Chapter Text
I remember it very clearly. I was in grade 5, sitting on one of the splintery wooden benches with my friend Newt, who at the time had a bright blue cast on his leg because he’d decided it was a genius idea to jump off the top of the big kids’ slide and immediately eat dirt.
He was milking the injury for all it was worth, obviously. We were halfway through complaining about maths homework when Ben came sprinting toward us like the school was on fire, waving his arms and yelling, “There’s a fight! There’s a fight! Between the grade fours!!”
I remember blinking at him and going, “Huh?” because we were in grade five and our school was painfully boring. No one fought. The worst thing that had ever happened was someone stealing a Zooper Dooper from someone else’s lunchbox.
So the idea of an actual fight felt illegal.
Ben grabbed my arm, I grabbed Newt, and despite the fact that he had a broken leg, I somehow ended up dragging him across the oval while Ben yanked us both toward the top courts.
By the time we got there, there was already a circle of kids chanting, and right in the middle were two fourth graders actually throwing punches. Not shoving. Not crying. Punching.
I was so shocked I forgot to even say anything. Then I started hearing the yelling.
“Hey, don’t touch the new kid!” “He hurt my friend!”
It turned out some dumb fourth grader had accidentally tripped a scrawny new kid on his first day, and suddenly it was hero versus hero in the most dramatic way possible. And one of those so-called heroes just had to be this pink-cheeked, buzz-cut blonde with the angriest little face I’d ever seen. Gally. Even back then he was a pain to look at, all scrunched eyebrows and puffed-up pride.
“This nerd fell on accident! I didn’t trip him!” one of them shouted. “That’s a lie! I saw it with my own eyes!” Gally shot back instantly, not even hesitating. “He’s nothing but a greenie!” I remember turning to Newt and bursting out laughing because Gally, in the middle of this ridiculously serious argument, actually fake-picked his nose and started chanting, “Greenie! Greenie!” like he was leading some kind of revolution.
And the worst part?
The entire playground joined in.
Kids were cheering, stomping, repeating it over and over until the new kid Thomas, I’d later learn, went bright red, shoved past the circle, and ran off crying. And Gally just stood there, breathing hard, chin tipped up like he’d just won something important. I don’t even think he noticed me watching. But I noticed him.
—
By the end of the term I’d mostly filed him away in my head as “that insane blonde kid who starts fights and calls people greenie.”
We weren’t friends. We didn’t hang out. We barely even talked.
But I knew who he was, and apparently he knew who I was too. One day I was heading to my usual lunch spot near the back fence. The good patch of shade that Newt and I had unofficially claimed as ours when I heard someone jogging up behind me. I turned around, fully prepared to tell Ben to stop being annoying, and instead I saw Gally.
He stopped a little too close, like he hadn’t planned what to do once he actually reached me. His hair was still cut short, his cheeks permanently pink like he’d just run a mile even when he hadn’t, and he had this weird determined look on his face. “Uh,” he started, scuffing the toe of his shoe against the concrete.
“Do you… have a girlfriend?” I just stared at him. I was ten. He was nine- no probably more like eight or something. “What?” I asked, genuinely confused. He shrugged, trying to look casual and failing miserably. “Just asking. Like. If you did. Or whatever.”
I remember squinting at him like he’d grown a second head. “No?” I said slowly. “Why would I? Only the popular kids think they have a girlfriend. Why?” He huffed like I’d somehow answered wrong.
“Well, I could. If I wanted to,” he muttered defensively, crossing his arms. “Get one, I mean.” “Right,” I said, nodding like this was a completely normal conversation to be having in primary school.
There was this painfully awkward silence where he just stood there, face getting redder by the second. I was about to tell him I was going to eat my sandwich now when he suddenly blurted, way too loudly.
“I LOVE YOU!”
The entire world went quiet in my head. A couple of kids nearby turned. I swear even the pigeons stopped. Gally’s eyes went wide immediately, like he hadn’t meant to say it that loud- or maybe hadn’t meant to say it at all.
His face went violently red, right up to the tips of his ears like a kettle over steaming. He made this strangled noise, spun around, and bolted across the oval without another word.
I just stood there, dropping my neatly packed lunchbox, trying to process what had just happened. And that was the day I learned that Gally, resident hot-headed menace of grade four, was apparently also insane.