Lucy

The first time you ever fall in love is the best and the worst.

You were a boy. In the eighth grade. She was Lucille. After school she showed you some French postcards in black and white. They were pornographic even though you didn’t know what that meant.

It wasn’t the pictures, it was her. She laughed at how embarrassed you were. You walked her home and left with your head spinning, your heart beating wild and your feet not hardly touching the ground.

What the hell had happened? The pictures were black and white and fuzzy. There was an ugly guy and a girl and they had no clothes on, they had lots of black hair and they weren’t doing anything. They looked dirty, not sexy.

The pictures didn’t matter. What mattered was Lucille. You couldn’t think of anything else but her.

It was in the Fall. Leaves were burning and it was getting dark. When you got home, supper was on the stove. Your mother looked at you. She said what’s the matter? What did she see? You looked at your mother and almost cried. What had happened? He didn’t know. He went upstairs to the bathroom and closed the door…to think. His mother called. He went down and ate, tasting nothing. She asked did he have homework and his eyes lit up. He had to get a book he said and ran out the door and all the way down the hill.

He stood in front of Lucy’s house. She was Lucy now.

He stood there in the dark hoping he would see her.

Other girls came and went but it was Lucy who remained in his head and heart until the day she went away. He liked to think she was with Angels. He’d never know.

—Richard Greene, Warren Avenue