A Short Love Story by Garrett Kaminaga

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A Short Love Story by Garrett Kaminaga


Jumper had known Molly Jensen since the moist-eyed days of
early youth.  Charlie Rickford had teased Jumper about hanging out 
with girls until Molly beat him up and made him cry in front of 
Arthur Jones, Jonathan Loo and even Quentin Clarke.  And this was 
in _the second grade_, where crying meant the end of hanging out, 
of chasing each other at near light- speed on bicycles, of 
endless adventures in the any-world of the fantastic playground.  
It was, in the second grade, like another fall of man.  but Charlie 
was reunited with the gang the next day, his . . . unmanly tears 
forgotten in the furious pace of a seven-year-old's life. 
        Jumper liked Molly because she never asked him to marry her,
never wanted to play house, was interested more in transformers than in
the fake Barbie dolls that you could cut the hair off of and it would
never grow back.
	Not that Jumper pretended or even thought that girls were yucky; 
he liked them on the whole. but they were so much less real than Molly 
was. Jumper still got frightened at the movies, went swimming and 
played get-dirty-get-scraped tag with the guys, but he reserved his 
most fantastic adventures for playing out with Molly.  The any-world 
of Charlie and Arthur and Jonathan always had the same machine-gun 
fights (even when they played knights and dragons), the same gory 
deaths, the same _everything_. Molly and Jumper created worlds better 
than anything on TV, filled with the black-and-white hopes and fears 
of second grade, because Jumper and Molly were best friends.
        When they reached intermediate school, and Charlie and Arthur
all eagerly pretended to be grossed-out by spin the bottle and the 
other I'm-curious games of adolescence, Molly and Jumper, impossibly, 
grew closer together.  One day at the park Molly wanted to play on 
the swings instead of play four-square, and she began to talk about 
the grayer hopes and fears of thirteen-ness.  And Jumper, amazingly, 
found that he really didn't mind.  So, they learned from each 
other -- Molly talked about training  bras, about stupid slumber 
parties, about the unbelievable pain of braces.  Jumper talked about 
his middle name (Xavier), about not making the basketball team cut, 
about the requisite machismo of being a teenage guy.  And they both got 
to sleep a little easier because of it.
        They stayed friends even through the intense world of high
school. Through Nazi history teachers who pulled pop quizzes and 
looked at someone else but asked you a question, through class 
struggles that made Sally Hart laugh at Jumper when he asked her out, 
through Valentine's dances and Homecoming games, club fundraisers and 
the slow invasion of the pressures of the outside world.  Not that 
they were boyfriend and girlfriend.  You never saw Molly and Jumper 
talking and crying or stuck together like siamese twins.
	They didn't even go to prom together -- Jumper went with 
Sally, who was much nicer after she stopped hanging out with the soc 
crowd, and Molly went with Quentin.  They exchanged pictures and 
signed yearbooks and talked just like regular friends, right up 
through graduation.  But only Molly knew that Jumper came close to 
flunking out of school, and only Jumper knew that Molly had slammed 
the door in Quentin's face after prom (although Quentin told it 
differently).
        Then, while waiting in the registration line at State, 
wedged between his roommate (who claimed to be an anarchist, making 
Jumper go look the word up) and a huge woman who wore a hideous shade 
of green and smelled of anchovies, Jumper realized that he loved Molly. 
All it took was his roommate telling him, as Molly walked into the 
gym, that his girlfriend had arrived. Jumper started with the 
automatic response of "She's not my girlfriend," since he had been 
asked that too many times to count in high school, when all the memories 
of their time together pressured it back down his throat and lodged 
it painfully in his chest.  
      For the entire semester, when Jumper was at Molly's dorm doing 
frosh english or just talking, his mind was racing through thousands 
of scenarios of confessing his love.  
	"Molly, I love you" wasn't quite right, and the moonlit walk 
through Bishop Yard was a little too saccharin (and dangerous). 
When they fell to talking as they had been so used to, he lied when 
she asked him about his love life.  Jumper knew that if she didn't 
love him (how could she, so beautiful, so warm, love me? he thought) 
then that put their friendship in a precarious, awkward position.
	Their 2-year friendship was too much to gamble. But then, the 
pain that had stayed from his realization in the registration line 
(Jumper had thought that it was indigestion at first) was eating him 
up from inside and burning through his skin every second of the day.
        Then, one night Molly told him that she had a crush on Adam
Rawlings, the athletic water polo player down the hall.  Jumper 
died inside. Dammit! Jumper only wanted Molly to be happy, but that 
meant her having Adam, and not having him.  But Jumper, who truly 
loved Molly, decided to get him for her.
	Jumper and Adam knew each other from weekly physics problem 
sets, and, through cajoling and begging and innuendo, Jumper got Adam 
to ask her out. Then, as Jumper was about to go drink himself into a 
stupor over what he had done, Molly asked him to come over.
        "Adam asked me out."
        Jumper acted surprised.  "Great!  What're you going to do?"
        "I'm not going.  I told him no."
        Jumper said nothing.  
	"Jumper, I've known you since second grade."
	Her words came slowly, choked.  "I ... ever since high 
school ... "
        And Jumper knew that she loved him too.  He said nothing.  He
grabbed her hand and ran outside, into the parking lot, where the 
cold bit at the skin, but Jumper and Molly didn't mind because they 
were warmed from the inside and the moon was coming out from behind 
the clouds and someone, somewhere, was playing mambo music a little too 
loudly, and they didn't have to say anything to each other because 
saying anything would have been anticlimactic, and he slipped his 
arms around her and amazed, felt her against him, and he lowered his 
lips to hers, happy beyond all joys.
        Then a truck ran them both over and smashed them to bits.


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