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Sheldon said. "One reason
is you. Your soul mate is my soul mate. I don't have to tell you
that.
    "The other is Rodney. Now I know that football
and sports in general don't have the spiritual heft that something
like the art of serious music does, but – "
    "Not true," Tabby said. "The display of
physical strength and agility is as beautiful an art form as any
other. The Greeks taught us that centuries ago, so don't knock
it."
    "OK, I won't argue," Sheldon said. "But
anyway, Rodney, his considerable talent as a football player aside,
is a kindred soul to me, just as Bull and Jimmy are. I knew that
when Coach O'Connor named Rodney the starting running back last
fall, and Danny Jackson and Oscar Olney started giving Rodney a bad
time in the locker room one night after practice, because he beat
them out for the starting job. And he's only a sophomore and they
are seniors. It was getting pretty ugly, but Rodney handled it like
such an adult. Never backing down, never showing that he was
afraid. Instead, he complimented those guys for their hard work on
the field, and said he looked forward to helping them make the
Chante Lions a better team. He totally disarmed them. It was a
beautiful thing to see. That's when I knew. Rodney Stark is a
brick."
    Tabby smiled and gave Sheldon's arm a
squeeze.
    "I remember the first day I met Rachel," Tabby
said. "It also was the first day I met Rodney. Do you remember
that?"
    "Oh, yeah," Sheldon said. "Oh,
yeah."
    ●●●
    Tabby and Sheldon walked hand in
hand to school on Sept. 6, 1965, their first day as seniors at
Chante High. They had been dating since they were freshmen, but
they had been "together" ever since they were 2 years old,
next-door neighbors playing in each other's back yard.
    The high school, an imposing
three-story red brick building, sits on a hill overlooking the
town, which is situated in Chante Valley, through which the
Missouri River courses its way south.
    To reach the school's front
entrance, Tabby and Sheldon had to climb a long, wide flight of
concrete steps with galvanized pipe railings. Once inside the
building, they walked up two flights of well-worn wooden stairs
leading to the assembly hall.
    Along the way, they greeted fellow
students, some of whom they had not seen since the end of school
last spring. Complain though they might that the summer vacation
had ended, the kids were always excited that first day of school,
none more so than the seniors.
    Chante High is a relatively small
school, no more than 50 students in the senior class, and Tabby and
Sheldon knew everybody in their class, and almost everybody in the
entire school. One thing was for sure: Everybody knew Sheldon and
Tabby. Sheldon was a star athlete and scholar. Tabby was the
runaway favorite to be the senior class valedictorian, and she was
the leading soloist for the Chante Chanteuses, a girls' vocal
group. Both were outgoing and friendly, humble despite their
status, funny and easy to talk to, and beautiful. They had it all,
it seemed.
    So it was that as seniors, Tabby
and Sheldon were members of the royalty at Chante High, and they
were treated with deference by most students, and even some
teachers. If you could count Tabby Moore and Sheldon Beasley among
your close friends, something most students aspired to, you were
part of an elite circle. When Sheldon and Tabby took their seats in
the senior section of the cavernous assembly hall that first day,
one almost expected a standing ovation.
    In the back row of the senior
class that day, sitting alone in a crowd, was a slender girl with
straight dark hair that hung down in no particular style. She wore
a plain grey knee-length dress, clean but somewhat worn. Her tennis
shoes were grey, her socks black. She spoke to no one. No one spoke
to her.
    Her name was Rachel Stark, but no
one except for a few teachers knew that for several days. She was
an invisible presence. She came and went almost
unnoticed.
    That changed a few days later when
she showed