by Craig Birk
Interlude Five
Alex (10)
Midway through fourth grade, Alex’s family moved from New Mexico to Seattle. Usually, Alex despised moving, but he never much liked New Mexico and immediately felt more comfortable in the lush green surroundings of Washington. He liked the new school as well. The only immediate obstacle was that the social dynamics were radically different. Most importantly, boys and girls at this school were paired up together and were considered to be “going out,” whereas in Albuquerque girls were generally to be ignored and actual physical contact with one was cause for embarrassment and ridicule.
Alex’s dilemma was not with the principle of the idea, since he liked being around girls. However, all of the ones cute enough for him to consider socially acceptable were already taken upon his transfer. Alex was still unaware that the average fourth grade relationship lasts somewhere around three weeks and a bit of patience would go a long way. Instead, he settled into a courtship with the most attractive remaining choice, Tiffany Monrose. Tiffany was very shy and their relationship was for appearances only, something like a high society Manhattan marriage without the charity balls, affairs and cocaine habits. Instead, their interaction consisted of passing a note back and forth in class once or twice a day. The notes typically discussed classroom gossip or debated who was better, Duran Duran or Prince.
Due to his lack of enthusiasm for Tiffany, Alex was easy prey to succumb to a scheme devised by Peter Dunn, who was probably the most popular kid in the class. One Friday during the lunch recess, Peter and a few of the other boys convinced Alex that he should approach Jessica Kempinski and tell her he would like to go out with her instead of Tiffany. Jessica was a bit fat and tended to smell like stale bacon, the fault of living in her parent’s house which reeked of various cooked meats.
On Monday, after Jessica would proudly announce her new boyfriend to the other kids, Alex would announce that he was actually going out with Julie Simpson, who Peter had arranged would break up with her current boyfriend Jimmy Everth. Alex would further declare that his conversation with Jessica was actually a friendly act in which he helped her to pair up with Billy Massey, a spectacled kid with a strange fascination for frogs, whom no girl wanted anything to do with. The plan was cruelly genius in its ability to humiliate Jessica, Tiffany, Jimmy and Billy all at once. Also, it was entirely plausible because many couples began official courtship through a third-party intermediary.
Alex at first resisted the idea and had no interest in hurting the more vulnerable kids. Even so, he was eager to fit in at the new school and eventually went along with it. Wearing white Reebok tennis shoes, blue Gotcha shorts and a white Seattle Mariners tee shirt, he approached Jessica and followed through with the first part of the plan toward the end of lunch. She was, of course, ecstatic.
Over the weekend, Alex began to have even more serious reservations about the operation, but at this point he saw no clear way out. Sure enough, on Monday during the morning recess, once Jessica had bragged sufficiently of her pairing with Alex, Peter and Alex jointly revealed the actual status of things. Peter took extra care to reveal just how crazy Jessica must have been to believe Alex intended to be associated with her. The humiliation succeeded beyond Peter’s expectations. After recess, Jessica broke into a crying fit so severe her mother had to be called in from work to pick her up and take her home. Tiffany was also visibly upset. Jimmy was simply confused. Billy, who was by now largely used to such attacks, ignored the spectacle Jessica caused in class. During the delay, he sat at his desk happily drawing a frog. The dark green frog was holding a sub-machinegun and was happily mowing down some children in the distance. Three of the children were standing and screaming while four of them were depicted in a prone position, surrounded by growing pools of red blood.
Alex felt awful about the whole thing and wished he had never listened to Peter. He wanted to take it all back, but this was impossible. He refrained from crying until he was home alone after school.
