We Dream of Love From a Young Age

fiction in which childish naïveté results in kisses and young romance

It was her first kiss. The inside of his mouth tasted like Lunchables ham mixed with dirt; all the boys were playing with dirt on the playground then and sometimes the weaker ones would be made to eat it. There was also a bit of a metallic taste, and she was surprised by how wet his mouth was. His hands were roaming all over her body, desperately pushing into various parts of her with no discernible rhythm or pattern. He was making a lot of moaning sounds, and even his feet seemed to have been lost to the passion of the moment as they exaggeratedly twitched like the legs of a cockroach on its back. Encouraged, she deepened the kiss, pushing him further against the chain link fence, locking their mouths together so tightly that canines knocked against one another and the two tongues knotted into one. She feared he might be at risk of swallowing her face. 

When she finally released him, she looked toward the crowd of their peers who had gathered to excitedly cheer on the long-awaited and long-encouraged display. Their laughing faces dropped and their raucous shouts of encouragement quieted as the boy took a few shaky steps before puking up a torrent of blood. Sticky tendrils of the thick liquid elastically drooped from his lips as he hunched over, his hands on his knees and his shoulders shaking as if he were really cold. Slowly he raised his head, a never-ending stream of blood cascading down his chin onto his faded Sketchers and spilling onto the asphalt of the tetherball court. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but the girl could tell from the blood gushing out of the deep bite marks on his tongue that talking might be too painful. Besides, it’d be difficult to try and formulate words around the deep pool of blood that didn’t seem to lessen no matter how much the boy swallowed or spat. So he just stared at the girl using eyes wide with shock and disbelief, fearfully soliciting an explanation. 

All the spectators in the crowd had been too stunned to move but now, in the corner of her eye, she could see some of them turn away to vomit, while others finally shocked themselves out of their stupor and started screaming as they ran to get help. The girl spit into her hand, releasing a mouthful of blood whose deep red was softened by her saliva. Floating around this liquid mixture were flecks of pink that had such a rubbery appearance she momentarily thought she might have chewed on the bear eraser adorning the top of her #2 pencil too hard. She looked back up and held the boy’s gaze, slowly being overtaken by a paralyzing shock at this turn of events. 

“What?” she said in response to the earnest, questioning look on his pallid face. “This is how I love you.” 

He started screaming. Or, he tried to, but all that came out were loud aggressive gurgling sounds at the back of his throat while his face contorted in pain.

She was genuinely perplexed; she had expected him to be more ecstatic. When he keeled over instead of throwing a triumphant fist in the air and emitting a celebratory “whoop!” like when his kickball team won, she felt like the rug had been swept out from under her. He had been chasing her for months–– he terrorized her with declarations of love, he poked deep marks into the flesh of her arms with a newly sharpened pencil every time he passed her in class, he threw wood chips that gave her face tiny cuts, and he left a ringing noise in her ears every time he aggressively shouted Top 40 love songs into them–– if her love wasn’t his end goal, then what was it all for? 

For a quick second, she wondered if she had misinterpreted his signals. But when she had told her mom about how she was being treated, her mom said this was all happening to her because he liked her. This kind of confused the girl, since everyone said the boy was “gay” and, besides, her bruises and scabs didn’t feel like he liked her, but she decided to trust her mom. After all, her mom was older and married, and the girl was only nine years old. 

Once the girl saw the truth of her situation, she decided she should show him she liked him, too. Then his tireless hounding after her could end, and maybe they could be like all the other couples she’d seen. To do that, of course, the first step would be to kiss, but it would have to be a special kind of kiss that matched the ferocity of his passion. This was what she was trying to explain to all the adults who had been asking her questions ever since the boy was taken in an ambulance, but she didn’t think they were getting it. She could tell by the frenzied and desperate explanations her mom was giving the officers that her mom was also missing the point. Oh well, there was little more the girl could do now. 

She showed no remorse for what had happened, nor did she feel any, because it had all been done out of love, and, though love had put him in a hospital bed and required emergency oral surgery, love can be forgiven even when it’s disguised as hurt. She thought this was common knowledge, but as she distanced herself from the frenetic energy of the adults and made her way toward the playground, where she proceeded to sit on the swing and serenely kick her legs higher and higher into the warm evening air, she realized more people still had to learn this basic fact. She thought maybe one day she would take it upon herself to share this message, but for now she chose to luxuriate in the peace that only comes to those privileged few who are intimately acquainted with enlightenment.