Kyle has an opinion about everything. He is involved in student government, the high school newspaper, yearbook, musicals, and anything else he can pencil in. His favorite teacher is Senora Finnegan. Even after we are done taking all our required Spanish classes and state tests, he eagerly signs up for an elective Spanish class she is offering to Juniors. Kyle gets me to sign up too. Senora is always wearing big, busy colorful prints and moving about the classroom fluidly while playing soft Spanish Flamenco dance music on her small CD player in the back of the room. The room is decorated with vibrant student-made and store-bought posters. The wide open shelves are full of half-finished projects, construction paper, and various crafting decorations and utensils. One day in particular, Senora opens up class by delivering a somewhat sad, Spanish soliloquy that relates to her personal life. I don't understand all of it, but I can tell that something sad happened. Kyle is moved to tears, goes through an entire box of Kleenex, and whispers a translation to me once he pulls himself together.
Kyle gets worked up about everything: people, movies, news, politics. His emotional side is both confusing and contagious. He is more alive than anyone I know. He gossips about certain people more than others. He cracks jokes in class, here or there, just loud enough for anyone seated next to him in class to hear, and just funny enough to laugh and forget about it afterwards. No one ever gossips about Kyle. He's generally loved by all, though he doesn't go to parties. Instead, he invites other non-party-goers to his house, and with him there, it's a party. No alcohol necessary.
Fast forward fifteen years. Kyle is a hundred pounds lighter and works for the entertainment industry. He lives in NYC and wears great designer glasses. His wife is a beautiful younger lawyer chick, at least from what I could see on Facebook before Kyle blocked me. I sent him a few desperate "forgive me please" FB emails before he clicked block. But some things can't be forgiven.
From my earliest recollection of Kyle in eighth grade, I thought he was snobby. I didn't get his personality. He seemed so apathetic to others around him, so self-consumed, whispering often into someone's ear or rolling his eyes while mumbling something out-loud to himself. It was weird. I was perplexed. Doesn't he realize other people can see and hear him? He would stretch out his giant back and big arms and dip his head backward in his chair and moan during the middle of a teacher's lecture or a test, displaying the agony of Edvard Munch's Scream, then quietly collect himself and go back to working on the task at hand.
He was often walking the halls with his girlfriend Julie. But in ninth grade Julie broke up with Kyle for a guy named Jesse. Ironically, I had chosen Jesse as my future husband in Mr. Keniston's eighth grade science class when we did an experiment. I was sad when Julie dated Jesse, but Jesse had a twin brother so I told myself I'd settle for either twin. It never happened. Neither twin had any interest in me beyond some occasional flirting. And I never thought of Kyle romantically, even after a friendship began that year. I wondered why this pretty, athletic girl Julie dated Kyle at all, given he was so strange and she seemed so normal. This intrigue birthed my first affections for Kyle. I wanted to learn more about this dynamic character.
By the end of ninth grade, I was walking the halls with Kyle daily. We were inseparable. We talked on the phone most nights. He complained about his step-dad, who I thought was great. Ron. Ron gave me a WWII packaged lunch that never got opened. I have it to this day. It's probably worth money, but I'll never sell it. And Kyle's mother was so pretty and sweet. He had two older sisters he didn't talk to much, and a slightly younger brother he made fun of sometimes.
I worked at McDonald's and sneaked him extra fries and sometimes milkshakes. Sometimes we ate together. I liked his smile, his hair, his charm, his witty conversation, and warm companionship.
In tenth grade I went through one of several cigarette-smoking phases. Kyle never smoked. Everyone else across the street from the bus semi-circle did though, so I thought it was okay. It was on one particular damp, Spring day that I was jonesing for a cigarette while walking to McDonald's with Kyle. I saw butts all around, but most of them were wet. I finally found a dry, half-smoked Camel, and bent down to pick it up and light it. Kyle tried to rip it out of my hand. I tried to explain it was perfectly good, and wasteful not to smoke it. He told me he could never talk to me again if I lit and smoked it. I lit it and smoked it anyhow.
Kyle was disgusted with me then, but he eventually got over it. Yet I continued to disgust him. During senior year I ditched our morning hallway walks together to make out with my boyfriend in the elevator shaft. I had never dated anyone before. This happened every morning for about three weeks straight. Then the boyfriend dumps me and senior prom is only a few months away. Kyle, though disgusted at my behavior with the bf, asks me to prom. I am shocked and dumbfounded. It seems like senior prom should be for romantic couples. I play it cool and tell Kyle I am holding out for Jason Fuller.
Not so cool. Jason doesn't ask me, Kyle's feelings are hurt, and I feel like a moron. But Kyle waits until prom is only two weeks away and entices me in his charismatic way. I reluctantly agree. It turns out to be the best night of my life. I feel bad for not agreeing sooner. It's so much fun. Especially planning our outfits. We wear matching bumble-bee themed dress and suit, with bumblebee corsages and bees worked into my hairdo. Kyle spikes his hair and dyes the tips bright yellow, and carries a black cane with yellow duct tape circled around as stripes. He gets me to dance to a few songs, always using his cane as a prop, though we mostly hang out by the punch bowl as he points out fashion sense fails. He can't contain his laughter at so-and-so's outfit or dance moves. Neither can I.
Prom ends. I go to a dumb party. Maybe Kyle goes too. I don't know. I probably make out with some random dude and get a cab to my friend Amanda's before passing out completely. I really don't remember. Then we graduate and go off to college.
I decide to email Kyle once during my Freshman college year, after ignoring a few emails from him. I guess we kind of drifted apart. His college was across the state, and his place in my life was reduced to a little black and yellow picture frame perched on my dorm room dresser.
As I sit down to email Kyle after almost an entire year of college has gone by, I feel awkward about not making more of an effort to stay in touch. I need to break the ice. I have this great idea to jokingly email Kyle a picture of a guy in a Speedo looking all sexy. I find a ridiculous image that makes me laugh, and send it as an attachment. For whatever reason, Kyle is beyond disgusted. He is mortified. He lets me know so in his very brief and final email correspondence with me the following day.
We don't speak again during our college years. I forget about him for the most part. I see him jogging a few times during my college summer vacations. He is renting an apartment with a bunch of girls across the street from the restaurant where I waitress. I whistle and holler at him obnoxiously each time I see him jog by, and each time, he rolls his eyes and says nothing. Sometimes he puts out his hand as if to say hello, or shut up, I don't know. But he doesn't look at me and he doesn't say anything.
Eventually we have graduated from college, and lots of my high school friends are back in my home town celebrating with their families, sorting out internships and careers, and I decide to go into student teaching. At this point, I miss Kyle desperately and hope to run into him. We have so much to talk about now. So much time has passed. And I finally get my chance.
I'm at a local bar when I see his familiar face and sharpened jaw line. I almost don't recognize him because he has traded in his teddy bear physique for a thin, toned one. He is playing pool with a few other girls we'd gone to high school with. When I realize it's him, I leap from my bar stool and gallop to the other end of the bar with open arms to embrace him. He doesn't open his arms or look kindly at me, so I just run my finger down his shirt buttons and say, "You look amazing!"
He pokes me with his pointer finger between my collar bones and replies, "So am I good enough for you now?" He strains a smile then turns around and paces the other side of the pool table, whispering and giggling, probably about me, to his little posse of girls.
This will be the last time I ever see or speak to Kyle. I don't know him anymore. I go back to my bar stool, do a shot of something, probably whiskey, with my sister, and we go home.
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