A Game Their Mother Had Taught Them by Liz Snider-Lotz

“Wait,” he said. He was a black silhouette framed in shades of orange and gold: the last light of the evening flooded the hallway, blinding Katherine and casting the speaker into anonymous relief. She hesitated, stepped once, and came to a halt slightly past him. Turning her back to the double-doors labeled ‘West Parking,’ she blinked away the green afterimage and let the details of his face come into perspective.

“I’m sorry…?” Now that she could see him, she recognized him instantly, even in a graduation gown. Her first thought—unbidden—was that the square cap perched on his bulbous forehead was anything but flattering, even though four years of High School had served his body well. Amusement was followed by confusion and shame, because she quickly remembered that he deserved to hear her say I’m sorry without even the hint of a question mark.

“Do you remember me?” He asked her.

His words allowed no doubt as to whether or not he remembered her.

Four years ago, after school on the last day of the first week of September, the first thing she had noticed about that boy was the abnormal width and diameter of his forehead. It seemed to indicate that he was a stranger of either great or meager intelligence. However, his stance of awkward bravado had canceled out both possibilities and marked him as another average freshman. The second thing she had noticed about this stranger with a head shaped like a light-bulb was that he was looking at her: looking, and laughing, and whispering something that roused another laugh from the crowd aggregating around him. They seemed unable to decide whether to conceal the topic of their conversation or rub it in.

Katharine, who had recently cut the end off of her name and discarded it like a slice of bruised fruit, didn’t hear the girl to her left her address her as ‘Kat.’ She missed one in a stream of many opportunities to assert herself within the tentative alliance of girls-who-wait-for-the-bus-by-the-third-bench, because her eyes narrowed in the evaluation of threat and her back muscles clenched in a futile attempt to raise the hackles of her newly adopted namesake.

She liked the name ‘Kat’ because it was short. Sharp. It didn’t roll off the tongue; no, it snipped itself out of the air in neat, precise strokes—a kinetic K immediately silenced by a terminal T. Her new name was a word that confronted the world with edges and angles, and while it didn’t quite fit her exactly, it made her feel visible. Her attempts at visibility were evidently successful, because Mr. Light-bulb could see Kat, and he was lit by a brilliant idea. In the scramble of High School politics, as the incoming class sorted itself into factions and warred its way into a society, Kat sensed a ‘bulls-eye’ being traced in the lines of her forehead. Her fingers extended into claws and retracted themselves again, made slick by the rain, and she remembered a day three years ago when an arrow meant for Katharine had found its mark.

Her small hands had been sticky with residue left behind by tape. The miniature paper city unfolding upon her desk had been a world far better than the one responsible for producing her middle school. The buzz of her classmates chatting within their separate and overlapping spheres had risen and fallen unnoticed as Katharine had put the finishing touches on the Unitarian Universalist church zoned for development next to the International Community Center.

“Umm,” over her left shoulder—a giggle, “can I borrow the tape for a second?”

Her concentration unbroken, Katharine had assented and the dispenser had been lifted from her desk, freeing the plot next to the high school for a football stadium or—a vastly better idea—a theatre. The question: could a theatre be erected in the fifteen minutes before the bell rang, or would Atlantis sink into the trashcan before construction was complete?

After class, it had taken Katharine a moment to register the note taped inside her locker door, since she had decided to forestall demolition, and was attempting to place the fragile buildings into her backpack without damaging them. Aware she was being watched, she had attributed the attention to her quirky paper city, and had eyed the note with a combination of weary mistrust and naïve expectation. She had known that notes exchanged hands and slipped into lockers all the time, but not her hands, and not her locker. She had wondered: could it be that it was truly meant for her, or was it merely a mistake—a missive meant for a locker adjacent or below?

She had gently unpeeled the note from below the vents, careful not to rip the edges. An artisan of paper, she had smoothed it flat and seen her name misspelled in the top left corner. Katherine, it had read, Hi. I think ur beutiful and i want 2 know evreything about u because i think i am in love with u. Plz wait 4 me THIS AFTERNOON by the statue of the bulldog. Wait 4 me until i show up. It had been signed, XOXO ur secret admirer.

“What’s that?” Looking up, she had been startled by the glittering blue eyes of the girl who had borrowed the tape. “Is it a love letter?” Behind her, giggles had erupted and been silenced.

“Yes.” She remembered feeling her cheeks grow hot as she had tried to conceal a goofy smile. She had figured that girls like them probably got love letters all the time, and wouldn’t think it was cool to consider it a big deal.

“Do you know who it’s from?”

“No.”

“Can we see?”

Katherine had felt a jolt of possessiveness—why hand over the note? It had been private, special, and hers. However, smiles all around had convinced her to say sure and relinquish it. Blue eyes had barely glanced at the note before crooning “Oooh, How exciting.”

With that, Katherine had smiled more openly.

“Do you want us to walk with you?”

“Okay,” she had said, “That would be awesome.”

Only, it hadn’t been awesome—or it had been, but only in the sense that awesome and terrible were once synonyms. As the group of girls approached the statue of the Bulldog, Katherine had noticed a piece of paper standing on its canine head. It had been cut into the shape of a man, and when Katherine had picked it up, she had read the words April Fools! Have a paper boy for your paper city, loser. That’s the only kind of boy you’ll ever get. Upon reading those words she had dropped her backpack. Atlantis hit the dirt with a sickening crunch, but she couldn’t hear it; she only heard the sound of humiliating laughter.

“Kat,” the sound of her name cut her memories short, bringing her back out into the rain, “did you record Charmed last night or not?” The girl speaking was another high school freshman, Kat’s favorite of the group she had chosen to stand with while waiting for the bus.

“I did.” She replied, “You can look at my tapes and borrow whatever you want.”

“Awesome!”

Another girl chimed in, “I don’t have a VCR anymore. Isn’t that funny? It broke, so we just threw it away. We only use DVDs now.”

“So do a lot of people…” Kat replied. She thought that statement was a bit strange, but she was willing to work with it. Her eyes drifted back to the boys, and she saw Mr. Light-bulb break away from his group and drift in her direction. She continued, “Blockbuster is starting to rent mostly DVDs. They only have a few walls devoted to VHS.”

Around the circle, faces registered confusion about the incoming male, but they parted and allowed him to pass through and stand in front of Kat.

“Hey.” He said.

“Hey.” She said.

“How are you?” He asked.

“I’m fine. What’s up?”

“… Not much.” He hooked his thumbs into his denim pockets, and shrugged.

“Oh yeah?” She teased, “So why did you come over here?”

The boy glanced back at his friends, who were watching expectantly, and then he said, “Can I get your phone number?”

She wanted to believe it, and then she heard one of his friends laugh, and for a second the boy in front of her looked like he was made out of paper. Years of resentment made her want to rip him in half. “Oh, really? What for?”

“For talking on the phone...” He said it slowly, because his answer was so obvious. “With you…”

“Cool. If you want to know me so bad, we have time. Lets talk now.”

“I don’t want to talk now.”

“Why not? Anything you can say to me, you can say in front of my friends.” She gestured around the circle, and realized that the girls all looked as nervous as he did.

“Oh.” He said, dimly. And then he said, “I have to go.”

“Yeah.” She said, “Go on, go away.”

He walked back to his friends, and then he kept walking right past them. After a second, one of the other boys followed after him.

“Don’t you think you were a bit harsh?” An honest opinion, from the girl who wanted to borrow the tapes.

“Yeah,” Kat looked at the ground.

“That’s ok. He had it coming.” It was the girl who truly didn’t have a VCR.

Looking back, it was clear that he hadn’t deserved it: she had lashed out at an innocent victim, too jumpy to see the situation for what it was. Now, for whatever reason, he had approached her a second time, and the two of them stood in the hallway, squinting at each other. They were both adorned with the gaudy tassels of the accomplished scholar—twisted ropes of brilliant color braided and wrapped around the neck to signify dignity and enlightenment.

Without even pausing to consider her options, she shook her head. “I don’t think I do remember you. Where do you know me from?”

“You know what?” He said, “Forget about it.”

“Ok... Have a nice summer.”

“Yeah. You too.” He continued to stand there as she turned around and quickly passed through the double doors into the parking lot. Outside, one of the teachers was loading boxes into the back of her mini-van. Sitting in the grass, her three daughters were playing a game she had taught them: Rock, Paper, Scissors. In unison, their hands bounced and came down, revealing one of each. Looking at them, Kat—Katharine—wanted to run back inside. Instead, she continued to walk toward her car. The last thing she hard before she closed the door was a shriek of merriment, followed by the sound of tears.