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Guinevere by CHRIS HOELSCHER

Young love has its ups...and downs...in what the author calls "a modern take on Joyce's short story 'Araby' from Dubliners."

Before Guinevere moved into the Bixby's old house, on the corner of Freemont Street and Oak Ridge, my notions of love and adoration were limited to crumpled notes passed beneath desks, the dirty magazines hidden in my father's closet, and the Lifetime original movies my mother taped and watched repeatedly. But as I first watched her appear from behind a yellow Ryder truck, arms filled with split-seamed boxes, I realized that love had never existed within the circumstances and happenings of my teenage life here in Greenville, but rather, was waiting for me within the body and soul of this girl with a strange name, a girl not like any I'd ever seen.

Unlike the girls of Greenville, little blonde darlings, who from birth strive to fit the molds constructed by their medicated mothers and corporate fathers, Guinevere's ragged beauty and carelessness set her apart from the sea of debutants and soon-to-be prize wives. Her auburn hair hung in wispy waves, bending rays of sun, and sending them back as glimmers of red and gold. Her face was void of cosmetics--adorned only by a few remnant childhood freckles across her nose and cheeks, and a small furrow that formed beneath her eyebrows as she contemplated her new life here.

The other boys that ran among the manicured hedgerows and opulent homes of Freemont Street paid her little attention though. Her tattered summer dresses, shoe-less feet and librarian's glasses struck them as peculiar, if not completely unattractive. As a whole, they tended to opt for Bradley Bennet's older sister Christine. Rumor had it that her voluptuous body had earned her three abortions by age 18, and that she took laxatives to keep thin. Yet despite these rumblings, it was well known that Christine Bennet showered with the blinds open, and thus, she became the de facto object of lust for the boys of Greenville.

Not long after Guinevere's arrival, the rumors that accompany any outsider who enters the plush and comfortable world of Greenville affixed themselves like parasites to my lovely new prize. First amongst the boys, who claimed she was a mail-order bride from the Ukraine, enslaved by her terminally ill husband and his former wife. Others claimed she was retarded and mute, which was why she didn't attend the local high school, and hadn't spoken to anyone on our street yet, but really, no one had gotten close enough to substantiate such hearsay.

The girls of Greenville were much more vicious in their claims, whispering at the bus stop that she was raped by her father, and at night walked the streets of Dreighton, a dying city 10 miles to the south, as a cheap prostitute. But these whispers meant little to me, as I rushed home from school everyday, hoping that I'd be so lucky as to catch her coming or going.

Over the next few months, perched in Bobby Thompson's tree fort, crouching behind Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham's Lilac's, or hidden behind the lens of the telescope my aunt Lydia bought me for my birthday, I studied every facet of her being. I studied her routines, and analyzed her steps. When she smiled, I smiled. And at night, when she'd sneak onto her roof and look up at the few stars one could still see within the artificial lighted haze of Greenville, I wished upon the same star, and dreamed the same dreams. At the time I could not explain my attraction to Guinevere, but knew that I had to know everything about her. Soon, she lived not only two doors down, but also, in full vibrancy within the realms of my adolescent mind, and because of this, I loved her more and more. I loved how she bit her lower lip, while reading a dog-eared copy of a poetry chapbook. I agonized over the little crescent shaped birthmark just to the right of her naval, which I so delightfully discovered as she sunbathed on a warm fall day. And as she left in her rusted 1984 Volvo every morning, I wished that she would take me with her.

Yet as time waned, and my infatuation grew, the possibility of seeing her for only an hour in the morning, four hours at night before her light went out, and 16 hours on Sunday proved to be too little to satisfy my insatiable desire to be with her. So I clamored for clues as to where she traveled everyday. On garbage night, I sifted through her trash for paycheck stubs, report cards, addresses, and notes--anything that would lead me to her hideaway, but found nothing. (However, in the process I did acquire a nice collection of artifacts that included: a lovely old Polaroid of her and an old man, a pink band-aid, a small locket of hair, a worn size 6 slipper, a piece of bubble-gum pressed between a napkin, and a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses missing a lens.) I even attempted to follow her on my bike, but lost her within the first quarter mile, despite me pedaling my hardest.

Exasperated and dejected, but unable to break my infatuation, I one day watched her leave without me yet again. Looking out my bedroom window, I pleaded with her beneath my breath to tell me something...anything, when the sight of her canvas bag, the one that read: Norton's Books--the one that she carried every day--leapt from her hip, into the center of my weary mind. I dropped to my knees and prayed that perhaps she worked there, and that that was where she spent all her time away from me.

Finding the location of Norton's Books was not as problematic as I expected; it simply took a trip to the library and a search through their collection of local phone books to find the address, but the fact that it was located in Dreighton, just across the Everly overpass--a bridge that separated the dying city from the surrounding suburbs--proved to be more difficult. Although only ten miles away, no one from the suburbs, especially Greenville, ever crossed into Dreighton, except when merely passing through on the way to someplace better. I knew my mother would never let me go there alone, nor would she even consider driving me. What would my reasoning be? That I needed a used book, from a dilapidated bookstore in Dreighton? That I needed to see the mysterious girl down the street--a girl whose name I didn't even know yet, but had somehow fallen madly in love with without ever meeting? In a rare fit of courage, I decided I must do this alone, and, for once, without my parents consent. I would leave the next morning before school. Oh, if Guinevere only knew the risks I was taking.

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