A story that has nothing whatsoever to do with the opera.
I hate
olives.
I really
hate olives.
I don’t
hate how they taste. They are
delicious. They are wonderfully tart but
not over sour and they are juicy and finishing off a meal with a few green
olives in like chugging down Gatorade after scoring the winning goal. But now I can’t stand the sight of them- my
breath catches and my throat tightens and my head hurts- and so I haven’t eaten
one in years.
I blame
Jamie for this. Jamie is beautiful. She was always a beautiful girl, and I always
liked her. When I first saw her across
Mrs. Merle’s classroom in the first grade, she had mousy features and messy
brown hair that fell over everything and she sometimes wore those green-rimmed
glasses that I thought were so cool and I thought, oh, wow, she is really cute,
she also looks nice, she’s probably a little shy but that’s okay because I can
talk for both of us if we were friends, but I’m also really nice to other kids
so I will make sure she gets to talk when she wants to talk, and maybe we’ll be
friends for the whole year, and then
within a few seconds I already had this great story in mind about how we would
be really close friends all throughout school who would share secrets with each
other and secretly long to be dating the other but not at the same time so it
would never work out, and then we’d go off to college together- I’m not really
sure I understood what college was, but anyway- we’d go off to college and just
naturally start dating and maybe one day we would even be married and everyone
would think oh, that’s really sweet and that’s just perfect because they know
each other so well, and they aren’t even too young for it, because it’s not
like they’re in their teens anymore, and they’ve known each other so long that
it’s like it’s overdue. And then every
time after I’d come up with this story and I’d see Jamie my breath would catch
and my throat would tighten and my head would hurt, but not in the way like
when I see olives, because I hate olives and want to get away, but it would
hurt like I really just was too far away from something I needed but that was
happy because it was the kind of hurt that you like and you know that it’s the
kind that has a beautiful ending.
Jamie is
beautiful. She turned from a mousy type
into a boyish active girl, and she cut her hair short, and I thought that was
so cute. And even today she is beautiful
and she still sometimes wears those green-rimmed glasses that I think are so
cool and she has brown hair that perfectly frames her face and her face is like
movie-star perfect except that Angelina Jolie has misshapen features and Jamie
is, like, legit beautiful. Because she
looks happy.
When I
was in middle school, Jamie had long and kind of curly hair and her eyes were a
little more blue than green, and we were
really good friends. I sat next to her
in English Language-Arts and I was kind of fat and probably really awkward and
everyone liked to pick on me and call out in the middle of class that I was gay
or that I had farted and I didn’t know why they were saying this, but I figured
the best thing to do was to laugh at it and try and be cool about it so I’d
laugh and act as though it was some sort of inside joke and sit tall and hope
that everyone else in the class would think that Chad and I were buddies and
then I’d try to quickly look at Jamie and she would laugh with me and she was
beautiful. And I would try to make
sarcastic comments if anyone got too mean so that, even if I wasn’t very good
looking or popular, I could at least win people over with my brain because I
was witty, and I don’t know if that’s why, but I guess Jamie liked me and we
would talk all the time before class and after class and sometimes in the
middle but Miss Hodgeson would usually overlook that because we were normally
some of the better-behaved kids and so Jamie and I would talk and she was
beautiful.
Jamie
was probably the one friend I had in middle school. If I had others, other than maybe Drew, I
don’t remember them, and Drew doesn’t count because he decided in November of
the seventh grade that I wasn’t cool enough for him and so he started to hang
out with Chad they played soccer together during the second lunch bell and when
I tried to talk to him he would pretend I wasn’t there. Jamie and I would hang out during break,
though, and it didn’t occur to me then, but now I realize that it was, like,
every single day that we would hang out and she didn’t really talk to other
girls and now I think that’s really unique and beautiful. I knew that she liked me, because we were
friends, but I didn’t ever think that she like
liked me, because I knew that people just didn’t like like me, because I wasn’t cool. But I really liked our friendship and I was
okay with whatever happened because in the back of my head there was that story
and it didn’t matter where we went because all roads lead to Rome and college
and dating was Rome.
“Jake!” That was the first thing she’d called out to
me on that one day. It was lunch time
and she hadn’t been in any of the morning classes.
“Hello, m’lady!”
I called back, and she looked down and laughed and she was beautiful.
“Good
sir!” she said, in a really terrible British accent once she’d finished
laughing, “Careth thee to eat with this female individual whilst we
lunchest?” I guess that’s what she
thought knights and maidens and medieval people talked like.
“Yes! Yes...eth...
Yea!” I finished, and she laughed and she came up to me and she pushed
me into a locker and I laughed but inside I was afraid because I wasn’t sure if
she was mad at me because that was just the world I lived in, and it was just
what happened if one day someone was your friend and the next day he wasn’t,
and now that I’m older I can’t believe that I just accepted that was normal but
I guess I thought that was normal. But I
laughed and she laughed again and we headed out the doors by the art room that
smelled like soapstone dust and we sat right outside the doors at the edge of
the field just like we always did. We
opened our lunches.
“So...”
she intoned, prying the lid off the slice-of-bread-shaped Tupperware container
she had every day, “what’d’ya get for lunch?”
I pulled my sandwich out of my plastic bag and tried to un-smush it and
get it out of the sandwich bag. I tried
to hide it from her view because why couldn’t my mom just buy sandwich
containers like everyone else’s mom and put fruit-by-the-foot in my lunch?
“Peanut
Butter and Pickle” I answered. Jamie
crinkled her nose.
“That’s
gross.” I was immediately angry.
“It’s
delicious. Have you ever tried it?”
“No. ‘Cause I know it’s gross.”
“Do you
like peanut butter?”
“Yes...”
“Do you
like pickles?”
“Yeah. Not sweet ones. Just dill.”
“Yeah,
you only use dill pickles. Pokey Ogorkee
are the best. No name baby dills are
good if you prefer juiciness over crunchiness.”
I tried to say this like I was a pickle connoisseur and I wanted this to
make Jamie think I was right because I was smart but instead she laughed and
pretended to be impressed and that also made be happy because I just want to
know people don’t think I’m dumb.
“Oh,
wow. You should be a pickle maker. And own a pickle factory. And sell luxury pickles to the prime
minister.” We laughed and that story
popped up in the back of my head and so I forced myself to laugh louder and
carefreer than I normally would have.
“Yeah. I’m kind of an expert. So, anyway, if you like both, you’ll
definitely like it.”
“Like
what?”
“Peanut
Butter and Pickle sandwiches, you tard!”
I was trying to be angry but funny angry where no one could be angry at
you for being angry. But I don’t know
how well I did that.
“Oh,”
Jamie said, and then bit into her sandwich.
She didn’t say anything, and I felt like it was her turn to talk, and so
I couldn’t say anything, and now I really was angry.
“If...
my... what is your sandwich?” I finally asked.
“Huh?”
“What
kind of sandwich do you have?”
“Mmmmmmmcream
cheese and olives,” she took a bite and chewed a bit and then gave me a goofy
smile where her mouth was kind of open so I could see the green and white gunk
and bit fell out of her mouth and she was beautiful.
“Oh. Olives.”
“Yeah. I have olives. AAAAAaaahLAVHS.” She smiled a little and chewed really loud
for a few seconds. “Do you like olives?”
“Ha
ha. Yes.
I love olives.”
“AAAAAAhlevs,”
she said again, “want some?” She held up
her lily white-bread meal.
“Yeah. Okay.
Thanks.” I leaned in to take a
bite but she pulled it away and then moved her head in front of mine and opened
her mouth and said, “AAAAAH! Hab
sum! Hahahahaha!” And I was like, “Hahahahahahaha” and a little
more of the gunk fell out of her mouth and we laughed really loud and then she
picked the gunk up and tried to throw it in my mouth but it hit my cheek and
bounced into the dirt but I was still grossed out that she would try to do that
and so I picked up the dirty gunk ball and tried to put it in her mouth and her
eyes widened with surprise and then narrowed in anger and she hit me. And I didn’t know what to do so I laughed and
then she finally laughed, too, and I was glad she wasn’t really mad at me or
at least that’s what it seemed.
“Fine,”
she said in mock bitterness, “you can’t have any.”
“I don’t
really like olives anyway.” That was a
lie. But Jamie looked disappointed.
“Oh.” A pause.
“But they’re magic words!” she said quietly.
“Olives
aren’t words. They’re vegetables. Oh, actually, no, they’re fruits.”
“Yes,
they’re words. That’s why I wanted to
give you some. Because they’re magic
words for you.”
“O...kay.” I shrugged and just as I was doing that she
sort of hopped in place, but she was still sitting, and then she was sort of
sitting right before me and we were facing the same way. I turned to look at her and she was looking
at me.
“Do you
want me to say the magic words?” she said quietly.
“What do
the magic words do?” I choked out hesitantly.
When we were both sitting right beside each other but with both of our
heads pointing toward each other our noses seemed really uncomfortably too
close and I could see right into her eyes and there was a lot of green and I
didn’t think they were that beautiful and I thought that was really odd that I
should think that. But, anyway, I
couldn’t just look at her, so I turned my head back to look at the brown brick
wall of the school and it was even odder that we would talk to each other
without looking at each other but it seemed like the only thing to do but now
it really did seem odd because Jamie didn’t turn her head, too. She was just talking at my ear, now, and I
could feel her breath on my cheek.
“Do you
want to see?” she said even more quietly.
I hate it when people talk quietly to try to force you to be quiet, too.
“What do
they do?” I said in a louder than necessary voice.
“They
make me and you really happy.” Another
pause.
“Okay,” I
said, quietly, and I hated myself for it, “say them.” Jamie smiled- or at least, I thought she
smiled, because her breath stopped on my cheek and I felt it burst out her
nose- and then scooted and little closer and when she settled into place she
put her hands down and she put her hand down so that two of her fingers crossed
over two mine and my whole mind went blank and I didn’t know what to do because
that just wasn’t what our hands did.
Jamie
leaned closer – how was that possible - , pushing down on my hand, and it kind
of hurt, but I didn’t really notice that it kind of hurt because my mind was
still blank, and she said, “Okay.” I
turned to look at her and her face was too close and it seemed my whole field
of view was just her thin lips with a speck of white bread perched under her
nose. But I wasn’t really thinking about
the speck of bread or her lips or the unusually small distance between us. I wasn’t really thinking. I was just on “record” so that I could play
it back later and think about it when my mind decided to come back.
And that’s
when, in my memories, I wasn’t watching Jamie anymore, but I was standing in
front of the both of us, watching the both of us. I wasn’t really doing anything. I was just sitting with my sandwich all
squished up in my hand. Jamie was
starting to smile kind of nervously and then she pulled her hair behind an ear
and then sort of frowned and she moved her head to whisper into my ear.
“Olive...
you,” she whispered, and then she drew her head back quickly to look at my
face, her eyes searching everywhere for some reaction.
“What?” I
said, and I cocked my head to one side and furrowed my brow, but that wasn’t
really in response to what she’d just said.
I’d just left my body on autopilot until I came back. Jamie’s frown deepened, but her eyes grew very
wide, unblinking.
“Olive
you,” she repeated, and I didn’t respond, “Aaaahluhv you.”
We just
sat there, staring at each other. And
then she came close again, this time resting her chin on my shoulder.
“I love
you.”
And
that’s when I was back, sitting there, her head on my shoulder, and I was thinking now, but I was thinking how
odd it was that everything had gone quiet and there were no yells from the
soccer field and the nest-building birds had taken oaths of silence and there
wasn’t even wind and the whole world was waiting on this one moment, waiting
for me to do something.
“Jamie,”
I said, and that was it. That was all I
said. And then, as we sat there, she
reached across me to put her hand on my other shoulder and pulled herself in
and pulled her lips toward mine.
And that
was when the sound exploded back into the world and everything was commotion,
and suddenly my breath caught and my throat tightened and my head hurt. I pushed Jamie away with one arm, and that
was the arm I was leaning on, and so I fell back, and she fell back.
I quickly
jumped up, and Jamie and I locked eyes for one brief moment. And then I ran away, and I never looked
back. She was calling, but I didn’t
look.
The next
day, Jamie wasn’t at school. And when
she was back at school, a day after that, we didn’t talk for the next week. And that... was the end. We didn’t eat lunch together anymore. And every time I think back and remember
Jamie and remember middle school and the friend I had and I remember that now
I’m in college, I think stupid, stupid,
stupid because it all could have been different and I could have done
something better and she was so beautiful.
