Queen Bee

She was at the top of our class, served in student government, was a yearbook editor, and spent most of our high school years heading up one committee or another. She was a queen bee—one of those brilliant young women who is constantly surrounded by a hive of drones eager to serve her. To be allowed into her circle of friends was to be granted the privilege of being in the know, and part of the popular crowd.

She scooped me up and placed me in her orbit soon after I’d gone out a couple times with the captain of the football team. New to the school, I had no notion of anyone’s status, but with just those two dates, I suddenly found I had one that brought me all kinds of recognition.

“Do you have tickets to Mam’Selles yet?” she asked at the end of trigonometry class.

“What is Mam’Selles?” I responded.

Eyebrows raised she placed a hand on her chest in feigned surprise. She then explained that it was an exclusive organization to which she belonged that put on a girls-ask-the-boys dance each year. “As a member, I can select five girls who I’d personally like to invite to the dance. I have ten tickets so each girl I choose is given two of them.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Do you have tickets to Mam’Selles yet?” she repeated more urgently.

“Uh, no,” I answered.

“Well, I’d like to give you two of them.”

“I wouldn’t know who to ask.”

“You don’t know who to ask?” A wry smile appeared on her face. “But of course you do.” She then explained that she knew all about my going out with the captain and that I should ask him.

“Oh, I couldn’t do that. We hardly know each other.”

She pursed her lips together and scrutinized me closer. “Look, the dance isn’t for another two months. I’ll give you the tickets, and then you figure out when a good time to ask him will be. If a month goes by and you still don’t think you can ask him, then just give me the tickets back and I’ll give them to someone else. Okay?”

At the Mam’Selles dance, we sat at her table—I on his right, she on his left. Throughout the next year, she kept me, or rather us, close at hand. She sat with me at the football games helping to cheer him on. She invited us to spend summer Saturday’s at her family’s beach house. When the captain was leaving town on a series of college visits, she volunteered to take care of me in his absence, which is when the first sting occurred.

I came to school the morning of the day before the captain was to leave to visit Dartmouth College. I sat on the concrete bench outside the library waiting for his bus, just as I did every morning. She joined me, as she always did. But, when he got off the bus, he gave us a sideways glance and headed off in the opposite direction. I was confused. I looked at her and wondered aloud, “Whatever could be the matter with him?”

She sniggered and said, “Oh, he’s so silly. He probably believed what I told him we were going to be doing this weekend.”

“What did you say we were going to be doing?” I asked as my heart began to race.

She put her hand over her mouth smothering a giggle and said, “I told him we were going to drive to Orlando to visit my cousin, and that he has a friend who really wants to meet you.”

I stared at her in horror.

By noon, the incident was all straightened out, but not before I had cried so hard and so long in the ladies room that my chemistry teacher had to come looking for me.

The following week, our triangle was fully restored. She sat with us on the bus to Grad Night, and joined the group of 12 that ate dinner at his parents’ home before prom. And when he went off to college, she and I attended the local community college and did things together on the weekends. She shared my excitement and anticipation for his return for Thanksgiving break. But, as many high school romances go, the captain’s and mine did not last.

When I started dating Scott, a guy from college, she was, again, there at every turn. And when I broke up with him because I didn’t like how much he drank, she was as furious as I’d ever seen her. She was more upset with me about my breaking up with him than he was.

There were other incidents that I easily dismissed when others questioned my continued loyalty to her. “That’s just her,” I’d say, giving her a pass no matter how much her stings hurt.

In my mid-twenties, married, and now living in New England, I returned home one summer to spend a week at my parents’ home. I was subsequently invited to a party a former classmate was giving, and I soon learned that she was planning to attend. I called her up and cheerfully made plans to meet at the party. The party was crowded and loud and I leaned in close and suggested we go downtown to Fitzgerald’s instead. She shook her head, pointed to another friend of ours and said, “We’ve been shopping all day, and are exhausted. We’re just going to head back to my house and call it a night.” I was disappointed but understood. I told her I’d give her a call before I left town. She gave me a thumbs up.

Two days later I did call her. We chatted about the party and then she said, “It was so loud there that we just couldn’t stand it another minute, so we left early and went downtown to Fitzgerald’s. We didn’t leave there until they closed at two.”

The sting of her words buzzed through my adult filters, and I finally understood everything. I wished her well, and that was the end of that.

Copyright DJ Anderson, 2016