This Is Us
To All the Triangles I’ve Loved Before
I was yin. She was not yang. She didn’t even know who yang was.
It was fourth grade, and I was dating Ashley Hoover because I was afraid of her.
If Ashley wanted to date you, you dated her, no questions. She was a tiny, toothy girl with long, black hair, and she could do this thing with her eyeballs, making them vibrate. I’m serious. It looked like her eyes were having an earthquake. So when she looked at you, shivered her eyes like a rattlesnake’s tail, and said, “You,” your only response was, “I do” — and then you were boyfriend and girlfriend forever, until she was finished with you, which, in fourth grade could be a day, an hour, or a week, but it felt like the rest of your life.
Unfortunately, Ashley noticed I had eyes for Crystal.
Beautiful Crystal, girl of long brown hair, girl of dance, girl of her father had a four-wheeler and I would have sold my soul for a four-wheeler, girl of excellence in games of tag, girl of steady eyes that didn’t scare me to death.
Just before recess, I felt a tickling sensation on the back of my neck, like a spider crawling toward the thicket of my hair, or two tiny, vibrating pinpoints of heat trying to burn their way to my spinal column. I turned around…
