We are all worms, But, I do believe, I am a glowworm.
Usually I wont post writing on my blog, but I thought this was kind of a cute piece as it was inspired by one of my tutees more or less professing his love for me. It's fun but kinda long so enjoy!
“I love you.” He said.
“Psh,” she replied, “people don’t fall in love with me. That’s ridiculous.”
“I will readily admit that I’m ridiculous.” He said. He wanted to touch her face. He wanted to kiss her feet. He wanted to kill someone he loved her so much.
“What? What can I do?” He asked. “How do I prove it.”
“Aw, sweetie,” she said. “Nothing you do could ever prove to me that you loved me. People like you don’t fall in love with people like me.”
“THAT is ridiculous.” He said, triumphantly.
“No, no. I’m not the one falling in love with me. You are.” She said, laughing. “I don’t fall in love with people like me. I would never. YOU are ridiculous. I’m too old for you anyway. How old are you?”
“Psh,” he said, mocking her gently. “Love is ageless.” He stated. She laughed loud. Her laugh was what always got him. It killed him how beautiful it was, piercing and so warm. But she wasn’t exactly a cuddly person. She was the toughest teacher at school and when the other boys fawned all over her high heels and pencil skirts she hit them with their textbooks, but for some reason when he couldn’t stop staring at her she didn’t do the same to him.
She turned to leave the shop. He reached out to stop her, she avoided his outstretched arm but smiled all the same.
Her trips to the shop on the corner began in early August. She had just moved in down the street, a couple houses down with her two roommates, Luis and Pedro. He wondered if they were her lovers but it all turned out to be completely unimportant to him. All that mattered was that she was changing his life, revolutionizing it. He was always just this awkward Indian kid who never got the other girls and whom the other girls never got. Honestly no one ever really worried about trying to “ get” him except for her. She did so effortlessly. She just did. No questions about his interest in classic literature and his obsession with old westerns. She said things like “ OY” when kids were speaking out of turn. And she had the tendency to be very difficult to please. It wasn’t the grammar that got this English teacher going, it was the content.
Taj later realized that she got him so much because she was just like him when she was in high school. She must’ve been. There was no other explanation. Truthfully, what he really thought was that since she started teaching she had been searching for a kid like him. But she was lucky because it was only her first semester as a teacher and already she had found him. Or so he hoped. He hoped he was the star pupil. That she noticed him. That she was the one who just knew, without even trying, what was happening in his head.
He loved her so much it was painful. When he thought about her hot and cold sensations shot through his veins and he had to physically shake it off. Just the thought of the two of them talking about Faulkner made him feel things he had never felt for any girl ever. But she wasn’t just any girl she was THE girl. She had to be. She was the only woman he knew who knew all about Faulkner and Dickens and even VONNEGUT! She knew everything there was to know about books, she could even write POETRY! AND she knew all about theatre too. Was there anything she didn’t know?! GOD! She was the only woman for him. The perfect woman to marry and settle down with.
He told no one of his love for ms. Murphy, the black Irish woman who was changing his life. He didn’t even know her first name until his dad left him in the shop for an hour to go for more chai. She sauntered into the shop in her after school clothes. His mouth hit the dirty tile floor. She was wearing pink CONVERSE! And a Beatles t-shirt. She had a fedora perched on her head and for the first time ever, he saw her without glasses. Her eyes were so big and blue he felt utterly alone when he looked into them, as though there were no one else in the world. He loved her JUST that much. He loved her so much he could actually form real sentences around her, unlike when he was around the other girls. When he was with the other girls first of all he thought it would be a waste to say real meaningful things and second of all they wouldn’t understand anything he said if he tried in the first place.
So he stared her straight in the face when she came up to the counter with her corn torillas and ginger ale and he asked. “ So, like… What’s your first name?”
She laughed, lightly and replied. “ What’s the haps, Taj?”
His insides fluttered around a lot when she talked like that, which she didn’t do often and he liked to think, only did with him.
“ I really, just gotta know.” He said.
She held out her hand he took it ready to kiss it but it turned out she just wanted a handshake, he noted the firmness of her grasp.
“ I’m Molly.” She said. “ But, don’t you dare call me that at school. I’ll effing kill you.”
He nearly passed out. She just SWORE! Well, maybe not really, but she came SO CLOSE! And so close was close enough for him. She walked out of the shop and though he knew the jangling of the bell above the door wasn’t really the love goddess singing it sure did feel like it to him.
His friends at school would never understand such a sophisticated set of emotions, so he made a point never to tell them, what friends he had anyway, which were limited to the three other Indian kids in the 11th grade. Taj was just WAY too mature for them.
He took a little while to think about whether he had been a little too hasty to tell her he loved her within the first three months he knew her, but then he came to the decision that no matter what she said now, she would realize later that he was the right man for her and even if he had spoken a little too soon everything he said was still true.
Next was kissing her and then spiriting her away to his dads cabin on the lake. He wasn’t sure how this would happen since he didn’t have a car or a license for that matter, but he was sure she’d be alright with driving. He couldn’t wait much longer, he just couldn’t keep this daisy stomping-bootlicking-retardedly-fucking-awesome feeling he had.
If he knew how many lines a sonnet had he would compose one just for her. He noted to himself that was something he would probably need to know if he was going to marry her so the next Monday he went straight to the library after class let out and picked up Shakespeare’s sonnets and set about reading them at lunch. She was just walking by when she turned around with her Grape Naked Juice in hand, she must have looked over her shoulder cuz she stopped and said
“ What number are you on?”
“ 112.”
“ Wanna know a really crazy secret?”
“ Totally.”
“ I have CXVI tattooed on top of my right foot. Figure out what number that makes, read the sonnet that corresponds and talk to me after class today.”
“ That’s easy,” He said flipping directly to 116. “ WAIT! YOU HAVE A TATTOO?!” She hit the back of his head with her juice and told him to shut up, kid.
He read the sonnet with such intensity he didn’t realize the whole lunch room was empty and he was nearly 3 minutes late to her class. He scrambled in just in time for roll call. She called his name accusingly but winked at him when all the other kids made fun.
For the first time in the history of ever, Taj couldn’t wait for her class to be over. He wanted to talk to her about everything, Shakespeare and every single sonnet in existence, though he had only read Shakespeare’s he felt he had a pretty good handle on the whole sonnet concept. 14 lines, that’s all ya needed. Generally they were about love or hate or death, but mostly love. So there Taj sat so heavily fixated on what he wanted to say that he couldn’t even remember what he wanted to say. When the final moment came and the final bell of the day rang and all the autobots from his class filed out and went screaming down the hallways he walked slowly up to her desk and waited for her to speak.
“ So what did you think of it?” She asked, smiling.
“ I’d have to say it’s moving, touching, surreal kind of.”
“ Wow, kiddo. Nice adverbage. But, what did it make you feel?”
“ I don’t know, it kind of reminded me of how I feel about you.”
Her face turned red. SHE BLUSHED! SHE blushed.
“ Taj, you really gotta knock this off. You don’t love me. You’re just super excited I get what you’re going through, that doesn’t make us soulmates.”
“ How do you, by the way?”
“ How do I what?”
“ Get what I’m going through?”
“ I just remember what it was like being the only kid in school who actually enjoyed the books my English teacher assigned me and enjoyed writing essays and book reports. I was just like you when I was in high school.”
“ You act like it was so long ago, but you’re only 23.”
She shuddered. “ Who told you that?”
“ My dad, he checked your ID when you were buying whiskey. He thought you were too young.”
She turned red again and giggled a little.
SHE GIGGLED! SHE giggled.
“ Look Taj, it’s true I really do understand you a lot better than the other kids but that doesn’t mean we’re meant to be together forever or anything, it just means we get along really well.”
“ Whatever you say, dear.” He laughed as she hit him on the top of the head.
“ You’re a cheeky little bastard. But, it’s true, I see a lot of myself in you. I remember what it was like to think I was in love all the time and feel rapturous when whoever it was that week smiled at me, but this will pass. You wont love me for much longer.”
“ You’re wrong.” He said and moved closer to her, she didn’t back up, she didn’t push him away, her breath quickened as he reached out to touch her face, she was just the right height, tall but not quite as tall as him. he came closer and closer her face was red, he could feel the heat radiating from her, nothing was in between them, not even air and when he touched her feather soft lips with his he felt every explosion there was to feel in the world, he had chills. In the long kissed they shared he wondered so much about her, whether she showered in the morning or before she went to bed, whether she put her right or left shoe on first. There was so much swimming through him that he barely noticed the janitor standing outside the door, but then he did and the kiss was over and when he came to school the next day he was crushed to know she had been moved to another school. But then he thought of how he would now have free reign to talk to her as much as he wanted now he wasn’t her student and he felt much, much better.
The next step was the cabin.
