Callie

Kelley Fong

My junior year yearbook rests on my bookshelf alongside, fittingly, other paraphernalia from my high school years: my SAT prep books; an old math textbook I never returned; a few scattered copies of Sports Illustrated whose cover athletes I can no longer remember. I reach for the yearbook, open it, and smile as I flip through pages of hastily scrawled messages from former friends who by now are nothing more than acquaintances and old acquaintances today merely strangers. I look more closely at the messages, realizing that I’ve lost touch with the great majority of the people whose words lie in the book’s pages; most of the inside jokes made immortal in my book now escape me. But even as I have transitioned from adolescence into adulthood, one girl’s message above all others has stayed with me.

You have to understand, first, that setting crazy goals has always kept me from getting bored. For some reason, personal challenges give me a rush found in few other places, places I have searched many times over to no avail. For example, I used to have this terrible habit of speaking in clichés, so one day I decided to go cliché-free to prove to myself that I didn’t need them, that I could be completely original. I lasted about four hours before failing and resolving to try again the next day. It took me a week to finally go a day without a cliché, but when I succeeded I understood the value of focus, of perseverance. A couple years ago, I made myself a lefty for a few months, just to see what it felt like. I adapted nicely to lefthandedness, surprisingly, and after a couple weeks of cramped frustration I found writing with my left hand to be nearly as natural as with my right. Then, having succeeded, I reverted back to my original way of life. But the exercise was not for naught; from that little venture I gained ambidexterity. And despite being quite the carnivore – or perhaps because of it – I made a pledge to vegetarianism my freshman year of college, for no one’s reasons but my own. I was a regular at the salad bar, swore off hamburgers, and somehow I survived. Not eating meat was demanding, but when I succeeded I found true satisfaction. It was like year-round Lent, except you didn’t have to pray or anything.

In June of my junior year in high school, I set out to accomplish something that, to my knowledge, had never been done before, something that would garner me nothing tangible, not even fame, but give me perhaps the most personal joy I might ever know. My plan was to collect in my yearbook the signature of every student in my grade. I justified this scheme by saying that I was practically a senior, finals were an afterthought, and I needed something with which to occupy my time. The task would be tough, but not insurmountable, I reasoned, because I knew mostly everyone in my grade. After all, it wasn’t like I went to one of those huge public high schools with five thousand students; we were only talking about around a couple hundred people. I figured the hardest part about it would be finding enough space for all my inscriptions, as the yearbook only provided three or four pages for signatures.

Looking back, I admit that I was slightly conceited. But they say all mythic heroes have their share of hubris, right? Anyway, I liked to call it self-confidence. I’d just been named senior class president and captain of the varsity soccer and baseball teams; there was nothing I felt I couldn’t do. Oh, sure, my grades were slipping a bit and I had the SATs to worry about, but these things seemed relatively trivial, overshadowed by the fact that I sat at the right lunch table with the right people and I went to all the important parties. Maybe I wasn’t the most popular guy in my grade, but I was certainly in the vicinity of it. People I’d never seen before knew who I was, and when they finally met me they looked at me in awe as they would a celebrity. To the scared little freshmen, I practically was a celebrity.

The first day of the yearbook-signing mayhem went relatively well. I got most of my close friends and everyone in my French class as well as the cheerleaders and the guys on the baseball team. The thing about yearbook signing is that no one really pauses to reflect upon the year, and no one inscribes anything particularly meaningful or personal; it’s all of the generic “have a nice summer” variety. So it goes rather quickly once you get started. All I had to do was give my yearbook to one person and then inevitably others nearby would line up to sign. By the end of the day, I had filled up all the blank pages in the back and now people were writing in the margins in an array of variously colored pens. I had to admit, I was popular and it felt good.

By the third day, I was a yearbook machine. I had a whole spiel that I would hastily recite to people I wasn’t really friends with – “Hey-Jordan-what’s-up-I-was-wondering-if-you-could-do-me-a-favor-and-sign-my-yearbook-thanks.” Sometimes, I admit, I was slightly apprehensive approaching people I hadn’t talked to before, but I played it off like I did this all the time. Though perhaps my internal confidence was shaky, I held up the façade of a professional signature commissioner, if such a thing existed. I had perfected the art of collecting signatures to a science, precise and predictable. The trick, I soon realized, was asking people in an assured tone, like it would be their honor to sign my yearbook. And when they were asked at the right time, they always happily obliged. By the end of the week I’d crossed nearly everyone off the list I’d made at the start of the mission, from Lizzy Abrams to Dave Zuckerman.

The next Monday I approached Callie Parker, a quiet, mousy-haired girl who had never been on any of my “lists” until now. I found her sitting alone in the library with a book entitled German Artillery of World War I. So she was doing a history project or something. There was no going back now, so I suavely slid into the seat across from her. She lifted her eyes ever so slightly and gave me a puzzled look. I sensed the rest of the people in the library staring at me with equal confusing. Now I somewhat regretted being associated with her in a place so public, but I took a deep breath and reached into my backpack for the ill-fated yearbook. I could feel myself blushing. When had I ever blushed around a girl like Callie Parker? I tried to sound debonair and sophisticated as I gave her a sly smile and offered her my yearbook. “Wanna sign my yearbook?” I asked.

The silence was overwhelming. She raised one eyebrow. I’d always wondered how people were able to do that. “Are you sure?” she asked, almost as if to see if I was serious or if this was some cruel joke.

I nodded avidly, trying to show her with my facial expressions that I genuinely valued whatever she might inscribe in my book. I don’t think I succeeded. I snuck a glance at everyone else to make sure they weren’t watching this. Me, star right wing and shoo-in for next fall’s homecoming king, practically getting turned down by a girl who spent her Friday nights practicing the piano – it was unthinkable. I expected her to be completely flattered that I even asked and beg to sign as most of the girls like her had done. Then she would draw my name in hearts all over her binder and… okay, maybe I was taking things a little too far. But still, I didn’t expect her to say what she said next. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not,” she said as she deftly went back to reading about artillery.

To tell you the truth, I was stunned. I didn’t know what to do – should I make a scene and embarrass her? Or should I play it cool, like it didn’t really matter to me? I was probably imagining things in that center-of-the-universe, typically teenage attitude of mine, but everyone seemed to be watching for my reaction with bated breath. “Okay,” I stammered, trying to sound nonchalant, “see you around, then.” I got up and left, my face burning.

The next day I approached her in statistics class, a bit nervously, actually. This was a girl whom I’d known since kindergarten; our mothers had been on PTA together and we had gone to their annual Labor Day barbecue since I was six. Of course, I’d been dragged there every year by my parents, and while there I would barely say two words to her. This was different. Once I set my mind to something, I wouldn’t – I couldn’t – let myself fail. I had to get her signature not only to prove something to myself, but maybe to everyone else as well. I had to do it to show that I could get the signature of anyone I wanted.

“Callie,” I started, “yesterday – you know, in the library – why, um, why didn’t you want to sign my yearbook?” This didn’t come out as smoothly as I had hoped.

She looked directly at me; I had to avert my eyes. She spoke clearly and with conviction, the way I wished I felt. “You want a list?” (Uh-oh, I was thinking, and I kind of wished I had called her on the phone or something more personal.) She didn’t give me a chance to respond before she continued, more definitively than I had ever seen her before. Well, it was really the first time she had any power over me, anyway. “You haven’t gotten to know me at all in the ten or so years we’ve known each other, and what’s worse is that you haven’t cared to know me or even give me a chance – not like I’m imploring you for one, either. You care so much about your image and not enough about you. I’ve seen you. You’re embarrassed just to take your little sister out to a movie.” This was true, and each word she spoke hit me squarely in the chest, demolishing my pride in one fell swoop. “You’re arrogant, and self-centered,” – what so many girls would tell me in the years to come – “and I knew whatever I wrote in your yearbook wouldn’t be positive or complimentary in the least. I figured I’d spare you.” I blinked. For the second time in two days I was dumbfounded by a girl I’d never thought twice about before. “Don’t sugarcoat it,” I muttered under my breath. But she had walked away before I could say anything more, with her vanishing any remaining hopes of accomplishing my perhaps not-so-simple ambition.

I would love to tell you about how I made a complete turnaround in my life after my encounter with Callie, because we all love happy endings. Maybe in a storybook or a chick flick I might have realized how stupid I had been. I might have begged her to forgive me, and she might have signed my yearbook after all. Maybe we’d end up getting married and having three kids and a golden retriever and this would be the story to tell to the grandchildren, and we’d laugh about it afterwards.

Life isn’t like that, though. She held out, and all though every day for the rest of my high school career I wanted to ask her to reconsider, I never did. Mostly I was afraid of being rejected again, and I didn’t think my reputation was worth her message in my yearbook. I didn’t see her all summer, I avoided her at her barbecue, and I didn’t talk to her all of senior year. It is only now that I begin to wonder what might have been. I have inscriptions from nearly everyone in the junior class, but without her signature I am left with nothing; the one my book lacks negates each of the ones it has. Even though I can’t find her name on any of the pages of my book, Callie is the only one who truly left her mark.

And when the time comes for us to have a high school reunion, maybe I won’t mind so much what everyone else thinks of me. Maybe I’ll find the courage to walk up to her and start a conversation. And maybe I’ll hold out my junior-year yearbook and finally obtain the signature that has eluded me for years. But I’m not holding my breath.