Be Mine

I didn’t install a hit counter on this thing. It would just remind me how terribly unpopular I am, like this girl Karen I went to grade school with. We all had a Karen in one of our grades growing up… that one kid in class whose clothes were just a little too tattered or out of style, whose hair was a little fucked up, who stood out, but not in a good way. Their family usually had a lot of junk in their yard, or their parents drank a lot, if they had two parents at all.

I wonder how many people it happened to in elementary school; Valentines’ Day, kids would bring in cards that their mom bought them at Zellers, the really cheap ones printed on crappy paper, they weren’t glossy or anything, made in China probably by people getting paid 25 cents a day or something like that. You know the kind of cards I’m talking about, with the cheesy sayings, like that stupid joke off of The Simpsons; “I choo-choo choose you” with some bug eyed train with a big shit-eating grin on it, like it just took a bong hit.

Anyways, we’d all have made these stupid boxes with our names on them with hearts and stars (this one bitch Cindy, who spelled her name “Cindi”, even though it wasn’t her Christian name, dotted her I’s with hearts), we’d give all the cards to the teacher, and then during recess or lunch, she’s “deliver” them into people’s boxes. There was always that one girl (Cindy) whose boxes couldn’t even hold all the cards put in it, and there was always the kid who got one pity card, from the teacher. That kid in my elementary school was Karen. That day the teacher forgot to put a card in Karen’s box.

I was only about 11 at the time, but I remember seeing a look in her eyes, like her soul broke… not a broken heart, or humiliation (like during the previous year’s Christmas gift exchange when David K. drew her name and wrapped up a bar of soap with her name on it) but the utter destruction of some vital part of her, like taking a sprouting seedling and crushing it with your boot… slow. She didn’t cry, or run from the room, she just calmly sat back in her seat and waited. I don’t even think Miss Johnston realized what she did (she was oblivious most of the time and there was that one time during a pop quiz where she fell asleep at her desk, and we all cheated and she was so proud that the whole class got straight A’s ‘cuz it proved what a fucking spectacular teacher she was shaping our young minds.

We never did find out what happened to Karen. She just never came back to school after that day. I remember overhearing Cindy telling Heather at lunch one day that her mom said that Karen stood in front of a freight train on a bridge on the other side of town the same night of the whole card incident. Fucked up. I didn’t believe it at first, but Miss Johnston started falling asleep at her desk even more, and started smelling funny, like she hadn’t had a shower for a long time. Eventually Mr. Tardiff took over our class. Funny how some people just disappear out of your life and you never think of them till years later.

After school about a week after Karen stopped showing up for class, I ran as hard as I could to the bridge that she supposedly died on, looking for any sign that what Cindy heard from her mom was true. I waited and waited, thinking maybe her ghost would show up, screaming and wailing and looking for her Valentine.

I wear a big heart shaped locket around my neck that an Uncle gave me for Christmas once. It was silver at one point but I rub it a lot so the yellow metal underneath shows through. When I’m feeling bad, or I get in a bad place, or am having one of my very extremely awful days, I clutch the locket in my hand and shake it, and inside I hear the rattling of the tooth I found under the bridge that day, and it makes me remember that it could be worse.

-L-