They called him Giggles. Gigs for short. It all started freshman year in high school, he was just a little chubby, but strong, so some of his friends decided to get him into football. It took weeks of nagging, begging, threatening, finally they got him to do it, but I think he did it to stop the whining voices.

The first day of practice they did some drills, coach said it was to get the team used to the idea that they would be hitting, and hitting hard. Gigs stood and watched through the first part of the drill. One guy would stand in the middle of the ring of players and the coach would walk around and yell someone's name to run in and try to knock over the guy in the middle. It went on until the guy fell over, then the guy that hit him went.

“All right!” The coach yelled, “let’s get some freshman in there!”

One of the brawnier kids stepped out into the ring. The coach started calling out names, Johnson, Samuels, a few others. Soon the coach called Gigs out. He got in a lucky shot and knocked the guy over. He actually was doing pretty well for a while, soon the coach started calling out the stronger kids. It didn’t take long to knock Gigs over.

When the guy that knocked him down went to help him up Gigs was laughing. He got some strange looks, but nobody really thought about it. Ever since then whenever he got hit hard he was laughing. Pretty soon someone called him Giggles, and the name stuck.


After football life went back to it’s usual sway. He never really had a girlfriend. The closest he came was a preschool crush that ended when the girl moved away. It’s not that he didn’t want a girlfriend, it’s just that every time he liked a girl they didn’t like him that way. His friends were good though, they ranged from the goofy girl to the straight A honor roll boy.

He was a good friend, that’s what everyone said, if you had a problem, Giggles could help you, stuff just made sense to him. He helped a lot of people with relationship problems, in fact that’s the type of problem he enjoyed solving most. He told me once that if he couldn’t have a relationship maybe he could save everyone else’s. I told him to go for it but to keep trying with his own relationship.

He lived out in the middle of nowhere, the entire county went to the same highschool, and even then there were only about two hundred students at school. I guess that’s sort of why it was so hard on Gigs. Once you got rejected by one girl, all of her friends heard about the rejection, and then they wouldn’t date you, and when all of their friends heard about it, well, it was a sad cycle and pretty soon there wasn’t a single girl in the entire school that would go out with him.

His brother was in a completely different situation of course. Where Gigs got lots of smarts and problem solving skills, older brother, Tracey got the charm. But Tracey had problems too. He didn’t get along well with people that didn’t meet his standards, meaning if you’re not pretty you can hit the road. He had lots of friends though, people that were like him, charming but not so friendly to everyone.


I think the problems started when a new girl moved into the county, her name wa Marly. She was pretty, and really nice. She liked to tease and joke though, not in a mean way, she was just trying to make you laugh. That’s probably what Gigs liked about her, the problem was, Tracey liked her too, and she liked Tracey.

He just about gave up right then and their, tagging her as “just a friend.” But Marly was more then that to him, nobody knew that he liked her, but everyone knew how his last crush ended, rejection as usual, so they knew he wouldn’t be trying anything with anyone else soon. Well they thought they knew, in reality he was scheming a plan to sweep her off her feet.


Winter formal was coming up in a few weeks, it was just another dance to everyone else, but to Gigs, it was the moment to make his move.

His plan started two weeks before the dance with something simple, every time he looked at her, he smiled. It didn’t do much, but that part wasn’t hard at all, it came naturally. It got harder with the next part, a poem he wrote, he signed it, “Your secret admirer.” Not fancy, but he didn’t want to give anything away, not yet. He slipped the poem into Marly’s locker after asking his 4th period teacher if he could use the restroom, just an excuse to get into the hall. It took him 2 whole minutes of staring at the slit in the locker to build up the courage to slide in the poem.

The next day he noticed Marly showing everyone the poem, about her smile, her jokes, her hair, her eyes, Gigs hadn’t left out a thing, and she was thrilled, she only had one question, “who’s this from?” she asked everyone, but nobody knew.

A few days later he had perfected his next poem, but this time he left a short note at the end, “May I have the last dance?” She got the idea, her secret admirer would ask her for the last dance at winter formal.


It was that night, the dance, everyone buzzed with excitement, one of the main topics was who Marly’s secret admirer was. Finally the dance opened, the students lined up single file, Gigs was at the front of the line, extremely excited about the next two and a half hours.

The dance passed far too fast for his taste. There were too many fast dances, he was a pretty good dancer though, it was fun watching him dance, he could feel the beat and be dancing confidently in just a few seconds.

Most of all though he liked the slow dances. Holding a girl that close, dancing slowly through the love song, of course there was one slow dance he was looking forward to most of all.

All too soon the clock struck 11:27 and the D.J. announced, “Alright everyone last dance, grab your date or the person you’ve been wanting to dance with ‘cause this is your last chance.” Gigs looked around the room for Marly, she was sitting on a bench waiting, slowly he walked towards her.

Someone brushed past him, in horror he watched as Tracey, cruel brother Tracey asked Marly to dance. What hurt most of all was the smile on her face, and the movement of her lips saying, “Thankyou, for a second I thought your brother was going to ask.”

Giggles turned, and walked out the door, a chaperone asked where he was going and he answered simply, “Home.”


This wasn’t new to Gigs, it was the reason why he got his name. You see when Gigs got hit that hard on the football team he was laughing because the only thought on his mind was, “This is supposed to hurt? This is nothing compared to the daggers in my heart.”