Miss Teen Chemainus by Harrison Kim

Richard Stanley opened his mouth at the back of the school bus and told Len “You look like a rat.”

Amy Cooper giggled “Yes, you sure think you’re something Len but you’re ugly did anyone ever tell you that.”

“I know I’m ugly,” said Len, thinking “stay cool,” and noticing Amy’s acne puffed face blotchy against the sunlight that pierced bright through the windows on all the student riders. “I’m the lowest of the low, that’s for sure.”

“Going forward into a new day of learning,” he thought, “They’re telling me their truth, it’s what they do and really it’s what everyone does,” as he squinted his eyes at the the passing cars and stroked his nose “yes, kind of resembling a rodent.”

He took it all with a twitch and a shrug, not a serious rat, maybe his front teeth protruded. Amy always looked away when he grinned at her and he guessed this was the reason, or maybe it was his rodent breath.

“Dental work needed,” he thought.

When he jogged from the bus he passed Cheryl Alicante, Miss Teen Chemainus, moving by him in her white pants and matching blouse, the scent of cinnamon as she went by and did she smile but why would she smile at him, and what sort of animal did she smell there?  He thought about hamsters as he entered the gym, time to go play early morning ping pong.  Jackson stood there holding his favorite red ping pong bat.  

Len admired Jackson the way his friend kept his head down and never smiled, resembling a giant unpredictable ape, especially when he won the ping pong, smashing the ball across the table towards Len’s face, then jumping around and howling.

In Math class, Len felt loose and restless, couldn’t focus at all on numbers, only the girls caught his attention. Jackson sat behind him whispering “You have no sideburns, amigo, why are you pulling on your cheek?” and at lunch hour Len ran to the typing room.

Cheryl Alicante worked there, practicing her speed in the same desk as yesterday, typing away pushing her speed up, only he and Cheryl in the room under shimmery fluorescent lights, her ankles neatly crossed behind her, long limber fingers on the keys.  She looked up and paused as he fidgeted in the desk beside her, turning some paper round and round, “she doesn’t leave,” he thought, “even when I am so bold.”

“Hi,” he said, and she told him “You were here yesterday and the day before too, but you sat way at the back.”

“Got to practice,” he said, “If I don’t get my speed up to 50 words per minute, I’m gonna fail typing.”

Then he looked away, because maybe he scared her.  She scared him, he knew.  She was there so close, but he couldn’t help it, nowhere else in the world to be at noon hour but the typing room with Cheryl for the third day in a row.  

First, he typed out the front page of the book beside him, “History of Chemainus,” then tapped his name on the keyboard, Len Len Len, while glancing across at Cheryl and after a few moments she stopped typing completely and lifted her legs around to the side of her chair.  He looked at her some more.  She tapped her fingers on the desk.

“It seems like your speed is tremendous,” she said. “But is it accurate?”

“I’m typing my name and the history of Chemainus,” he said, printed off a sheet and showed her “The Chemainus of today was built on trees, big trees.  Trees brought the European lumbermen.”

“Next, I can type your name,” he said.  “Your name begins with a C and a c is curved very well,” and his voice cracked as he said this.

Cheryl held the paper in front of her a moment, then crumpled it into a ball and tossed it back at him, overhand.

“My shoelaces are undone,” she said, and they certainly were loose and dangling, though Len hadn’t noticed a thing in that direction when he entered the room.

Cheryl Alicante, Miss Teen Chemainus, Len didn’t know how that happened in the detail department, but it was logical that she have this title, her eyes so huge her dark hair contrasted with her white blouse, so startling and now her runners bright, pink, the laces blue and undone, her hips and legs outlined in tight jeans.  But did she see anything in him?  He resembled a rat, long nose and a few stray whiskers.  He stared at the crumpled paper on the floor, then over at Cheryl as she raised her foot, “your hands are shaking,” she said, and they certainly were.

A gout of car exhaust blew through the window, Len stood up from his chair, looked down at Cheryl’s laces.

Keyboard practice in the typing room at noon hour.  That was the task.  Fifty words per minute. He’d known Cheryl would be there.  She liked him enough to ask for a shoe tie.  He didn’t think about his heart tripping or his voice cracking and his dry mouth. 

She lifted her face, “You have a funny expression,” she said, and he breathed in her cinnamon scent, did she run her tongue across her lips?  That was so trippy for his heartbeat.  Why would she ask him to tie her shoelace? But again, she really didn’t she just mentioned that they were undone.  But what did it matter, the top button of her blouse was missing.

He knelt, took her shoe in both hands then lowered her foot, and pulled the laces, she pushed her leg forward, into his hands then said, “Make sure they’re tight,” as he made the loop.  He looked up and she lifted her head towards the windows, the underside of her throat above him, white and clean, the cinnamon scent so powerful now. He stared right up past her leg her yellow blouse her small face with a half-smile and her lips moving, what was she saying, something like “The heel’s coming off the left one”

“I can hammer it back on,” he answered, or was that only within his head?  He thought a lot of things that never made it from his mouth.  A car horn beeped, and Cheryl  turned her head away for a second, “Maybe some other time,” he thought she said.

Wow, those blue laces on pink shoes!  He clasped her ankle, then he moved his hand down and took her shoe right off.

“I think I’m going in the wrong direction,” he told her.

“You’ll have to put that back,” she told him, and he did so.

She wore pink socks and they felt fuzzy and warm with her feet just on the other side.

His nose breathed in her cinnamon scent.  “What do you think?” he asked. “Is that tight enough?”

“I think you should tie my other shoe, kinda like a Prince,” she said, and she did not smile.

“This one’s only got one loop.”

She reached down and untied the lace again, pulling on the string and Ken saw the blue material all loose along the cracked linoleum floor.  He stood up, and even from this far he could smell the scent of her hair, rich shampoo, maybe mint with something else, something that could only be Cheryl herself.

Did she know what she was doing?  She turned his way with the untied shoelaces dangling down, moving her leg forward.

“She’s only a girl,” Len thought but she wasn’t, she was an indescribably beautiful creature.  He knelt, and tied her laces again, or did he?  All he did was feel his way.  After a time, he perceived the task completed. He stood up.

Cheryl looked at him.  Her mouth parted.

“Thanks,” she said.

Len sat back at his desk. “Richard Stanley said I was ugly on the bus this morning,”

“Maybe he’s just jealous,” she told him.

She spoke loudly, she didn’t have to, no-one in the room but them, they would be the only ones to remember this moment of communication.

“What animal do you think I look like?” he asked. “Amy Cooper says I look like a rat.”

 She stared at him.

“You look like a deer in the headlights, you know, one of those stags in the forest.”

“A stag?” he said.

“Caught in a moment,” she told him, “Like in a wildlife photo,” and she paused, then asked “What kind of animal do you think I look like?”

He swallowed and after what seemed like a long time he spoke “To me you look like a girl, you smell like a girl,” and why he said that he did not know but she stopped smiling. “A good-looking girl,” he said.  “Very very good looking.”

“Your fingers are very trembly,” Cheryl said.
He stood up in front of her desk, smelling his old spice deodorant and her cinnamon, trying to breathe deep.

“I wouldn’t listen to Amy Cooper,” Cheryl said. “You know about her? She has sex with every guy.”

Len picked up the thrown and crumpled piece of paper and unwrinkled it to see his name Len Len Len and the first page that said “History of Chemainus.”

“Wow, I didn’t know,” he said.  “Sex with every guy.”

“I’m not like that,” Cheryl said. “Not like that at all.”

She turned and faced the keyboard once again.

Len nodded “No, not at all,” and backed out of the room, hit the doorway with his heels, turned and weaved down the hall, bumped into a wall, the smell of gym shirts all around, the smash of locker doors closing, a teacher in a suit striding, boys and girls milling, everyone moving and making screeches and chirps and howls, no-one stopping, every action ticking through time.

He pushed through the hallway and his life at this moment.  The air all around him appeared thick as smoke, with boys and girls weaving through the fuzziness, he drew a deep breath, taking in this air that kept him going, and his heart alive and rocking. He pictured Cheryl and the power he had when he tied her shoes, even though his hands shook.  There was a steadiness in him that kept him going, he couldn’t stop, he would do something in life, he didn’t know what, and it would be good and make a difference.  Maybe he’d be a gigolo.  And there looming in the hall stood his friend Jackson, huge head down, big hair and wide shoulders.                

“Jackson, I tied Cheryl’s shoelaces,” and Jackson grinned his huge grin. He reached up and grabbed Len’s ear “Man, you don’t even have sideburns yet, what do you mean you tied her shoelaces, can’t she do it herself?”  

Len slapped Jackson on the back, what a good friend he was, so correct and those sideburns would grow for real someday soon.  

He’d tied Cheryl’s shoelaces and there was no going back, next time she’d undo her blouse and he’d button it up, you never knew what could happen in those keyboard practices.

“Are you going to Social Studies?” Jackson asked.  “Man, you really slapped my back.”

He punched Len on the shoulder and did an up and down leg dance, running on the spot.

“Yes,” Len said, “I’m going to Social Studies,” and he lifted his legs up and down too, just to get along. “Jackson, you should keep your head up, don’t walk with your head down, man, you’ll miss everything.”

Cheryl stepped out of the typing room and moved down the hall towards them.  Len tried to glance away, even though nothing else was important but her. He watched from the side of his vision as she stepped by him, turned and smiled, then walked on.  Len turned around to face Jackson.
“A stag,” he whispered.  “Cheryl says I look like a stag.”

“You need a beard to be a stag,” Jackson said. “Why are you staring at me like a weirdo?”

Cheryl glanced back, gave a wave.  Both boys waved back.

“She’s friendly!” Jackson noted.

On the bus home he sat across from Amy Cooper, she leaned over her seat, chatty and flirty with Richard Stanley.  Was he one of the boys she had sex with?  Wow, those sure were sad acne blotches on her face.

“You let me tie your shoelaces, Miss Teen Chemainus,” he repeated under his breath, “I think that’ll be my keyboard practice tomorrow,” and he cupped his hand and breathed into it, imagining the roar of a stag as the bus rolled towards his stop.

Len wasn’t concerned with next month, next year, or anything Amy Cooper said.

He thought instead of the afternoon, how he stood in the hall with Jackson, and Cheryl Alicante stepped past them, then turned her head to wave and smile.

“I’m not a weirdo,” Len whispered to himself.

Harrison Kim

Image by RENE RAUSCHENBERGER from Pixabay – Big yellow American school bus