It was those charged five minutes between 2nd and 3rd period when the courtyard of my junior high was suddenly thronged with twelve-, thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds of all shapes and sizes, all with backpacks dangling off their shoulders. Small groups began to form, halting traffic on the two narrow cement walkways that crisscrossed between the three separate grade buildings and the gymnasium. Some groups stepped off the cement onto the grass. They stood together in the sun, huddling close, smiling, talking and laughing louder than they ever could in class.

I stepped off the path and into the spring sunlight. I bet nobody noticed me, Jessica Fry, standing alone. I leaned against the side of the 8th-grade building with my heavy backpack between my scrawny, 5’4” frame and the brick wall. Almost the entire school population flowed steadily along the sidewalk just two feet away from me, and not one person looked in my direction. Jessica Fry: short, ugly, nobody. I raised my chin toward the blue sky, closed my eyes and felt the yellow sun lighting my face, warming me up. And, for just an instant, I didn’t feel so bad.

The one-minute bell rang.

The courtyard jumped to action. So did I. I started running toward the 8th-grade doorway, my thin, blond hair flapping atop my backpack as I plunged into the current of rushing students.

I was just one foot from the doorway to the 8th-grade building, but someone else was entering from the other side. It was a dark-haired beauty, the most beautiful girl in school. Her name was Sheila Duvall. She was a grade older, and she looked it. She wore makeup, green glitter eye shadow, and it looked like her full, brown hair had spent the night in curlers. It dipped and glided over her shoulders as naturally as waves rolling in to shore.

We both moved quickly toward the door, as if we would smack directly into each other. Imagine that: Jessica Fry, school nobody, knocked down by Sheila Duvall, Aphrodite in training. As we stepped toward the doorway, we leaned away from each other, me to the left and Sheila to my right, but I kept my eyes on her: the round, sweetness of her face; her fragile collarbone; the relaxed evenness of her shoulders. The door casing was narrower than we thought, and in all the rushing and trying to squeeze through we both turned to face each other in the narrow doorway. My heavy backpack caught on the door casing and squeezed us into each other so that our momentum forward, past each other, slowed and then stopped. We were utterly, undeniably stuck.

The bell rang.

Sheila smiled there, just a few inches from my face. I could see a freckle in her left eye. I saw the way her eyes were like green and brown coral with unexpected dips and ridges of color. I smelled her fruity shampoo, and I could feel, especially compared to my barely-there breasts, how heavy and full hers were smushed between us.

Then the seconds slowed. Something came over my body. Something unexpected. Being saddled so close to her, her belly to mine, I felt my stomach, my legs, my chest go suddenly warm.

Sheila jostled against me, giggling softly, trying to unhinge herself, but I didn’t move. I couldn’t. It was like the way a massive ocean wave rolls up and crashes against a shallow rock jutting out from the sea. That’s how it felt against her. She was the wave, and my body, from my bony knees to my small chest and especially, yes, especially the center of me, could feel her softly but forcefully crashing against me. But I was not cold and numb like some rock. I was all flesh. And that small, hot, awakened part of me could feel the gentle, fluid force of her against it. Then the massive wave of her exploded in warm, white froth that splashed over the two of us at once.

Sheila looked me in the face and smiled.

“Um, maybe we ought to back out,” she said. Her voice was soft and kind.

I hesitated, staring at her face, waiting for the familiar disgust to come over it, for her softness to harden and her sweetness to sour. But she still smiled.

I backed up slowly, as did she, and her body went from pressing into mine to gently grazing to not touching at all. I was dazed. I couldn’t believe it. Suddenly, I couldn’t care less about school, class, bells.
I backed up a little more. Sheila smiled at me again and blushed.

“Thanks,” she beamed. Then she plunged forward, her brown hair rolling down her back as her strong legs broke into a sprint. I saw her feet falling soft and fast down the cement to the 9th-grade building. I stood there, one step back from the doorway, not sure what to do.

All the classroom doors were slamming shut in the hallway, including mine at the very end of the hall. Am I a lesbian? I thought as I stepped forward through the doorway. I walked slowly down the bare hallway, my sneakers squeaking on the linoleum. Could I love Sheila?

When I opened the door to my science lab, all twenty faces of my classmates looked up from their long, black tables at once. Their eyes were bright and their mouths curved in smiles of anticipation as if some great surprise might come through that door. Then they saw that it was only me, Jessica Fry. Their smiles sank. Their eyes drifted away.

Jessica Fry, school nobody. Jessica Fry, the nobody of nobodies. That’s what they saw. I pried my heavy backpack’s straps off my shoulders as I walked toward my seat. No one looked at me at all, but I didn’t care. They didn’t get it. They didn’t know that I was really Jessica Fry, girl with a secret, girl with a beautiful, terrifying possibility, girl with a chance at happiness. Sheila Duvall had smiled.

About Gina DiPonio

Gina DiPonio’s work has appeared in Contrary Magazine, Story Week Reader, Traverse Magazine, and others. She teaches literature and writing to every age of student, from 3rd graders to elderly home residents, around Chicago. Any time now, she’ll have an MFA in Fiction Writing from Columbia College, Chicago.