Cooties

Eleven year olds, as a general rule, were a crueller than children of any other age.  They would mock, tease and provoke each other and then wonder why the number of friends they had began to diminish.  That is, of course, unless everyone else was mocking, teasing and provoking the same children.  In this particular public school, it fell on every single student to ridicule one particular pair of friends.

"Will and Bethie, sitting in a tree.  K-I-S-S-I-N-G.  First comes love, then comes…"

Always the same taunts and jibes directed at Will Jamerson and Beth Winters.  Best friends and neighbours, but none of the other children could understand the closeness that they shared.

"Oooo, Will's got a girlfriend!"

It didn't help that Will was in the grade above Beth.  They sat together at lunch, both of them cast out of the cliquey groups that their own grades had formed.

"Cradle-snatcher!"

Forced into their own little word, away from the others.  They'd grown used to it though. When Will had started school a year before Beth, he'd been lost and withdrawn within the school yard.  He'd missed his best friend with an ache that his young mind had been unable to put words to.  When Beth had started school a year later, he had brightened up almost immediately.  Taking Beth under his wing at school had given him a new hope.

"Why don't you go play with your boyfriend Bethie?"

Will had been in countless amounts of fights over his friendship with Beth.  Boys had started scuffles, calling him a 'sissy-boy' and a girl, starting violent punch-ups that Will felt he had no choice but to enter in to.  Beth always yelled at him after the fights, but she knew why he always fought, and part of her was grateful.

"Beth and Will, Beth and Will, Beth's a dill and Will wears frills!

The teachers could do nothing to stop the teasing, save for handing out detentions.  This tended to become monotonous when the taunters were quite happy to stay after school as long as they got to tease the young friends.

"Bet'cha Will's in the girl's bathroom cos Bethie's crying again."

They made Beth cry nearly every week.  Some weeks she could handle the taunts.  Will would grab her hand and give it a gentle squeeze, which only gave the other students even more ammunition to play with, but Will hated seeing his friend cry.  In all honesty, he'd been close to tears a few times himself, so he couldn't fault Beth for breaking down every so often.

"Will's got girl germs!"

On and on the insults went, days, weeks, months.  Fight after fight, detention after detention until Will finally snapped.  He'd been holding in his anger for too long, keeping his inner cool.  The insults were too much.

'We can't be friends anymore Bethie."

Beth and Will stopped seeing each other, stopped playing together, stopped sitting with one another.  They were both miserable, but suddenly, the other children accepted them.  Will was invited to play soccer with the fifth grade boys, and Beth was invited to play jump-rope with the fourth grade girls.  Finally, they were accepted by the others-, but neither of them had been more miserable in their lives.

"Finally ditched the girl, huh Will?"

Their parents were concerned.  No longer were Beth and Will nattering on about each other.  The conversations turned to other children, but the sparkle of excitement was gone.  Their feet would drag in the door after school, and the Jamerson's and the Winter's noticed the pained looks of anguish that crossed their children's faces whenever their other half was mentioned.

"Having a spat with Bethie, huh?"

They'd never fought before, and it was slowly taking its toll on both of them.  Beth had trouble sleeping and would slip into her parents bed, cuddling up beside her mother and crying softly.  Will would hug a bear to his chest as he tried to sleep, wondering why he felt so horrible when the teasing had finally stopped.

"We're going to the zoo Bethie.  With Will and his parents.  Doesn't that sound like fun?"

They hadn't spoken in a week and when they were first confronted with each other, neither knew what to say.  With short grunts to say hello, they were dragged through the zoo, neither one taking in the sights of the animals that only a week ago would have excited them so thoroughly.  They were sneaking glances at each other, desperately wanting to talk and laugh and joke with each other, but knowing that the teasing would start up again.

"Can we see the monkeys?"

The question came from both Beth and Will simultaneously, and it was only a millisecond later that they broke into fits of giggles.  Their parents smiled above their heads as Will and Beth both broke into excited chatter, running towards the monkey enclosure, boosting each other up to see the animals that lay in the sun. 

"Friends again?"

School started once more, and instead of the  obvious avoidance of the previous week, they went out of their way to integrate each other into their respective groups of friends.  The teasing began again, but neither Will nor Beth let it get to them.  They shrugged or smiled but continued socialising with both their own friends and each other.  The teasing eventually filtered away when the other students realised that they could no longer get Will or Beth to retaliate. 

"You guys are no fun to tease anymore, y'know.  It really sucks."

By the time Will was in year seven, they were once again separated by the schooling system.  Will had graduated to the high school, leaving Beth in the junior levels.  Once again, the confusion and depression set in.  The teasing stopped but their friendship continued.  He'd swing by the primary school to walk home with her, always abandoning his friends in preference to his oldest and best friends.

"You still hang out with that kid?"

By the time Beth reached high school, Beth's girlfriends had begun taunting Beth once more.  Except the teasing was no longer cruel.  There were friendly nudges about her handsome older 'man' who was the perfect gentleman towards her.  By the end of year eight for Beth, half of her friends had fallen for Will themselves. 

"He's sooo cute.  He's not going out with anyone is he?  I wonder if he'd go out with me…"

These same questions over and over, the monotonous repetition grating on Beth's nerves.  No matter how many times she explained that she and Will were only friends, they continued to try and push the two together.  They'd both roll their eyes and walk off together, simultaneously muttering that their friends were nuts.

"You guys should so get together.  You're the absolute twosome of cuteness."

Year ten came and went for Will.  Beth was in year nine and going through random mood swings every month.  He had trouble keeping up with her, but he still adored her with every fibre of his being.  When she was hospitalised and nearly died towards the end of the year, Will knew that he couldn't, wouldn't and didn't want to live without his best friend. 

"I think I'm in love with you."

Everything changed after that.  All of Beth's friends groaned with disappointment and bouts of jealousy when she proudly told them that she and Will were finally together.  Will's friends too seemed to be disappointed that Beth was suddenly unavailable to them as well.  Both the other boys and the other girls had always known they could never have a chance with either of the two friends.  They had always belonged to each other.  They always would.

"I'm sick Will.  I'm dying."

He was eighteen when Beth told him that she was sick, dying, wasting away with cancer that couldn't be treated.  A brain tumour that would eventually kill her.  His heart had shattered and he'd gone on a drinking binge.  His stupidity had only lasted a day before he got himself together and became her rock.

"Marry me?"

He'd asked her quietly when they were lying on his bed.  Their parents had allowed them to spend as much time as possible with each other since Beth had been diagnosed.  Neither set of parents worried when their children didn't come home.  They were usually at their spot down by the river, hidden from the world under a canopy of leaves.  The fort they had built together when Will had been thirteen.

"I'll miss you, Beth."

She'd passed away three months later.  The doctors had told her that she had a year.  They'd been wrong.  Two weeks before they were to have had the wedding, her parents had found her dead on the floor of her room.  It had been an aneurism, silent and deadly.  A sudden haemorrhaging from a ruptured arterial vessel from around the area that had been operated on when they had attempted to remove the tumour without success. 

"She may have felt a little nausea, and probably passed out as it happened."

The funeral had been a small service of family and friends, Will standing beside the casket for the entire service with the ministers words falling on his deaf ears.  She'd been lowered into the ground, swallowed by the plot of earth where her body was to rest for eternity, her soul taken to a peaceful afterlife. 

"Sleep well love."