If I thought I suffered for the sake of Ethel, I found that my suffering over Cheryl Buksas was twice as bad. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was because Cheryl had at least allowed me into her small circle of friends. I had played with her on the hopscotch squares she drew at least once a week on the sidewalk in front of her house, even though it had also been with Luann, Connie, Shannon Carroll, and others. There had been other things, to, like the times when Cheryl went into her house after a round of hopscotch or hide-and-seek and brought out Sugar Babies or Good and Plenty and shared them with us, with me. There were times when she looked at me and I could tell by her expression there was something more than casual in the way she thought of me. Maybe it was the idea that I could get close to her, but never any closer, I could never really have her. And it was the nearness that made that idea so poignantly clear.
But as the few minutes I was able to spend near Cheryl here and there added up to hours and eventually days, I began to ache whenever I wasn’t with her, a sort of hunger like you have when you first discover it’s dinnertime and you’ve been too busy to notice just how hungry you’re getting, and then you’re famished. The ache I felt for her was more persistent, and deeper. It kept the idea of Cheryl foremost in my mind, until there was little else I could think of.
It’s a lot like having a bad case of the flu. It gets a lot worse before it gets better.
I was in the car with Larry and Charlotte, when something—a glimpse of another girl walking along the street, a whiff of perfume, I didn’t really know what it was—triggered in my solar plexus a pain that was terribly familiar, the same pain I’d felt when I was sobbing so hard I could hardly breathe, as if I was being beaten with a belt wielded by a strong and angry and long-winded hand. And there was Cheryl’s face in my mind’s eye, watching, unmoving, uncaring.
I tried to tell Charlotte what it felt like, between sobs. She listened with sadness in her eyes, and then smiled. It’s puppy love, she said.