This Woe Is Woo

By G.A. Jahn

It’s the 1960s, decades before classroom battles were fought in cyberspace, but long after conflict itself had become a recognized form of courtship. Here, amid cheerleaders and nerds and rehearsals of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ is one old-school way in which warring students could — and still can — make happy disasters of their senior year.

• Language: English
• Publisher: G.A. Jahn
• Release date: Dec 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463118467

Book preview

THIS WOE

IS WOO

G A Jahn

Smashwords edition ©2019 G.A.Jahn

THIS WOE

IS WOO

Vicky Harper giggled something to a boy passing by, then hurried into her third-period English class. The green and white pleats of her cheerleader skirt danced and swirled as she tiptoed excitedly to the first desk in the middle row and dumped the many books from her arms.

Vicky was short enough that she did not have to stoop when standing at her desk. She opened her blue cloth notebook (plastered with Johnson/Humphrey stickers) and slapped through several sheets of paper. Elbows wide, she clicked open the rings; curls of her light blond hair jiggled fetchingly out of place. I gotta show you this, Kay! she said, smiling, to the girl in the desk behind her own.

Kay, a red-haired friend, looked up from her paperback copy of Heart of Darkness and made frightened eyes at the page of writing Vicky was handing her. (The paper contained blocks of tiny script.) "Our ballads aren’t due today are they?"

No, not till Monday, said Vicky plopping into her desk and flipping the tumbled hair off her forehead. The big green ‘T’ on her white sweater became prominent, and her legs, still tan in November, flashed lithely into a happy cross-legged posture. "I got a super idea what to write about last night, she giggled. I sat up till three working on it!"

Kay read the title aloud: ‘Tale of the Trojan Horse’, then made an ishy grin. "Thee Trojan Horse, or is it about Glen?"

Vicky had raised her notebook and was tapping on a slip of paper taped to the inside cover, a cartoon clipped from the Trojan Blade, their school newspaper. It pictured a well-muscled Centaur whose cleated hooves were galloping over the broken bodies of an opposing football team. The creature’s human half was helmeted and emblazoned with a large ‘28,’ the jersey number of Glen Horstead, the All-State running back for the Taylor Park Trojans. Below the cartoon was a headline from the city newspaper: ‘TROJAN HORSE SETS ALL TIME SCORING RECORD.’

Kay was nodding with her lips pressed tightly together and began reading Vicky’s poem. She smiled a few times and asked for a word to be deciphered.

Vicky’s eyebrows stood tall watching her with delight.

Tammy, a thin, bespectacled friend, hurried from her desk in the back of the room. "I wanna see too!" she squeaked, bending down to read over Kay’s shoulder. Several others crowded around as well.

Neat, Cool, Not sexy enough, were some of their comments.

Heading back to her desk Tammy added: Better show it to Glen before you turn it in.

I already did! At his locker just now. Vicky was smiling grandly. "He likes it — well, he said it was sick, but he read it twice. Leaning close, she tapped a short, clear-coated fingernail on one of the stanzas and confided to Kay: The part about his sudden-death touchdown came out pretty good, I thought."

Kay nodded, reading it again.

Settling back in her desk, Vicky sighed, I just have to add one more verse about his cheerleader girlfriend? She batted her eyelids. But that’s hard to do without sounding corny.

It’s, uhh, pretty corny just as it is.

This triggered laughter from neighboring desks.

"I know, I know! — I mean really corny! Vicky, too, was laughing, but then abruptly ceased, snapping the paper from her friend’s hands and scowling at the young man across the aisle from Kay who was craning his neck to see the poem. Just … butt out, four eyes!" she scolded.

The young man, making no reply, returned to his own copy of Heart of Darkness and gave his glasses a push with his finger.

Did you notice? said Kay, glancing at the young man, he’s wearing his knickerbockers again.

Yes, Vicky drawled. She looked around the room to make sure the teacher was still gone, then added, leaning toward the young man, "Quentin, if you’re gonna wear different colored socks, you should at least wear pants that cover’em up … Quennntin!"

As several of their classmates began to giggle, the young man, Quentin Derg, looked over the edge of his desk at his trousers, the cuffs of which, while sitting down, came no closer than four inches to the tops of his shoes. Both socks were an identical shade of brown.

Vicky and the others laughed to see him looking at himself.

Duh, said Kay, I can’t remember if I put socks on this morning!

Duh, Vicky added, "I can’t remember if I took’em off last night!"

In the classroom’s laughter, Quentin’s feeble repartee, if there was one, went completely unheard.

Vicky continued to giggle as she opened her notebook and carefully snapped her poem into the binding rings. Oh, poor Quent, she cooed, you’re such an easy target.

A moment later Kay patted her on the back and whispered, Went too far this time, Vic. He’s gonna end it all for sure!

Vicky glanced over at the windows where Quentin was canting open one of the small rectangular panes. She looked down at her poem, smiling and tilting her head, That’s okay, she said, the lawn needs fertilizing.

This was not met with abundant laughter, however, and she crossed her legs once more while continuing to gaze fondly at the poem.

A shadow fell on the pages, and her notebook was snatched away.

"Quent!"

Before Vicky could scramble to her feet, the boy had slapped the notebook shut and was halfway to the window with it.

God, you … ! Vicky yelled, running clumsily around the front of her desk and toward the windows. She arrived in time to see the notebook ejected through the opening and begin to tumble and mix with the gently falling snow outside. The blue cloth covers opened wide, like butterfly wings, and bared their insides to the heavy flakes; the individual sheets fluttered wantonly in their long, tumbling, three-story descent.

Vicky was too short, even on tiptoe, to see past the outer ledge and locate where exactly the notebook had landed. Dammit! she squeaked, pummeling Quentin’s arm while he, unperturbed, closed and re-latched the window. She kicked his ankle as hard as she could, which he made no effort to evade, and she had to clamp her jaws on the sudden pain inside her sneaker.

Running for the door, she turned back a moment, her arms spread wide, "My college application’s in there, idiot!"

No one was laughing any more. All their classmates, seated or at the windows, stared at her and Quentin with startled faces.

Banging the door open, Vicky dashed down the hall to a vacant stairwell.

The tardy bell had begun to ring as she arrived at the chilly first floor entry. With a steam-like hiss, she thrust fists under her elbows and bucked open the heavy brass-handled door. Cold, wet flakes were coming down thick outside (it was the first snowfall of winter), and only patches of green grass, like shadows trailing the intermittent pines, were still visible among the expanse of white. She hurried along the scrubby evergreens adorning the brick wall of the school building.

Vicky kept close to the bushes so that the kids in her own room could not see her, but a perplexed teacher stared out at her from one of the first-floor classrooms. The falling snowflakes tickled her cheeks and eyelashes; she pulled her chin tight against the turtleneck of her cheerleader sweater.

After some searching, she found the notebook lying on the snowy dirt between two tall shrubs; a layer of melting flakes had already collected on the bared pages. Picking it up, she shook the notebook gently and patted a few sheets with her sweater cuff, then moaned over the cracked binding and smeary rivulets of ink. The cartoon of the Centaur was a muddy blur. She cursed aloud dashing back to the door.

Upstairs, Vicky slapped at her hair to dislodge the icy wet flakes and stamped her feet, leaving spattered footprints on the hallway floor. Through the little window in the door she saw that Mr O’Donnell was seated at his desk and had already begun class. As she entered and hurried across the room — sneakers squeaking — the teacher looked up from the book he was lecturing from.

Sorry, said Vicky, pointing at her desk.