movie trailers or comicbooks without drawings

I woke from a dream this morning that gave me a start. So much so that I jerked awake and woke my wife who let out a bear groan to my left. I lied silently in the gray light of 8am - thinking. I looked around our room and managed to grasp on to reality again. Desk, chair, clothes for the day, mirror, curtains. Still 20 mins. before the daily alarm would start yelling. The day hadn’t started yet and I was up with nothing but nature. Even the baby was sound asleep, a miracle in itself. I took in the 20 minutes I had to myself as an event to appreciate. It had been so long since Twenty Minutes was my own. I used the time to go over the dream I just left.
I remembered an incident back in high school I never resolved in my mind. It was a typical story of missed opportunity, but this one, for some reason or another, was more important in the laundry list of the missed opportunities of my life.
There was this invisible girl who I saw randomly around school. Not the prettiest, not the ugliest – neither, but incredibly interesting in her placid drifting. I couldn’t get around her command of invisibility. I think maybe I remembered her answering a few questions in a Spanish class or something but, other than that, nothing. No gossip about her, no one praising her after dances (who even knew if she Went to dances!), no Most Likely to Do Anything’s. I don’t remember ever hearing her say a single memorable word until the day I was at the Smoke Ring.
I had a habit of randomly smoking cigarettes. Usually, it was when shit went down at home and mom and dad would go on one of their screaming tantrums during the week. The next day I’d manage to find a pack of cigarettes and be out there at the Smoke Ring – the unofficial smoking area for students. It was an out of the way place positioned right by the dumpsters and across from the cafeteria loading dock, behind school. Even on warm days there’d be puddles lying around, perfect for casting out spent cigarettes. The night before, the match had been about television. Why, on God’s green Earth, should my father be allowed to sit on his ass and watch television while my mother be made to cook, clean, and toil hours after her job was over? It was embarrassing how much we still lived in the past. I’d heard harsher fights on the Brady Bunch. But this is what they fought over. Yelling and crashing back and forth and it never amounted to much. I was always embarrassed how in love my parents seemed. Not possible, I told myself. I was 17 and I knew that. I don’t believe it’s like that, so grossly peaceful. So boring. It was this conflict in my brain that started the search in my desk for my smokes, which led me to the Smoke Ring back at school.
(Those days I had a habit of wearing headphones everywhere. I think it’s something every teenager does for a time, when the soundtrack to life becomes stilted. I kept the music going; my tape player running on whatever 90s culture had to give me. Regardless of popular myth, the Smoke Ring was not an entirely social area. When I was in Jr. High, I remember hearing rumors about high school and this place where teachers and students alike were on the same level, slaves to their own addictions and fears. I remember thinking how much I wanted to be apart of this school ground camp fire and hear stories from Seniors about the winning football plays and pass around answers to history exams while sharing gum to chew for the rest of the period. Instead, what I found were the remains of two dozen anonymous cigarettes, the silence of the kitchen generator, and the emptiness of 11am on a school day. I learned quickly; headphones came with me.)
It was Wednesday and I had just finished my first class of the morning and was in the middle of a shamelessly scheduled study hall. Homework was done already and I had three classes left. I stood outside surveying: the gray sky reflected cloud patches off the puddles thrown randomly on the ground. Raindrops from the gutters fell into dumpsters unaccounted for. The generator purred endlessly, taking a moment every so often to let go of a heavy sigh. I forget what I was listening to when the broken fire escape door opened behind me. I had been pondering - if my parents got a divorce, would it just be another game in their love/hate version of a spent relationship. Did they even love each other enough to care that much? People who fight, I thought, fight cause they care about something. You hate cause you love, You get angry cause it matters, you take cause you want. My parents’ arguments on the other hand seemed so bland and passionless, I wondered if they even had makeup sex. Or if they just shook hands at the end of the night, gave a quick peck and took another 6-hour nap. Heatmiser was playing on my tape player when I heard:
“ You got a light?” she asked with a passive tap on my shoulder. I turned around only hearing Girl, my hand in my pocket like it was a gun holster. After making the complete turnaround, I went through the names in my list of people I knew at school to match the one who’s face I stood before, but honestly, as much as I had briefly given this invisible girl a second of my time, I went blank when I grabbed for her name. So already, she had one up on me. Not only was she asking me for my light, but
I’ve already lost. She’s got my lighter and my name.
“Yeah, here.”
She had long brown hair, a sweater with teddy bears on it, blank shoes, a real no one. She probably got B’s on social studies tests, I thought to myself, as she lit her cigarette. If I asked her who Hidalgo was, she might remember. The fan took its lazy sigh and the smell of dish soap mixed in the air with wet dumpster.
“ Thanks,” as she lit it with ease, even as the fan roared its yawn, and a gust of warm kitchen air blew our way. She didn’t budge. She was tough in her teddy bear sweater and for a second I thought, this is what my parents have lost. I wanted to pick a fight with her.
“What class you in?” I asked shifting into neutral small talk.
“Geometry or something. We just had a test and I finished early, you?”
“Study Hall.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, whoever did my schedule gave me a good Wednesday, wake up go to English, then hang in the library for an hour and half, or just come out here and listen to music.”
“ Cool, what are you listening to?”
“Just a mixtape, uh, I think the Lemonheads are playing now, I forget.”
I had just finished my cigarette so I was sorta standing there without a reason. She went into her bag and took out a pack and offered me one.
“Camel?”
“Nah, I got one,” I took out my own pack and took the lighter back and started my third cigarette of the morning.
“I’ve seen you around, I think we might have classes next to each other on Fridays. I got Spanish 2 in the afternoons.”
“Yeah I’ve seen you too, I’m in Spanish 1. I don’t know, it’s ok.”
We still hadn’t been introduced but, slowly, my memory was filling itself in. Was it Lindsay, or Leah, or Lauren?
“Wanna make out?”
The question was asked with such a lack of feeling, I couldn’t do anything but cough, as hokey as it must have looked. I answered by looking her up and down, her straight brown hair hanging on each side of her face. She wasn’t skinny, but she wasn’t fat by any means either. She was in the middle. The most boring place to be. No hips, no hip bones. Just a sweater with some teddy bears lined up right where her big boobs would’ve been. I wanted to save her.
“Sure.”
Because I was boring too. I moved closer to her, our cigarettes in the air like torches between our fingers. I left her name behind. I kept thinking when the fan was gonna blow next and imagining us standing there eyes closed, slowly tasting each other’s tongues, in a cloud of dirty dishsoap. I grabbed that sweater so slow and fast it almost ripped at the seam by her non-hips. I pulled her towards me – you. here. now. She closed her eyes as her blank shoes slid across the wet pavement. To our right was a dumpster overstuffed with garbage, it would serve as our fourth wall. No words, just the slurping sounds of our lips together.That’s when my brain started.