“Ooh, baby, anytime my world gets crazy
All I have to do, to calm it
Is just think of you.”
~“When I think of you” by Janet Jackson~
A note fell on my desk, neatly folded, the paper pulling me out of my thoughts, and I knew immediately by the scent—mandarin and citrus—who it was from. The strains of internal music playing incessantly in my head—Janet Jackson totally understood me—faded, relegated to the land of daydreams.
Glancing up, I caught Lisa Erickson’s eye. She was leaning over, her teased, curly blonde hair falling over her shoulder, her lemon-colored dress flaring with the movement, the yellow bangles on her wrist clanking together.
I sniffed the note. “Really?” I mouthed.
She shrugged, grinning. Lisa was a Liz Claiborne kind of girl, every neon-embossed inch of her. She even sprayed perfume on her underwear … you know, just in case.
The note read: “The Cube tonight?”
It was the last day of school before spring break, the knowledge infecting the room with excitement. Feet shifted anxiously on the floor, colorful fingernails tapped the desktops, and soft chatter infiltrated the space. Our history teacher, Mrs. Miller, gave up shushing us. Honestly, she was as antsy as we were.
It had been a bleak new year, the NASA Challenger disaster in January casting a somber shadow over the entire nation. Everyone had tuned into the televised launch, too many eyes on the spacecraft when it exploded, killing all seven crew members aboard including a teacher, Christa McAuliffe. It didn’t matter that most of us didn’t know the astronauts personally. The sick feeling was there lurking in our hearts.
The memory of Ronald Reagan’s speech, done in place of the scheduled State of the Union address, rang like an echo through the halls, especially the part where he addressed the students.
“And I want to say something to the school children of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle’s takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons. The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave …”
His speech had stuck with me, firing up my blood. I wanted to do something significant after high school, to find a way to alter the world somehow. I wanted to make the world stronger, even if it meant getting hurt in the process.
The tragedy taught me that.
Hell, my mother taught me that. In her time, she’d been an activist, protesting anything she thought was wrong. She hadn’t just followed in the footsteps of revolutionaries, she’d started revolutions. In comparison, I felt weak. Like I was trying to squeeze my foot into a giant’s footprint.
This spring break, coming on the heels of the disaster, felt bigger than past spring breaks. We all needed to feel alive. I needed to feel alive.
Not bothering to write a reply, I leaned forward, a smile stealing my lips. “Tonight, Corey Sanders is totally mine,” I hissed.
I mean, change has to start somewhere, right? Tiny feet and all.
Corey Sanders, a college boy with a bodacious bod, was the bouncer at The Cube, an eighteen and under club next to the bowling alley in town. I’d been crushing on him all year but had been too afraid to approach him. Not anymore. Tonight, everything changes.
“Let’s try and keep it down!” Mrs. Miller admonished, no bite to her words.
The clock in the room ticked, each second slower than the last. We watched it, fingers and feet tapping.
“This sucks,” Judd Ferris murmured behind me, his long legs kicking the back of my chair.
Across the room, Farrah Garret dropped her head, throwing a curtain of hair over her face before unleashing a can of hairspray on the strands.
“God, Farrah!” Duke Nelson growled, fanning his face.
She threw him a look, swapping the hairspray for lipstick. “I’ve got
All I have to do, to calm it
Is just think of you.”
~“When I think of you” by Janet Jackson~
A note fell on my desk, neatly folded, the paper pulling me out of my thoughts, and I knew immediately by the scent—mandarin and citrus—who it was from. The strains of internal music playing incessantly in my head—Janet Jackson totally understood me—faded, relegated to the land of daydreams.
Glancing up, I caught Lisa Erickson’s eye. She was leaning over, her teased, curly blonde hair falling over her shoulder, her lemon-colored dress flaring with the movement, the yellow bangles on her wrist clanking together.
I sniffed the note. “Really?” I mouthed.
She shrugged, grinning. Lisa was a Liz Claiborne kind of girl, every neon-embossed inch of her. She even sprayed perfume on her underwear … you know, just in case.
The note read: “The Cube tonight?”
It was the last day of school before spring break, the knowledge infecting the room with excitement. Feet shifted anxiously on the floor, colorful fingernails tapped the desktops, and soft chatter infiltrated the space. Our history teacher, Mrs. Miller, gave up shushing us. Honestly, she was as antsy as we were.
It had been a bleak new year, the NASA Challenger disaster in January casting a somber shadow over the entire nation. Everyone had tuned into the televised launch, too many eyes on the spacecraft when it exploded, killing all seven crew members aboard including a teacher, Christa McAuliffe. It didn’t matter that most of us didn’t know the astronauts personally. The sick feeling was there lurking in our hearts.
The memory of Ronald Reagan’s speech, done in place of the scheduled State of the Union address, rang like an echo through the halls, especially the part where he addressed the students.
“And I want to say something to the school children of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle’s takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons. The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave …”
His speech had stuck with me, firing up my blood. I wanted to do something significant after high school, to find a way to alter the world somehow. I wanted to make the world stronger, even if it meant getting hurt in the process.
The tragedy taught me that.
Hell, my mother taught me that. In her time, she’d been an activist, protesting anything she thought was wrong. She hadn’t just followed in the footsteps of revolutionaries, she’d started revolutions. In comparison, I felt weak. Like I was trying to squeeze my foot into a giant’s footprint.
This spring break, coming on the heels of the disaster, felt bigger than past spring breaks. We all needed to feel alive. I needed to feel alive.
Not bothering to write a reply, I leaned forward, a smile stealing my lips. “Tonight, Corey Sanders is totally mine,” I hissed.
I mean, change has to start somewhere, right? Tiny feet and all.
Corey Sanders, a college boy with a bodacious bod, was the bouncer at The Cube, an eighteen and under club next to the bowling alley in town. I’d been crushing on him all year but had been too afraid to approach him. Not anymore. Tonight, everything changes.
“Let’s try and keep it down!” Mrs. Miller admonished, no bite to her words.
The clock in the room ticked, each second slower than the last. We watched it, fingers and feet tapping.
“This sucks,” Judd Ferris murmured behind me, his long legs kicking the back of my chair.
Across the room, Farrah Garret dropped her head, throwing a curtain of hair over her face before unleashing a can of hairspray on the strands.
“God, Farrah!” Duke Nelson growled, fanning his face.
She threw him a look, swapping the hairspray for lipstick. “I’ve got
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