I went frantic trying to pop out some reason to get her to myself, far from these shoppers and pigface cups. An old lady wearing what looked like pajamas, I swear, came over asking did we carry Snake-B-Gon. I tried to play dumb but Donnamarie gave me the mom stare, so I went to show her. With my heart banging, for fear of never seeing the fairy girl again. A nymph, I knew those from anime. Heaven’s lost angel. I never took my eyes off her, while PJ Mammaw ran on about the snake she seen in her tater hole and her boy that didn’t believe her. Yes ma’am, I kept saying. Watching those pretty arms and legs that were begging to be touched.
I got back in time to say a few things, all stupid. If she needed anything, she should let me know. Too bad the chicks were sold out, those little guys were cute as buttons.
“August is late in the year to be counting your eggs,” Dori said. Which seemed like something a nymph would say. I said true, but you never know what a customer will want.
She gave me this amazing smile, black eyes glittering, raised eyebrows that were the same silver lavender as her hair, and said, “Snake, begone!”
Then the dad had a coughing spell and they left. For the rest of the day I wondered if she knew the name I went by, Demon Copperhead. Was she vanishing me? I might never know.
I was a fool to tell Angus, but so afraid Dori would disappear. Like the dreams you wake up from with your heart on fire because some dead person you cared about was alive, and then by noon it’s just vague nonsense. I couldn’t stand for that to happen. I told Angus I was in love.
“Hold the phone,” she said, not even taking her eyes off the TV. We were splayed on our beanbags in not much more than our underwear. The AC had gone out, and we were pretty shameless with each other, litter pups. Or what Mouse said, eggs in a nest. At the commercial she picked up one of my notebooks and pretended to page through it. Licked her make-believe pencil. “Okay, number five hundred. What’s her name? I’ll enter it before you forget.”
“Fuck you,” I said.
“Oh no, sir, not me. Let’s keep this focused on the object of your momentary affection.”
“Go to hell. Forget it.”
We bickered like this every day. It was not a real fight. We’d only had one of those, and it was over. Angus was thinking now she’d go to community college, not applying to her go-away universities. For all her boss talk, we didn’t know one person that really did that, so probably she got cold feet about jumping off the end of the world. Coach was her excuse, that he would fall apart if she moved out. So we were good again, at that moment watching Survivor, with me thinking how on an island with Dori I could outshine the city guys as far as making her a house, spearing fish. Idiotic thoughts, in other words.
After a while Angus piped up. “So who is she?”
“Nobody you know, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
“No problem. I’ll find out next week when she’s crying in the bathroom. Another victim fallen to the fleeting crushes of Demon.”
I had no more to say, because she was wrong about everything: school bathroom, fleeting crush. Too bad for you, Angus, is what I thought. You’re never going to hear how this is the real deal, a whole new feeling. Not another full day would pass though before I spilled my guts. Angus being the only human on the planet that could calm down my wild stupid heart.
A few weeks later, I would see her again. Crazy. I live fifteen years in the same county with this magical girl, never to cross tracks, and now she’s the air I’m breathing.
Maybe because I was finally ready for something that good to happen for me. To trust the wild woolly universe, as Angus was always saying I ought. Tenth grade had started righteously, two shut-out games in a row. I played every minute of both, ran four TD’s. Cush Polk was as solid a QB as the Generals had seen in years, and a solid friend. Maggot, sadly, not so much. High school has its razor-wire walls between these and those. I don’t make these rules, they just are. My teammates were my guys. Horsing around pantsless in the locker room, to the point of naked feeling normal. Or eating in the lunchroom with covetous eyes on our wide-receiving shoulders. We cruised the top waters. Girls swam in our wake, eyeing us as the direct route to female power. Again, just the rules, ask anybody. （Other than Angus.）
It wasn’t that I believed myself to be hot shit particularly, the opposite in fact. I was the same worthless turd as ever, just a turd as it happened that could catch a thirty-yard pass. I did speak to Maggot if I saw him in the hall with his dark people, but he’d just roll an eye at me through the hair curtains like, Don’t do me any favors. Until I quit trying. I faked my cred, expecting every day to be busted and sent back to orphan class, but they let me stay, until I started feeling like, Fine, this is me. I deserve this.