Sometimes i go out by myself, and i look across the water...

       when I was in high school I was in love with this girl named Valerie for a heart beat or two.
She was a real tomboy-looking girl with this pretty face that didn't really match anything else about her.

      I remember her in the kind of tight black pants that are cool in present times (except they weren't see through back then) and wearing some big ass skater shoes that matched her ears, which always stuck out through her hair.

      she had this scratchy voice like Emma Stone, Jennifer Tilly, or Eliza Dushku, and I had always been a fan of that, even in my high school times. I remember just wanting to listen to her talk, even if it wasn't to me.

      I remember one time a few of us were standing in the commons or whatever it was called where everyone hung out during lunch. we had this little are surrounded by some lockers that opened up on the third side to accommodate a table for some of us to sit. I usually stood.
      I remember it was around the time that kids figured out you could turn a can of keyboard cleaner upside down and suck on it to "get high". This day I was watching our small group pass around this can when it came to Valerie. She grabbed it, turned it upside down and sucked in a giant breath of propellant. I remember the next part even now, over ten years later.
      She moved the can away from her lips, turned pale, and fell to the floor in what was called "flopping" back then (since you looked like a freshly caught fish when it happened) because it happened so much that it acquired a proper name.
      When the other kids standing around us saw what happened, they left. They took off like they didn't want to get caught or be responsible for what had happened, or because they were turds down inside. And I was left standing there with a girl passed out at my feet who I had a crush on.
      I quickly picked her up and sat her on one of the now empty chairs all around us. As I pushed some dark hair out of her face she asked me what happened. I told her that she had passed out from inhaling that shit and she looked up at me, embarrassed. that kind of embarrassment that comes after you did something you know was stupid in front of other people.
      After a while she was well enough to get up and go back to class eventually.

I'd like to say that we became friends and talked more often after that, but we didn't. I liked her and I wanted to save her, and when I had my chance, I picked her up and sent her away.

All I have left of that time now is a terrible yearbook photo and a red backpack just like the one I used throughout high school.

But I still remember her sometimes, barely as tall as my chest, hair in a sloppy pony tail, raspy voice laughing at something a bit harder than everyone else around her.

     That was Valerie.