Loving is Easy

What she missed was the bliss that came with being juvenile. To most, it was an inherent yearning. The jaded business men going out for beers, reminiscing about the childhood they drummed up in a dream of theirs, bitter because they wished for nothing more than to know nothing. Innocence was one of those evanescent beauties, something you weren't allowed to notice until it was gone for good.

Levi was eight when she first heard the word.

Her callow hand grew tired of cursive. She remembers the dull, metronomic throb that hit at the outer pad of her palm and thumb, something that was the result of holding her pencil in the obtuse fashion that she did. She thought it to be a nifty quirk of hers, and seldom concerned herself over the sporadic bouts of carpal tunnel she dealt with, not that she knew the pain was a result of her unorthodox actions.

Their heavyset teacher called for a break, and so the typical bustle of strident jive encompassed the space of the small class. Levi shuffled over to some group in the far-off corner of the classroom, one that was deliberately diagonal to that of the teacher's desk to make for an optimal distance away from the upholstered instructor. She stood coolly alongside some raggedy red-head who was absentmindedly gnawing on a Ticonderoga pencil; thoughtlessly observing that the girl had made it to the R. To her left was a child of laughably small stature, who puffed out her chest and rigidly thumbed the belt holes of her corduroys.

She stood and listened, shifting her weight from one foot to the other in a convoluted attempt to garner some stimulation from the boorish gossip the girls were so blindly immersed in. 

It was a word she had never heard before. The group of girls continued in hushed voices, breathlessly passing around the word like it tasted vulgar in their mouths; repeatedly spitting it out, again and again, only to fervently lap it back up. They say it like it's filthy, like when they daringly utter curses under their breath and fork around their heads to be sure their parents didn't hear.

"Don't you know? It's Abigail, from our class..." a lanky blonde snickered. Their hands were cupped, almost as if they thought weren't speaking softly enough. Levi knew these girls. She didn't understand the malicious edge to their murmuring. "I heard that her big sister's...gay,"

"Gay?" came the wave of hushed voices that tripped over one another, Levi's included. The group bustled lightly, it was the energy of the newfound excitement that came with learning a new cuss. Levi was confused, the tongues of the girls who uttered the word were laced with addled malice. It made her wonder, why that word warranted such venomous resonance. 

"Uh-huh, they call it Lebanese or somethin'...'parently, she likes girls," Spat another snippety adolescent, her already scrunched up nose turning higher into the air, "Means they like to do things like kiss n' hold hands, 'cept it's like when our mommies and daddies do it."

The group of girls whine and coo in disgust, and Levi can't help but feel impossibly lost. She makes a grossed-out face, going the extra nine and sticking out her tongue in a mock display of admittedly disconcerted disgust, in hopes that she wouldn't look too out of place in the group of equally appalled girls.

Soon enough break was over and Levi was back at her desk. She recalled the pain in her hand. It started up again, despite not having written anything. Now she felt it in both appendages, right down to the fingertips. It was a heavy pulsating that came along will a dull ache in her head. She brushed it off as normal happenstance; her hand always hurt time to time. Because of the different way she held her pencil, that would never change.

The same day Levi scopes out Reisz in the playground. Their getting together was one that came hurling in the form of a volleyball square in Reisz's face.