A Moment as Some Passage of Time

I cannot remember a day when Jack Olsen wasn’t the one that everyone looked up to. It didn’t matter how little he knew, or how much talent he had, he had this annoying gift of pleasing everyone--unintentionally of course.
We met in the sixth grade. I was the so often clichéd outcast of the school and I couldn’t seem to escape my stereotypes. I had it all, frizzy hair, pimples, a weird walk and it didn’t help that I was pretty fat. I think that was the worst part about it, being fat. ‘Lazy Janey” they used to call me with their boney little faces, and their juvenile smiles. I would walk into school every morning, fumbling to remember if I had even finished my homework, while trying to not look as stupid as I felt, and it never failed, they said the same thing every day, “Lazy Janey, what a pig! She can’t even open her bag!” Every time that I would rally up the courage to walk down that school hallway, and then hear the jokes, and feel the heat of someone staring, I would tell myself, “Jane Grey. You will not cry. They’re not worth it.” And it never failed; I always did, every time.
Jack somehow seemed to be different. Everybody liked him, and he towered over everyone. By the end of the sixth grade he was already five foot ten, and was only getting taller. Sometimes I would see him and just stare, so in awe of his stature, and of the ease at which he made friends. Part of me wished so much to be like him, to emulate his fearlessness. It was funny; when I turned twenty he was the one who told me fearlessness is acting. All you have to do is play the part. He played it really well.
If I hadn’t been for my paralyzing shyness Jack may have never even approached me that day. I tended to draw some attention to myself, in an odd and unappealing way. People noticed that I sat by myself at lunch, and didn’t do group work. I read a lot too. Most nerds do that, I hear.
I remember the day he sat next to me during an assembly, this towering kid next to my large, if not embarrassingly short self. I was alone, I was always alone. I had grown accustomed to seclusion. It was like he didn’t even notice; he just started talking to me. “You’re Janey Grey, right? I’m really bad with names, sorry.”
I fumbled with my notebook, and eyes staring down, “uh well, Jane Grey, you don’t have to call me Janey.”
“Oh sorry, Jane.” He said so matter-of-factly. “You’re in my reading class I think. Your reading “Of Mice and Men”, right? I’ve never read that one. Who wrote that one?”
“John Steinbeck. It’s ok.”
“Oh yeah.” There was an uncomfortable silence that followed. I just wanted him to get to his point, whatever it was. “Listen, I need a partner for the reading class, and everyone else is reading like Cynthia Voight, and I’ve already read that stuff. I really like to read. Don’t tell anyone that.” He said with that grin he was so known for. “Do you want to be my partner?”
I didn’t know what to say. In the minute it took me to respond I kept thinking it was a joke.
“Are you serious, I mean, don’t joke around with me here.”
‘No, I’m serious, just don’t let it get around school, will you be my partner.
I remember looking into those hazel eyes, mesmerized by his charisma, not even really aware of where I was at.
“Alright Jack,” I said with reluctance “I’ll see you Monday then I guess.”
He went back to his seat and life continued on as normal. I had never expected that. Time never stopped for Jack and I, being there in that moment and feeling that connection between us. These moments, moments that unite us are nothing more than a passage of time. An instance, that’s all. However, it did feel nice having someone to share my thoughts with. This shell that I had built up was starting to melt away, and it felt nice. I had a friend, and they stopped calling me “Lazy Janey”.
My feelings about him didn’t change too much after that. In high school we became really close, and had a lot of the same interests. My popularity grew somewhat from those awful years in middle school and I had formed a really nice group of friends. Jack was the only I felt like I could stay true too though, and I did everything I could to please him. I couldn’t help myself.
One day in our senior year of high school he came up to me during 5th period. I was working in the damp school library. I had always loved being amongst the volumes of books, and soft brown tables. I suppose it made me feel more intellectual. The back table in the far corner of the library was where I had spent most of my time, reading and writing, whatever I could think of. It made me feel secure; writing words down, like my thoughts wouldn’t be forgotten but immortalized.
It was on the Friday before homecoming and he had a problem. He always felt the need to tell me his problems. It was the subject that I dreaded the most, his girlfriend. I could always tell when he was going to talk to me about Jenna McNann. He would get this weepy, puppy dog like expression on his face and his shoulders would just slump right over. He was always the one who had baggage, and I was the one that he dumped it on. I was pulling books off of the top shelf when he approached me, his tightly worn jeans making this soft sound whenever he moved, and his navy blue sweater loosely fitted against his arms. This was the same outfit he had been wearing all week. Jack was always interesting, but rarely was he clean.
“Jane, so have you heard what happened with Jenna?” he asked me looking down on me with his wide grey eyes. The rumors were true; he kept growing from middle school and now was a whopping six foot six. I, by the way, stood only five foot three.
I wasn’t really interested in his problems with Jenna McNann but I pretended to care anyway. “Something about her flirting with this guy on that football team I think.” I began handling the books more dangerously now. I even contemplated hitting him on the head with A Tale of Two Cities, in hopes some sense would be knocked into him. “I hear a lot of things about Jenna. She’s even more popular than you, of course I hear rumors.” His weepy eyes turned cold for a moment, but this wasn’t surprising too me.
“I’m breaking up with her Jane, I’m sick of this shit. This game of hers is getting old.” After that I began to mute what he said out. Every few months, like clockwork we would have the same conversation. They never did break up.
Still our interests kept us friends even through our senior year. We both enjoyed poetry and we would spend hours in the back corner of the library discussing Keats, and Goethe. We would droll over and over the stanzas and analyze each one. Our lips would bleed whenever we read Shakespeare, and nothing soothed Jack’s mind like assessing philosophical arguments.
After graduation it seemed as if everything was changing. We were heading in different paths and as fast as he was going, I didn’t have the energy to catch up. My summers consisted of work behind a cash register, and running errands around our too small town, while his included late night parties, weekends with his girlfriend, and whatever felt good to him.
I look back now, and I don’t know why I wasted so much of my time chasing him, waiting for him to see me there and stop. He never did, and when I look back, no one was ever chasing me.
We didn’t speak again until the spring of my sophomore year in college. That was when the thick blanket I’d sewn around myself began to unravel.
The plan was to meet for coffee at the small café right outside of the campus grounds. We would get together and catch up on old times. That’s what I was thinking anyway. I was the one who instigated it, of course and I could hear the burden in his voice as he agreed to meet me.
It was a Friday, and the weather was the coldest that out town had seen all spring. As people left their cars and entered stores, they walked with a deep sense of urgency as if to beat the wind to the door. Their leather coats and velvet scarves were bundled tight against them, and for once I noticed how similar they looked. They were all the same color. I had never noticed that before, and it sent a chill in me.
I saw them as I left my apartment and entered my car. I began to feel exactly as I had years before. With my black pea coat and white angora scarf, hands on the wheel so tightly my knuckles turned white. I couldn’t seem to escape. My heart began to beat faster and faster as I pulled swiftly out of my driveway. I had this feeling of immense dread, and sadness. But I didn’t know why.
I pulled into the coffee shop. I sat in a booth in the front so Jack would see me when he entered. All at once the aroma of coffee beans, and dry toast flooded my nostrils, and the quiet guitar music began to play raucously in my head. I heard each string with pain.
He entered the café about fifteen minutes later. My eyes gazed at him as he sat down. I noticed how different he looked. He had a velvet scarf, and leather jacket, like I had secretly feared. His hair, which he had vowed to keep short, was unkempt and covered his ears and his eyes, and his clothes smelled of liquor and cigarettes. Everything about him seemed to have changed.
“Wow.” He started, “Jane, It’s been a while huh?” he slowly sipped the coffee he had ordered. “How have you been?”
“Fine” I answered him. “I’ve just been really busy with school and work. I wish we had got together sooner. But I suppose you’re really busy.”
“Yeah, I am.”
The deafening silence was starting and all I could hear were guitar strings and chalky vocal melodies. I fumbled with untouched coffee and looked out the window. Jack broke the silence.
“Well, we haven’t seen each other in a while and I’ve been meaning to tell you. It’s about me and Jenna. I don’t know, maybe you heard, were getting married.”
I knew he’d said those words, but even now, I have trouble believing he said it. After everything I had sacrificed for him, and for all the plans I’d made to tell him how I really felt about him I had never seen this coming. I felt like a fool.
“Married? Wow. I don’t know what to say Jack. Wow.” I fumbled in my purse to find something, anything that would free me from this tiny box I’d been forced into.
“Well, aren’t you happy? I mean, we’ve all known each other for so long. Aren’t you excited at all? Jane?”
At that moment I saw him. He was just a tattered, broken, unaware twenty year old. I had put him up on this insurmountable pedestal and he couldn’t have ever reached those expectations. I didn’t think that he wanted to either. So I told him the truth, for once.
“No. No, I’m not happy. I wish that I was but I’m not. I’ve spent the better part of my life trying to get you to look down and notice me really notice me. I thought that I loved you I think.”
He replied, shocked “What? I—”
‘Let me finish. I know you’re not perfect, and I know you’re not a mind reader but how come you never gave anything back? How come I was the one always doing the giving?” With each breath I began to shake, this feeling of complete helplessness was filled in me and I had no where to run. “I thought that you cared as much as I did, but that was just another excuse I had told myself to never see reality. I’ve taken on your garbage for so long that it’s become my garbage, and I don’t know any different.”
Jack was angry; the whole café could see it. “What the hell are you talking about Jane, what do you even mean? This isn’t about you. You’ve gotten so selfish. I’m going to marry Jenna. How did this turn into the end of our friendship?”
I have always found how funny it was in movies, when a person was having an epiphany. They would be in this incredible theatrical moment and everything would literally freeze. In reality, life isn’t like that, but that’s how I felt at the time. I was suspended in reality having this epiphany and it was time for me to come back down.
I relaxed for a moment and started eating the muffin on my table.
“Don’t worry,” I said ‘It’s not, not really. It’s just not what I thought it was.”
He didn’t really say anything after that. He just sat up in his seat and stared at me, any hint of the anger that was there was gone. Maybe he had an epiphany too, I don’t know. I hope so.
It wasn’t so profound that I shouldn’t have seen it. It was pretty obvious. It happens all the time. Jack and I were going in opposite directions, and as much as I would have liked to believe I needed him, I really didn’t. He didn’t need me either. His life was so full; he didn’t really have room for me in his. I realize now, I didn’t really have room for him in mine either.