Jeana and Mickey generated heat from the beginning.
Take when they met. It was almost the second quarter of the 1978-79 school year, and the temperature still hovered near ninety. Even for southern Alabama, that kind of heat was unusual for so late in October. The box fans at both ends of the room in Mrs. Langston’s sophomore English class barely stirred the humid air, their somnolent drone only adding to the lethargy typical of sixth period classes.
Jeana took her alphabetically assigned seat at the front of the last row. Her hair clung to her neck in sweaty, auburn tendrils, and she lifted it optimistically, hoping for a breeze from the open window. When she felt something move across her damp hairline, she shivered and heard a familiar laugh.
“Is that a hickey on your neck?” Wade Strickland asked as he took the seat behind Jeana. “Oh, wait. Smart girls don’t go in for no neck sucking, right? Unless maybe it was for a homework assignment.” He leaned up and made kissy noises at her shoulder. “Want to help me with mine, Jeana-baby?”
She flipped her thick curls into his face. “What would you know about homework, Wade Strickland? Besides getting one of your girlfriends to do it for you?”
“I know enough to copy it in my own handwriting,” he replied. “Sandi dots her i’s with hearts, and I sure as hell wouldn’t want Old Lady Langston to think I had the hots for her.” He mimed an attack of nausea, getting laughs from his buddies Jimbo Sullivan and Lamar Pruitt.
With a roll of her hazel eyes, Jeana took out her notes on The Crucible for a last-minute review before the test. For the hundredth time, she silently cursed the luck that had put Mrs. Sutton’s regular English students in the advanced class after the teacher’s car accident. When she felt Wade playing with her hair, Jeana jerked her head and also cursed the luck that put all the jocks’ names in the same part of the alphabet as hers.
She tried to concentrate on her notes, but her interest was piqued when she overheard Wade and the others talking about the new boy at school. She’d been hearing about him all day but hadn’t seen him herself. He obviously didn’t take advanced classes. Probably just another jock.
“You seen him yet, Wade?” Lamar asked.
“Yeah, no big deal.” Wade sounded deliberately bored. “He’s a Yankee from Oregon or Washington. Somewhere like that.”
“Bubba said he’s wearing a frigging New York Yankee shirt.” Lamar’s forehead creased in confusion. “Did they move to Washington?”
“No, you dumbass.” Wade whacked Lamar in the back of the head and Jimbo snorted.
“He’s in my World History class,” Jimbo said, still laughing at Lamar rubbing his head. “Looks like he’s in decent shape. Who knows, Wademan? You might finally have some competition on the old gridiron.”
Wade looked disgusted. “You’re both full of shit.”
Mrs. Langston walked into the room, followed by none other than the subject of the discussion, and Jeana saw that his shirt indeed bore the logo of the New York Yankees. The boys might have been interested in his shirt—this was Atlanta Braves territory, after all—but Jeana suspected it was the exquisite way he filled out his boot-cut Levi’s, the wavy brown hair that virtually cried out for fingers to be run through it, and the biceps flexed slightly on the arm holding his books that held the girls’ attention. Jeana couldn’t help taking an appreciative look herself, even if he did appear to be just one more of the Locker Room Set.
“He is a damn Yankee,” Lamar said with a derisive curl of his lip.
Tiffany Pearsall tossed her feathered blonde hair and added, “Yeah, a damn fine Yankee.”
Jeana was surprised to realize she felt sorry for the boy being gaped at by everyone. He didn’t seem arrogant like most good-looking guys, and he didn’t emanate attitude like Wade. While Mrs. Langston looked at his transfer form, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and although he could obviously hear the whispers all around him, he pointedly avoided the twenty-five pairs of curious eyes. When he licked his lips and twin dimples flashed on his cheeks, Jeana drew a sharp breath.
Mrs. Langston looked up over her half-glasses and noticed her students’ rapt attention. “Since everyone seems so interested, I’ll introduce our new student. This is Mickey Royal, and he transferred to Vigor from Kent-Meridian High School in Washington state. Let’s see…” She took off her glasses and looked in Jeana’s direction. “Everyone in the last row, please move back one seat. Mr. Royal, you may take the seat in front of Miss Russell.”
An odd look crossed Mickey’s face momentarily before he smiled at Jeana and said, “Hi.”
“Hey,” she replied, mentally wincing. Why couldn’t she have just said hello?
“The Yankees suck!” echoed from the back of the room, drawing raucous laughter from all the boys and bringing Mrs. Langston to her feet.
“Who said that? I will not allow that vulgar term in my classroom!”
“Do you mean suck or Yankee?” asked Wade, invoking more laughter.
Mrs. Langston narrowed her eyes. “Since you’ve developed this sudden interest in words, Mr. Strickland, you may bring me an essay Monday on ‘The Importance of Having a Good Vocabulary’.” She bent to make a note in her grade book. “I think five hundred words will suffice.”
Wade’s grin disappeared and he punched Lamar in the shoulder for snickering.
“Please clear your desks.” Mrs. Langston began placing the mimeographed papers face down in front of each student. “Mr. Royal, you may begin reading The Crucible in your literature text. The rest of the class is taking a test on it today, but you will have until Monday to prepare. It would be advisable for you to borrow the notes on what we’ve been discussing from someone in the class.”
“Yes ma’am,” Mickey said.
Jeana heard someone say in her voice, “You can borrow my notes.” Mickey turned to smile at her again, and she saw that his eyes were almost the color of his name.
“Thanks.”
“Damn, you got it made, Yankee-boy,” Wade leaned up and whispered. “This here is Miss Jeana-the-Brain, and she usually guards her notes closer than she guards her virginity.”
“Shut up, Wade!” Jeana blushed furiously and glanced at Mickey. At least he hadn’t laughed.
Mrs. Langston pushed Wade back down in his seat. “Do we have a problem, Mr. Strickland?”
“No ma’am,” Wade replied. “I was just welcoming the Pride of the Yankees here.”
More snickering.
“No more talking then.” Mrs. Langston sat at her desk and began her test-taking vigil. “Everyone may turn their test over and begin.”
While Jeana answered the questions, she silently prayed for telekinesis so she could make one of the fluorescent light fixtures fall on Wade’s blond head. She despised Wade Strickland, and Mickey was probably just another jock who would end up running around with him and all the other thicknecks. And why on Earth had she offered him her notes?
She stole another glance at the broad shoulders in front of her and remembered the startling blue eyes and those dimples.
Okay. Maybe she knew why she’d done it, but she would probably regret it.
***
Mrs. Langston kept Jeana a few minutes after class to discuss the practice schedule for the High School Bowl academic team, and when she came out into the hall, Jeana saw Mickey surrounded by Tiffany and three other girls from class. He looked like a fly in a web with four spiders.
“That is so awesome,” Tiffany was gushing. “You play football, baseball, and basketball? You must be an awesome athlete.”
Jeana hurried toward her locker. It was even worse than she’d thought—a jock to the third power!
“Not really,” Mickey answered Tiffany. “I guess I’m just too hardheaded to give any of them up.” He looked at Jeana as she walked by and said, “Listen, I’ll see you girls later.”
Jeana looked back and saw their carefully made-up faces marred with equal amounts of surprise and annoyance as they watched him walk away.
“Can I get those notes from you now?” Mickey asked. “English is my worst subject, so I need all the help I can get.”
His voice was soft, with a whispery quality Jeana thought was incredibly sexy.
“I’m sure Tiffany would give you hers,” she replied, “and she’d probably volunteer to read them to you too. She thinks you’re awesome.”
“I’d rather have yours,” he said. “I hear you’re really smart.”
Jeana told herself not to look at him, to just tell him no. “I can’t find them. They must’ve fallen out of my notebook.” She tried to focus on her locker dial, but the stupid thing wouldn’t open.
“Oh. Well…okay.”
That was all it took. The disappointment in his voice got to her and she looked at him.
“Wait,” she said, wondering how his eyes could be even bluer than before. “Maybe they’re in my locker. If I ever get it open, I’ll look for them.”
Another display of dimples.
“Thanks. I’ll go to my locker and meet you back here in a few minutes.”
Jeana had to tear her gaze from the glorious view as he walked down the hall, and she discovered her throat was suddenly dry and it was difficult to swallow. What a wimp she was! Her resolve had lasted a whopping two seconds. All he’d had to do was sound a little pitiful and she’d folded like one of those giggling groupies.
She finally got her combination right and took the notes from her notebook, throwing everything else inside the locker with a disgusted sigh. When she saw him coming around the corner, she waved the notes at him and said, “Hey, I found them.”
“Great! I really appreciate this.” Mickey scanned over the five pages—front and back—of notes written in Jeana’s prizewinning penmanship. “Man, you really take good notes. But, could I…maybe get your phone number? In case I have a question about something this weekend.”
Jeana searched his face for any sign of coyness. “Well, I guess so. I’ll write it on the back of the last page.” She took the notes and frantically tried to remember her number.
“Super,” Mickey said when she handed the paper back to him. “Can I give you a ride home?”
Her heart was pounding so hard she thought he must be able to hear it. “Thanks, but my mother’s waiting for me.”
“Okay. Hey, thanks again.” He gave her arm a casual squeeze. “See you later.”
“Bye, Mickey.”
Jeana watched him walk away again and then stared at her arm in amazement. It actually tingled where he’d touched her. She walked to the parking lot still in a daze and got into her mother’s station wagon.
Betty Russell looked at her daughter with concern. “Jeana, Honey, what’s wrong? You’re all flushed.” She looked at Jeana’s empty hands and added, “And where are your books? You’ve never come home without any books before.”
“It’s the heat, Mama,” Jeana said, touching her still-tingling arm. “I’m too hot to study.”
***
Sequestered in her room, Jeana lay on her bed with a stuffed Persian cat named Precious clutched in her arms and tried to sort out her emotions as she watched the late-afternoon sun paint dappled patterns on the wall. What the heck was going on? She had never let herself be distracted by the things the other girls were obsessed with—namely boys, makeup, more boys, hairstyles, additional boys, clothes, and still more boys.
Besides being detrimental to her goal of becoming valedictorian, dating the boys at school had never held much appeal for Jeana, since most of them were either immature, irresponsible, or insensitive jerks. And the ones who played sports were usually all three—Wade Strickland as the prime example.
Of course, that didn’t mean Jeana wouldn’t indulge in romantic fantasies occasionally, it was just that she much preferred the men from the novels in which she lost herself. Men like Rhett Butler and Jo’s Professor Bhaer in Little Women. Jeana would conjure up a dream man who was masculine yet sensitive, strong but gentle, and whose intellectual brilliance matched her own so they could have deep, insightful conversations that would explore each other’s soul. She had yet to find anyone like that walking the halls of Vigor High School.
It had been easy to ignore the boys until Mickey came along, and Jeana was confused by her instant attraction to him. She was afraid to hope he might really like her, and not even sure she wanted him to. He’d probably just heard Wade say she was smart and thought he could get an easy English grade if he flashed his dimples at her.
“And wasn’t I just reeled in like a big ol’ catfish?” Jeana said, sitting up to look Precious in the eyes. “What was I thinking? He’s a jock, and he probably goes for the rah-rah type anyway, not smart girls with wild hair and minuscule eyes.”
She glanced at her reflection in the mirror across the room and then fell back on her bed with her arm thrown across her face. Here she was obsessing over looks now. What was next? Cheerleader aspirations?
Jeana answered the knock on her door with, “Go away. I don’t feel well.”
Her sister Shelly came in and flounced onto the bed. “What’s the deal with you, chick?”
Jeana moved her arm just enough to peer at her sister. “Good thing I’m not nauseous, what with your mistaking the bed for a trampoline and all.”
Shelly made barfing noises and held her stomach.
“You’re just so funny,” Jeana said.
“For real, Jeana.” Shelly stretched out beside her sister on the bed. “Mama told me you came home bookless and were acting all weird. What’s going on?”
Before Jeana could answer, the phone in the hall rang and she shot upright on the bed, drawing a suspicious look from Shelly. Jeana tried to act as if she’d just remembered something she desperately needed from her night stand, picking up some loose change from the drawer as their mother came to the door and told them the phone was for Shelly.
“I’ll be back in a minute, and I want some answers,” Shelly said as she left.
Jeana sighed and considered confiding in Shelly about Mickey. They’d always gotten along well for sisters, despite their different personalities. An extrovert who was head-cheerleader for Clark Middle School, Shelly was a natural beauty with big brown eyes, olive skin, and golden-brown hair that curled cooperatively—unlike Jeana’s unruly mane. At fourteen, Shelly already had more experience with boys than Jeana, but the idea of getting advice from her little sister was embarrassing. And she didn’t really expect Mickey to call anyway. Why would he need to? He had her ridiculously detailed notes.
Jeana decided she wasn’t ready to face her sister’s inquisition just yet, so she slipped out the back door while Shelly was on the phone. It was still unseasonably warm outside, although the sun hovered just above the trees when Jeana stepped across the culvert separating their yard from Chickasaw Municipal Park.
She went in through the back gate and walked behind the bleachers on Field-C, heading toward the swings at the front of the park next to the batting cages. The fall softball season had just ended the previous weekend so the park was deserted for a change, but when Jeana reached Field-B’s home dugout, she heard the shuwop of the coin-operated pitching machine in one of the batting cages, followed by the sound of a bat on a ball.
She stopped, meaning to turn around and go back until she saw a shirt and hat hanging on the gate handle at the back of the cage. The NY insignia of the Yankees jumped out at her, and her heart did some Olympic-caliber acrobatics in her chest.
It was Mickey!
Jeana watched him from behind the dugout, feeling like a voyeur but unable to stop. He was shirtless and wore cutoff jeans, the sun turning the hair on his arms and legs a burnished gold. Her eyes took in the well-defined muscles in his back and his legs, and she noticed appreciatively how everything flexed when he swung the bat—particularly in the gluteus maximus region where her eyes tended to linger.
She realized her pulse was racing and the temperature seemed to have gone up several degrees. She fanned her face with her hand, telling herself she had to stop reacting to a physical attraction and her hormones. She didn’t even know him, for Pete’s sake. They probably had nothing in common and would bore each other to tears.
This did not, however, prompt her to stop watching him. When the pitching machine stopped, he fished in the pocket of his shorts and then stared at his hand a moment before walking dolefully over to where his hat and shirt hung on the fence. Jeana suddenly felt her feet moving as if of their own accord.
“Hey, Mickey!” she called. “Don’t you know it’s football season?”
She silently blessed her band director, because the only reason she knew it was football season was because she played the clarinet in the marching band and performed at all the games.
Mickey looked up and smiled when he saw her. “It’s always baseball season for me. Besides, you can never get too much practice.” He took a towel from the gym bag on the ground outside the gate and wiped his face. “What’re you doing here? Come to hit a few?”
Jeana noticed the small patch of damp curls in the middle of his chest and thought Lord, give me strength!
“No, I’m not into sports.” She gestured over her shoulder and added, “I live over there in that gray house and was just taking a walk. Hey, do you need some more change?” She retrieved four quarters from her pocket and held out her hand.
“Are you kidding?” Mickey’s amazing eyes lit up at her offer. “I never get tired of this.”
His fingers brushed her palm when he took the quarters, and she had to fight the impulse to jump at the electricity she felt. He fed the coins into the pitching machine and went to stand beside the plate as she sat cross-legged in the grass on the side of the cage.
“Mind if I watch?” she asked.
“No, but you might have to move from my line of vision. So you won’t distract me.” The corners of his mouth twitched and his dimples appeared briefly before he frowned in concentration at the first pitch.
Was he flirting with her, or was that just some kind of strict batting protocol? She watched him send every pitch sailing into the net and became intrigued. He actually seemed serious about this nonsense, and she supposed he must be good because he didn’t miss any of the balls. She decided it wouldn’t hurt to have a real conversation with him so she could see if there was more to him than just muscles.
Her eyes returned to the perfect curve in the seat of his shorts and she sighed. Absolutely divine muscles.
When the machine whirred to a stop, Mickey gathered his things and walked over to where Jeana was sitting, then he dropped to the ground beside her. “Thanks for the change. That’s two favors I owe you now.” He put his bag behind him and leaned back on it with one arm behind his head. “That reminds me. Why did you loan me your notes if what that Wade guy said is true?”
Jeana flushed at the memory of Wade’s crude remark. “Wade Strickland is an insufferable jerk.”
“Obviously,” Mickey said, “but that doesn’t answer my question. Why’d you do it?”
“I guess I felt kind of sorry for you,” she replied with a little shrug. “Transferring to a new school can’t be any fun, and I didn’t like the way Wade and his flunkies were giving you a hard time. Your choice of apparel didn’t help much, by the way. Don’t you know people around here are for the Atlanta Braves?”
“So? I’ve always been a Yankee fan like my dad, and I’m not ashamed of it. In fact, I was even named after the greatest Yankee ever.” He paused, clearly waiting to see if she knew whom he meant.
“Mickey Mantle, right?” she said. “Even I know about him. He was the only switch-hitter to hit more than five hundred homeruns.” That fact had been one of the questions from her last High School Bowl match and had stuck in her mind because it was one of the few she’d missed.
Mickey applauded, looking impressed. “Not bad. Not bad at all for a Southern Belle, especially a brainy one.”
Jeana bristled slightly at his use of brainy. “Are you making fun of me?”
“Absolutely not,” he said. “I like brainy Belles. Besides, any girl who knows about The Mick is a girl after my own heart.” He clasped his hands on his chest and fluttered his eyelashes, making her laugh.
“I hate to break that heart of yours,” she said, “but that’s about the only thing I know about him. I told you, I’m not into sports.”
“Neither am I,” he said with a straight face. Jeana shoved him and he rolled off the gym bag, laughing. “Seriously,” he said as he sat up, “you don’t like any sports?”
She shook her head. “Sorry.”
“Then, um…” He picked at a blade of grass by his foot and didn’t look at her. “Why did you stay to watch me hit?”
For a second, Jeana considered making up something. She was in uncharted territory and her first instinct was to hide her interest, but she decided that would be too much like the games played by the girls she disdained so much. Besides, she was in the mood for a little exploration.
“Maybe I’d become a baseball fan if the major-leaguers played without their shirts.”
Mickey looked at her in mock surprise. “Why, Miss Russell, I’m shocked. I feel so…used.”
He covered his chest with his hands in feigned modesty, and she laughed again.
“I like to hear you laugh,” he said. “You don’t giggle like most girls. You just kind of belt it out like you mean it.”
She arched one eyebrow. “Hmm…I guess that was a compliment, even though you make me sound like a lumberjack. But you’re right, I’m not like most girls. You’re not like most jocks either.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re nice for one thing, and your sense of humor isn’t at other people’s expense. That’s nothing like most of the jocks I know.”
“You shouldn’t judge all athletes by Wade,” he said. “I don’t know what he did to make you dislike him, but I can sure tell he gets your feathers ruffled.”
Jeana made a face. “I can’t stand him. He’s crude, conceited, and has the mental capacity of a gorilla with a neck to match.”
“Ouch,” Mickey said with a wince. “I hope you never get mad at me like that. But, gorillas are actually intelligent, you know. If you really want to compare him to a stupid animal, it should be a chicken. They’re so dumb they’ll walk right behind other chickens to get their heads whacked off.”
Her anger at the mention of Wade disappeared as she laughed at the scene he suggested. “Is that true?”
Mickey nodded. “Yep, I’ve seen ‘em do it.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said. “But then, I don’t know much about chickens at all, being a city girl. How do you know about them?”
“My great-grandmother had chickens and we used to visit her when I was little. She lived in Clarke County near Grove Hill.”
Jeana looked surprised. “I thought you moved here from Washington.”
“I did, but I was born in Mobile, and we lived in Chickasaw when I was in the fifth grade.”
He seemed to be watching for her reaction to this news, so she nodded. “I guess that’s why you say yes ma’am and don’t really sound like a Yankee.”
“My dad was from Washington. That’s why we moved to Kent.”
“I’ve always heard the Northwest is breathtakingly beautiful,” she said. “Why did you move back to Alabama?”
His expression changed and he looked away. “My dad died of cancer earlier this year. Mom wanted to come back to be close to her family.”
Jeana heard the raw pain in his voice and instinctively took his hand. “I’m so sorry, Mickey.”
He stared at her small hand in his with a ragged sigh. When he looked up at her, Jeana thought her heart would break at the sight of his beautiful eyes pooled with tears.
“Thanks,” he said, squeezing her hand. “I’ll tell you about him sometime. He was a great guy.”
“I’d love to hear about your dad, Mickey. Anytime you want to tell me.” They sat without talking for a minute, then she reluctantly let go of his hand. “I’d better get back home. Mama will have supper ready soon, and I have to get dressed for the game tonight.”
Mickey’s stomach growled as if on cue at the mention of supper, and they both laughed. “My mom will be expecting me too,” he said. “So, you’re going to the football game?”
“Yes, I’m in the band.”
“Oh. Too bad.”
Jeana laughed at his crestfallen expression and poked him in the chest. “You have something against band members?”
“No, I meant it’s too bad you have to sit with the band.”
He stood and offered his hand to pull her up beside him. They were standing very close, so she had to tilt up her face to look at him.
“Jeana, there’s something I want to tell you…” He paused and they heard Shelly calling from the other side of the park.
“What were you going to say, Mickey?” Jeana asked as he moved away from her.
“It can wait. I’ll tell you some other time.” He took his shirt from the gym bag and put it on as Shelly walked up.
“Supper’s ready, Jeana,” Shelly said, looking at Mickey. “Mama sent me to find you.”
“Shelly, this is Mickey Royal,” Jeana said. “He just moved here from Washington. He’s in my English class.”
“Nice to meet you,” Mickey said as he picked up his bag. “Bye, Jeana. Hope I see you at the game.” He reached out and flicked her earlobe with his forefinger before walking away.
“Bye, Mickey.” Jeana turned and grabbed Shelly’s arm. “Let’s go, and don’t say a word.”
“Man, Jeana,” Shelly said, looking back at Mickey as Jeana pulled her in the direction of their house. “I always knew it would take a miracle to get your mind off studying, and he’s definitely miraculous.”
***
Shelly kept giving Jeana surreptitious smiles while they ate supper, and Robert Russell noticed his daughters’ curious interactions.
“Where were you when I got home, Hot Shot?” he asked Jeana.
Shelly coughed and Jeana kicked her under the table.
“I took a walk to get some exercise,” Jeana replied, studying the red-beans-and-rice on her plate. “I figured I’d better start getting my legs ready for the Mardi Gras parades next spring.”
“I hope the football team can pull this one off tonight,” Robert said, buttering a piece of cornbread. “A win against Davidson will put them in the Shrine Bowl next week for the Region One championship, and it’s been way too long since Mobile had a team in the state playoffs.”
Shelly shook Tabasco sauce on her beans and said, “Sissy told me Wade came home from practice yesterday with ‘Take State in ‘78′ on the windshield of his ‘Vette in shoe polish. Their dad had a major hissy-fit about it.”
Betty shook her head and sighed. “Chuck has always been so hard on that boy. Seems like he’s yelling at Wade every time I see them.”
Jeana couldn’t resist adding, “Maybe it’s because Wade is such a jerk.”
“You didn’t always feel that way about him,” Betty said, getting a disgusted look from Jeana in return.
“Well, jerk or not,” Robert said, “Wade is the main reason it’s been so hard to score on Vigor this year. That boy’s a mean tackler.”
Jeana rolled her eyes. “I’m not very hungry. I’m going to get dressed for the game.”
She put away her dishes and went to her room, wondering if she would see Mickey at the game and feeling her stomach do a somersault at the thought. She enjoyed playing in the band and performing the half-time shows, but she’d never looked forward to a football game as much as she did this one.
She put on her uniform and sat at her dresser to brush her hair. Should she borrow some of Shelly’s makeup? She looked at her face in the mirror and then shook her head. No, he either liked her the way she was or he could find some other girl to make weak in the knees.
“And he does like me, I can tell,” she told her reflection. “Me, Jeana Lee Russell, the redheaded nerd-girl.”
She turned and threw her brush at the bookcase that housed her old yearbooks.
“Take that, Wade Strickland!”
***
The Stricklands lived next door to the Russells until right before Jeana and Wade entered middle school, and they’d once shared the kind of friendship possible between boys and girls only until the plague of puberty strikes. Growing up together on West Grant Street, Jeana and Wade played together uninhibited, along with the other kids in the neighborhood. Childhood games like freeze tag and hide-and-seek, played until the streetlights came on and everyone knew it was time to go home.
Around the age of nine, Jeana caught the other kids up in her love of mystery and intrigue, sparked by her journey through countless Nancy Drew books. They formed a secret club and even had a clubhouse—a storage shed in Wade’s back yard served as the site for their clandestine meetings. They had code names and passwords, and Jeana even invented a written code for sending top-secret messages between club members: add the first letter from the next word to the end of the previous word, and meet me in ten minutes became meetm ei nt enm inutes.
Wade was so impressed the day Jeana showed him the code, he told her he thought she was the coolest girl in the world, but he was still going to call her Redhot, the nickname he’d given her because she loved the little candies so much he claimed they were the reason her hair was red. There was unabashed admiration in Wade’s green eyes when he looked at Jeana, and she was thrilled by the way it made her feel. He liked her and she knew it.
Then Wade’s father got a big promotion at International Paper Company the summer after the kids were in the fifth grade, and the Stricklands moved to a nicer house in another neighborhood. Jeana didn’t see Wade all summer, but the day they started the sixth grade at Clark Middle School, she saw him standing outside before the first bell with two boys she didn’t recognize.
She went over to say hello and to catch Wade up on what had been going on in the neighborhood, but what had always been an easy friendship between them was suddenly made awkward by the snickers and ribbing of Wade’s friends from his new neighborhood, Jimbo and Lamar. They teased him about Jeana being his girlfriend, and Wade got angry and walked away.
She tried to talk to him again at lunch but he still avoided her, so when she saw him at his locker after school, she made one last try to find out what was wrong.
“You’re crazy, Jimbo,” Wade was saying as Jeana walked up behind him. “Who would ever like that redheaded nerd-girl? She’s too weird.”
His words hurt Jeana deeply, and not only because of their cruelty. She knew they weren’t true because, if Wade didn’t like her, why had he sent her a note to meet him in the clubhouse on the day he moved? Alone with her in the shed that day, Wade had told her how much he was going to miss her and then shown her the heart with their initials in it that he said he’d carved on the shed door so she wouldn’t forget she was his girl. Then he’d pulled her into a tentative embrace and pressed his lips to hers.
Jeana’s first kiss. Monumental enough in itself, but even more special because it had come from the boy she thought was the sweetest she would ever know. But, standing in the school hallway three months later with Wade’s hateful words still echoing in her ears, all Jeana could do was stare at him and wonder what had made him say such an awful thing about her.
When Wade turned around and saw the hurt and bewildered expression on Jeana’s face, he looked sorry at first. But then Jimbo began to laugh, and Wade laughed with him. Jeana swore never to forgive him.
In the years that followed, she avoided Wade whenever possible and they’d never spoken of what happened. He discovered football in the seventh grade and got progressively more arrogant in direct relation to his rapid increase in size. By the time he was sixteen, he’d grown to six feet three inches, weighed two hundred twenty pounds, and was the starting middle linebacker for the varsity football team. He’d also grown accustomed to seeing his picture in the newspaper captioned with phrases like Strickland Crushes Murphy Offense and Vigor “Wades” Over McGill.
When boys had started to notice Jeana’s blossoming figure around the age of thirteen, she promised herself she would never again be misled by the insincere things boys said. She ignored them all and concentrated on her intelligence, because that was something on which she knew she could always depend.
Once Wade began to be touted as a football phenom, girls who had never given him the time of day before were suddenly clamoring for his attention, and he appeared to have forgotten the hurtful words he’d said about Jeana. He seemed to think she should welcome his attention like the other girls did and flirted with her at every juncture, but Jeana never took any of it seriously. She figured it was just something so ingrained in his nature it was involuntary, like sneezing.
And, although there was never a shortage of adoring females willing to put up with Wade’s obnoxiousness in exchange for riding around with him in his yellow Corvette, Jeana made sure he knew she wasn’t interested in ever being one of them.
