Julio's Girls with Revisions

 
There are cork boards of opportunity everywhere filled with messages that lost me long ago pressed back against peeling avocado green paint.  I push on my best, dark expensive-looking sunglasses, so black they completely hide my eyes, like the kind Gitt wears - no letters on the side just fancy swirls that mimic the way she spins.  (She says they cost four hundred dollars online).  Julio doesn’t seem to notice why I’ve donned my cheap shades or anything at all but the damn lunchroom doors.  And then he swivels his head in my direction.

“Halloween Hair’s coming to my sister’s Quince,” he says.  I heard he asked Kimmie, but the way he says it, it stings, and I try not to see the super boys out of the corner of my wet eyes.

The super boys come in all shapes and sizes.  Some wear glasses and know all the answers in Geometry.  Some are make-believe, they live in glossy magazines, they are guitar players, travelers with fancy cameras or models with impossibly perfect slicked-back hair.  It’s something in their eyes that tells me they would treat me better than Julio.  They wouldn’t watch Kimmie and invite her to parties, and I wouldn’t wonder or stare out at boring blue cafeteria doors (the paint still looks fresh as if they were recently touched up, the only thing in here that was).  Super boys gaze into eyes and want to go places.  And maybe I’m still hopeful that Julio will turn into one.

“Why should I care if you invited her. Besides, Gitt’s having another party.”  Just saying the word party makes me think about the stuff that happens whenever Julio and I are alone.  Electrical impulses dance up and down my spine and over my arms and legs and reach into every body part.  These charges canvas where I wish his hands would touch.

“When is Gitt having this party?” Julio asks.

I smile wide and bask in this victory over Kimmie, even if his interest has been fueled by the promise of a carnival of fun, even if my eyes still feel soggy after hearing the news second hand that he had even invited her to his family thing.

“We could go early to English?” I ask.  "And I could tell you about it."  Julio just shrugs; he doesn't even ask me for details.

I spin away from him and imagine I’m hanging out with the super boy from our English class, the one with curly hair and scolding brown eyes (he wears clothes the way Julio does and looks like a character from our required reading list.  He’s straight out of Austen, or Bronte, or Shakespeare).  And like a good female lead, I tell him all about what it's like at Gitt’s.

We’ll laugh, cry, or feel warm and fuzzy as if we are on an island and gab with superstars.  And you might believe the boy or girl you like, likes you back.

I look down at my new nails and think about running home to change the polish as if by doing that, I can change my life, and when I return, Julio will magically be interested in talking to me.

“Adrianna, wait,” Julio says.  “We can go early to class.”

“No one is your girl.”

And this time I move like I’ve seen Kimmie move, fast through the heavy doors, then I fly around the corner like a super girl (I fly so fast the sweater around my neck becomes like a cape).  I dive past shiny black and white and color ads and walls with painted on orbits and painted on stars.  All I see are blurry images.  I shatter all of my illusions about Julio on the way to class and won’t be troubled, almost like that me that liked him never existed (for however long that lasts).

Originally published February 20, 2015