Sally

Sally and I first became aware of each other my freshman year in high school. She was shy but she extracted confidence from her small group of friends, a mean little bunch with whom I did not along. The reason for our mutual hostility was simply that they were academic gunners just like me. And in those days, getting into a good college (the best college) was the penultimate prize around which all of our efforts revolved. All of us were stupid enough to think that this competition was all or nothing, Harvard or community college, and so we competed fiercely, under the delusion that being number one was the way to future riches and happiness, the only way.

Sally did not have strong feelings about me at the beginning, but as her friends ridiculed me and spewed their collective venom, she couldn't help but be caught up in their practically ritualistic Shawn-bashing. I remember sitting in English classroom one day that October watching Mel Gibson's version of Hamlet, and suddenly hearing her sing, without any provocation, just loud enough for me to hear, "I hate Sha-awn, I hate Sha-awn." By this point, my skin had become thick to these attacks and my mind was well practiced in sublimating any hurt into doubled-up efforts to become the top student in the state. So her words did not sting, and I didn't care. And anyway, I couldn't hate her back because I thought she was beautiful with all the intensity of pubescent infatuation.

She had long black hair that rolled past her soft brow and green eyes and fell just past her clavicles to settle in the slopes of her chest. Her teeth were straight and her smile was asymmetric, with a sharp corner on one side and a more rounded upslope on the other. There was in her a consummate girliness, a femininity that broke through despite a body that was still growing and whose parts were different distances from the finish line. Despite these awkward proportions, it was clear that she was destined to be sublimely attractive. Her shyness only magnified this beauty, like a soft halo accenting a fragile form. So she hated me. So what? She was my angel even then.