Though they had went to elementary school together, it wasn’t until the 6th grade that she noticed Elijah James. He was a short, cherubic-looking half-black kid, with blue eyes and a tangled mess of golden curls atop his round head.
She was so much taller than all the boys, and too thin in some places, yet somehow not thin enough because she already wore her BONGO jeans in a women’s size while all the other girls still got theirs in the kiddie department.
He played football and always listened to Tupac and Dr. Dre on his walkman during her favourite class; Language Arts. She went to raves, worshiped Axl Rose and Kurt Cobain, and pretended like she didn’t know every word to every song on Snoop Doggy Dogg’s ‘Doggystyle’ album.
He had a cheerleader girlfriend named Amber, the most popular girl in their grade, a tiny blond bird-like creature who bought new clothes at Nordstrom every single weekend.
The only reason she had begun to take notice of Elijah James in the 6th grade was because that was when he began to torment her every day. “Jolly Brown Giant” he called her. He would gather his buddies around to marvel at her chest, which had not yet sprouted even those little bud-like prepubescent titties that other girls had in the 3rd grade. They would point while chanting loudly, “Flat as a board! Flat as a board!”.
Once he rummaged through her desk, found and passed around the love poems she had written for Daniel, an angry Mexican foster-child. At lunchtime, a furious Daniel walked up to her, called her an ugly bitch and punched her in the chest–hard–in front of everyone. She looked deeply into his tiny black eyes while fighting back tears and said nothing, a wave of humiliation washing over her.
That very same day Daniel walked her home from school and they smoked pot out of an apple behind the bushes and he let her give him a clumsy hand job, a first for the both of them, and they never spoke again.
Fast forward to 1997 and Elijah The Tormentor is somehow at her 16th birthday party. Only, no-one is really there for her, they are all there for the 6 kegs of beer that her 4 Puerto Rican roommates (all brothers) got to celebrate the occasion of having any excuse to drink beer.
They haven’t seen each other since one month into the 7th grade—when she dropped out of junior high to finish college. They are drunk and marveling at the mutual attraction that has been born out of the lethal combination of puberty and alcohol.
She is out of the closet about rapping now, so they freestyle together in the living room (TERRIBLY), before falling into a drunken kiss. As their teenage tongues intertwine she remembers all of the terrible things he ever did to her and she begins to feel the need to exact her revenge. She grabs him by the hand and whispers softly, “Let’s go to my room.”
Barely 16, and very much still a virgin, for the first time in her life she wants to fuck.
He has a condom in his wallet and she doesn’t know what to do so she just lays there while he fumbles with it, sticks it inside.
It doesn’t hurt like she thought it would when he pops her cherry, it’s more like a lot of resistance as he goes in-out, in-out. in-out. She is immediately disappointed and can’t believe that this is what sex is, what everyone makes such a big fuss about.
“Is that it?” she accidentally mumbles audibly.
“What?”
“I mean, are you almost done?”
“A few more minutes.”
It is pitch black and his night-vision is NOT on fire so he doesn’t see her when she rolls her eyes. He cums.
“I think you should leave now.” she says.
“Okay.” he heads for the door.
She intercepts.
“Out the window, I don’t want anyone to see you.”
He looks taken aback but swings one leg over the ledge anyway. He looks back at her with wide pupils, the moonlight bouncing off of his pale blue eyes.
“Oh shit, that’s a really far jump!”
She pushes him and laughs hysterically when he falls flat on his ass and scrambles as the Riqueño’s pit bull, Sativa, starts chasing him around the yard.
She leans her shirtless torso out of the window, her a-cup breasts still too small to dangle, points and starts yelling, “Flat as a board! Flat as a board!”