He didn’t lose much in being alone, because his fantasies about what people might do in bed were vivid and polymorphous, better than what they did in real life. He imagined that the boys who actually talked to girls, who dated them, had some seventh sense that he was just fumbling at. He might have glimpsed it a few times, when he saw a garter belt or read the ads for men with exotic tastes in the Metro Times.

His mother used to tell him that eating carrots would help him see at night. It was for similar reasons that he watched Margot, who sat a row over from him, one seat up. She acted as if she were drunk – and perhaps she had been, before – giggling always, every comment outraging or tickling her. He had made some progress in a few months: her ponytail, tossed in his face like a discarded jersey, a pot of lip gloss, half-gone, that she tossed at the trash and missed.

One morning, he swallowed so hard that he choked, and he could not take his breakfast. His mother kept him home and served him from spoons and small cups, and he savored the pleasure of not being inferior for a day. He only missed seeing Margot in the class where he sat alone, even during group work. Late in the afternoon, he began to watch at his window, thinking he might see her. A few of his classmates clustered in the small park on his corner before heading home. He had always been afraid to join them, the popular girls in a phalanx against the playscape, and the big boys sauntering up, ambassadorial.  

At three o’clock, his grade streamed by, cut by the upperclassmen. He shifted behind the curtain when he saw her walk by, wide rainbow scarf trailing scrappily behind. Margot lived in the opposite direction, so he resolved not to move from the window until he saw her walk by again. He picked up his drawing pad and began sketching idly, first the trees in front of him, shading the bark as he had learned, then venturing into faces, with exaggerated, blocky precision that made the people look like Easter Island heads. Feminine shrieking reached his ears, and he shoved aside the windowpane. The girls were flirting a lot today, or maybe they were drinking.

His pencil was still on the tip of a trapezoidal nose when Margot ran by silently, holding the two sides of her hoodie together. He could see a few wood chips clinging to her back. Her hair was unsmoothed, half out of her ponytail, and her jean skirt switched like a crooked bell as she hurried. It didn’t occur to him to run after Margot, or to comfort her. His relationship with the girls was like the ancient Greeks’ with their gods: fumbling to interpret their actions but powerless to intervene.

It was awhile before the big boys walked by, tossing the stub of a spent cigarette with a casualness he might learn in college. He heard them chew on her name and worry it for a moment before dropping that, too.

It was almost dark now. He had to see. Surely they had left some clue that would explain to him what had happened. He inched down the hallway, filled with the tenor of his father’s voice, newly arrived, and out the still-open garage door.

The park was still. He slithered up the playscape in his slippers, looking for evidence. The swingset, the wooden suspension bridge, the low bars were unsinged, unmarked, without so much as new graffiti.

Now he would have to sneak back in, and for nothing. He climbed down the ladder, and something soft brushed his foot. He bent, with a gasp, and pulled at the thing. It was Margot’s scarf, the knit loosened on a rung. He picked off the wood chips and inhaled. Past the first notes of pine, it smelled of shampoo and mall-bought perfume.

He knew a lost garment meant a woman had given something up, but he was not sure what. Perhaps they had taken it to tease her and she had given up. Or they had taken her money, or tried to kiss her. Or maybe they had stood in a line and refused to let her pass, as they had done to him outside the locker room, when he needed to change.

T. M. De Vos is a poet and fiction writer living in New York City. Her work has appeared in Washington Square, Small Spiral Notebook, Yuan Yang: A Journal of Hong Kong and International Writing, Pebble Lake Review, Alimentum: The Literature of Food, The Pedestal Magazine, The Saint Ann’s Review, Ars Medica, The Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette, HOBART, and the Sakura Review. She has taught at the University of Michigan and New York University, and currently teaches in the New York City public school system. She received an MFA in 2004 from New York University and a Hopwood Award in 1999 from the University of Michigan.