Ever since I could remember, I had bought this comic, manga, umm…graphic novel? I first laid my eyes upon it at at an import store packed with toys, games, action figures, anime, and a plethora of comic books. Some of them covered by a grey plastic guard that I could only catch a glimpse of that first time. I perused the sections of R’anma ½’, ‘Magic Knight Rayearth’, ‘Cardcaptor Sakura’, and the works of Studio Ghibli. However, SHS burned deep into my retinas due to the girl on the cover of each issue. She had flaming red hair and green eyes that look into your souls and tell you: “yes, I know how you feel, we can do this as a team. Walk with me, and we’ll live the dream.”
Yes, she spoke some of her words in poetic rhyme, like the the ending scenes in sone of Shakespeare’s plays, but Will would have never looked good in a high school jumper and skirt.
From that week, every two weeks I would go back to the shop to pick up the next issue and wished I could read Japanese as the English translation was at least six months behind. The shop owner—who was always there—took note of my budding obsession and offered me a deal on a replica of heart pendant she wore around her neck on the day the Yakuza took some kids hostage, and she used it to deflect the shots they made to her heart.

Oh, to meet someone like that in real life.
I’ve had those dreams: the girl walks down the hall and our eyes lock. It’s like lasers, or beams of heavenly light as Cherry would say, connects us. There I go again, talking about a fictional person like she’s real. I had days where I thought I could break out of my shell and approach someone and maybe get a date…but then I’d start asking them to change their color, maybe wear some contacts and a mid-knee-length uniform…
“Gehn! Snap out of it!”
“I’m here, I’m here.”
“Looks like you were on the other side of the cafeteria.”

I usually sat with a group of non-professional outcasts. In college we would be considered an interesting group and maybe if the world was really like the world in “The Big Bang Theory” then we’d be kings. But for the last two years of high school, we have found ourselves underneath the proverbial castle toilet openings.

“You were looking at Cala, weren’t you?” Simon asked as he shook his head.
“No, no, not at all.”
“Liar” Lucas grunted.
“She’s not on my radar.” I flashed my hands in a “no, no” gesture,
“Could have been at one time,” Mike commented as he swirled around a clump of spaghetti that had been on is fork for over five minutes. I wasn’t sure if he was sick, not hungry or sculpting the perfect Italian work of art with what passed for noodles and meat.
I nodded. “Yep, I know, I screwed that up.”
The others glared at me.
“We would have had one girl sit with us, Gehn, but then you went and said that.”

Cala enrolled midway through the freshman year, and she sat with us for a few weeks. We would talk about inane subjects and then, one day, she pulled a card out of pocket and asked if we knew anything about it,
“A Blue-Eyed White Dragon!” Mike exclaimed as he held his hands in a “please, miss, I want some more” way. Cala handed the card over, and Mike, Simon, and Lucas hovered over it like it was gold.
“If I had this card in my deck!”
Cala turned to him in shock as Lucas has a slight lisp, so she assumed he said something else.
“He doesn’t really want to have that in his dick. He meant in a card deck.

Tragically, I said that just about when the entire lunchroom decided to get deathly quiet. So, Carla’s embarrassed, I’m embarrassed, and the guys continued to ogle a laminated card. She looks at the rest of the cafeteria and then high tails it out the door. I rose up to follow her and at that moment, the guys realized what happened.
“Don’t,” Simon warned.
“Don’t get up,” Mike said as he tried to grab the arm that was still on the table.
“Can I just die now?” Lucas lamented as the noise returned to the room.

I ran out of the room and tried to call out to Cala. When she turned back to me, there was no laser, no love’s blinding light or anything, no, just an expression of total shock and disgust.
“Sorry, Lucas has a slight lisp.”
“You guys are messed up.”
“You’ve been sitting with us for all this time. And no one said anything.”
“You thought I couldn’t understand him. You thought I was just some inferior girl. Oh, and she’s blonde, so even more so.”
“How can I think that when you know so much about how a warp core functions on Federation ship?”
Cala stormed back and her eyes stared like knives deep in my chest and eyes. “If you tell anybody else about that I. Will. Kill. You. Do you hear me!”
“Clear as crystal.”
“Freak!”
Cala stormed off and we never saw her the same again.

“I just wanted to talk to her about it. I mean she looked like she heard something else.
“You should have just stayed at the table and let her calm down and come to us after some time had passed.”
“Where were you with this advice then?” Simon and Mike.
“Well, anything would have been better than Gehn’s plan.
“I said I was going to talk to her.”
“And I could have sworn three out of four us said that wasn’t a good idea.”
“You know, we could go and sit anywhere we want to? It’s not we’re confined to this one spot.”
“I, for one, prefer this spot,” Simon replied and pointed to the table. “It’s out of the way so we can see anyone coming from a mile away. The perfect anti-social sniper spot.”
I looked around and slightly signed. It wasn’t that our school was defined by cliques. Sure, we had out “I’m better than you in my head” group. The “Cheerleader” group, that at times could be friendly, but I think that was part of their position. There were the football players, the basketball players, marching band, the “Chronic”, “Ganja” and “MaryJanes”—surprisingly, pot can bring the races together. The “chess club” players, the “D&D” masters, and then there was the four of us. We never had an official name, but we would welcome anyone into our circle.

“Hey, Weebs!”

None of turned our heads to the person approaching our table. He was the proverbial alpha male. The guys who got the chicks. The guy who had a car before he could drive. The one who’s an expert in everything. His fans called him Al, his enemies called him “sir.” Tragically, I had to call him my older brother.
“Is this your gay mag? Found it in your room.”
Do you have that one sibling that if you stepped, looked, or breathed in the proximity of their room, their stuff, or in their general direction then the yelling never stopped? BUT they could just waltz into your room and help themselves like an all-you-can-eat buffet?
“How manly pages did you read?” I asked as he threw it onto the table.
“I autographed a few,” he replied as I could see several crudely drawn penises on a few pages.
“Your friends must understand yaoi more than you do, Allen.”
“Just a bunch of girl boys.”
“It looks like you enjoyed reading it,” I commented with a slight grin but inside I was livid. This was one of my favorites, as it was always wrapped in plastic with a spine card. It was the one that made me want to write to the creators because the series had just abruptly stopped. It has been over a year and so without an answer I just did what everything else did: made up my own fan fiction and posted it online.
“I should let mom know about it.”
“You do that. And I will tell her exactly what that stain is in the back of her SUV.”
“You’re dead when we get home,” Al whispered and then walked away.
“You’ve been saying that since I was four.”