Principles of Love by Emily Franklin

long, lean, and tan (will they EVER fade?) legs of the cool field hockey girl I talked to at Slave to the Grind.
    “Hey, Love,” she says. And if she hadn’t used my name, I might have been able to figure out a way to ask her her own, but we’ve clearly gone beyond this get-to-know-you point and I’m obviously supposed to know her ID, but I don’t, so I have to make do.
    “Hey, you,” I say, making a note to add myself to my list of things that are annoying.
    “Mind if I sit?” She rests her stick on the porch-side and smoothes her skirt underneath before sitting next to me. I take a good look at her — yup, she’s very shiny — and pivot, closing my journal. She asks what I’m writing and tells a story about how her grandmother was a writer but didn’t publish her first collection of poems until the age of eight-two.
    “I hope it doesn’t take me that long to write a song,” I say.
    “Hey,” she points out, “You already rhymed.” I smile then twist my mouth. “I’m sure you’ll do anything you want.” It’s so bizarre to hear this from her, not just because we hardly know each other, but because she is that girl . That girl that roams the hall of every high school as the human equivalent of a dog in those Purina ads — silky hair and bright teeth and perfect bones. And no doubt a luscious older, probably foreign boyfriend waiting for her to accept his offer of eternal love in his castle. Plus, she’s probably got two parents and a life vision.
    As the afternoon light fades, she unlaces her cleats, rolls off her socks and steps onto the still-green grass. “This feels amazing,” she says and pads around.
    I’m leaning up against one of the pillars on the porch. “You look like you belong on a beach in the Bahamas or something.”
    “Really?” Her hair swings as she spins like a kid, dizzying herself until she falls and laughs.
    “Don’t you wish you were in a tropical paradise?” I say, envisioning.
    She thinks a second and shakes her head. With her arms around herself, hugging her own self against the cold wind she says, “Not really.” When I shoot her a look that suggests otherwise she explains, shrugging. “I guess I’m always fine where I am. Like, I don’t try to be somewhere else, because I know I can’t be — so what’s the point?”
    Her words resonate with me and we part ways and I head inside for dinner with my dad. He’s on a multi-cultural kick that means Pad Thai and many different bean and grain combos and tofu sautéed, braised, and grilled.
    “Tonight,” he says, trying to flip some sort of substance around in a pan like a food network chef. “It’s garlic and chicken kebabs with couscous and spinach.”
    “Sounds great, Dad,” I say. “Let me clean up and I’ll be right back down.”
    I pull my hair back and wash the grime of the day off my face. I managed only to dot myself with mustard at lunch (as opposed to the more frequent splotch n’ spill) so my shirt is decent enough to wear out tonight to study at the library. Then I remember that I have my first Robinson Hall-taught senior seminar tonight and whip my shirt off to try to find something more appealing. And then I reconsider — if a clean shirt is what would make Robinson like me, then he’s a superficial loser and not worth it. So I put my mustardy shirt back on. Then I think, but if my self-worth is such that I value treating myself well and wearing clean clothes, and THAT’S what catches Robinson’s subliminal attention, then that’s okay. So I get topless again. I’m sure Lila Lawrence, Robinson’s supposed amazing girlfriend would never wear something with lunch hall remnants on it. I walk around my room, poke into my closet, open and shut drawers and then rationalize again. No guy would ever change his merely slightly dirty shirt just to go to a seminar, a class, where the girl he likes might notice him. So I put the mustard shirt on again, just in time for my dad to yell