Madelaine.

Madelaine. a girl I had a crush on ever since I seen her white triangle up her skirt across the way in the U-shaped English classroom; but she did not really look at me ever, but let me put her to sleep over the phone once or twice since our parents knew each other; the night with tremendous immature things said to each other everywhere I will never remember except for the fact that I fell in love with her breathing, too. She was blurred in the shadows of a clear kid with no ambition revealed to myself; anyway and with so much sorrow he just smiled along at everyone so you could not see it overpowering; whatever he was, wherever he truly cared enough or not at all to suck a wicked disaster no kid in the school was ready for - this melancholy spirit sent himself to this spectacle of antifreeze and sleeping pills so the whole school mourns him in a mass at the cathedral; and Madelaine, poor Madelaine just weeps without showing anything.

Pointy elbows in the thin arms of Dwayne Centeres; a tall boy trimmed real neat with a buzz cut and pretty blue eyes way up in his small head; got me real good with her. He usually wore sweaters on the long frame, a dark complexion naturally tanned but the cheeks were too rosy, legs slacked and those boney arms in perfect long sleeves of some cotton button-down through the arm openings of them sweaters, too cute for most girls and too quiet for others; a good boy extremely smart and always dressed so nice even in among homes of brick and blacktop driveways where garden pathways in these overgrown vines get them dewy sprinkles on you when brushing past them… Onto my face and swimming arms and hands to feel through the darkness, through late summer jut before our senior years, to get around back into a sensor light suddenly flicking alight, and giggling quietly up onto the deck to get high with pretty boy Dwayne Centeres; wearing my best jeans and pair of sneakers; came with these obnoxious lumbering twins Gerald and Gerrod back to the back deck and others I could easily tell apart through the bushes and darkness as we entered the back part there; kids in my school partied inside the home with parents gone; and somehow there was Madelaine.

The twins I knew through CYO basketball games. Where she always reaches behind and takes her brunette hair around in her hand to turn the bunch of it over her face. But how she was; there; in the bleachers each time I looked over to her. Feet upon the lower seats. Hair pulled over to her face with a flip, the bend at her shoulders, fits of her small nose over the ancillary, at the fist of it, supporting her head, hair in hand. Back of her arm resting on her prominent thigh. Over and over she turns hair up to her face, and arrests that way making side contact with him; not watching the game; rather watching for his, Dwayne’s appeal in the fringes within his own mind imitating over a million things..a million reasons to glance and instantly stop in time.

We all got to recognize each other, which Gerald pointed out in front of everyone like he needed to; that clever clown of that English class that we all had together; and always he had something intelligent to remark about, some smartass comment, but this time intending to embarrass me and impress Madelaine. The weed must have sold him on “why you such a stoner dude?” And like the others who really only talked about getting stoned, he passed on it, again trying to impress her; when the little group gathered on the back deck and Gerald popped the light back on every time it shut off by waving his hand in front of it. And the only kid in that shadowland other than me who actually got singed, that knew how to hit the bowl was Dwayne Centeres, who burst at Gerald, “leave the damn thing off man. You want the neighbors to see us and get so and so in trouble?” Only he said the name of the student’s house I cannot remember now; as “your crumby bowl is clogged,” Chad Grodan claimed because the woose did not actually want to inhale hard enough and get all squeamish and scared, capricious like I love, that selfish solace cry for sympathy I now assume Dwayne was silenced by and amazed; yet actually revealed he was just conquered by love.

That is when I noticed him catching looks at Madelaine after putting down huge gulps I could hear sizzle and crack, pop the hunk of a marijuana seed right on out of the bowl. He blatantly grabs her with looks in most obvious turns of his head. Hopes. He hoped anyways in the moments when he purposely gets her looking over at his talking with the others, and just like at the games among a few others of them real pretty things on the seats between this unpredictable surrendering… to ..reaches over that, will bring her brunette hair, up, across her sweet face; to meeting eyes after watching him talk to the others between them when he is not so much looking as he is sensing her watching; the right moment to look right into her and twist the gorgeous hair fully in the way of her face.

Though I never questioned and did not intend to ignore it, Dwayne who was just trying to make her cover smiles at him, flicked into the shadows of a clear kid with no ambition – and I wondered why she liked him.

And poor Dwayne. How I freaked about in my mind how when I recognized his seat over there empty in English class afterward; after he took those lovely turns she made completely away; without him; and I tried to feel bad, stirred as they took the casket too; down along the road and away from the cathedral, but a bird then shit right on my pathetic hair, just buzzed it; and to get back to this story but was struggling but with Dwayne Centeres’ suicide and the funeral and afterward and how nearly this same group got high again with myself and the others and that awkward silent splendor, Madelaine.

On that deck like ghosts we talked about our CYO basketball league and English class and our futures and shit we never dreamed. But he never mentioned anything close to what he must have been planning. We actually connected to the point word passed around to others, who just went, “those are the sickheads,” and everyone played along like, “they suck!”—“oh yeah that’s the worst fucking group”—“yup, that’s the one’s with him on the deck”—“they should have known”—“they should have helped him,” and everything since the dust settled, by the end of the thing, summer, and Dwayne’s life.

So there, the little group somehow gathered again, but down along the road away from the cathedral, a few streets over, and out of sights of the principle or teachers or anyone else; in this mini-van, after Dwayne’s funeral, and in the sloppy confusion which had begun to settle in the way buzzes can, Gerald tells them where a whistle blew after Dwayne aggressively went after a loose ball to catch this rebound and his pointy elbow busted into his front tooth, blackened and bruised the thing that seemed to startle my own wisdom teeth with growths, woke them up say within my braces, as he exposed the thing to everyone climbing on out of the min-van; but what remained between Dwayne and myself as Chad Grodan, he went, "I know how you feel," he said, a deep sigh escaping his nose; as the autumn wind blew through their hair, sending shivers down their exposed necks. She forgot her scarf. She knew better. "Things were better yesterday." Madelaine said ---was adoring her hiding into behind that brunette hair, turning it up into her face, and without looking at them, feeling those light-colored blue disguises, forming her honey-colored face with that full-length hair around and kind of down the side of her hand, then behind sort of grasping, turning it up and in front of her face trying to be smiling with me.