“Alfie, would you like to kiss after school today?” She leaned in not noticing her lower lip was quivering, brandishing her shy demeanor as innocent, casual and elegant, at the prospect of having her first kiss be with the only boy in the fifth grade who openly had emitted kissing a girl on the mouth during summer vacation.. He had never made the claim himself, at least not outside of his circle but boys would talk, portraying their curious understanding of the intimacies of adulthood through causal humor, unwittingly taking on the roles of vulgar caricatures of men, innocent and lonely. Yet even if the kiss was untrue, everyone assumed and desired a version of his sough after guilt.
“OK” , he said catching himself flustered between surprise and tension. Scarlett's appearance at her locker, the rusty square above his, had never conceived this prospect before, turning to meet her brown eyes “When.” He asked gaining his boyhood composure and wiping the sentiment of sensitivity back into the corner of his locker as the rusted bucket closed with a SNAP. He looked about the empty hall, the clock and the stained tile, watching as the dark shadows emptied into the lighted doorways and disappeared.
“Now! Meet me outside next to the bleachers,” Scarlette said with uncompromising matronly absoluteness.
“Ok! But,” pausing a moment to reach into the cognitive shallow waters of his memory. “I can't today, I have detention.”
“Alfie you are always getting yourself into trouble.”
“That is why you like me.”
“No it is not,”she said flirtatiously. She laughed with a charming greeting toward her corruption for further repertoire but Alfie's lack of certainty into the causal signals of the girls in his class kept him silent.
“What did you do this time?”
“I skipped Miss Eve's class yesterday.”
“I will bring you a note saying you were sick all day yesterday and left early so you could get back to your mama. Meet me outside on the steps."
Scarlet quickly unfolded her notebook and sifted out a clean sheet of lined paper. She balanced the end of the folder on the cap of her knee, propped horizontally against the lockers and wrote the forged note quickly and with artisan care. It was not painful for Scarlet to lie forging the note, but instead she felt courageous as the means and end became subjectively intertwined, and her explorations of intimacy could begin. As her hair fell off her shoulder and Alfie hurried to detention the rest of the hallway also cleared. Scarlet, determined to get her kiss and her boy, walked into Miss Eve's classroom. The door was propped open, lessening the commotion that would have transpired if she had had to enter the world inside the class room through an opening frame, turning the heads of the uniformed class as if there heads had all been connected to the corners of the door by strings, diverting that process and saving it for another girl at the end of another day.
“Can I help you Scarlet,” Miss Eve said smiling. “I know you are not on the list to stay after school today.”
“Not but Alfie's mother asked me to bring this note to you, she forgot to give it to Alfie this morning and when she stopped by the school no one was in the office, but she saw me at my locker and asked me to give it to you”
“Is that right?”
“Yes mam” Scarlet drew the note from her pocket
“Would you please unfold it?”
Scarlet unfolded the note gently as if a piece of art had been discovered in the earth and she had been the anthropologist to discover it. Once dissembled, each wrinkle folded over long then lines that fell off the page, Scarlet noticed the flaw of her plan and with stark unintelligible urgency retracted. She saw that instead of signing Alfie's mother's name at the bottom of the page she had written her own, Scarlet Walker written in her perfect and newly acquired anatomy of penmanship, cursive.
“Oh wait,” she said as she suddenly retracted the effort to hand out the leaf of paper, coiling back her hand like an electronic whip hung back on her black frame. The turned around quickly. “Alfie's Mom put the wrong date on here, I will fix it. Since, she sent me with the note, it would be my fault if I did not fix it for her.”
“May I begin Miss Scarlet,” said the smiling teacher.
“Yes mam, don't mind me.” Scarlet in one solid motion took out a clean sheet of paper, propped her leg against the invisible air and began writing the note over again, paying special attention so that more then just her cursive was perfect.
Miss Eve swayed her hinges, shifting the weight from one heal to the other, reaching her desk just as Scarlet was putting the final touches on the note. “You are not writing a novel now are you dear?” She said turning around, the couple students who sat in the classroom snickered at the much needed entertainment of watching something other then Miss Eve against the green and white chalk board.
“Here Miss Eve” Scarlet handed her the note and turned to meet the air out side the classroom door.
“Hold up girl” Miss Eve said just as freedom and the kiss, Alfie would be waiting outside, had become near as a casual glance and two more steps.
“Scarlet I was substituting in the gym yesterday at the end of the day and I know Alfie lifted one hundred pounds for the first time because I saw him do it, now please find Alfie and both of you join me for detention.”
“Yess” Scarlet breathed in deep and ran to meet Alfie beside the school doors.
