War Doesn't Win Girlfriends

Okay maybe the Patriots were better than the Colts on that year. Maybe, in all fairness, they have been better for most of the last decade and will be for most the next one. I get all of that. But to boldface wear a New England Patriots jersey and get-up in Indianapolis, the heart of Colts territory, and call yourself a fan of that lying, cheating, good-for-nothing idiot over there, then to me, you’re just asking for trouble. In fact, that “harmless” little glittering bracelet on her arm war was about to become the target of one of the bloodiest battles in the war of youthful rivalry. If she wanted war, she certainly got it.

Halle skipped into the classroom, tossing her baby blue backpack to the ground, singing her “I Love the Rain” hymnal of which the lyrics were simply the title of the song on loop until the bell rang, without a care in the world. She sat down at her desk and pretended to find the math problems scrawled across the top of the board the most fascinating thing that ever was. But alas, she had dined on a prodigious breakfast of all things sugar, and she could not contain her energy when Patriot’s girl commenced to argue with Jasmine about some meaningless case of bullying at the front of the classroom. Head’s turned away from cheerful Halle to Lily’s vicious argument. Her silvery red white and blue bracelet jingled softly on her thin pale arm as she waves it up and down and all around for emphasis, but no one can hear it over the intense shriek of her voice.

Halle, either annoyed at the dramatic production, or relieved at a break from the laborious math problem, looked up at Lily’s appalling Tom Brady jersey, complete with navy and red gym shorts and an admittedly pretty and expensive diamond Patriot’s bracelet, and decided it was an appropriate time to fire up the cannon and start up another epic battle. At about the same time, despite the ongoing rain song from beautiful sweet Halle, and the melodramatic performance in front of me, I finished the math problem, dropped my pencil loudly for a most satisfying “click” effect, and glanced at Lily’s despicable yet altogether too common attire, and decided it was a perfect time to let her know just what I thought.

“And then she said, that he said that Peter didn’t kiss Mary behind the locker…” that probably wasn’t what Lily was really spitting out of her mouth at two thousand miles an hour before I interrupted, but that’s what I heard.

“Really Lily?” I asked with a patronizing air, “it’s not even football season but you still insist on wearing that awful get-up. You know this is Colt’s country, right?”

“The Patriots suck,” added Halle, though, only doing so out of admiration for me, because this was the extent of her knowledge on pigskin.

Lily just smirked at Halle, “clearly you don’t know what you’re talking about Halle. We all know that it’s the Patriots who have six rings, not the Colts.”

“Yeah well –”

I cut her off because I knew I could throw a more powerful punch than her.

“– and make it to the AFC championship game only to lose by missing an extra point,” I retorted snootily.

“At least we were in the title game!”

At this point I knew I had been beat. You can’t argue with facts. I tried a different line of reasoning, “Well I still think the Colts are better!”

“8-8? Yeah, that’s better than Tom Brady. How evolutionary!” was her emphatic retort.

Prepared for this inevitable response, I replied: “We play fair our balls have air! Halle joined in the boisterous production once she caught on to my simple limerick.

“That was last year!” she whined, knowing that this time she had been beat, “Are you still focused on that? Is that all you got?”

“Unfortunately, but if you ask me character is more important than talent.”

This was the last move for her queen. I had her cornered, and if she went left she was a jerk with no character, and if she went right, that was herteam she was dissing. Checkmate. She couldn’t say a word, and luckily, she didn’t have to. “Let’s go over this problem. Back to your desks!” was the dreaded proclamation from Ms. Wheeler.”

And so, another homeroom war ended in bitter stalemate. To Halle it was a fun game that we played on Friday mornings when Lily put the target on her back. But to me, it was war. The idea of “just a game” never crossed my mind. The battle was going to rage on, until that girl fell on her knees and begged for mercy. No one insults my sports teams and lives to tell tale.

Ms. Wheeler droned on and on about fractions so much so that I feared my brain could explode without a moment’s notice. Her hand flew across the white board as she covered the once empty entity with green squiggles that might have been important. I kept giving evil glares at Patriots girl and her fancy bracelet, at which point she would look down at her worksheet and pretend that dividing fractions was better than ice cream and unicorns. Sometimes I’d sneak a peek at Halle and smile to myself as I watched the cute way she tilted her head, shifted her body to the right, and blinked her soft blue eyes in quick succession, as she worked the problems Ms. Wheeler was showing us. At some point, Ms. Wheeler said: “yadda, yadda, yadda, independent working time. I’m using the restroom for a second. Lily will you do me a favor and take this to the office?”

Lily stood up using her tiny hands to propel herself out of the green chair. She walked briskly putting one foot in front of the other, eager to get the job done. Evidentially her bracelet had been bothering her – itching or something – because she left it in plain sight atop her wooden desk. Light glinted down on the diamonds, and a rainbow of color splashed out. The wheels began to spin dangerously, slowly at first, now faster. Faster. Faster. She left her most prized possession on her desk. That was an expensive bracelet no doubt, and this was war. Make a valuable vulnerable in a war, and it isn’t going to survive. With no intention of solving fourteen tedious fraction problems, I crept over to Halle’s desk. “Wanna work together?” we asked in devilish unison.

“What’d’ya get for number one?” I inquired.

“Six and two thirds.”

“Me too, number two?”

“Do you see that bracelet on Lily’s desk?” Halle asked, clearly as interested in fractions as I was.

What can I say? Great minds think alike.

Every fiber in my body wanted to destroy the stupid thing, cut it into pieces, throw it in a paper shredder, or feed it to my dog. I didn’t care if it was a gift from her grandparents, or the Queen of England, it was a bracelet with the word “patriots” on it, and I wanted it gone. But a little part of my heart was softer than that, and, war or not, I opted to make a more playful attack.

“YES! We should hide it!” I exclaimed.

Halle grinned from ear to ear, apparently thinking that this was a good idea, because in one quick motion, without any hesitation she yanked the bracelet off the desk and slung the silvery thing into the once empty desk next to Lily’s.

“High five!” I commanded, and she obeyed, pretending to be repulsed by a boy’s “slimy” hand.

Just then, Lily walked back in, and right on queue Halle answered my initial inquiry: “Five twelfths?”

“Yup.”

And so, the day continued about as usual. Fractions. Fractions. Halle and I snuck a few peaks at each other until the giggling fits became too intense to contain with a hard bite of the tongue, at which point we finally forced ourselves to diligently solve the twelve problems remaining. More fractions. Neither of us thought much of our minor military action in the war of sports teams, once Halle and I stopped peaking at each other. It was hard to have fun when a-barrel-of-monkey fraction problems stood on my desk, hands on hips, shouting “homework, homework, homework!”

After a seeming eternity, lunch rolled around the corner. I sprinted to the cafeteria table, and plopped my bottom down next to Connor. He tossed his thick book to the ground producing a satisfying “thud” for a greeting. No more fractions. During that lunch period, we probably complained about the usual malarkey that our teachers “entertained” us with and said something about Patriots girl and the delightful prank Halle and I had chosen to perform. However, considering the events that followed, lunch was a soon forgotten part of an awful day.

We walked back to class after recess and switched to social studies and language arts as the routine had been for many months. I heard some yelling in the hallway, but I was too busy identifying parts of speech and subject compliments to care. Adverb. Noun. Noun. Article. Simple Declarative sentence. Prepositional phrase. Next. Verb. Interjection. Noun. Next.

“Braxton!”

Ms. Wheeler was calling me. She probably wanted to congratulate me on being the only student to ace the unit test. Or else she wanted to ask if she could keep my project for future years, so she might inspire future students. I skipped into the hallway blissfully. The first thing I saw was Ms. Wheelers murderous countenance and that was all I needed to know I wasn’t about to be congratulated. Her eyes were scrunched and scooted toward the center of her face, her gold blonde eyebrows angled forty-five degrees straight down, and her cherry red lips pursed into a perfectly straight line, like the roads of Indiana, the state that I was so proud to call home.

The second thing I saw was Halle, trying fruitlessly to blink back the tears that had already stained her choral orange shirt that read in elegant wavy calligraphy: “Hello Friday.” Suddenly I knew what this was all about.

“Did you touch Lily’s bracelet?” That was the first question Ms. Wheeler asked me, but etched somewhere beneath the obvious pen marks, she penciled in the unsaid words that were ringing loud and true: “you are guilty!”

“No I didn’t,” I replied honestly.

Ms. Wheeler’s eyebrows crawled menacingly lower on her face, her lips tightened into a line so thin you had to look hard to notice it was there. When she opened her mouth to speak, flames of anger burned out with a terrible orange glow. The smoke of death swirled out of her pointed ears in ghastly curls.

Ms. Wheeler tried to speak again: “Well, Hale here insist that she didn’t touch it…” she paused here to conceal something of a growl that was creeping up inside of her throat, “and…” another awful pause, “she says that youmay have been involved.”

In the heat of the moment there was little time to think, so, not wanting to throw the girl under the bus that meant so much to me I squeaked up meekly, “I didn’t touch it.”

Ms. Wheeler didn’t even try to conceal the fire this time, “Well obviously, one of you is lying and chose to touch Lily’s bracelet, and because of you her bracelet is broken,” and as she said this she revealed the shattered diamond bracelet torn into two pieces right between the “Patr” and the “iots,” like a master in creating guilt in the bodies of those who stand innocent. “I want you to know Mr. Lemay will be finding out about this, and you will supply Lily with a new one! Now you both owe her an apology!”

“Sorry,” I lied.

“It’s okay,” Lily said with an air of apology in her voice, as if she knew the innocent were “at fault.”

“Sorry,” Halle said through a river of tears.

Lily said nothing to Halle’s apology.

We walked back into the classroom with a three-ton brick on our shoulders, and suddenly verbs and adjectives were a whole lot less interesting. It was hard to be mad at Halle, who sat sobbing on the other side of the room, but she had told a boldfaced lie to a teacher about me – how could I not be? Mr. Lemay? That guy was scary. And there was no way I could pay for that bracelet with my allowance till I’m thirty.

But more painful than any of that was Halle, my sweet precious Halle, maybe my best friend, would tell a lie like that. I honestly thought we were going to get married and have four kids and move to the country and have riches and longevity follow us all the days of our lives. I blinked back tears through language arts class, more successfully than Halle, who nearly set her table group afloat, but I don’t remember a thing we did in class that afternoon. I don’t even remember playing Ms. Shepard’s game of Marshmallow Dodgeball, which was played every Friday by students who demonstrated satisfactory behavior during the week.

By the time social studies rolled around, I had mastered the art of going through the motions. I was never happier in my life to get on the bus after a day of sitting in a hard, green chair called “self-pity,” next to a loaded wooden desk labeled “pride.” My blue and white-checkered pillow had reasoned to be scared, because at that moment I was planning a vicious boxing match, and I was planning to win.

In hindsight, the whole thing wasn’t a big deal. Ms. Wheeler, as it turns out, was far too nice to dish out every punishment in the book to us, or else she had cooled off after a weekend filled with playoff football, but coming face-to-face with a lion would have been a more mortifying fate for me than to lose my Halle. For days, we didn’t even talk. When we did, the words were few and far between. It took me a long time, and a lot of awkward conversations to show Halle how much I still loved her after her blunder. My blunder. Weeks passed before we were tight, close knit friends again. Eventually, we did forgive and forget. In actuality little damage was really done, it was merely a blemish. In fact, week’s later Halle and I square danced together in PE. Even separated by five hundred miles, we keep in touch even now. But in the end, the rehabilitation process was a baby step forward after two big-foot steps back.

In all of this, I learned that, even when those you truly love are being mean, that doesn’t give you an excuse to be mean. There is no such thing as “just a joke,” and, even if not involved directly, when something bad happens, and you are woven into the situation, you are guilty. If you flirt with sin it will eat you after lunch in one satisfying bite as though you were nothing more than a breath mint. Moreover, I also learned a thing or two about forgiveness. We wasted time after this mistake, Halle and me. We got over it of course; we were just kids, but it took us a long time afterwards. By the time we were close friends again, I found out that I was moving to Atlanta. We all mess up, and when it comes between friendships, we ought to forgive and go forward, because every minute we pour all our energy into anger, we lose sixty seconds of precious happiness that is meant to come in life. Nobody gains anything by storing up vengeful thoughts towards those who have wronged us – not the criminal, nor the victim.