Chapter 12
Human Boy/Girl Relations,
or
How Kile Messed Everything Up Just In Time for Summer
Tuesday at school was relatively uneventful, until the boys were standing at the bus line for heading home. Robert had decided he would invite a few friends over for a small party on Saturday, even though his birthday was Thursday, and he wanted to use it as an excuse to invite Marissa. She was already twelve, tall and a glowing auburn red-head.
At just about every level, Rob realized he was too young to be interested in girls, but deep down he also recognized just how pretty he thought Marissa was…even though it was just last Fall when their friends had had an argument, and she ended up nearly knocking him out and started a full on brawl. He didn’t realize it, but the redheaded tiger in Marissa was probably all the more appealing because his mother was just the same sort of willful type.
So he asked Kile to stand in line for just a moment while he went over to the line for 21C. It was a perfect setup. Ronald, one of his best friends in the sixth grade was also in the line just two kids in front of Marissa and he could invite him and oh-so-casually mention something to Marissa at the same time.
Kile stood behind watching, eye brows, even in Little Ricky glimmer form, cocked to the left a bit while his head was cocked to the right. Something was going on with Robert. His voice sounded funny and he seemed nervous. The troll could smell that his human friend had also gotten a little sweaty all of a sudden. He listened intently with his troll ears and could just pick up the conversation.
“Hey Ron!” Robert greeted. Trying to remain calm he added to the side, “How’s it going Marissa?”
“Hey, dude! Wassup?” the other human male responded.
The female just nodded, smiling slightly and said, “Z’it’goin?”
“Ron, I was wondering if you’d like to come to my house up in Maple Springs Saturday afternoon for some video games and stuff. It’s my birthday this week and I’m kind of, like, having a little party.” Rob’s voice seemed to Kile to be a little squeaky once or twice, and the troll wondered if it was because Robert was nervous.
“Oh yeah! Definitely,” was the reply.
Robert apparently wrote something on his friends hand with a pen. Then he stepped back.
“Hey, uh, Marissa? You don’t happen to like video games, do ya?” he asked before turning away.
Kile sniggered a little at Ronald’s reaction. It was a cross between a sneer and repulsion and the little troll thought it was kind of nice to see someone other than himself get the look for once.
“Girls, don’t play video games!” Ron said and sort of waved his hand out in front of him to place it between Rob and Marissa.
“Actually,” Marissa spoke up and eyed Ronald, “I do like some video games.”
Kile sensed then that the intimidation Mrs. Johansson was trying to teach him about applied to human boys just as much as trolls. Marissa was a good few inches taller than Ron and probably a little more muscled too, despite her pretty flowered blouse she wore with blue jeans and cowboy boots. Ron backed down immediately.
“Well, I guess I should give you my address and phone number too, then,” Robert said. His voice cracked on “my” again and Kile couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him.
“Robert,” Marissa said, arms crossed before her holding a notebook, “If you’re asking me to your party why don’t you just ask me.”
“Oh. Yeah, okay. So…would you like to come to my party on Saturday?”
Marissa smiled and rocked back on her cowboy boot heels as she responded, “I’d love to. Here, write your number and address on mine too.”
Kile thought it odd that while she probably had paper or something to write on in her binder, the red-headed human girl stuck out her arm to have Rob write on it, just as he had done to Ronald. As he did and he concentrated on what he was writing, the girl bit her lower lip and smiled, still rocking on her cowboy boots. All in all, it was a very odd sight for the little troll. Until this point, the human males and females all just sort of interacted, like they did on the television shows he’d watched over the last couple decades. It was true that at the school a lot of the older adolescent human boys were not too keen on talking with the girls, but still, it wasn’t like the separation of the two genders back home in Machsa. And there were just as many girls as boys in the human world. So, why was it Robert seemed so intimidated when their relationship was so easy compared to the trolls’. Then it hit him. It must be just like the human television shows. Robert must have wanted to kiss her! (As strange a custom as that seemed to be among the humans. It was saved for extreme respect among trolls and usually one was only given by a king or queen or great leader.)
When Rob made it back to the bus he was smiling slightly but looked dazed. Kile wagged an index finger at him and said, “You want to kiss her, don’t you?”
“Wha?!” Rob said. He glanced around to make sure no one else was really listening. The closest pair of eight-year-olds just snickered but then stopped paying attention. “What are you talking about? You don’t ask that!”
Kile shrugged and held out his palms. “Why? Isn’t that what you wanted? Like that Hospital show?”
“Man!” Rob took the little troll to the side out of the line and growled near his ear, “Stop talking about it, okay?”
“Okay,” Kile said, but he didn’t forget about it. He watched the pretty redhead human girl standing in line occasionally glancing Rob’s way and he too started rocking back on his heels and smiled. He was coming up with a plan.