky asked, studying herself in her bathroom mirror.

“Of course it will work.  In twenty minutes, you will be a beautiful blond Barbie doll, and Jimmy will be falling over himself to ask you to his party next week.”

“Somehow, I seriously doubt that.”

“Quit being such a Negative Nelly, and let’s go watch the movie,” Jenna said, setting the timer.

 

“That was the grossest movie I have ever seen,” Becky said, lifting herself off Jenna’s bed.  “I can’t believe they lit that guy on fire.”

“He was a zombie,” Jenna pointed out, “in case you didn’t see the blood and guts dripping off of him.”  Jenna wrinkled her nose.  “What smells?”

“It smells burnt.”  Becky sniffed.

“Omigosh!  We forgot to rinse your hair!”

The pair rushed to the bathroom, and Becky jumped into the shower without even removing her clothes.  The cold water rinsed the dye down and polluted the water at her feet.

“Quick!  Put on this conditioner!” Jenna commanded.

Becky massaged a glob of conditioner over her head and down to the tips of her hair, pulling away several strands no longer attached to her head.

“The box says to leave it on for five minutes.  We should probably do ten,” Jenna suggested.

Jenna left to get a bathrobe to cover Becky’s soaked body, and when she returned, a worried Becky was sitting on the toilet in her bra and panties; her sodden shirt and jeans were left in the tub.

“I’m sure it’s not that bad.”  Jenna handed Becky the robe.  “I just need to style it.”  She pulled a bottle of leave-in spray conditioner out of her medicine cabinet.

Becky was silent as Jenna ran a comb through her wet hair, spritzing it repeatedly with the conditioner.

“Okay, have a look,” Jenna said when she was done.

Becky lifted her head to study her reflection in the mirror.  Her hair was a mix of bleached white-blond and brassy yellow, and the texture was somewhere between dried grass and oil slick.

“You just need to wait a day and wash it with a good conditioner,” Jenna soothed.  “Use one of those shampoos with vitamins built in.”

Becky nodded mutely.  Her eyes swam with tears, and her throat was constricted too much to talk.  She abandoned their Saturday girls’ night in favor of a quiet night of crying into her pillow.

 

“Where have you been for the last week?” Jenna scolded.

“I couldn’t go to school with my hair like that,” Becky said with embarrassment.  “My mom had to take me to a salon and have most of my hair cut off because it was damaged so badly.  This is all I’m left with.”  Becky lifted a lock of hair that was hanging just past her earlobe.

“I am so sorry,” Jenna apologized.  “I should have brought the timer in with us when we were watching the movie.”

“It’s okay; I guess my hair doesn’t look so bad now that it has been cut.  It’s just really short.  I wonder what Jimmy would think.”

Jenna stared uncomfortably at the floor.

“What’s wrong?” Becky asked, instantly on alert.

“Jimmy’s last day was Friday.  That’s why he was having the party.  He told everyone at the end of the party because he didn’t want people to be sad.”

Becky’s gaze wandered forlornly to Jimmy’s locker.

“I think I’ll give you a minute,” Jenna said, excusing herself.

Becky slammed her head lightly into her locker.  She had let the object of her affection get away without so much as a proclamation of her undying love.  She stepped back from her locker and screwed her eyes shut, holding back tears, as she opened the door.  A slip of paper fell to her feet, and she bent to retrieve it.

It was a letter written in a hand she didn’t recognize.  “Becky, please come to my party Saturday night.  My parents are making me move.  I have always had the biggest crush on you.  I love your raven black hair.  I hope I don’t sound too stupid writing this, and I hope to see you Saturday.  Yours, Jimmy.”

Reviews

[Just Me]

Awwww... That was so cute. You should write like another part of this like when they see each other again or something. I would love to read more. I loved this, I really really loved this.