and visions of sugar plums ...

Don't know exactly why ... may have been that my playlist shuffled and sweet, young, angelic looking Kalan Porter singing "Beauty" filled my ears (definition of sweet, young, angelic = longish, curlish blonde hair, blue eyes and barely past his teens) ... and "whoosh" I was back at high school ...

I can see the scratched, dinged and dented grey lockers lining the walls ... the checkered linoleum floors ... the windows above the cafeteria covered in fingerprints, circles of fogged breath ... see the principal shuffling her papers on her desk (wonder if she was really this busy or just moving papers to give the illusion to engrain upon young minds the picture of authority) ... the halls are filled with bell-bottoms, tight jeans, shaggy hair ... the nerds, the cool ones, those that cross-over the clique lines, the school hero, Roy and his queen, Nicole ... the tramps, the scamps, the druggies, froggies, the lost, the found ... the pretenders, the contenders, the offenders ...

the smell of pen, papers, book bags, rotting lunches in corners of crowded lockers, laughter, fear, intolerance, indifference, yearnings of acceptance ... the smell of after gym sweat, pre-exam nerves and jitters, flirtations and ignorations ...

so what am I doing in the hallways of Saguenay Valley High School? ... a trip through time, standing there ... a ghostlike form with students walking through me around me ... and I spot him ... the memory that brought me here today ...

will he look the same through these time-jaded, wiser, more experienced eyes?

tall and lanky ... blue jeans and jean jacket ... not too old, nor too new ... and yet not faded except maybe at the seams which only a dozen washings could fashion ... a dark blue t-shirt beneath the unbuttoned buttons of the jacket ... a blonde head above the crowd ... the bluest of eyes shielded beneath the longest of lashes ... pale but not sickly ... quiet, aloof, apart ... beyond it all ...

not arrogant ... not really there ... somewhere else ... dreamy but not in a dreamy kind of way that reached the eyes ...

David Vick ... where are you now? ... where were you then?

his brother the superhero of the school ... the coolest of the cool ... the one who walked hand in hand with the queen .... queens ...

and David ... somewhat shadowed ... not wanting to be found ... a silly grin upon his face at times, struggling for passing grades ... not always the smartest, never the loudest, never in any crowd but part of all ...

a shadow .. that flitted here and there ...

he was so cute ... so tall ... so blonde .. so beautiful ... and so unattainable, so unreachable ...

I was drawn like a moth to a flame ... and played games in circles and spirals ... hey look at me, talk to me, touch me, be something, say something ...

I visited him in at his residence (which was at a college residence building ... I think his parents were far away and apart and he'd been placed here ... he didn't protest, didn't contest, just was ...) in the summer ... laughed and giggled ... walked and talked (of what I'm not sure) ... he knocked at my door 45 miles away and we spent time ... I met his grandmother ... and his mother showed up at his brother's graduation wearing the same dress as Carolyn, a graduate ... his father was big and large and larger than life ...

... and he had a string of mes ... others who were drawn to him in the same way ... and we all cajoled and teased and flitted and fluttered ... but I wonder now ...

his grin used to brighten a hallway, a moment ... a span of time ... I can feel his arms around me when we slow danced as friends at one of those friday night dances ...

... stealing glances ...

innuendos, teen age hearts and dramas and dioramas ...

where did you go? what did you do? who won your heart? who are you?

... do you ever give a thought to us ... those butterflies who danced in your cool flames ... do you ever wonder where, how, why, what are they doing now?

and how is that you don't even show up in a google search ... your brother does as does Carolyn, and Cheryl and Kathy and Wendy ... and me ...

and I guess all I really want to know ... is what did you finally decide to become?

because all that these older eyes have seen while looking back is that those eyes of yours simply mirrored ... certainly didn't let any of us in ... neither kind nor mean nor loving nor hateful ... simply indifferent ... amused at the flitterings and twitterings ...

a cool pale shadow that had yet to decide what it wanted to be. As I said ... what did you choose to be?