“I was starin’ at the sky
Just looking for a sign
To pray on or wish on or something like that…”
           -- Fiona Apple, “Paper Bag”

It started last September. Senior year. Well, I suppose really it started before that by about three years, but whatever. I’m not quibbling semantics here.

I was attending high school in Laurel Canyon. I’d managed to pretend, successfully, that I lived at Matt’s house. His parents indulged this, as the Echo Park high school I would have had to go to was a hell. So Matt and I had the same address, and the school was okay with this because I gave them the best months of my high school career playing basketball.

All in all, it seemed to be working out.

What puts a hitch in this is that earlier that summer I’d broken up with Bethany Lane. She’d found out the truth about my address and income level from a rather sordid affair that I don’t really need to go into here.

Suffice it to say she hung out with people who were not my friends. And that these not friends told her where I lived. And what my family’s annual income was. And that neither of these answers fit what Bethany Lane thought they should be.

So come September 7th, I sat alone in the Cafeteria at lunch, pining over her sitting outside on the patio. I watched her toss her wheat blonde hair. I watched her laugh and flirt with other boys. I watched her as if she were on television. If I could have stalked her, I think I might have.

I know it’s sad.

But what else could I do? I was 17, and obsessed with the only girl I’d ever slept with. Eventually Matt got sick of listening to me pine about all this, and decided to tell me off.

“You should get over her already. She was never any good for you, and I tried to tell you that from the beginning.” His face turned a shade of pink I’d ever seen before as he tried to put some vehemence behind his words. But I just couldn’t agree with him. I suppose that was my downfall, never listening to those who were right.

That’s how I came to meet Dashiel. Well, that’s not it exactly. The story continues from there that I pretended to agree with Matt that seeing Bethany every day was too much, and that I should try having lunch somewhere else. So I did. In the library. I could spend my whole lunch looking at soft-core porn on the internet, like swimsuit models.

Dashiel finally caught my eye because he would do two sets of the same homework, in two different colors of ink. I only noticed this because I saw a kid who looked about thirteen pulling physics textbooks off the shelves, taking notes, and then returning them at the end of lunch. Then I noticed the pens. One purple, one blue. Then I noticed the handwriting styles, both slanted, but one with the softer curves of a girl.

Eventually I realized he wasn’t even signing his own name at the top. Or at least, I suspected it. So I dropped my books on the table next to him, and asked him who his teacher was.

“Ms. Hamill,” he said without missing a stride.

However, when I followed up by asking what period he attended, he stumbled a bit before offering, “Second.”

And that’s when I became sure that whoever this boy was, there was no way he was either Deke or Dara Kendrick. If he was, he would have known that Ms. Hamill didn’t teach second period.

I let it go though, figured he’d figure out his mistake soon enough. Pulling a chicken salad sandwich out of my bag, I fell deeply into reading Hamlet, and barely noticed when the bell rang to get me to class. The good thing about the lunch in the Library arrangement was that I’d get more homework done. The bad thing about it was that I was now eating lunch in the library, and the biggest bout of excitement I would get was quizzing some kid on someone else’s homework.

I settled in for it to be a long year.

And to be honest, the first few weeks of school did seem to drag. The only decent thing about them was getting together with Matt for any old reason, and basketball. The one thing that kept me sane all the way through high school. It was the only thing my dad ever noticed me for. Especially after the accident.

But dad has nothing to do with Dashiel. With how “discovering” him changed my life.

My English class pushed away at Hamlet, struggling with every nuance, every last word. All of us except one, a girl who sat in the back of the class, turned in her homework on time, and other than that, sadly, escaped my notice. Maybe if she hadn’t, none of this would have happened.

But English was the only class I shared with Bethany, so every time one of my classmates said Ophelia, I looked at her and wished her into a nunnery. Every time we discussed the “radical implications of Hamlet on the Shakespearian ideal of love”, I wondered if that’s all we’d had. An ideal of love. If even that.

God, how pretentious does that sound? I was in high school; I was supposed to be thinking about next week’s party, or game, or what I would wear to the movies that Friday. Not some seventeen-year-old girl who thought that cash was more important than class.

So I continued to have lunch in the Library, and more and more often I found myself drawn to the kid who’s name I still didn’t know was Dashiel. I let him do other people’s homework in peace, and in return, he didn’t pester me about what a basketball star like me” was doing in the library struggling with Hamlet, or pre-calc.

I’m still thinking that’s all for the best. I would have just snapped at him, in my agony over Bethany.

God, I make her sound so important to this whole thing. It seems weird to think that I was so obsessed with her then, but I suppose everyone needs a key to his or her undoing. An Achilles heel. And Bethany Lane could certainly be called that.

But by the time I get to the interesting part of this, you’ll have forgotten who she was. I did.

We had been a cute couple, and so I wasn’t surprised when people asked if she and I were going to Fall Festival together. Another concept that needs explaining I think.

One of the backhanded benefits of the California educational system is it’s unwavering ability to choose to give students time away from class when they can use it least. In the case of my school, the first of these yearly occasions was Fall Festival. Three days devoted to having fun at lunch, skipping classes for sports assemblies, and topping it all off with one of our two outdoor dances.

Now, while I wasn’t surprised, the answer to that question, as we all know, was no. I was not going to Fall Festival with Bethany Lane, I would never again go to Fall Festival with Bethany Lane, and could you please do the world a favor and fuck off for asking?

So the first couple times I got asked I had a placid smile. The third time I got asked I glared. No one asked after that. That was the smallest blessing I’ve ever received.

The days inched toward Fall Festival. Scheduled to be the first week of October, we all waited out September with the patience of the condemned man. But only because we knew our pardon was around the corner.

Toward the end of September, perhaps the 28th, I was sitting in my government class when a note, on pink paper dropped onto my desk. In the inimitable spiky-curled handwriting of Jennifer something or other, it asked me to the dance that Friday.

I responded with an emphatic no. If I couldn’t have Bethany, I couldn’t, and wouldn’t have anyone. Again, make another mark in the stupid boy column. I’ll rack up a lot of those when we get to the end of this.

Anyway, Jennifer then decided to take it on herself to report to Bethany, and tell her that I was still a lovesick fool. Which was patronized every day in English by a look, and a toss of the hair. Everything about her started to say to me “I’m a spoiled princess,” and yet, she was a spoiled princess who I still wanted to get in the back seat of my car.

Damn my hormones for understand that she was beautiful. Damn my eyes for seeing it and reporting it to my hormones. And hey, while we’re at it, damn her. Who ever asked her to get stuck in my head anyway?

I suppose Dashiel probably heard me muttering about that the day of the dance, because he finally looked up at me from the homework he was doing, pushed his gold-framed glasses back up on to his face, and stuck out his hand. “Dashiel Roberts. And yes, I know who you are. What I want to know is why you keep giving that stupid Lane girl so much credit? Can’t you tell she’s ordinary?”

I just blinked at him dumbly for a minute. Then I looked at him again, and blinked some more. No one in this school, and I mean no one, would dare to say that Bethany Lane, the teen queen dream, all American prom queen was ordinary. Not and get away with it at any rate.

Especially not someone like this Dashiel Roberts. He wasn’t bad looking, I suppose, but his messy mop of dark hair and faintly tanned skin would only get so far. In Los Angeles you have to fit a look. A look that Dashiel was too short, too pale, and too self-aware for. Part of me wondered if he was conscious of the transgression he’d just made.

“Don’t look at me like that. Pick your jaw up off the table, and trust me. She’s ordinary. You want proof? Just… Tonight at the dance, give me a chance to prove it.”

He looked so earnest, and so young, and I felt a pang of sympathy. Perhaps he said it to garner some sort of attention, since he didn’t seem like the type to have a clique. I nodded abstractly at him, and put away my books, seconds before the bell rang. He smiled, tucked his own things away, and we headed off to our separate classes. Me to third year French, and him to whatever it was he did in the afternoons.

I suspected he claimed some sort of athletic exemption from PE, and finished the homework that he always seemed to be doing.

That night, I sat around in my room for near an hour trying to decide what to wear. Anyone who tells you that guys dress easier than girls is sorely fucking mistaken. We don’t. So I sat on my bed, and I looked in the closet for a while. And then I looked some more. And then I pulled out some gray wool cargo slacks, and looked some more.

Eventually a charcoal colored sweater recommended itself to me, and I realized that I’d had the foresight when I went shopping to at least buy things that these kids would fade into the background, as opposed to noticing for their less than superior quality.

And for not the first time, I felt like something of a ghost.

Dressing quickly, I took the keys to the car my dad hadn’t used since the accident, and drove the fifteen minutes to my school. Parking, I double-checked in the mirror, made sure everything was perfect, from my slightly spiky brown hair to my shoelaces, and then pocketed the keys and walked toward the school like the man I was supposed to be.

I tried to pretend I didn’t feel like people were staring at me, even though I know they were. I just shrugged it all off, and went into the courtyard. After all, I figured, if even a freshman like Dashiel knew who I was, well… I should be like a god to these people.

But then it smacked me in the face. I saw Bethany, and her date. One of the boys on the football team. Jared something. And they were very close. As if they’d gotten that close over the summer. She could have worn him for a jacket, that’s how close they were.

I was glad the whole thing was lit by Christmas lights. I thought it would hide the look of desperation on my face. I felt betrayed. The least she could have done, I thought, was come alone. That would have been right. God damn her.

I realized then that none of the happy endings that I secretly wanted in my “romantic” heart would ever come to pass. Sadly I’d always dreamed of having one of those picture perfect relationships, and now I was watching that dream die in the courtyard of a high school not big enough to hold my desperation.

Dramatic enough yet?

I leaned against a wall for most of the night, contemplated taking up smoking, if only so I’d have an excuse to sneak off and disappear without everyone asking where I’d gone. I didn’t see Dashiel, and slowly the hands on the clock passed. Eight turned into nine, turned into ten. I started to think he’d never come.

That is, until I heard the collective intake of breath. As if everyone in the place had looked up all at once and seen the same miracle. And who knows. Maybe they had. After all, I wouldn’t say that it was beyond them. They knew how to pull off so many other tricks.

Riding the wave of the gasp I first noticed Dashiel. He was the one I knew. His perfectly chosen slacks and shirt were all black, and somehow that worked for him. And yet, it also had the desired effect of casting him into shadow next to the people that followed him.

I somehow knew that the two stunning blondes were Deke and Dara.

When I say blondes, I should be accurate. They both had the kind of hair that most blondes bleach for. That white platinum that looks like pure sunlight when done right. They both had perfect golden glows to their skin, not too tan, but tan enough not to be mistaken for the type that spent all their time in doors.

It was obvious that these two were twins. Both five feet seven, both slim, but not skinny. Deke had golden brown eyes, the kind that looked like warm coffee. His smile was genial, and I, like most people, instantly wanted to like him. He was wearing a bowling shirt and pretty fifties shoes, which made him instantly both stylish and novel in our collective mind.

And then there was Dara. With eyes like the ocean, and a body like a mountain road. Stacked, and perfectly dressed in blue. Some sort of silk that both flowed off her body, and hugged every curve on it. She ran her hands over it in what could have been called a gesture of self-consciousness by the generous. Me, now that I understand her? I call it planned manipulation.

After all, what better way to draw attention to your body than to pretend you dislike something about it?

She was with them that night, although I gave her cream white skin and black hair barely a second glance. After the sheer sparkle and shimmer of Dara, what could compete? Even Bethany, my sainted Bethany, barely got another look.
I had become smitten with a new angel. And when I saw the crowd that gathered around them, I felt the same despair as always. I had wanted to approach them, had figured Dashiel could give me an introduction. Once the crowd gathered though, I figured I would be too late to pay my homage, and that I should instead give into the defeat that I was feeling and head for the car.

It was walking out the gate that Dashiel caught up with me. Put a hand on my arm. Smiled a bit, “Deke and Dara want to meet you. I’ve told them about you. And now you see what I mean about Bethany, right?” I didn’t even have to nod; I had agreement with his statement written on my face in big, bold letters.

The introductions went smoothly. Almost too smoothly. Deke shook my hand, Dara put hers on my arm, and I was instantly a part of. Immediately accepted, unquestioned by their new army of followers. The court, which had been ruled by Bethany, was now much smaller; many of her fans had gravitated to the new queen.

As the dance wound to a close I was surprised to feel myself being pulled gently out on the dance floor. Dara, who was a good eight inches shorter than me in bare feet, was wearing a pair of heels that put her head just beneath my chin. It felt nice to dance with her. Until I realized she was talking to me.

“We can give you back what you had, if you want it.” Her voice was soft, sweet, low. It was the kind of voice that made you want to lay your head on the shoulder of its owner and be convinced of the sweet lies that might be issued.

I let her continue, trying not to hold her too close, since we’d barely just met. “Dashiel’s told us of your…situation. We can ease your pain, if you’d like. Or even make things as they were.”

I think I stammered some sort of reply at her, because as the song ended she pulled away a little, and whispered, “Just think about it Zach Tyler. Dashiel will have something for you in a couple days. You can make a decision later.”

It didn’t occur to me until I was pulling into my own garage that I had never told her my last name, and I had no idea how she knew it.