It Happened on Maple Street

But there was one thing I liked about that kiss. It didn’t do a thing to me. Nothing. I didn’t feel anything anywhere in my body—except shame.

No fire. Not even a spark. No feelings down below.

Nothing like I felt with Tim. I wasn’t a bad girl. I wasn’t loose or sexually crazed. I felt the things I felt with Tim because I was in love with him. He was my Tim. My soul mate.

My soul mate who didn’t call me on Saturday. He’d said I wouldn’t see him all weekend, but surely he hadn’t meant that. He’d calm down. He’d see that he’d had nothing to fear. He’d call.

Even if he didn’t see that he had nothing to fear—even, he believed the worst—he’d call just because it would drive him nuts not to. Because we didn’t go all weekend without talking.

He didn’t call.

My brother left Sunday morning, and I spent the entire day waiting for Tim to call. I tried to do homework. I tried to read. Nothing worked. I was heartsick. By Sunday afternoon I picked up the phone to call Tim, but I put it back down. I wasn’t going to go chasing after him.

Maybe he’d been ready to get rid of me. Maybe this weekend, the thing with Chum, had just been an excuse for him to dump me.

Maybe he’d met someone else. Maybe he’d spent the night before making out with another girl in the bed on Maple Street. Or in the back of his car on a country road.

I’d see Tim at school the next day, and I was going to have to do something to get his attention. Something to find out once and for all if he had any feelings for me.

But I wasn’t going to cause a scene. Or be one of those girls who hung on a guy after he was done with her.

I wasn’t going to cry. Or beg.

His class ring pushed against my breastbone as I hugged my hands to my chest, and I knew what I had to do. If Tim had gone out on me because he’d determined that helping my brother meant I’d gone out on him . . .

I’d tell him I thought I needed my ring back. I’d put the seriousness of our situation right in his face. I’d force him to talk to me about us. I was taking a huge risk. I knew that. He could just call my bluff and give me my ring back. If he did, I’d have my answer once and for all.

But he wouldn’t. I knew that. He’d ask me why I was asking for my ring back. And I was going to let him have it. I was going to tell him that I was in love with him and he better get on the stick and find a way to tell me how much I meant to him.

I wanted to talk about getting married someday.

And then I’d tell him I’d been afraid I was pregnant.

Or . . . he’d tell me that I needed to calm down, he’d tell me no, he wasn’t giving me my ring back. He’d tell me that if I wanted it, I’d have to get it myself, which would mean getting physically entangled with him, and we both knew where that would lead.

Where we both wanted it to lead. In bed with each other.

Hugging his ring, with the yarn still firmly intact where it was going to stay, I went to bed early that night.

And cried in the dark.

It was Monday morning, March 14, 1978, and Tim stood outside of Tara’s English class, waiting for her to appear. He was leaning up against the cement-block wall in the hallway thinking about what to say to her.

He’d missed her all weekend.

And he was still stinging over her date—favor or not.

She came around the corner, wearing her typical blue jeans and sweater. He tried to read her expression, to determine her mood as she came straight toward him. She wasn’t smiling.

He didn’t smile either. “Hi,” he said, playing it cool.

“I think I need my ring back.”

The words rang so loudly he felt like she’d shouted them. Like everyone around them, going to and from class, had heard what she’d just said.

He was shocked, taken back.

He was the one with the right to be mad. She was supposed to be apologizing.