By Christopher Lake
Date: 15 March 2001
The Trouble With Acire
Acire was pretty girl. She was a good girl. She was small and slight and Irish and had long straight red hair and fair skin. She was desperately hopelessly irrevocably in love with Kris. Kris didn't love her back. She would follow him around all day--they attended the same high school--and get mutual friends to ask him questions. Questions like, "Will you go to the Prom with me?" and "Do you love me as much as I love you?"
Kris didn't. Didn't want to go to the Prom with her or love her as much as she loved him. He didn't really love her at all except in a general "I love all of humanity" way. This was not much consolation for Acire. Acire did not take it well, either. She would sit in her room on weekends and refuse to answer the phone and listen to the Cure's "Lovesong" forty times straight. She would drink Diet Cokes until her throat was raw.
After several months of this Acire got bored. She decided to up the ante by telling Kris through mutual friends that if he didn't return her affections she might do something desperate--like hurt herself. Kris didn't know what to think. But he was mostly alarmed. So he agreed to have lunch with her in the school cafeteria.
One afternoon they sat down together, each having gotten, by total conincidence, the same Hungarian goulash and orange jello. Kris said hi. Acire looked into his eyes for what seemed like an eternity. He wished she would stop. Finally, after some awkward small-talk, she handed him a tape with a note taped to it. "Read this when you get home," she said. Then she got up and left.
Kris was confused, but he did as he was told. The tape was a dub of all seventeen remixes of "Lovesong." For a brief moment he was touched. Then he read the note. It said, in meticulously-written script, "Maybe this song will let you know how deep my feelings are toward you... Just one thing, though--make sure you give me the tape back. It was expensive, and I'm sure I'll need to use it for something else sometime. Thanks!" Acire was a Virgo. Not that is mattered to Kris, but still... He folded the note and put it and the tape in his underwear drawer on top of the speeding ticket he was too afraid to show his parents. He closed the drawer and went outside to play basketball.
Kris and Acire both graduated that spring. They never did go to the Prom together. Nor did Acire kill herself. They attended different State Universities far apart from each other. Kris last saw Acire one mid-semester break at a gas station. It was January and bitterly cold. She was pumping gas herself at looked over at Kris with a steely gaze. Neither one said a word, and they again went their separate ways.
Acire went on to a distinguished career in real estate. Kris found himself stuck in one dead-end retail job after another. But he did eventually meet his true soulmate, a stunning woman with the intellect of Sylvia Plath and the looks of "National Velvet"-period Liz Taylor. She was an Aquarian. Not that it mattered, though.
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