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In trying to categorize this story, and deciding whether to break it into chapters or to go with a single story of multiple pages, I sought help. ElectricBlue66 stepped up and offered his; for that, I here express my thanks.
This chapter and Chapter Two will be in First Time; the other chapters, I will play by ear.
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Every high school boy has one of two things: a girlfriend, or a girl on whom he has an unrequited crush. In the summer of 1979, I had the latter: Melanie Clayton, with whom I had graduated the weekend before Memorial Day. Five-two, one-oh-five, hazel eyes, brownish-blonde hair in a Dorothy Hamill pageboy cut, cheerleader, basketball player, my compatriot in the National Honor Society -- she was the total package, and every guy in Ashwood, Nebraska thought as I did. (To get you up to speed, Ashwood is roughly thirty miles southwest of downtown Omaha and thirty miles northeast of downtown Lincoln; our population then was just shy of two thousand.)
Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to introduce myself -- my name's Dan Everton. In contrast to Melanie, my dealings with extracurriculars were limited to Spanish club, interscholastic festivals, and watching from the trumpet section in the marching band as the Ashwood Vikings won seven football games in four years. However, that did have a splendid side benefit -- that is to say, I got to watch Melanie cheer for them.
To complicate matters more, my crush on her only stood to grow worse with the coming fall. I was doing what many working-to-middle-class Nebraska high schoolers do, have done, and will do: I would be off to the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Melanie's family, meanwhile, were not ultra-rich but could partly afford (a generous financial package doing the rest) to send her to her chosen small liberal arts college in central Iowa. They could also afford her a nicer car than most of us had. Never mind this muscle car fetish Seventies guys continue to brag about; despite my grades and ambitions, I'd be going down to Lincoln in a shitbox '62 GMC pickup which, despite its "Don't Laugh, It's Paid For" bumper sticker, was able to me where I needed to go, and that in one piece. This stood in contrast to Melanie's '74 Datsun 260Z -- a sporty, sprightly little car to match her personality.
Our different standing and cars formed a partial contributor to her attitude toward me; she was always sweet and friendly -- as long as I didn't try to ask her out. In her case, "I'm... kinda seein' someone... he doesn't go to this school" wasn't the traditional ruse many girls use in place of, "I wouldn't date you if we were the last heterosexual male and female on Earth"; she really did have a boyfriend at a different school, closer to suburban Omaha. She even had a t-shirt made with their picture on it, and she always talked about him as though, in Nebraska slang, "he hung the moon and the stars." Therefore, as long as we Ashwood guys didn't approach her romantically, she got on great with us.
Impending semesters and interstate distances do not have good effects on established relationships, much less crushes. I wasn't entertaining any hope of doing much beyond sitting close on her porch and holding her hand as the sun set; anything else, I figured would come in time (if it were to come), with another girl I might meet later. Even so, I felt the need to share my mind and emotions with her; if nothing else, she would know them before we parted ways.
Opportunity chanced my way one late Thursday morning in August. Many days, I worked part time at the local Ace hardware store, as a way to mark time before going to Lincoln and also to help with paying my truck's upkeep; today, though, I was lucky enough to have off. I was sauntering down Melanie's street, on my way to I neither knew nor cared where, when I noticed her sitting, idly and alone, in one of the two deck chairs on her front porch; more to the point, the only car in front of the house was her Datsun. Mr Clayton was at work, while Mrs Clayton must have gone grocery shopping, to their church's Ladies' Auxiliary meeting, or other such.
Melanie caught sight of me first. "Hi, Danny!" Her voice was so bright I could hear the smile in it.
"Hey, Melanie, how's it going?"
'Not bad, not much doing... how about you?"
"Same here... got nowhere in particular to go, nothing really to do."
Her next words are still affecting my life, even today. "Come up and sit with me?"
No guy in Ashwood, least of all myself, would have refused such an invitation. I was up those steps in two seconds; in four, I was parking my five-nine, one-eighty-four frame in the chair next to hers.
"So... this is it," I said with a dejected resignation.
Melanie read my tone. "Aww, what is? Something's wrong?"
I looked straight ahead, fearing I'd start crying if I turned toward her. "This is probably the last time I'll sit here, being close to you." I swallowed a rising lump. "Here we are, off to college in a couple weeks... in different states, even..." I had to pause to keep my composure.
"I can still be your friend," Melanie offered in a kind voice, over and above the usual "I think of you more as a brother than a romantic interest" tenor she had taken with the male population of Ashwood over the last year and a half.
"But it's not the same, and we both know it," I said, glumly. "I'll be one place, you'll be another..." I was so wrapped up in self-pity that I initially failed to notice Melanie had silently moved closely enough to me that her bare right knee -- her knee was bare, that is; her ass and uppermost thighs were in cutoffs -- was resting against my bluejean-clad left one. "And there's Mark to deal with." Mark Morton, that is -- her "doesn't go to Ashwood School" boyfriend, about whom she had been so crazy.
He played for his school's football team, had a mane of blonde hair, and drove a sweet '68 Chevelle. In short, he did much better in the female-attracting department than most of us Ashwood guys could dream.
Her voice was distant and morose, a tear running through it. "Not anymore."
Three months earlier, this news would have had every guy in town rejoicing; today, though, was a day for listening. When a girl is crying, a wise boy does not delight in the misfortune that has brought her to this point.
She went on. "My birthday was a couple months ago." This birthday, of course, was her eighteenth, on the eighteenth day of June; my own eighteenth, for what it's worth, had fallen on the twenty-sixth of April. (As a short piece of inconsequential trivia, our dates of birth fell such that our combined ages were exactly five whole years old the day President Kennedy was shot.)
My hackles went up. "What'd he do?"
"He wanted to give me a -- well, a gift, if you wanna call it that."
