RichardDaub.com, December 2023

It started in seventh grade social studies class when Maggie Benetton asked Carl if he would let her copy his answers on a test, then culminated the following week in art when they had a substitute and there was an arm-wrestling tournament in which she was his opponent, her sweaty palm feeling like silk in his as they looked into each other’s eyes from across the table and he saw her soul.

The other guys thought she was a plain-Jane, but her soft brown eyes were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen and there would be no stopping the apocalypse that would give him feverish dreams from which he tried not to wake. He was far from having the nerve to ask her out and didn’t know what it would mean if she actually said “yes”. As far back as fifth grade he’d heard of classmates “going out”, but the logistics of dating were a mystery beyond what he’d seen on TV and in movies, and he didn’t want to get his mother involved driving them to the mall the way Daniel’s mother did in The Karate Kid, Carl envisioning his own mother chain-smoking with the windows rolled up and asking Maggie annoying questions and telling embarrassing stories about him.

With his Bic Cristal pens, he started inking “I ♥ MB” all over the desktops of J. Lewis Ames Jr. High School and, with Sanford King Size Deluxe Marker, adorned the backsides of school bus seats. But asking her out seemed impossible, as it would have to be done at a rare moment when no one else was around. Already this school year a couple of guys had been shot down in flames and everyone heard about both and then no girls wanted anything to do with either of them. Maggie, though, seemed to like him, especially when there was a test coming up in social studies, and he didn’t know of her liking someone else who wasn’t a member of New Kids on the Block, and she didn’t seem out of his league, so he thought he might have a chance, maybe.

The year rolled by seemingly faster than any previous school year since kindergarten. By Memorial day, with only a month left to ask her out before the long summer vacation, he was starting to panic. Then a plan began taking shape to ask her out on the last day, a half-day when there would be shortened periods and a lot of sitting around doing nothing. He’d heard numerous classmates say they weren’t even going to bother showing up. At the end of social studies, he could catch her in the hallway and ask her quickly. If she rejected him, at least there wouldn’t be too many people around to witness it and he wouldn’t have to waste his summer longing for September.

While aware there would likely be a high rate of absenteeism on that last day, Carl hadn’t considered the possibility that Maggie would be one of them, and the worst of all possible things happened—nothing.

* * *

The summer was long, hot, excruciating. Her phone number wasn’t listed in the White Pages and calls to the operator produced only one other Benetton in the Greater Massapequas, an old woman who claimed no knowledge of anyone named “Maggie”, and that her relations were all dead, and to please stop calling, young man.

For the first time in his life, Carl, who’d always hated school more than most, was looking forward to September.

* * *

In seventh grade she’d been in several of his classes, so there was reason to hope she would be in some of them in eighth grade as well, or even just one of the two lunch periods.

By the second lunch period of the first day, having not seen her all morning nor heard her name called during the takings of attendance, he began to panic. He kept looking around the cafeteria but didn’t see her among the hundreds of faces. By seventh period English, he hadn’t even seen her in the hallway and was worried that she may have moved away. By last period social studies, when she again didn’t appear and her name was again not called, two months of anticipation crashed down upon him. He was exhausted. By now all he had to look forward to was playing video games on the Commodore 64 after finishing his paper route.

Then, after class, he saw her in the corridor at locker #324 with one of her friends, a scowling orange-haired girl named Shannon. The locker door was open and a fresh New Kids on the Block bumper sticker had been affixed to the inside. He’d been caught off guard and neither Maggie nor Shannon looked in his direction, so he didn’t attempt to say hello.

Hope, though, had returned. He didn’t play video games after his paper route.

* * *

Carl was afraid of Shannon, whose locker was only a few over from Maggie’s, and they were always there at the same time talking to each other. Shannon didn’t really know him and Maggie hadn’t yet noticed him pass by, nor had she passed by his locker.

At the close of the first week, after spending the summer swearing it would not yet again be his fate, nothing happened.

* * *

The following Monday during math, he asked to go to the bathroom and passed locker #324 in the empty corridor. Earlier that morning on Z-100, he’d heard that New Kids on the Block were playing six concerts at Nassau Coliseum next month and tickets would go on sale Saturday morning.

He’d already been considering slipping her a note through the louvers on her locker door, but imagine her reaction if the note included a pair of New Kids tickets. Even Shannon would stop scowling for a moment and tell her she’d better not let this guy get away.

Unfortunately, getting the tickets and providing transportation to the Coliseum in Uniondale would both involve his mother.

“You have a girlfriend?” she asked, lighting a cigarette, sipping a mango-raspberry wine cooler.

“Uh, kind of. Not really. She’s a girl I like.”

“When can I meet her?”

“Uh, well, I was hoping you could give us a ride to the concert, so you can meet her then, maybe.”

“What if she says ‘no’?”

He shrugged. “I’ll sell the tickets, I guess.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

On Saturday morning, with his mother’s MasterCard at the ready, Carl spent four hours redialing the Ticketron phone number before finally breaking through the busy signal and scoring a pair of tickets for the just-added eleventh show, two obstructed view seats in the second to last row at the back of the arena that, after taxes and fees, cost over fifty bucks, two weeks of paper route earnings.

* * *

The tickets arrived in the mail a few days later. In his room he began composing the note, at first penning a rambling history of his love for her that he quickly scrapped, then writing a simple note asking if she would go to the show with him and, below it, “YES” and “NO” checkboxes, followed by his name, phone number, and locker number. He then folded the note around the tickets and slid them into a letter-sized envelope on which he wrote “Maggie” and sealed it.

The next day during math class, envelope in back pocket of white Lee jeans, he asked to use the bathroom. Moments later, he was in the empty corridor in front of locker #324 sliding the envelope through one of the louvers and heard it land on a pile of papers on the top shelf.

At day’s end, corridor crowded, he was sure that, in mere seconds, one way or another, something would finally happen.

But Maggie wasn’t at her locker, nor was Shannon, and nothing happened.

* * *

The next morning, he opened his locker and there was no note from her. After every period he checked again, but still, nothing.

At day’s end, Maggie was back at her locker and Shannon was there talking to her. He was looking at them as he approached and Shannon looked in his direction, then Maggie looked, but neither seemed to be looking directly at him, and it was only for a moment before they turned back to each other and resumed their conversation.

He’d not anticipated nonreaction. His distracted mind tripped up his feet and he nearly took an embarrassing spill, but he recovered his balance in the traffic flow, which, by then, had already swept him past her.

* * *

In the days that followed, nothing happened. No note, no phone calls, no looks in his direction. For all he knew, the envelope was buried unnoticed in her locker and wouldn’t be found until June. Another note seemed laborious, as he would have to explain that he’d left a previous note and two New Kids on the Block tickets, and there was the chance that the new note would also get buried unread.

It seemed a hopeless mess. At this point she’d probably forgotten him, forgotten his allowing her to copy his answers, forgotten their moment in art, hands clasped, looking into each other’s eyes. Maybe he should have endured the embarrassment of being beaten by a girl and let her win. Maybe it was only a meaningful moment for him and she felt nothing and had been using him the whole time.

By the end of the week, reality had sunk in. What never was would now never be. Not in this world was there another Maggie Benetton.

In the first game of his Friday afternoon bowling league, formerly the highlight of his week, he threw a 97, the first time he’d failed to break 100 since third grade. Also absent was his usual appetite for Twix bars, French fries, and vanilla egg creams. He spent the rest of the weekend devouring Archie comics and Hardy Boys books, spending Sunday afternoon reading mystery #78, Cave-In, instead of watching football.

Nothing proved a deep enough escape from the nothingness of the days ahead and the rest of his life.

* * *

Weeks went by. The New Kids played the first of what was now a nineteen-show stand at the Coliseum and their t-shirts started appearing everywhere at school, including on Maggie and Shannon after show number three. His mother had asked about Maggie a couple of weeks earlier and he said she already had tickets and that he’d sold his to one of her friends.

By the night of the eleventh show, which would have been their show, the ubiquity of New Kids shirts had rendered them hardly noticeable, and, now in the process of healing after the darkness, his eyes were again starting to wander in the direction of other girls who had no idea he was alive.

The next morning, a Friday, he felt a little better that the concert date was behind him. By now he figured envelope and tickets would be found during locker cleanout in June, and that he too would be absent on the last day, and that any embarrassing stories about what he’d done would be lost to the summer breeze.

He was proud to put this girl, who’d given him nothing but grief and heartache, in his rearview mirror and move on. There were so many girls in the corridors of J. Lewis Ames Jr. High, and he was now open to the possibility that, if not in these corridors, that somewhere out there was one better than Maggie. He’d emerged from the dark and was once again looking forward to a weekend of bowling, Twix bars, French fries, vanilla egg creams, and Sunday afternoon football.

Then something happened. A shock of orange hair at locker #324 and green eyes looking directly at him. Shannon said something to Maggie and she turned and they both looked right at him, then looked away and started laughing uncontrollably.

He could still hear them laughing long after he’d passed by. Fortunately, no one else seemed to know what they were laughing at, but that offered little solace.

On the bus there was an “I ♥ MB” on the back of the seat in front of him. He took out his Sanford King Size and X’d it out.

When he got home, he told his mother he didn’t feel well and was going to skip bowling that afternoon. This was the first time he’d missed a league match since second grade when he had chicken pox.

Over the weekend, he didn’t even feel like reading and lay in bed staring at the ceiling.

On Monday, Maggie and Shannon glanced at him, but didn’t laugh and immediately looked away.

On Tuesday, they didn’t look at all.

They never looked again.

Nothing else ever happened. ▪