Perry Rankling was nine years old when he first fell in love. Her name was Lauren Cowie and she wore pretty red dresses and white ankle socks. Appropriate to her surname, Lauren’s eyes were as large and as brown as a heifer’s, or so Perry remembered them to be. She would suffer with hayfever, and during seasons of high pollen, would make grunting noises with her nose. At will, Lauren could make her gums bleed, and once, during recess, Perry stood at the fringe of ten excited children watching as her milky white teeth turned the colour of rose petals. He later went home, took a pin from his mother’s sewing tin, and punctured his upper gum. When he smiled, he had the appearance of a boy who had been eating glass. He never felt so happy.
In the summer of 1986, softened asphalt turned the grass shades of autumn. Tree sap speckled windscreens of cars sheltering under thick boughs, the birdsong hushed by fatigue. Every living creature moved with measured steps, as did the boy from Pakistan named Aneil, and Perry, both of whom paced listlessly at the school gates. A gentle zephyr lifted the fragrance of exotic spices from Aneil’s skin, cumin and paprika, and in later years, whenever Perry ordered Indian take-away, the smell would remind him not of his friend, but instead of the ersatz pearl necklace he stole from his mother’s dresser: low-grade costume Jewellery, but to Perry, priceless. Under a sun that bleached the horizon so both earth and the heavens were equal, he and Aneil waited. Upon seeing Lauren leave the school building, Perry gave Aneil the small crushed velvet box containing the necklace and instructed him to tell Lauren that, “Perry Rankling loves you with all his heart.” He then ran behind the bicycle shed, awaiting Aneil’s return. Like a mirage merging from the sweltering haze of a desert, Aneil came back a few minutes later with two things: the first was the same velvet box. The second was the crushing news that Lauren had described Perry as a dog. That night Perry sobbed in his bedroom, and congested with misery, he breathed through his nose. The noise he made reminded him of Lauren when she had hayfever, and while wretched with sadness, Perry Rankling smiled and thanked God for bringing him a little closer to the one he loved.
In the Cowie aftermath, Perry found sanctuary in his mind where scenarios played out in his favour. There, Lauren would approach him. They would talk, and Lauren would lean forward and kiss his lips. Sometimes this would happen in class where everyone could see. Sometimes under cherry blossom or behind the bicycle shed. The sky was always bright and Lauren’s hand always soft. And so it was that rejection tilled the fields of imagination and from its fertile bed grand and wonderful moments were fostered.