During our trip back towards our home bus stop I could not help but glance repeatably at the blonde with the book from the vantage point of my seat at the back of the bus. She seemed like a nice girl, and I thought she must be smart if she reads a lot. I wondered what she was like. I thought that if she keeps to herself a lot, maybe she is shy like me. If I ever were to have a girlfriend I think she would have to be shy like me in order to understand me. I wondered if she could ever even like me.
The bus finally reached my stop, and as I left the bus I stole a glance at her as she was sitting and reading her book. She looked more gorgeous than ever, and very sweet. Her blonde hair cascaded down all around her shoulders and around her arms in amazing ways. I thought somehow I needed to know if she could like me. I just had to find out more about her, even if I was scared to death of her.
I wondered where she lived. If she were on my bus it seemed reasonable that she might not live that far away from me. I wondered how many bus stops came before my stop and which one she got on the bus from.
I ran into the house with my backpack and met my mom on the way in.
"How was your first day of school, Cole?", she asked.
"It was fine. I saw most of my classes on this first day, and have some homework already, but I don't think its too bad."
"Did anyone bother you, or wonder about you? Did anything unusual happen?", she asked.
"No, nothing unusual happened, mom", I lied, thinking about throwing Kyle in the dumpster, poor Lenny, and the blonde.
I started to wonder about myself. Could it be possible that I was now crushing on the blonde? I knew almost nothing about her, and did not even know she existed prior to today, yet it seemed like I was thinking about her more and more of the time.
I went into my bedroom not wanting to talk too much about my day. I really did not understand all that happened to me either. There were just too many questions.
I sat on the bed, and then mom came into my room. She was smiling at me, still curious about my day. My mom was as beautiful as ever.
"Hey Cole, what did you think of the girls at the high school? Are there any cute girls there?", she asked.
"Yeah", I allowed. I did not want to say too much. I really did not know much.
"Well, we hope you enjoy the school year and meet some good friends, but as you know you are not like everyone else so you need to be careful. I guess from what you are saying things went fine, right?", she asked.
"Yeah, everything is fine, mom", I said. I really did think things were in control, but I felt like I just needed to get away and just think.
"And mom", I continued, "I think I want to go back to the beach now. I want to relax and think about my day. Even though it's late in the afternoon I think I want to get a swim in before dinner. It only takes me 10 minutes to get there"
"Sure, Cole. Have a good time. Be back in about 2 hrs, okay?"
"No problem"
I quickly changed into my surfing swim suit that hangs below my knees at the bottom but is just off my hips at the waist. I gathered up my towel, sunglasses, a colorful T-shirt with a surfboard graphic on it, and flip flops and went to the garage and grabbed the bike. I quickly was on my way peddling to the beach.
When I arrived at the beach it was not very crowded as it was late. There seemed to be only a few cars. I assumed there would not be many bikini girls along the path, and that also proved to be true. There were two of them and both locked eyes onto me. I assumed it was because I was only wearing a T-shirt and not my "fat" clothes from school.
I laid out my stuff on the beach and then swam lengths up and down the beach for about a mile. I did not have enough time to do much more. I jumped out of the water and dried off and started heading out of the beach back to my bike. The bikini girls by this time had left.
Suddenly, something totally unexpected happened. I noticed two girls walking down to the beach that were talking to each other, coming towards me on the path. They wore shorts and T-shirts but one of them looked familiar - she was the blonde from the bus!
I panicked. I did not want her to see me. I immediately sat down on the beach and faced the ocean. I put my towel over my arms and shoulders and listened.
Eventually they reached me and walked past. They were talking about some movie they had seen, as far as I could barely make out. Looking up at them from behind it was cool to watch them trudging to the beach. The movement of their arms, their occasional laughter, and their bounce to there walk was captivating, especially from the blonde. She seemed so graceful to me. I decided to cancel my plans to go home and just watch for a while to see what they did. They had no interest in going to the area that the bikini girls would use by the path. Instead, they made their way to their own place, as I had done, further down the beach.
I decided to lie on the beach, face down and put my shirt balled up covering my head so no one could recognize me, but I positioned myself facing the girls to see what they would do.
They put down towels, and a bag, and pulled off their shorts and T-shirts. Both were now in bikini's and were sitting back on their towels. What annoyed me was that the blonde was on the far side of her friend so she was partially blocked. Suddenly she got up and headed towards the water. She had a light blue bikini with some kind of orange pattern on it, but she was perfectly proportioned. Her cascades of curls of hair bounced and blew in the wind. She was magical. I could not take my eyes off her. To me she was perfect.
Her friend then jumped up and ran after her, and they both laughed and jumped in getting their hair wet. When the blonde emerged from the water she was broadly smiling and laughing with her friend and her hair hung straight down framing her face. Both of them then ran back to their towels.
It was getting late and I knew they would leave soon so I decided to leave. I was trembling from excitement and fear. Somehow, someway, I just had to find out who that girl was.
I quickly got on my bike and headed home. I did not even notice the ride back. All I could think of was her. I thought she must live near me someplace as she was using our local community beach and was on my bus. I was thinking that hopefully Lenny would see her tomorrow and figure out her name.
When I got home I was a little later than the two hours I had promised. My parents wondered about that, but I just lied to them saying I swam an additional half mile. I changed back into my clothes after taking a quick shower and noticed there was a package in my room next to my weight lifting equipment.
My mom said it was some extra weights to add to the machine and the package was very heavy. My parents had ordered them as a gift. They consisted of heavy rubber slabs that you could stack on top of the iron weights on the machine. It was a cheap way of adding another 100 or so pounds to the machines. I was pretty much getting to the limit of the equipment.
———————-
The next day I was very happy and could not wait to see the blonde again. I had psyched myself up to execute the plan of following the girl to her home room after getting off the bus and was eager to climb into the bus to get things started. I jumped into the bus with happy enthusiasm, but was crushed with disappointment.
She was not on the bus!
My happy, excited mood became totally deflated. I wondered what happened to her, and I could not believe how much I missed seeing her, and I did not even know her.
When the bus pulled into the front of the school I again noticed the big guys and a bunch of girls hanging around the white mustang convertible in the student parking lot. They were all smiling, laughing, and joking around. I noticed that Kyle was not among them.
When I went to homeroom I saw Lenny there and he gave me a smile and looked at my chest again, but that was well covered with baggy clothes again. He then looked back at my face. I did not know what sort of look I should return to him.
After home room I told him the blonde girl was not on the bus and I was very disappointed because I could not point her out to him, but I would try as soon as I could. I mentioned that I had seen her at the beach.
"Oh why didn't you wave to her and say hi", he said.
"Lenny, I just can't. You don't understand"
"What's wrong?", he asked.
"Lenny, you don't get it. I am just a lump, and I am scared shitless. If I ever do make friends with her it has to be done where I don't look like a jerk. Right now I can't even talk to a girl. I sound like a blithering idiot. If she were to laugh at me I would die. Girls scare me, and this one is important to me right now. They have tremendous power over me and I am not even sure what I would do with her if I had her. I have to figure that out. I am pretty helpless, and I definitely don't want to mess things up with this girl. I think this one might be special. She seems different than the rest and might be someone that could understand me. I just want to know about her, okay?", I said softly in a meek tone. Lenny looked surprised.
Lenny looked at me a while and seemed sympathetic to a point.
"You know, Cole, I don't really have a real girlfriend either, though I do know a lot of people. I guess I am ok with it because I am not sure what I would do with one as I still just like to hang out and play games. I guess the girls I know are just friends. Maybe you can just focus on trying to have her as a friend?"
I thought about that. Lenny's idea sounded like a good idea, and maybe it would work. The problem with what he said, though, was how could I even be a friend to a girl if when I am near them my blood is boiling, my heart is pounding and the rest of me is going nuts, literally. Maybe I am doomed to never really have any kind of relationship. I did not want to give up, though. Not yet. There had to be a way, I figured.
Lenny just looked at me and said, "Ok, Cole, I don't know what you are thinking but I can see this is really important to you and worries you a lot. I will definitely help you find out who she is once you point her out to me. After all, you saved me from that Kyle bully. I owe you one."
"Thanks!", I said.
The rest of the day was uneventful until I got to Spanish class. At the beginning of class there was a bit of a disturbance at the back of the room and two really big muscular kids arrived and went directly to the teacher. I heard them say that they changed their schedule and were now to attend Spanish. One of them, the tallest of the two at perhaps 6 foot 3 sat next to me. Like me, he did not fit our student seats very well because of his size. The other guy was assigned a seat further away. I looked at the big one near me and thought I recognized him as the one that had been sitting up high in the white Mustang in the student parking lot each morning.
I hated Spanish class. It seemed pointless to repeat words and study a language that I probably would never use. I did not understand why it was required at my school. The big guy next to me spent most of the class eying the girls around him and making cracks and comments about football. The teacher tried to involve him in the lesson by bringing up Spanish words for football, but it may have been more about soccer than what the big guy was interested in. I figured out from the banter going back and forth that the guy's name was Lance Gordon, and it seemed like he was the quarterback of the team. Occasionally he glanced over at me and seemed a bit curious but I never said anything to him. He did, however, keep looking at the bulk of my clothes. I was sure I looked fatter than ever.
Following Spanish I could not wait to get home. When the bell rang I went to my locker and then onto the bus. Entering the bus I looked at the empty seat where the blonde girl had sat the day before. I wondered what happened to her. I missed her.