Pressure - By Jeff Strand Page 0,34

college that was less than an hour from Branford Academy. One weekend I thought I might make a road trip to my old school and fling a shitload of eggs at whatever campus windows I could find.

But I was here. I was completely on my own. Completely free. Though I was going to work hard and study like an absolute maniac, I was also going to have fun. This was my opportunity to reinvent my life, and gosh darn it all to heck, I was going to take advantage of it.

I fell in love for the fourth time, right there in the bookstore line.

I don’t mean that I fell in love four times while standing in line, although the length of that particular line would not have made this entirely out of the question. Rather, it was the fourth time in my life that I’d fallen in love.

The first was the day after I turned fifteen. She was sitting on the edge of an indoor fountain in a mall, licking an ice cream cone. Blonde hair, blue eyes, brown lips (from the chocolate). The most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in my life. I vowed that no matter what, I would work up the courage to walk over there and talk to her.

I did not work up the courage to walk over there and talk to her.

I was still fifteen the second time I fell in love. This time it was with Mrs. Vierling, my biology teacher. The spark of love first hit me when Mrs. Vierling consoled Wendy Chandler, who was crying over the dead froggies, and it was a love that sustained throughout the rest of the school year. Since Mrs. Vierling was twenty years my senior, married, and bound by both moral and legal restrictions that prevented her from dating me, it was doomed to be an unrequited love. But I harbored a fantasy that she was secretly into skinny fifteen-year-olds, and that if we’d ever found ourselves trapped in a closet together, she would have ripped off my clothes and taken me roughly.

We did not find ourselves trapped in a closet together.

The third time I fell in love I was seventeen, and so was the object of my affection. Margaret. A redhead. Absolutely gorgeous. We had three classes together, and my time spent gazing at her contributed to me answering more than one question from the teacher with “Huh?”

I confessed my love to my friend Bryan. He shared this news with lots of people. Lots of people shared this news with Margaret. Margaret, whose taste in men did not lean toward those with large purple birthmarks on their chin, was humiliated. She told me to leave her the hell alone (which I guess she meant in a preemptive way, since I’d never even spoken to her). Lots of people witnessed this event. Most of them seemed to enjoy it.

The fourth time literally took my breath away.

Something struck me in the gut so hard that I let out an ooomph, pronouncing it exactly that way. Both hands went to my stomach as I struggled not to double over and puke.

Then I stared into the wide, horrified eyes of the girl who’d accidentally bashed her duffel bag into me and was immediately entranced. I was entranced, suffering from physical agony, and embarrassed because the other students in line were staring at me, all at the same time. It was quite a sensation.

“Oh my God! I’m so sorry!” The girl lowered her duffel bag and put her hand on my gut. “Did I hurt you?”

I shook my head. Had she not hurt me so badly, I might have managed a verbal response.

She pushed up her thick glasses. She had long blonde hair that was pulled back, was a couple of inches shorter than me, was thin but not waifish, and was positively adorable. “I’m sorry…I wasn’t paying any attention to where I was going. I’m such a klutz. Are you sure you’re okay?”

I nodded, still struggling to keep my lunch from making a cameo appearance.

She removed her hand from my stomach. “Okay, well, I’m really sorry about that. I’ll just go slink off now.” She gave me a sheepish smile, the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen in my entire life, and quickly walked away.

I watched her go, regretting that I hadn’t thanked her. It took me another fifteen minutes of standing in line to realize that regretting that I hadn’t thanked her for bashing my gut was really,