A Night at the Opera, by Dima

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.

A musical gift for those of you who made it to the end: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtIfld84Ydw