Little Boy by Anthony Prato Read Free Book Online Page B

insult with a kiss. No : She’d slap me silly.
     
    Every available reaction was faulty. I was
outmaneuvered. Trapped. In short, I was in love.
     
    Here was this beautiful girl that dressed
pretty much like all the other loser girls at the dance—but she
didn’t like hoods! And best of all, she hated dancing! Don’t even
get me started on dancing, because I hate it. I despise it.
And I never understood why all these jerks enjoyed jumping around
like freaks to that God-awful music. Usually, if I was forced into
dancing, I’d totally ignore the music being played, like the night
of the Deck the Halls Ball. Sometimes, I’d just think of a song I
really liked, usually a Beatles song, and dance to it instead. As
the horrendous music pulverized my goddamn brain, I’d hum The
Long and Winding Road or She Loves You , or something.
That’s how much I hated dancing; that’s how much the music played
at those dances sickened me.
     
    And hoods—forget about it! The worst thing
about hoods is that they thought they were normal. They didn’t
realize—actually, worse: they didn’t care—that they were a bunch of
followers. Not only was Maria a beautiful Italian Princess, but she
hated the two things I hated most. In the endless sea of adolescent
negativity, we discovered that we had two crucial dislikes in
common. How ironic.
     
    My ears stood at attention and I knew I’d
struck gold. What a break! I thought. The hardest part of
getting acquainted with any girl was discovering some mutual
interests. Already, we had important things in common.
     
    I could always tell a good joke to get a
girl’s attention, but anything beyond that was excruciatingly
difficult to conjure up. Stuff that came so naturally to the hoods
and jocks—the small talk, the chit-chat, the shit that followed
“sup”—was a pain in the ass. I was a good conversationalist, but
the trouble was in getting one started with people, especially
girls, most of whom couldn’t care less about current events outside
the newest shade of lipstick. Without realizing it, Maria had
opened up a door to my true personality. It wouldn’t be the last
such time.
     
    “You don’t like dancing?” I practically
yelled out to her. “Jesus, I despise dancing.”
     
    “Well,” she said, “I don’t despise it.
I just don’t like it, okay?”
     
    I was in heaven. This information hit me like
a punch in the chest. I stood there silently for a few moments, in
awe. You really don’t understand how hot dancing was, and
how rare it was for someone to dislike it. When I look back on it
now, I still think how amazing that one thing was.
     
    She started to look bored, so I asked her
what else she didn’t like. Maria thought it was a pretty dumb
question, I could tell, so she didn’t really bother answering it.
But even though she looked bored, she was sexy. Very sexy.
     
    “Well, what I mean is, why don’t you like to
dance?”
     
    “It’s not that I hate to dance, it’s just
that I hate it when I meet these stupid hoods and all they want to
do is dance. I can’t meet a guy and start to like him that way. I
have to talk with him first, and then I know if I want to dance
with him.”
     
    I wanted to propose to Maria right then and
there. She wanted to talk first! I couldn’t believe it! What a
stroke of luck. It was time to go in for the kill.
     
    “So,” I said, “we’re talking right now,
aren’t we?” That’s why I grabbed you before—I really wanted to talk
to you before I asked you to dance.”
     
    “But…” she said with a perplexed look on her
face, and didn’t bother to finish. She restarted: “Well, we can
talk, but I can’t dance with you because you’ re going out with
Lynn. And you also like Jeff’s sister.”
     
    Now this I couldn’t believe. Somehow, I had
gone from speaking to Jeff’s sister on the phone to liking her.
     
    “But I don’t like her!” I demanded. I had to
get that crazy thought out of her