Hawthorne Girls

I don’t know which came first—Keith introducing me to his ex, Roxanne Hunt, or me thinking, Dang, I’m almost twelve years old, time to rustle up a girlfriend. Either way, Keith stepped in as coach, lucky for me. Not only did he have tons of girl experience, but he was a behemoth of a kid—five inches taller than anyone in the school—and that gave him confidence. This was Pocatello, Idaho, 1973, and confidence was in short supply across the sixth grade. Thank the gods of pairing off that Roxanne was among the candidates to choose from. The year before she wouldn’t have been. Because of shifting demographics and a mandate to bus from Hawthorne, a school on the other side of town, Washington Elementary now boasted four classes of sixth graders instead of two. Ah, Hawthorne girls: they were cuter, funnier, more dangerous. Fruit on the sunny side of the tree ripens faster—something like that. Perhaps they possessed a mystery pheromone, especially the girls you didn’t notice right off, like Roxanne: pretty but shy to the point of muteness, hair the color of a magpie wing, teeth whitely clean like construction-paper snowflakes. Her body had not yet lifted her out of simple sweetness but it was starting to, oh yes. Roxanne of the Hunt, Hunt of the Roxanne.

The pairing-off thing at Washington Elementary started with the simplest of questions, which even social pariahs understood: Will you go with me? If the intended agreed, you produced a friendship ring purchased the day before from Super Save Drug—a ring that cost a dollar, or in other words, four candy bars and a handful of Swedish Fish. I wanted to follow the rules, but was too chicken to ask Roxanne directly, so I rolled the ring up in a piece of notebook paper on which I’d penned the question, then taped the ends closed. What I held in my hands resembled a poor man’s baton or something you’d use to start a fire. After school I carried it to the bus stop. The Hawthorne bus was just pulling away, but Roxanne was watching for me from the window, so I ran alongside the bus and jumped as high as I could until, on the third try, she grabbed the baton. Task accomplished, I ran back to my circle of idiot friends, who punched me in congratulations and together we walked home, plotting which candy machine at the university dorms to rip off. And this was love.

At school the next day, I waited for a response like a petty thief being booked at the police station. When I passed Roxanne in the hall, she wordlessly lifted her hand—with my ring on it. What a way to say yes! Her answer was like a blown kiss, like a song by Tony Orlando and Dawn, like a piece of wintergreen gum passed from her mouth to mine.

Over the next week, our courtship turned a corner, from serious to serious serious. How do I know? We stopped speaking to each other. Under the social pressure of being a couple our ardor was forced underground. We lived a language of hungry glances. I sent boy spies to see if she wore the ring while playing four square and girl spies to see if she wore it in the girls’ bathroom.

Good, she still liked me. I responded as any serious boyfriend would: I called her at home, once or twice a week, my nervousness kicking in each time I dialed. I almost never got her on the line directly, but had to forge my way through a screechy sibling or two, undergo a dust storm in static, get dropped on my head two or three times, and pass muster with a sentinel parent before I finally heard, Hello?

Hope, eagerness, fatigue—what was it I heard in her voice? Each phone call felt like a rescue operation with me doing all the labor. Sure, Roxanne seemed happy enough that I called, but her enthusiasm never translated into free-flowing sentences. What took...