Short Story: The Last Day Of School

Short Story: The Last Day Of School

Andy watched from the other end of the concourse. His stomach tied up in the familiar mass of knots as she flicked her shining, darkly-dyed and immaculately layered hair. It settled around her shoulders and brushed her face in a way that made his palm itch to touch her. He thought of how his hand would smell after stroking the softly powdered swell of her cheekbone.

It was the last day of school and in five years of wanting her, worshipping her from a distance, Andy had never made a move. His crush on Denise was the stick his friends, even his family, used to beat him with. She was like a star to him; impossibly distant and untouchable, forever out of his reach, the light that shone from her already fading into the past before it reached him on the periphery of her space.

He’d decided months before, sometime after the disaster of the Christmas dance where he’d tried to have a conversation with her only to find in the New Year that she’d been drunk and didn’t recall a word that passed between them. She’d asked him if he’d been at the dance because she didn’t remember seeing him that night. Her attention was back to her friends before he could even answer.

It was now less than two hours until they left school forever and went to different colleges. Andy was paralysed with the fear that he’d never see her again even though neither of them was leaving home and they’d likely bump into each other in town at weekends. It didn’t matter how many times he told himself this, he felt the need to do something now, before she stopped being a girl he was in school with, before even that tenuous link was broken.

Still, he didn’t say a word to her. He sat on the wooden bench against one wall and she sat on an identical bench on the other side of the senior students’ seating area and there may as well have been a river of lava between them. Andy watched her furtively and his stomach churned with need, anxiety and hopelessness.

One of his friends made a joke on the ever popular and familiar theme of Andy’s spinelessness. They all laughed but it was dutiful laughter, laughter that spoke more of habit than humour. They subsided and started talking about their holiday to Turkey, a holiday Andy wasn’t going on because his parents were taking him to visit his grandparents in Spain in two weeks. He’d told them he’d prefer to go to Turkey with the boys and, after a horrible argument, his mother had cried at the ingratitude of her son. Andy hadn’t brought up the subject again and he hadn’t joined in with their false excited conversations when the subject came up.

As he contemplated the misery of his life, Andy saw Denise stand up with her friends, all of them laughing and clearly excited to be so close to freedom. Andy knew it was easier for girls to do fun things, to really live. Those good looking girls could plaster on make-up and wear revealing clothing to look more than old enough to get into pubs and clubs. Andy and his friends, with the exception of Thom, who was over six foot tall by the age of fifteen, had no hope of getting in anywhere that served alcohol.

Andy had no doubt that Denise and her friends would be out celebrating that night and he felt strangely left behind and excluded, although he’d never been part of their circle to begin with.

Then, when he saw them walk in his direction, he felt a cold sweat break out on the back of his neck, despite the warmth of the day. It was like one of his more fevered dreams, the ones he woke up from tangled in sweat-soaked and sticky sheets. She even looked at him, smiling slightly as she crossed that impossible distance between them, a distance that he couldn’t take a single step across.

And then suddenly, there she was, right in front of him. Her friends faded into the background but Denise stood out in sharp, stunning focus, her expression confident and friendly. Andy didn’t say a word and he swallowed again and again, trying to drown the butterflies.

“Hi. Are you lads going out tonight?” she asked and Andy couldn’t think, couldn’t form an answer. Thom, always self-assured, was the one who took the lead in the conversation.

“No, man. We’re all saving for Turkey.” Not me, Andy thought but the girls, Denise, didn’t need to know that.

“Yeah? Shame. When you going?” she asked as her friend Elaine smiled shyly at Thom. Andy wondered how it could be so easy for them, how they could approach the boys they liked so confidently. His stomach twisted and he didn’t say a word.

“We’re trying to get everyone’s numbers before the end of the day. So we can keep in touch, you know? Thom, why don’t you give Elaine your phone? She can take your numbers,” Denise said and Andy’s heart seized with hope. “We’ll all get them from her,” she added.

As the mobiles were exchanged, the two groups chatted but Andy still kept his mouth shut, his eyes sliding from Denise’s face every time she looked in his direction.

Then the numbers were swapped, the memories shared and the small talk ran dry. Denise and her friends wished them a nice summer, said they’d see them around and turned to walk outside in a swirl of hair and a swing of shoulder bags.

Andy watched and words tumbled through his mind, caught in a snarl before they could reach his mouth, and the girl who’d preoccupied his thoughts since he was twelve years old walked away towards a life that didn’t include him.