YELLOW # 2
Roman was in love for the first time in his life. Her name was Elizabeth. She was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen and she sat directly in front of his desk in Miss Love’s 4th grade homeroom class.
Elizabeth had long dark hair… straight as if she ironed it before school every morning, though she didn’t. It hung down to the middle of her back… Roman was an expert on her hair. On its color… a rich dark mahogany of brown, a sheen so silky that it would make light dance. It smelled of apples, strawberries and fresh linen sheets that had the freshness of summer sun and blue skies… she could have starred in her own shampoo commercials on TV. The back of her head was perfectly shaped in proportion to the rest of her slender and lithe body. She was perfect.
Unlike my own, Roman thought. He was blessed with the head of an adult that sat precariously atop the skinny neck of a bean pole body, or so that’s how he pictured himself.
The highlight of any day would be when she turned around to say hi, her lips parted just the right amount to show off her perfect teeth. Roman was drowning in a sea of puppy love as deep as her large brown eyes… every nuance that exposed another small detail of her flawless personality… a freckle on her nose or a shy twinkle of a smile… she was absolutely lovely in every way he could imagine.
On this fateful morning in class, just after the first bell had rung… Elizabeth got up from her desk and walked to the front of the classroom to sharpen her pencil. As usual, Roman was glued to her every move, fascinated by the way she casually strolled up the aisle as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
Roman was struck by a brilliant plan. He was known in class as somewhat of a jokester, his quick wit was legendary among his fellow students. The plan was genius in its simplicity that blossomed in his sugar riddled brain.
It would almost guarantee some light verbal bantering… possibly followed up by one of her sly smiles…maybe even a conspirator wink. He would simply stick his number two pencil eraser down into the corner of her seat as if were a rudimentary tack. Then upon her return to her seat Beth, as Roman liked to call her…she would spy the trap. “Now who would the jokester be?”, and look at Roman. One of her signature smiles would undoubtedly play across her face and she would exclaim only loud enough for Roman to hear, “Roman Bayley!you little devil… are you trying to poke me?” They’d laugh… their eyes would meet and their little shared joke would click everything into place. It would be the perfect Segway to ask her out, maybe go to a movie, the mall, who knew where this might lead? Roman wanted nothing more than to steal a kiss.
As Beth returned from sharpening her pencil, making her way back to her desk, the plan was simply to stop her before she slid into her seat and innocently say something along the lines… “Oh how did my pencil get there?! Wow, that was close… these things can be dangerous… I don’t even know why they allow us to use ‘em.” Timing was the key here… perfect timing.
“Roman! Roman! Hey did you catch last nights “Welcome Back, Kotter?” Man, that Horshack kills it… did ya’ see it?”
That was Dean McGruder, one of Roman’s best friends… whispering loudly from across the row on Roman’s right, one desk behind his, Dean slapped him on the shoulder as he laughed.
Roman turned to tell him not now… “Of all the times to shut up for once in your life”, Roman whispered… “Can’t you see I’m in the middle of something here?” As Roman turned his attention back to the grand plan to witness the beauty of it falling perfectly into place two things happened simultaneously that would forever live on in his mind.
First… the scream that penetrated his eardrum was like that of a tomcat with its balls on fire…
Secondly… and most importantly the key that bound everything together was the timing. Time is… as Roman knew, a linear progression, in the way it goes forward, one minute moving to the next, one second becoming another… tick tock, tick tock… but not then, not those precious few seconds that it took Roman to become distracted by Dean. Those precious few seconds it took to turn his head to tell Deano-I’m-gonna-kill-you to shut up.
No… those few seconds turned into something else entirely.
As if time suddenly went in all directions at once, Roman could hear Elizabeth scream while at the exact same moment he could see himself still turned towards Dean and see Elizabeth plop down in her seat like she’s done a hundred times before.
Those two or three seconds were as enormous as the Hindenburg, and just as explosive. Roman looked on in horror as Elizabeth withered to the floor… blood spurting everywhere… screaming like a banshee… Roman’s # 2 pencil sticking out of her thigh, like a bolt from some medieval hunters crossbow.
Holyfuckingshit! Roman screamed inside his head. He sat frozen in his seat unsure what to do. Miss Love ran to Elizabeth and knelt down in the pool of her blood. Unsure of what has happened or where all the blood is coming from… then she sees the pencil sticking out of poor Elizabeth’s thigh. Miss Love looks up at her classroom and yells at the top of her lungs “Who is the little Monster that did this?! Speak up right this second! I mean right now! WHO DID THIS?!”
She had her neck stretched out as far as it could possibly go… her normally pretty blue eyes were bulging and scary as anything Roman had seen. The look on her face was one you would associate with lightning bolts shooting out of her eyes and thunder rolling from her throat.
He sat there in his desk stunned… this was one of those moments in people’s lives… that singular moment when you know you’re at the crossroads… and the next decision he makes will be one that will shape his future, one that will DEFINE who Roman Caral Bayley is for the rest of his life?
Yeah… well, maybe… He stood at that juncture… at that crossroad… and had no idea what to do. Ok… that’s not altogether true - he knew what he SHOULD do…but he was just too scared to do it.
Roman hadn’t taken much responsibility for his actions up to this point in his young life. As hard as he might want to… this didn’t seem like the best place to start. Baby steps… baby steps… the voice in his head repeated over and over. This? This was like jumping off into the Grand Canyon… a black abyss of the unknown.
He quickly looked around the classroom, like all of the other kids… all of their little heads swiveled back and forth, scanning the room for the “little monster” that had committed such a heinous act on sweet, adorable Elizabeth.
“What happened? Who did this?!” Roman joining the chorus of others. “What happened to her? Who hurt her??” He cried out. Miss Love had scooped Elizabeth up off the floor by now and rushed her out of the classroom down to the nurse’s office. Leaving the rest of the class speculating what had happened… accusatory glances flying around like yellow-jackets looking for a target to sting.
He kept his eyes averted, not daring to look at anyone else, so no one might see the tears welling up in his eyes. He was so ashamed he thought he would die. It was inconceivable that anyone would want to hurt Elizabeth. The fact that it was him that had caused her so much pain… that he alone had orchestrated this… terrible act. Roman’s soul had been torn open, his heart ripped from his chest… his gut ached with the knowledge it was all his doing. That God had tested me… and I had failed, failed miserably, He thought. All he wanted to do was to crawl into a dark hole and die.
Roman never saw Elizabeth again after that fateful day. Her family had decided she would be better off at a private school, nevertheless Rev. Rob had taken a teaching post in another town, another state, and forever from his first love…