IJMC - A Love Story

For those of you following the story of my headache, it's still here! 
We're going three days strong and still powered by Energizer. Ah well, 
anyone want to send me some Tylenol III?			 -dave
							 




Molly and Jumper and Mambo
Strains on the FM Radio
-  A Short Love Story by Garrett Kaminaga

Jumper had known Molly Jensen since the moist-eyed days of early youth.
Charlie Rickford had teased Jumper about hanging out with girls -- until
Molly beat him up and made him cry in front of Arthur Jones, Jonathan Loo
and even Quentin Clarke.  And this was in _the second grade_, where crying
meant the end of hanging out, of chasing each other at near light-speed on
bicycles, of endless adventures in the any-world of the fantastic
playground.  It was, in the second grade, like another fall of man.  But
Charlie was reunited with the gang the next day, his . . . unmanly tears
forgotten in the furious pace of a seven-year-old's life.

Jumper liked Molly because she never asked him to marry her, never wanted
to play house, was interested more in transformers than in the fake Barbie
dolls that you could cut the hair off of and it would never grow back Not
that Jumper pretended or even thought that girls were yucky; he liked them
on the whole, but they were so much less real than Molly was.  Jumper still
got frightened at the movies, went swimming and played
get-dirty-get-scraped tag with the guys, but he reserved his most fantastic
adventures for playing with Molly.  The any-world of Charlie and Arthur and
Jonathan always had the same machine-gun fights (even when they played
knights and dragons), the same gory deaths, the same _everything_. Molly
and Jumper created worlds better than anything on TV, filled with the
black-and-white hopes and fears of second grade, because Jumper and Molly
were best friends.

When they reached intermediate school, and Charlie and Arthur all eagerly
pretended to be grossed-out by spin the bottle and the other I'm curious
games of adolescence, Molly and Jumper, impossibly, grew closer together.
One day at the park Molly wanted to play on the swings instead of play
four-square, and she began to talk about the grayer hopes and fears of
thirteen-ness.  And Jumper, amazingly, found that he really didn't mind. So
they learned from each other -- Molly talked about training bras, about
stupid slumber parties, about the unbelievable pain of braces.  Jumper
talked about his middle name (Xavier), about not making the basketball team
cut, about the requisite machismo of being a teenage guy.  And they both
got to sleep a little easier because of it.

They stayed friends even through the intense world of high school.  Through
Nazi history teachers who pulled pop quizzes and looked at someone else but
asked you a question, through class struggles that made Sally Hart laugh at
Jumper when he asked her out, through Valentine's dances and Homecoming
games, club fundraisers and the slow invasion of the pressures of the
outside world.  Not that they were boyfriend and girlfriend.  You never saw
Molly and Jumper talking and crying or stuck together like siames twins.
They didn't even go to prom together -- Jumper went with Sally, who was
much nicer after she stopped hanging out with the soc crowd, and Molly went
with Quentin.  They exchanged pictures and signed yearbooks and talked just
like regular friends, right up through graduation.  But only Molly knew
that Jumper came close to flunking out of school, and only Jumper knew that
Molly had slammed the door in Quentin's face after prom (although Quentin
told it differently).

Then, while waiting in the registration line at State, wedged between his
roommate (who claimed to be an anarchist, making Jumper go look the word
up) and a huge woman who wore a hideous shade of green and smelled of
anchovies, Jumper realized that he loved Molly.  All it took was his
roommate telling him, as Molly walked into the gym, that his girlfriend had
arrived.  Jumper started with the automatic response of "She's not my
girlfriend,"since he had been asked that too many times to count in high
school, when allthe memories of their time together pressured it back down
his throat and lodged it painfully in his chest.  For the entire semester,
when Jumper was at Molly's dorm doing frosh english or just talking, his
mind was racing through thousands of scenarios of confessing his love.
"Molly, I love you" wasn't quite right, and the moonlit walk through Bishop
Yard was a little too saccharin (and dangerous).   When they fell to 
talking as they had been so used to, he lied when she asked him about his 
love life.  Jumper knew that if she didn't love him (how could she, so 
beautiful, so warm, love me? he thought) then that put their friendship 
in a precarious, awkward position.  Their 12-year friendship was too much 
to gamble.  But then, the pain that had stayed from his realization in 
the registration line (Jumper had thought that it was indigestion at 
first) was eating him up from inside and burning through his skin every 
second of the day.

Then, one night Molly told him that she had a crush on Adam Rawlings,the
athletic water polo player down the hall.  Jumper died inside.  Dammit!
Jumper only wanted Molly to be happy, but that meant her having Adam, and
not having him.  But Jumper, who truly loved Molly, decided to get him for
her.  Jumper and Adam knew each other from weekly physics problem sets,
and,through cajoling and begging and innuendo, Jumper got Adam to ask her
out. Then, as Jumper was about to go drink himself into a stupor over what
he had done, Molly asked him to come over.

"Adam asked me out."

Jumper acted surprised.  "Great!  What're you going to do?"

"I'm not going.  I told him no."

Jumper said nothing.  "Jumper, I've known you since second grade."  Her
words came slowly, choked.  "I ... ever since high school ... "

And Jumper knew that she loved him too.  He said nothing.  He grabbed her
hand and ran outside, into the parking lot, where the cold bit at the skin,
but Jumper and Molly didn't mind because they were warmed inside and the
moon was coming out from behind the clouds and someone, somewhere, was
playing mambo music a little too loudly, and they didn't have to say
anything to each other because saying anything would have been
anticlimactic, and he slipped his arms around her and amazed, felt her
against him, and he lowered his lips to hers, happy beyond all joys.

Then a truck ran them both over and smashed them to bits.