Girls Are Not To Be Trusted by Andrew Jahn

Eddie sat with his back against the faded brick wall of J.M. Reynolds Elementary School, trying to count the leaves on a small birch tree on the edge of the basketball courts, but giving up every time he got to fifty or so. He could never tell if he were counting the same ones twice anyway. Kermit said next to him, plucking and peeling blades of grass into as many strips as possible before you couldn’t tear those strips into any more strips. Then he would pick up another one and begin again, examining it carefully through thick glasses that made his eyes seem huge.

After trying in vain to peel a leaf of grass into two symmetrical threads, but instead accidentally tearing the whole thing in half, Kermit left out a sigh. “Let’s go home,” he said.

“Just a little longer.”

“She’s not coming.”

“Just five more minutes. Then if she’s still not here we’ll go to your house and watch it. Are your parents home?”

“No.”

Eddie knew that his parents wouldn’t let him go over to Kermit’s if no adults were home. But he always told his parents that there were, even though as far as he could tell Kermit’s parents hardly even existed. He had met them once or twice, maybe. When he had seen them, Kermit’s dad would always have to go, muttering about picking something up at the hardware store, while Kermit’s mom would sit on the sofa and leaf through magazines, occasionally glancing up and smiling. Her small frame reminded Eddie of a mouse.

Kermit kept peeling his blades of grass and Eddie kept counting. Finally Kermit stood up and brushed himself off.

“Hey,” he said. “Check this out.”

He pulled two small, dirty-looking cigars out of his pocket.

“I got them from my dad’s sock drawer.” He handed one to Eddie.

Eddie rolled the cigar back and forth between his fingers and sniffed it. He wrinkled his nose.

“Put it in your mouth. No,” Kermit said, “to the side. It makes you look tougher.”

Eddie placed the cigar in the side of his mouth like he’d seen in the movies. It tasted like cardboard.

“It’s a Backwoods cigar,” said Kermit. “Just like the ones Eastwood smokes.”

“What about matches?” asked Eddie.

Kermit frowned. “I forgot them.”

Eddie took the cigar out of his mouth and handed it back to Kermit.

“We’ll smoke them later,” he said, placing them both back in his pocket.

“Yeah.”

The boys sat back down and continued their vigil. Kermit moved on to tearing up dead leaves between his thin, grubby fingers, trying to delicately separate the objects along the stem and ribs. It never worked out though, and he invariably would twitch slightly or it wouldn’t tear right and everything would be ruined.

“I saw her with John Lloyd yesterday,” Kermit said suddenly.

Eddie’s shoulders stiffened. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Big time. I saw them both sitting under that big tree by the playground and they were talking about stuff.”

“Really.”

“Yeah. And I couldn’t hear them or anything, but they were talking a lot and she was laughing and they looked like they were having fun.”

“Okay.”

There was a pause for a long time before Kermit spoke again:

“I think he’s gay.”

“You think everybody’s gay.”

There was another long pause. Eddie starting thinking about why he had done it, exactly. Eddie and Katie weren’t in the same class, but he had seen her in the cafeteria nearly every day and had used to see her often when he had soccer practice. She also had soccer and they sometimes had games at adjacent fields on Optimus Park, and she always put her hair into pigtails when she played and wore a pink jersey. He liked the way she looked. Whenever they had games at the same time, or if she were walking by from one of her practices, he wanted to do something to capture her attention, breaking away with the ball maybe, and scoring a near impossible goal that hooked perfectly just past the goalie’s fingers and into the back of the net. As it was, he played halfback and did a lot of running around. The other kids did most of the scoring. He quit playing soccer after a while and didn’t see her much after that.

However, earlier that day, by some random twist of fate, he had found himself passing by Katie on his way to gym class. She was putting her backpack up on a coat rack outside of her classroom and she had her back to him. He figured he would wait for just a second until she turned around, and then he would talk to her. It also gave him an opportunity to smell the back of her neck.

When she finally did turn around, there was a look of surprise on her face, but Eddie was convinced she also looked a little happy to see him. He had asked her whether she was walking home that day, and she had said yes. He told her that he would be outside the east entrance after school and she had nodded and that was that. He had been waiting to do this for a long time. He was unsure of what to do next, exactly, but figured he would just keep waiting for a little longer.

“I’m bored,” said Kermit, jolting Eddie back into reality.

Kermit’s insistence at staying around – Just until she got there, he said – had created a few more problems for Eddie. He didn’t want to be out there alone waiting by himself, but he also didn’t know what to do with Kermit once Katie got there.

“Maybe you should go,” replied Eddie.

Kermit didn’t say anything.

Eddie began thinking about the stories Kermit had been writing since the third grade. Ever since Kermit had seen Becky Frozolone kissing Wayne Russell behind the big oak tree at the edge of the kickball fields he had forsaken all passion, all emotion, picked up his pen, and decided to move west. Draped in a serape and meditatively chewing a cigar out of the corner of his mouth, Kermit became a drifter, feared and renowned throughout the scattered towns of that desolate wasteland, bringing terrible justice to every place he set foot in. Eddie also had a bit part as his sidekick, but never did much; the action belonged solely to Kermit. When Kermit walked into Rampike, the most dangerous and lawless town of the west, what he found disgusted him: brawls erupting in saloons, topers staggering about the dusty streets, working girls attempting to lure customers in broad daylight. It was there that he confronted Wesley Pistolwhip and his gang of bandits. The whole town had come out to watch, but it was all over in a matter of seconds Before any of Pistolwhip’s gang had a chance to draw their weapons Kermit had already drawn his Colt Single Action Army and shot them all straight through the heart. All, except for the youngest and most cowardly member of Pistolwhip’s posse, who just stood there quivering and pissing himself. Kermit left him alive.

In an epilogue that Eddie found rather ridiculous, Kermit had been lauded as a hero, a savior of that forsaken place, and had been made a sheriff by the mayor. Betsy, the mayor’s daughter, had literally begged him to marry her, but he steadfastly refused. Sheriff Kermit, as he was now called, was a man of principle, not passion, and could not stay.

The last story had ended with Kermit swaggering back to J.M. Reynolds Elementary, bloodied and scarred from his death-defying exploits, with the look of a man much older, much wiser, and unwilling to trifle with such mundane human emotions as love. He felt that his classmates looked upon him with awe and wondered where he had been and what he had gone through. But he wouldn’t brag about it, Kermit had said. He would just let them continue to wonder. He wrote all of this down and showed it to Eddie, but only Eddie, because he was sure he would understand. However, there were always those times, either in class or underneath the big oak tree overshadowing the kickball field, when Eddie would see that far-off look in his eyes, and he knew Kermit was planning another literary journey out into the territory.

“This is dumb,” said Kermit suddenly. He kicked a small rock across the pavement. It skipped several times and made a flinty sound each time it bounced. “We’re supposed to be home by now. We were going to watch Shane.”

“I’ve already seen that. I’ve seen that and High Noon and The Searchers and every other movie you have.”

“Better than waiting here.” He kicked another rock.

Eddie continued sitting and watched as Kermit continued to kick rocks and even spit on the ground a few times. Eddie checked his watch and saw that it was much later than he had thought. His cheeks began to burn.

“You can go home if you want.” His throat felt dry.

“If she was going to be here, she would have been here,” said Kermit. “She’s gone, and she’s probably with John Lloyd and she’s doing stuff with him and he’s making it explosive for her.”

Eddie’s eyes widened. “What?”

“I read it in a magazine. That’s what it says adults do. They spend lots of time together and make it explosive.”

Eddie began to picture Katie and John Lloyd sitting together on her bed with pink covers and he was just leaning over to whisper something in her ear, and she would playfully push him away and titter. “Oh, John,” she would say, “You’re so funny.” And then their faces would come a little closer. “And…smart…” And then something would happen and he’d make it explosive for her and Eddie tried hard to stop thinking about it.

“Let’s go,” said Kermit, interrupting Eddie’s thoughts. Eddie didn’t move. “Come on,” he said. “She didn’t even say she was coming. You said she nodded and it was probably just so she wouldn’t hurt your feelings, because she’s got something else to do. And you’re just sitting here feeling sorry for yourself and wondering why she’s not here, and the next day you’ll see her but she won’t even say anything, because she doesn’t care. So let’s – ”

“Shut up,” said Eddie. His forehead was burning now. He glared at Kermit. “Your movies are dumb,” he said finally. “Your stories are dumb. I don’t even read them anymore. They’re stupid. You shouldn’t write them because nobody will read them, and they’re all the same and they’re boring and they all end the same.”

Kermit opened his mouth then closed it, continuing to stare at Eddie for what must have been an hour. Eddie averted his eyes from Kermit and looked straight ahead, trying to think of something to say, something that would either make the situation better, or something that would get Kermit to leave. Anything but nothing. Finally Kermit turned around and began walking, steadily, across the soccer fields and back toward his house. Eddie continued to watch as Kermit grew smaller and then reach a row of houses on the other side of the fields, where he would take a left until he hit Sciota Road, and then a right for another couple of blocks until he got back to his house. They had walked that route a thousand times.

Eddie went back to the basketball courts and found a poorly inflated basketball lying at the edge of the pavement. He picked it up, gave it a few bounces, and shot at the nearest basket. It went wide and rolled across the dusty asphalt and onto the grass. Eddie went back to the wall and sat down. I’ll give her a few more minutes, he thought. He looked back in the direction where Kermit had walked off but he was out of sight.