Running the Bases

This excerpt is from Chapter 1, told in first-person by Alan Macklin, a 17-year-old high school student. Earlier, he has been told by his friend Jeremy that his only chance to take a girl to the upcoming school dance is to ask Maggie Macpherson. In this selection, Alan seizes the moment.

I got up on shaky legs and started in Maggie's direction. I could feel perspiration everywhere – on my forehead, dripping from my armpits, turning my shirt into a soggy mess. I suspect even my ears were dripping with nervous perspiration.

It wasn't that Maggie looked all that intimidating. She sat there in her usual baggy-everything outfit and pink-grey running shoes from some no-name company. She had little round glasses balanced halfway down a button nose. That nose, and most of her cheeks, were dotted with freckles. Her usually frizzy red-blonde hair was pulled back into some kind of half ponytail. And she had a ketchup smear just under her lip.

“Hey, Maggie,” I said when I got close. I managed to knock against a couple of empty chairs as I made my way between tables.

She looked up over her glasses and gave me a smile, or maybe it was a wince, I couldn't be sure.

“Mind if I sit down?”

“It's a free country, as the phrase goes,” she replied.

I chose to interpret that as a yes . Jeremy had said that I should think positive, think of myself as strong, masculine and desirable. He also told me to exude confidence, but right now all I was exuding was sweat.

“So, nice day, isn't it?” I began.

She looked out the cafeteria windows. “It's cold and it's raining.”

I had to think fast. “Yeah, well it's a nice day if you like rain, and I kind of like rain because it's, uh, kind of damp, if you enjoy the damp kind of thing.”

My god, I thought. I sound retarded. She must think I have an IQ of 32. I had to do something to redeem myself – I had to say something interesting, something intelligent, if not brilliant.

Nothing came to mind.

“So what about that math test?” I said. “Wasn't that a killer?” There. Not brilliant, but something that we had in common. Mr. Greer's math test had been on area and volume, something about the number of cucumbers you could plant in a field so-by-so big, given so much space per cucumber, which might be interesting if I were a cucumber farmer but otherwise left my mind reeling.

“I kind of liked it,” Maggie replied. “Those problem tests give you a chance to think, you know?”

“Oh, yeah, I liked it too,” I lied, knowing I'd be lucky to pass. “Thinking … well, thinking is always a good thing.”

Sounding like an idiot again . I talk like I've never had a thought in my life. Maybe my IQ really is 32.

“So speaking of thinking,” I went on, hoping for a clever segue into the real topic, “I've been thinking about the dance next Friday.”

“Oh that! ” she said, spitting out the word like the dance was about as appealing as a cockroach scurrying under the fridge. “The Spring Fling thing. What a cheesy name for a dance.”

“Yeah, well, I guess,” I said, never having thought twice about it. “I was kind of wondering if you were thinking of going.”

She actually stopped to look at me through those little glasses of hers. I felt as if she were studying my face, maybe counting the droplets of sweat on my forehead. Naturally, that brought on a new shower of perspiration.

“Maybe,” she said with a verbal shrug. “It's mostly a first-year thrill, but I might go if Friday looks kind of void.”

This is hopeless , I thought. I can't seem to put three words together that make sense and I'm trying to ask out a girl who can use the word void in conversation. Why did I let Jeremy push me into this?

“So I was thinking,” I said, but then I was aware that I was repeating myself, so I stopped talking and thought about repeating myself and how stupid that was and how stupid I must be to repeat myself except I'm really not that stupid so I must just be nervous but how stupid it was to be nervous because I was just asking her to a dance and the worst she could say was no and so what was the big deal anyhow?

“Hello, Alan,” she said suddenly. “Earth to Alan, come in.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.”

“For a second I thought you were having some kind of seizure, like that guy Simon in Lord of the Flies .”

“I was just thinking,” I explained.

“Oh, right,” she said, and took another bite of her hamburger. The bite made a pickle shoot out of the burger and fall to the table between us. I thought I might try to say something witty about the pickle trajectory, or maybe make some clever literary connection to pickles, but my mind was blank.

It was Maggie who broke the silence. “Oh, I get it,” she said. “You want to ask me to the dance!”

“Well, uh, yeah.” Now my face was turning red. I was sweating buckets – no, swimming pools – and now I felt like my face was burning up.

“You want to do that whole I'll-pick-you-up-at-seven-and-hold-your-hand-and-kiss-you-goodnight thing, right?” She said this as if the idea just amazed her.

Actually, I hadn't let my mind jump so far ahead, certainly not as far as the kiss-you-goodnight thing, but given the pickle bits stuck in her braces and the ketchup on her chin, it didn't seem all that attractive a concept.

Her eyes seemed to widen behind her glasses. “You think I'm so desperate for a date that I'd go out with you!” she went on.

“I never said ‘desperate,'” I replied.

“But you were thinking it,” she told me. “You were thinking, there's a girl so desperate she'd even go out with Al Macklin. That's what you were thinking, weren't you?”

“No … no, I wasn't thinking at all.”

“But you said you were thinking, just a couple seconds ago.”

“But I wasn't thinking. Or I wasn't thinking about that.”

“What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking …” and then I forgot what I had been thinking about.

So now we were both stuck in silence. It seemed the whole cafeteria had fallen into a kind of hush, as though everyone was listening in to this pathetic conversation.

“I'll tell you what I'm thinking,” said another voice. Maggie and I both looked up. It was Hannah the Honker, standing with a cafeteria tray in her hand. “I'm thinking you should get out of my chair, Alan.”

So I got up, looked at Maggie, then looked at Hannah and then looked at the only safe place – at my shoes.

“Well, see ya,” I said lamely, and to nobody in particular.

“See ya,” Maggie said as I turned away. And that was the last thing I heard, though I swear Hannah used the word loser in some kind of sentence just before I was out of earshot.

It was a long, slow walk across the cafeteria. I was sure the eyes of everyone in the room were glued to me, all of them thinking loser as my heavy feet trod the floor. I felt like one of those death-row prisoners you see in movies, walking down the cell block to the electric chair while the other inmates pound their metal cups against their bars.