Honk if You're Homely

The girl of my screams.

Elloween Abigail Rohrschach was the kind of girl one took home to Mother. A trait which made her unsuitable for just about everything associated with cool. She was polite in the company of adults, well mannered and dressed. She stood almost a full foot taller than me; statuesque, with full, bowed lips, heavy lashed green eyes and long, auburn hair she cajoled into tight sausage curls. She always wore skirts or dresses-- sometimes plain, but often plaid-- and knee high socks with black mary janes.

She knew a lot about everything, being something of an overachiever. There was a face she made in her confidence. That self-satisfied half smile. It shriveled what was between my legs and my lungs, but from that palpable impossibility grew the first twig of something I feared give name. It was something I’d felt but in passing; for my kindergarten teacher’s teenage daughter, the dark featured teller at Dad’s bank, even Mom’s friend from church whose feathered blonde hair framed her perfect smile. It was something I’d reserved for age and experience and only ever felt for those beyond my years.

This was new. Foreign.

Terrifying.

The classroom was no exception. I sat at the rear right corner, where Elly sat up one and over. Her back was always straight, legs crossed, nose and chin tilted up. I often watched how her lips pursed with thought, the way her nostrils flared before her hand went up to answer a question. How it stayed up even after Mrs. Schultzgaber called on someone else. Sometimes that person was me. Sometimes when I knew the right answer, I’d give the wrong one so Elly could answer instead. One time I did this, she turned to me and smiled, lips pressed together. It made all the crickets and butterflies in my stomach do somersaults.

Then it happened.

It was the middle of a math test. Multiplication tables. I noticed something shudder out of the corner of my eye and I looked up. Elly’s shoulders raised as she inhaled sharply.

“ACHONK.”

I dared not breathe.

The classroom erupted with laughter. Even Mrs. Schultzgaber cracked a smile. Elly blinked several times and joined them in a fit of giggles as the teacher offered her a tissue and a prayer.

"Bless you."

In the moments after, as everything settled back into the dull hum of young minds calculating numbers, mine skittered away on its own tangents. Where before she and I were separate, apart in both attitude and flesh, I saw how the criss-crossed web of destiny and chance drew us together. It wasn't the sum of her individual parts that bore weight of her grace, but their quality. She was different. She was idiom.

She was weird like me.

Elly was still Elly, but to me she was Goose Girl. She was the perfect match for Dirtball, or so I had it all planned out in my head.  We'd go on walks together, talk about the things that mattered: sci-fi shows, ice cream flavors and camping out in the back yard. We'd read comic books together and discuss which characters we liked best. When she sneezed like a goose, I'd follow up with one of my own, even if I didn't have to sneeze. In that shared expulsion of dust and slobber, she'd know being different meant she was beautiful. Validated.

Loved.

I spent most of class running these scenarios through my mind; the endless possibilities. Every one ended with a smile and a bashful kiss. It went on like that forever until we were eighty on the front porch sipping lemonade. That far into the future was difficult to bring into focus, but I held onto that single image as if it explained everything. In my head, happy lives culminated in old couples on the front porch sipping lemonade. The real stuff. With pulp.

Goose Girl's goosneezes became the thing I looked forward to most in school. That is, until the day I had to sneeze and it didn't come out quite the way it was supposed to.

"GACHONK."

It sent shivers all through me, and while I sniffed back a follow up, I noticed everyone staring at me. Silent as a library, the room closed in, every face an accusation. Goose Girl's was worst of all.

Her's was one of betrayal.

Mrs Schultzgaber cleared her throat.

"Do you need a tissue?"

I slouched behind my desk.

"No, ma'am."

On the walk home after school, Goose Girl approached me with her two closest friends in tow. Her eyes were dark, pinched. Mouth puckered up like a raisin.

"Hey, Dirtball."

I tried looking her in the eye, but couldn't get above her dimpled knees. Her stockings were argyle. Pink, white and gray.

"Umm, hey."

"Shut up."

I looked up just enough to see the way her mouth was wound like a pitcher.

"You're stupid. Your FACE is stupid."

"But--"

"It's JUST like a butt. A fat. Dirty. STINKY. BUTT."

Giggling. The malicious kind. My mind reeled as my heart melted.

"But--"

The smack felt like a firecracker on my cheek.

"Don't talk to me ever again."

Elly scowled as she walked away. It was a face she'd reserved for a special kind of dirtball.

One like me.