Second Chances

We never saw her - not really. I could lie, make myself feel better, and tell you that she never allowed us to see the real person she was, but the truth is, we were all too shallow to look. After all, we were the "in" crowd, made up of football stars and Homecoming Queens - beautiful people, destined to take the world by storm.

Funny thing is, if you look at the classifieds, job openings for queens and linebackers are few and far between.

She was plain. Plain clothes, plain hair, plain eyes. She had a way of blending into her surroundings like a chameleon - unless you looked really hard, you didn't know she was there. Believe me when I tell you, we never looked.

Kids are cruel - we were no exception. We never teased her, or called her names, or lured her to the prom and dumped pig's blood on her head, but I think sometimes outright indifference is the cruelest sort of abuse, and the fact remains that we didn't care one way or the other. Were we really too important to pass a kind word in study hall, or return her smile in the corridors on our way to lunch? We certainly thought so then. How much time would it really have taken to ask how her day was going? Too much - we had a clique to run, after all.

High school ended - a harsh reality we weren't ready for - and the real world didn't seem quite so inclined to bow down and worship us. We went off to college, pledged with the best sororities and fraternities, and generally acted as though we were starring in the latest National Lampoon blockbuster. God, we were idiots.

Some of us managed to make it the full four years and graduate with a degree, some of us burned out on booze and cigarettes and ego. All of us - those queens and football stars, so determined to be rich and famous and beautiful forever - ended up right back where we started, in a one horse town on a two lane road, working in daddy's garage, or the Chatterbox Cafe, or the two to eleven shift at the mill down by the river. Our degrees, those of us who earned them, were nothing more than fifty thousand dollar wall decorations.

We married, and started families, and some of us - the lucky ones - managed to get away. My husband and I moved upstate, to a nice house in a suburb of Salem with a two-car garage and a quarter acre of fenced backyard. I cooked chicken every Saturday, and my husband mowed the lawn on Sunday afternoons, and we had a little boy, who (we said) would play football like his daddy, and then a little girl with pretty blue eyes and blond curls who would (of course) be Homecoming Queen someday.

When my son started kindergarten at the neighborhood school, he was terrified - clinging to my leg and crying as I attempted to leave him at the door to his classroom. I detatched myself, kissed him quickly, and left before he could see my own tears.

As I waited for him on the playground at the end of the day, I steeled myself for more tears, for pleas to never have to return, for accusations of abandonment and neglect. How dare I leave him here to fend for himself? He's only five, after all.

The bell rang, and my little man walked out of the classroom door, beaming from ear to ear, holding the hand of his teacher, laughing at something she said. As they came closer, my heart skipped a beat.

She was plain. Plain clothes, plain hair, plain eyes. I recognized her immediately, though it had been ten years since I had last seen her at graduation. My son was looking at her as though she had recently hung the moon and served ice cream for dinner, all on the same night. I didn't know what to say. Should I apologize? Pretend as though nothing had happened? Wait and see if she recognized me before I made a decision at all?

"Stephanie," she said warmly, as they reached me. "Small world, isn't it? I heard you married Chris, congratulations. You two were always so great together."

And finally, after so many years of convincing myself she was beneath me, I allowed myself to return her smile.

As it turns out, only Amelia's looks are plain - and I would have known that ten years ago, if I had only taken the time. She herself is an amazing person. After high school, she got her teaching certificate, joined the Peace Corps, and spent two years in Africa, running a school for orphans. When she returned to the US, it was with two of the orphans, whom she adopted. Eventually, she settled in the same suburb as my husband and I, only two blocks over.

Sometimes, God grants us a second chance - even if we don't deserve it. That plain girl who I never saw in high school has become the best friend I've ever had - and a woman who I see every day, and will for the rest of my life.