opportunity

Attribution Sascha Grosser

At 14 years of age, Claude was a lonely schoolboy. He was not particularly good looking, wearing spectacles and with a smattering of pimples. But Claude was a passionate lad, he loved his cat, he was committed to watercolour painting, and he had a huge crush on Alice. He froze whenever she was near. That was no wonder. For Alice, in the same class as Claude, was gorgeous with long black hair, shining eyes and a cheeky smile. Claude had never spoken to her, he was far too shy. But the end of the year was approaching, and Alice was changing classes and would no longer be in Claude’s class. He had to work fast.

After class one day, Claude noticed Alice remained sitting at her desk while the others were leaving. He braced himself and approached her. But before he could speak, Big Bob the Bruiser loped up to her.

‘How’s your brother, Alice? Is he getting better?’ he asked. She smiled. They started talking and left the room together.  Claude, pretending to occupy himself with his books, wondered how her brother had been sick. He didn’t even know she had a brother.

A week later, Claude was in the gym. He noticed Alice enter dressed in her tight gym outfit. She looked sublime.  He halted his ping pong game and shuffled towards her, but Muscles Mike got to her first.

‘Don’t use the gymnastic rings, the fittings are loose,’ Mike advised in a fatherly tone. Mike took Alice off to explain the problem with the equipment. Claude watched them before returning to his ping pong. He lost his game. He found it difficult not to keep glancing over to the pull-up bars where Alice was exercising.

It was the last week of the school year. Claude was inspecting the notice board when he glimpsed Alice striding down the corridor. She was alone.  This was it. His moment of truth. He had to act. Claude took a deep breath and sidled up to her. She stopped.

‘Your hair looks so nice when you brush it to one side like that,’ he gushed. ‘Your hair is always so gorgeous, especially when you wear ribbons. And you are so athletic in the gym on the treadmills and with the resistance bands, and you perform so gracefully on the pull-up bars and battle ropes. And I adore your paintings in art class, how do you paint those mountains so realistically?’

‘Stop it,’ snapped Alice. ‘And get out of my way, you greasy crawler.’ She brushed past him and marched off down the corridor with her nose in the air.

Claude stood alone, head down, glancing at the shards of his soul scattered on the floorboards. His world had ended; his heart collapsed. Such a shock that his angel could speak to him that way. He wasn’t greasy. Through the welling tears, he watched her sway along the corridor and vanish around the corner, the last vestige of a lost opportunity.