Winterfresh
by Kent Kosack

I quit chewing gum in eighth grade. It was spring and we were all nervous and excited for graduation and summer and high school and somehow that energy gave me the courage to approach Joey Talbot on his perch at the top of the bleachers as he watched the cheerleaders practice on the soccer field still damp from the morning rain. He’d broken up with Sara, our grade’s It girl, and I swear I’d seen him checking me out in the hallways. I could feel his eyes on me in social studies in third period while Mr. Jackson rambled on about the Great Depression. Only I wasn’t depressed. I was ecstatic, at first. Greatly. Until a month passed and he still hadn’t asked me out and the ecstasy turned into a dull thrum of anxiety and doubt and expectation. When would he ask me out? Where? How? Finally, I spotted him on the bleachers, alone, and I just went for it. I shoved three sticks of Winterfresh in my mouth and kept repeating the name like a mantra, Winterfresh, Winterfresh, trying to feel as cool and crisp as the gum as I creaked up the bleachers.