More On Words...

They're powerful.

But are they powerful enough
to hold two people together?

Do people need
physical closeness
to feel connected?
Or will a
dial-up connection do?

Yuuki is in love.
Or at least
I think she is.
She thinks she is.
Mom and Dad
disagree
but what do they know?

His name is Ronnie.
And he lives
over one thousand miles away.

They met on the internet
of all places,
a place teeming with
middle-aged predators
psychotic people
with online personas
because who they are
in real life
isn't enough for them.

But he came along
as authentic
as a real person,
so he had to be one.

And after all the
questions asked
and the
"Really? Me too!"
responses
and all the things they
discussed
debated
pondered
shared
confessed
she realized she had
found somebody
worth finding.

She liked
how he unfolded
before her
like a story
that she couldn't see
the end of yet.
I guess it was
almost suspenseful.
He fascinated her
she fascinated him
They kind of
fell in love
with each other's
brains.

There were too many
similarities
for it to be random
Too many details
for it to be a lie
Too many
smiles
for it to be mere luck

Too many
reasons for him not to
feel the same way
(according to her),
but she told him
how she felt anyway.

And it was
quite a risk to take
because the only thing
that held them together
was
words.

But somehow,
in some way
that I'll never understand
because I'm much
too cynical,
their
relationship
survived
the confession.

And it's weird,
because whenever
I see a couple,
in a photo on Facebook
holding hands in the hall
dressed up for a formal
I turn the ugliest
shade of green.

But when I think about
Ronnie and Yuuki
and the nice things
he says to her
and the way he says
he'll come up to see her
in April
and the long-ass
messages they send
each other,
that waste time
I could be spending
blogging
messaging
scrolling
thinking
responding
observing the
more interesting lives
of Facebook friends
I don't even know,
and the mix CD
she made for him
for Christmas
full of love songs
yet somehow
not awkward
that she sent in the mail
yesterday

It all makes me
happy.
Their words
make me
happy.

The Damnedest Things

We all say things we don't mean.

Vicious words, crawling out of your mouth with the intention to hurt someone. And all you can do is watch them escape in astonishment. How did you let them slip by your common sense, who usually guards your mouth so closely that you end up never saying what's on your mind?

Sometimes, common sense takes a coffee break. No one wants sleepy, sluggish common sense. People in their right minds want their common sense to be wired, wide-eyed, vigilant.

So while common sense runs down to Starbucks for overpriced coffee and possibly a cookie if it isn't in the mood to diet, it leaves you unattended.

That can be dangerous.

I've never understood the phrase, "Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words will never hurt you." Who even made up something so futile, and why do people choose to believe that?

Words can be painful. I consider my sharp tongue one of my deadliest weapons, a dormant creature that rested behind my teeth, sometimes trying to rear its ugly head but being suppressed by that common sense. And every once in a while, when my feelings are in danger of becoming wounded, I sharpen that tongue and take it for a spin, always a little stunned by the results.

A slap to the skull, shock, confusion, oblivion, a look of astonished hurt, a sharp-edged insult fired back to hit me right where it hurts.

I call my sister self-centered. I say I hate my grandmother. I drop snide comments to my parents on a regular basis, until I unintentionally hit a nerve, then I recoil. I pointedly disagree with things David says just so he realizes that my goal in life is not to please him. I start spur-of-the-moment arguments with Symphony out of boredom and irritation with her tendency to be a thousand miles away when all I want to do is talk. I say that I wish Floyd would get hit by a train. I say that God doesn't care about me.

I say the damnedest things sometimes.

Common sense had best grab me a mocha cappuccino or something while it's at it, because this has been one long coffee break.

The Christmas Spirit

What comes to mind when you hear the words "traditional family"?

Parents still married. Dad is some rugged Ken doll in an army uniform. Mom is his Barbie doll equivalent, with curled blonde hair, a billowing circle skirt. She vacuums the living room, a majestic dance of spinning skirts and graceful cleansing. The kids are playing in the spacious front yard, never growing past the age of eight or so, jumping in the spray of the sprinkler, screaming with delight. A golden retriever named Ralph barks, loud and jovial, and circles the playing children, and no one cares what life is like outside of the white picket fence.

Much to the dismay of Hollywood filmmakers and the like, this family never existed.

Americans have odd standards set up in their minds when it comes to their idea of perfection. They believe in intangible things, making them their goals subconsciously. Absentmindedly searching for conventional solutions to things that usually aren't problems in the first place.

People always talk about "getting in the Christmas spirit."

This year, I just couldn't seem to get into that spirit. I couldn't remember where it came from. I couldn't remember if I'd ever actually found it in the first place. But what if "the Christmas spirit" is just another overrated figment of America's imagination?

I mean, what is it, anyway? Blasting Christmas music in the car? Drinking hot chocolate? Baking? Decorating your house? Picking out a tree for the living room? Going to holiday parties? Going shopping? Getting gifts? Giving gifts?

After giving this whole "Christmas spirit" thing a bit of thought, I settled on an answer that just seemed so easy. Too easy, but what else could it be?

"It's true, wherever you find love, it feels like Christmas."

I think that the Christmas spirit is love. Love, fueled by Christmas. It's loving the world around you when you look outside and see snow falling peacefully. It's loving Jesus for loving us back. It's loving the Christmas movies you watch every year. It's loving being alive on December 21, and every other day too. It's loving your best friend when she gives you a makeshift photo album of memories after she drew your name for Secret Santa. It's loving that moment as you leave school on the last day before break, like a colder version of the last day of school. It's loving Floyd even though I hate him and I don't exist anymore. It's loving your family when you find yourself surrounded by them and their mouths that flap like ducks' asses and their love for you. It's so weird, knowing that people love me. I don't know why. It's like, I didn't do anything to deserve it, and yet, it's there. I guess that's really what family is. Loving people for no real reason. Just knowing you do.

If you look for love, you'll find the Christmas spirit everywhere. "It's true, wherever you find love, it feels like Christmas." That quote is from "A Muppets Christmas Carol," which I've been watching every year on Christmas Eve for as long as I can remember.

Sometimes we learn the most important things from places we'd never think to look.

Merry Christmas, everyone. :)

Strangers

Have you ever been in love with someone?

I think that I have. I think that I am.

But when you’re only sixteen, saying you’re in love feels stupid. It’s like the words don’t fit in your mouth correctly. They feel awkward, even in your brain.

Is it possible to become addicted to another human being?

He’s like a pack of cigarettes tucked into my back pocket. Absentmindedly, I pull him out, take out a little piece of him. Like the sound of my name in his mouth. Like the smell that hung on his clothes. Like the way his eyes smiled when he said something wicked. Like the way his breath felt against my ear. Like the countless knowing glances that were exchanged. Like the sound of him singing under his breath. Like the song "Kristy, Are You Doing OK?" by The Offspring.

And I light it up and let it burn in my mind. It calms me down. It brings a small, bittersweet grin to my face. It takes me away.

And it eats away at the inside of me.

Sometimes I wonder if I ever even knew him, because I certainly don’t anymore.

I remember what it was like to have a crush on him.

Mouthing the words of "Kristy, Are You Doing OK?" as it blasted from his computer, meeting my gaze as I did the same. Nowadays, those chords make my throat tingle, the same sort of lump that forms when you're frantically searching for something that you have lost.

Telling me he hated my "I ♥ NY" t-shirt, because it was so cliché, and I told him that's why I liked it.

Smiling to myself when he told me his girlfriend had dumped him, but replying with, "Oh, really? Why?" like I was actually concerned.

Watching him walk into shop class, fresh from an extended period of Chemistry class, which he despised, and asking smugly, "How was Chem?" Him letting out a scoff and replying with, "Long," he paused, gave me one of his wicked, admittedly roguish grins, "…and hard." I rolled my eyes and laughed in spite of myself.

Scrolling through the unorganized list of songs on his Blackberry, familiar titles catching my eye on the cracked screen. One headphone each, hushed conversation, there was only two people in the world.

Something like jealousy burning just behind his green eyes when he saw me laughing at something Jordan said, comfortable by his side, sharing food with him, listening to Protest The Hero. His obvious attempts at making me jealous too, and the way they always worked. Oh, how we pissed each other off.

Him falling into step beside me as we left class, talking and laughing until we found ourselves on the other side of the school, where I was supposed to be, but far from where his next class was. He laughed incredulously, and asked "What am I doing?" And I didn't know what he was doing, but I liked it.

Brushing sawdust off my shoes and peeling Elmer's glue from my fingers during Geometry class, a thousand miles away. Or more accurately, merely a class period earlier.

My voice saying his name fearlessly, watching him turn and watch me as I confessed my feelings for him. The way he turned me down, quick and painless. My hands shaking in my lap. My eyes wet from subconsciously refusing to blink. And the way that moment disappeared from his mind afterwords, like it never even happened.

I remember what it was like to wake up every morning and think to myself, "Maybe today is the day that I’ll win his heart." I remember what it was like to smile only because I was with him. I remember feeling so full, so content by his side, and all of the bad things in my life suddenly didn’t exist anymore.

And then, out of nowhere, he became one of those bad things.

Summer was an eternity. The days moved by sluggishly. Boredom reigned on all levels. Summer was the beginning of the end, and I spent every day hoping that it wouldn’t be. When it came to a close, I breezed through the doors of the school and back into a life I think I came to love before those three slow months brought everything to a screeching halt. And there I was again. Waiting for it all to start again, right where it left off.

How foolish.

"Hey, Floyd," I said breezily, as I slid into the seat behind him in my first period math class.

"Hey," he replied.

The amount of times we have spoken since that day could probably be counted on my fingers. It’s been months. And the last time I checked, I had only ten fingers.

The air outside is now brisk and empty, the kind of cold air that it hurts to breathe in. The leaves have long fallen from the trees and plastered themselves to the ground, leaving the branches to shiver in the wind. Every house shines with Christmas decorations, some artfully placed, some tacky as hell.

What happened? When did we forget how to dance on the line between friendship and more-than-friendship? Silence fills the once charged atmosphere between us. When did we become different? Did I change? Did he? He didn't seem to be different. Same flannel and jeans uniform, same witty sarcasm and talking just to hear his own voice, same curly hair and fiery eyes, doodling in notebooks, head in his hand. There was a tension in the air between us, unanswered questions.

Why isn't he talking to me?

Does she still like me?

Is he playing hard to get?

Is she ignoring me?

Or does he just not care anymore?

But after a while, even the tension went away.

And we have become nothing.

I wish I knew why.

I wish I knew the reasons why every day in study hall, he will sit less than ten feet away from me, but he will not say a word to me. He won’t even look at me anymore. I’ve become translucent. Am I even alive anymore? Or do I just go through the motions? Why do I need him like this?

I miss sitting on my Nana’s porch swing until dark, listening to the All-American Rejects and just dreaming about all of the things that couldawouldashoulda happened, and the things that I had my fingers crossed on to happen when I saw him again. A quirky fairytale, the result of mashing together a dreamer and a cynic who switched roles so much it was like they were playing musical chairs. Who played which part? I wanted it so badly. And sitting there on that porch swing, it seemed possible.

But this isn’t a good feeling anymore. This is hell. This is a loss of inspiration. This is crying my eyes out with only Metallica to comfort me. This is wanting to move on, but for some reason, it’s impossible. This is hating his guts. This is wanting to beat his brains in just as much as I want to hold him.

Is this love?

If it is, I want no part in it.

Numbers At My Feet

I lost twenty-five pounds.

I can’t remember when I decided to lose weight.

It feels like only yesterday that I had broken a promise I had once made to myself, and hesitantly stood on the old scale in my Nana’s bathroom.

The needle jumped from the zero and past the "160" mark. I stepped off quickly, then left. I shook the number from my head before it could settle there. Was that the deciding moment?

I couldn't tell you.

But nonetheless, I made a decision. A big decision.

I let the amount of food I was eating every day slowly dwindle down to somewhere around one thousand calories at one point. My evening walks turned into my evening runs. I remember how it felt, taking a rest on a cool rock at the end of the walking trail, gulping water, being slick with sweat. It was excruciating, but I pushed myself to do it every day. And then it didn’t feel hard anymore. I simply pushed myself along, looking at the dull brown river as I ran alongside it, my mind completely blank. Then, when August began and marching band practices made it hard to spend time at home, I started going for bike rides. By the end of the summer, I was only consuming around 1200 calories at the most and going for two bike rides per day. It was excessive. I didn't care.

And at one point, my clothing stopped fitting me. I poked new holes into my white stud belt, all the way up to where the studs started. My friends would look at me, envy shining dully just behind their eyes, asking me how I had done it.

It was a strange feeling. It was foreign. People were never jealous of me. People probably hung out with me because they wanted friends that they didn’t have to be jealous of.

There was a time when my weight loss went from an experiment to an obsession. The amount of calories in all of the snacks in my house became common knowledge. There are 140 calories in 26 cheese curls. I still know that. Maybe I'll always know that. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about the last ten pounds I still want to lose. Every time I eat something outside of the strict confines of my diet, I immediately begin planning what foods I will eat (and not eat) the next day.

I may look a little better in my clothes, and the numbers at my feet have slipped neatly back into a "normal" BMI, but along with the weight, I lost something else.

It’s something I can’t really find a word to describe. Is there a word that means "the ability to go through one day without any worries"?

Happiness?

But did I even have that in the first place?

Winter

Vacant tree branches

save for the cedars and pines

First snow long gone

Fresh baked cookies

raw dough in my stomach

My Nana's house has

become the North Pole

in appearance

My own house has

become the North Pole

in temperature

Plump tree in the living room

Might be the last real one

in the world

Unwrapped presents

waiting in Boscov's bags

For Santa to wrap them up

And the days of clarinet playing

lips chapped and destroyed

from reeds and cold air

long gone now

No more concerts

no more shows

or practices

Don't know whether I

should be smiling

or reminiscing

Maybe both

Decorations are put up

shopping is done

Free time

is precious


And now,

we write.

Autumn

It was always my favorite season.

I love everything about it. The way it looks. The way it smells. The way it feels. Autumn is a season that is considerate to your senses. It's the only season that seems to adore me, appealing to my tastes flawlessly. Suiting my fancies.

Perfect weather. Football season. Marching band season, the good parts and the bad. Changing leaves, falling leaves, naked tree branches--perfect excuses to take photographs of anything and everything. Halloween. Candy corn and mini Twix bars. Thanksgiving. Pumpkin pie.

Autumn is one of those occurrences that teaches you to love the simple things in life. Watching leaves fall around you. The feeling of warm air pushing against your face as your bicycle races through the clear air. Sitting around your kitchen table with your family on Thanksgiving. The sheer happiness you can't contain when your school's team wins at a football game. The little burst of pride when you take the perfect photograph of yellow leaves scattered on the front lawn or bare trees reflected in the still river. Autumn humbles you. The world stops revolving around you. You start revolving around the world.

And then all the leaves dry up, everything turns brown, the air becomes shallow and cold, and so do you.

Autumn was long this year, and it never quite screeched to a halt. It just disintegrated, so slowly that I barely even noticed. The occasional balmy day would come along after a few days of cold or rain. It was an unpredictable visitor that seemed to live for the surprised smiles on our faces as we walked outside and found ourselves bathed in warm sunlight, stripping off our warm weather hats and knitted scarves and exchanging our layers for a single sweatshirt. Even that was too much sometimes, but we had to keep that little bit of warmth, because we were uncertain of how long our good luck would last.

Is it possible to simply enjoy your good luck? Is it possible not to question it?

Summer

A New England summer is as unpredictable as my life is not.

One day, it's ninety-eight degrees, and the sun beats down on you so hard that you think God has turned up the pressure of gravity just to watch you squirm. The next day, it's barely seventy and pouring rain.

But the unpredictability of my summer stopped there. Every day was the same. They all blended together, daylight hanging on for dear life, showing up sometime around five in the morning, and finally letting go sometime around eight thirty. The nights were short, warm and breezy.

And it came to the point where I forgot what the world was like beyond the edges of my vast property. I became so accustomed to being miserable and bored that I forgot what it was like to feel otherwise. The simplest things slipped my mind, things I used to know how to do. How to be social. How to put on a disguise of false kindness. How to make an attempt to look and act presentable for the sake of having a social life.

My previous life froze in its tracks, and even the most sweltering of those summer days couldn't melt it back into place. My new life was repetition. Obediently watering flowers that weren't even mine for no reward. Eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and TV dinners. Waking up after eleven and going to bed at two in the morning. Going to grocery store with my mom, which was something that changed my day from boring to eventful. Watching movie after movie on my living room floor. Going for the same walk on the same trail every day. Listening to Nirvana and The All-American Rejects on my Nana's porch swing until dark. Flipping through old Seventeen magazines. Playing the same old songs over and over on my guitar, "Kristy, Are You Doing OK?" becoming a daily routine. Dieting. Reading. Going for the occasional swim at my grandmother's house. Surfing the Internet at the same time every night, marveling at how dull my life was compared to the lives of the smiling faces on my Facebook News Feed. Thinking so much that I put myself into a bad mood.

I missed the things I had to replace with memories.

But my "summer life" wasn't all bad. Nowadays, I'd do anything to get that simple existence back. It was complete paradise compared to putting up with the rest of the world, and all of its superficial, idiotic occupants.

But that last statement makes me feel a little troubled, even when I write it, because I hate hypocrites.

In Your Eyes, I Lost My Place.

"Just look at David and laugh. He'll think you're talking about him," Floyd says to me quietly, smiling mischievously. He sits in front of me, turned in his chair, his elbow resting on my desk. David sits beside me, working diligently on his French assignment.

I smile back and nod. Floyd gestures for me to lean closer, so I do, and his lips are right beside my ear. He pauses for a moment, then cracks up a little before whispering, "Just laugh." And we both burst into perfectly staged laughter, staring at David. After a few more minutes of this, David is obviously annoyed with us.

"What?" he snaps, rolling his eyes.

"Nothing," we reply in unison. I want to tell him that it's a joke, and I'm only playing along because I like when Floyd whispers in my ear. But I don't. His annoyance wears off and he simply ignores us. The moment passes, but I still feel Floyd's breath on my ear, giving me chills.

Now, I can still feel it.

I can still feel myself bringing my hands up to my face on the bus home one day and smelling his scent there, and the way I smiled and breathed it in. I can still feel his eyes burning through mine, the way it made me buzz with electricity, the sparks that I hadn't even realized were flying. I can still hear him singing "Away From The Sun" with me in Shop class, and I can still feel our hands brushing together as we built our bridge. I can still remember the way we exchanged a glance after our bridge collapsed, a small smile on both of our faces. Oh well. The teacher had asked us if we worked well together, and he had replied with, "Of course. She did everything I told her to," but flashed me a smile to let me know he was joking. I can still hear the beginning of a song by The Offspring he had played for me in French class. "My friend's got a girlfriend and he hates that bitch, he tells me every day…" I had laughed out loud, then went through more songs he had saved on his Blackberry, pleased to find that many of them matched my own taste in music. I can still hear him rapping his fingers on his laptop to the beat of whatever song he was listening to, the sound sharp and loud like a snare drum. I can still feel his body beside mine, how I would think that only one touch would break an invisible wall between us, the last wall that still stood. One touch. If only it could be intentional.

He sits beside me, talking to Elaine at lunch. Bored while I wait for our row of tables to be called up, I pull out my computer. He watches, a smirk on his face, as I open my Super Mario Bros. game to pass the time. He meets my gaze silently, and he waits. After I begin playing, he hums the Mario theme song dramatically, and presses his fingers on top of mine, making it hard to control what I'm doing in the game. I laugh until there are tears in my eyes, but then he makes me fall into a hole, and with fake anger I growl, "Floyd! I hate you!" He sits back and laughs, and I'm sad to feel the warmth of his hands leave mine.

But now, all of those moments feel far away. I feel like I'm losing them. I feel like they're slipping away from me. I feel like he's slipping away from me, one little piece at a time. His fiery eyes, his breath against my ear, his hands brushing against mine, his brutal honesty always working in my favor. It isn't disappearing. It's just as if the intensity is fading. Now, I feel like we're just friends. Weren't we just friends before I told him how I felt? Nothing had seemed to change. But did it?

Is he drifting away, or am I pushing him away myself, out of the sadness his rejection left ringing in my head? That sadness that made me shake with sobs, as I listened to the same depressing songs on repeat until I had them memorized. The sadness is like a voice in my head, whispering, "You were right.  It's over now. He doesn't love you. He never will. No one will." It stings me when I see him treating other girls the way he had once treated me, and that voice whispers in my head, making it hard to smile back at him when he meets my gaze, making it hard to take his side. Making it hard to want to please him. I don't owe him anything.

I always thought that was all we were the entire time, just friends.

I never even noticed the sparks until they started to burn out.

Is this my fault?

How Would You React

I close my eyes and say to myself, "I hope that when I open my eyes, I wake up and realize this is all just a dream, and I’m not here, and you guys aren’t doing this to me." I laugh to make it seem like I’m not anxious and angry, and they laugh too.

David. Lucy. Symphony. Brooke. Elaine. I’ve never dreaded eating lunch with them this much. Floyd acts oblivious, but I don’t think he is as clueless as he seems.

"You’re really starting to annoy me," David snaps, rolling his eyes.

"Just do it!" Symphony exclaims, and Brooke nods.

"Now or never," she says, still nodding.

"You know what guys?" I say, and they all look at me intently. Floyd is talking to Elaine, and I’m glad he isn’t paying attention to me. "Fuck you," I mumble. They laugh again. How is this amusing? I close my eyes again. I open them. I’m still there, in the cafeteria. It is approximately twenty minutes after noon on the last day of April. I take a deep breath and turn to him.

"Floyd," I say, and he turns to face me. I don’t play with or mutilate my plastic silverware. I don’t look to my friends for support. I look straight into his icy green eyes. "How would you react…" I start, and pause for a moment. I feel six pairs of eyes burning through me. "…if I told you I wanted to go out with you?"

His eyes don’t leave mine, and I don’t look away. I can’t this time. I can’t.

My mind races incoherently while he says something about how it would be weird because he knows me too well, and our dads know each other, blah blah blah. And then my thoughts stop abruptly, as if someone had pushed a Pause button, and I hear him say two words.

"I’m sorry."

And it hits me. I just told Floyd how I felt about him. And he just turned me down.

"Okay. Well, then I won’t ask," I say with a small smile and a shrug, and he smiles back.

I’m sorry.

The words echo in my brain as Floyd says something to the rest of the table about how they shouldn’t have been pressuring me to do something I didn’t want to do. Since when did he care about my feelings?

Since when did he know how I felt?

His answer was so smooth, so fast. Almost painless. Almost as if he had been planning it. He had known I was planning, and he had planning also. I had been planning my fairytale, and he had been planning the sweetest way to destroy it. Trying to figure out how to break a heart as gently as possible.

Does he see the hope shining behind my eyes shatter? Does he see a part of me collapse? Does he feel the heart he had had in his hands for so long fall to pieces?

And then it is over. David grins. Brooke and Elaine smile proudly. Symphony leaves because the show is over. Why are they proud of me? Why are they so happy that I made an ass out of myself?

I look down at my hands and notice that they are shaking. I fold them and place them in my lap, hoping Floyd doesn’t see them. But he is too busy talking casually to Elaine, leaving me alone while his rejection sinks in.

I close my eyes again, hoping to see my bedroom. The giant ceiling leak above my head. The dull yellow color of my walls. But when I open them, I see five pairs of eyes, and a few sympathetic smiles, which I do not return. I pick up my tray and take it to the window at the front of the cafeteria. The entire room is out of focus, and I want to disappear. I wonder if they talk about me when I leave. I wonder if Floyd talks about how happy he is that it’s over, and it didn’t seem to bother me. But it does. 

The last few minutes of lunch pass slowly, and for the rest of the day, I walk around in a daze. My angry music blasts against my eardrums, and I find myself on the brink of tears a few times, buried in the safe haven of the back stall of the first floor bathroom. I dig my fingernails into my skin, pinching myself, willing myself to wake up from the nightmare, but I never do.

Does he regret it?

I doubt it.

Chemically Enhanced Fire

Floyd’s eyes are a fire that burns through everything but my heart. How can someone be so brutally honest, yet also not be able to recognize the truth when he sees it?

Maybe I’m better at hiding it than I think I am.

Near the middle of the school year, when the air had become bitter instead of balmy and the first snow had long passed, my crazy Chemistry teacher had conducted an experiment for the class, using different chemicals to light small fires. Each flame was a different color. Floyd’s eyes are like one of those chemically enhanced fires. Light green and icy gray and maybe even a little bit blue all at the same time. His gaze is like heat on my skin. I can always feel it before I see it. I always know when he is watching me, even where he is looking.

"Sneaking your music, I see." His voice yanks me from my thoughts and my eyes are greeted with that fiery gaze. Our French teacher, a tiny woman with a loud voice who was easily frustrated, had initiated a strict "No iPods or Laptops Out During Class" rule after realizing simply yelling at my unruly class wasn’t working. But obnoxious freshmen girls who played rap music in the middle of class and yelled their conversations for the entire class to hear weren’t going to keep from me from listening to Metallica in class, especially on rainy days like this.

Nice to know you were looking close enough.

I think the words to myself in response to Floyd’s comment, but reply only with a small smile and a nod. We usually talk more in French class, but that day, I felt a little jaded, my usual optimism worn down by the dreary weather. It’s funny how the weather seems to control my mood. When it rains, I'm miserable. When it's nice out, I am hopeful and smiling. When it's cold, I'm irritable and nasty.

He had probably picked up on the "leave me the hell alone" stamp on my forehead, complete with bold letters and a bleak expression. Not that that stamp ever really applied to him. Floyd’s random conversations and wicked sense of humor are always welcome.

But our lack of conversation didn’t bother me as much as I expected it to. There's never any pressure to make an effort with him. That’s how it always is with us. We're always laid back, always talking, whether it be with our words or with our eyes, whether it be about nothing or everything. There was once a time when I would remember every remotely sweet thing he ever said to me, everything that I said that made him laugh. But now, all of the times I spend with him blend together, like one big moment that never becomes a distant memory. What would I do if I let that happen? I'm so comfortable by Floyd's side that it makes me wonder if I belong there.

That wondering is what got me into this mess, isn't it?

It’s funny how easy it is to keep a secret. It’s funny how easy it is to laugh at his jokes when they aren’t even amusing. It’s funny how easy it is to be the funny, witty girl friend, but when his back is turned, the perfected exterior falls to pieces, transforming me into the adoring shadow that would give anything to be his girlfriend, to be one word instead of two, and be many more besides.

It’s become a daily routine, putting up the same front every morning and taking it down every afternoon. Smiling and meeting his gaze when he speaks to me, basking in the warmth of his eyes, pride buzzing beneath my skin when I feel it. Making an effort to laugh when he makes an effort to be funny, saying just the right things to make him approve of and adore me. But when he isn’t looking, the smile fades and my eyes follow him slowly and deliberately, memorizing and yearning. And I fall apart beneath the surface, scolding myself for being so hard to love, scolding myself for not being witty enough, not being pretty enough, not saying what I should have. And the cycle repeats itself, viciously turning me into the definition of anxiety.

A clock ticks in my mind. It reminds me that time is running out. I can only wait so long, before he fades back out of my life, and goes back to being the childhood acquaintance he had been before my sophomore year turned my life upside down.

The internal conflict that boils inside of me becomes a war. Anxiety vs. Hope. Optimism vs. Pessimism. The Impulsive Act vs. Saving Myself The Possible Pain And Jumping To Conclusions Instead. Assumptions vs. Reality, which one is which? The battles escalate, the fighters most likely driven insane by the ticking clock in my mind. Time is the real enemy, the enemy in every battle there is. It’s only purpose to make our lives seem a bit more organized, setting up a pretty backdrop behind our chaos, always a reminder.

And there’s only way to make it stop.

My stomach lurches every time I think about it. My throat dries up a little, my fingers feel tingly. It’s such an uncomfortable feeling, anxiety. Wishing for the best and expecting the worst.

Could I do it?

Could I tell Floyd how I feel about him?

Everything flashes through my brain, like it will be the end of my life. Will it?

A bridge named Giles Corey, the bridge he had chosen to build and destroy with me in Shop class "because I’m smart." Times when we had shared our food at lunch; me giving him cookies that he would eat in one bite, him plopping cups of sugary peaches on my tray because he knew how much I favored them. Our eyes meeting, how it still electrifies every part of me, yet I'm still so comfortable with him. Falling for his personality before his looks. Inside jokes. He always keeps me laughing, sometimes until my eyes fill with tears and I'm not thinking about how ridiculous my face looks or if I sound like a hyena. Him always copying my homework, one of the only people I have met who is unashamedly lazier than I am. My friends who see us together and tell me that they think he feels the same way, and the way I smile because they just might be right. How he takes my side when no one else has the audacity to do so, because when Superman is on your side, the truth always finds its way out and the victimizers become the victims. The bit of fear in the pit of my stomach, the fear of ruining everything and the fear of the opposite.

I think of this perfect thing, whatever it is, that we have.

Am I really going to risk it all on a confession?

Too Easy To Forget

It was only six days ago, a Tuesday.

"Are you ready to take this?" the French teacher asked me, referring to a quiz. I had missed school on Monday due to a random case of the flu, but the content of the quiz was things I had already learned.

"Yeah," I said in response, nodding.

"No," Floyd said, turning around. "When asked that question, you always say no." I rolled my eyes.

"No, Floyd, you always say no," I replied, and he laughed, turning back around.

"If anyone needs any help, raise you hand," the teacher sighed. She always seemed frustrated, but if you had to teach a room that was mostly obnoxious freshmen girls, wouldn’t you be frustrated too? Floyd raised his hand immediately.

"What do you need help with, Floyd?" she asked, her voice flat, like she was just expecting that smart-ass comment and she didn’t know whether to acknowledge it.

"Yeah, um, what are the answers to numbers…one, two, three, four—" She cut him off, smiling despite the obvious setup. I think that the French teacher wanted to like Floyd, but found it very hard to.

"Get back to work," she said simply, and walked away to help someone else.

"Floyd," I hissed, and he looked over his shoulder at me. "What’s the date?"

"The twenty-fourth," he replied and before I could write the numbers down on my paper, I stopped short, something in my brain opening up, letting a few memories spill out.

April 24. Sometimes, we just remember certain dates and their meanings, sometimes we don’t.

April 24 had been Kimberly’s birthday. As far as I know, April 24 is still Kimberly’s birthday.

In middle school, in fifth or sixth grade, a new girl had moved to our school, a girl named Kimberly. She was tiny, not even five feet tall, and probably not even a hundred pounds. Her hair was cropped short, almost like a boy’s. Her eyes were light in color, either blue or green, I can’t remember now. Her teeth were slightly crooked, and she always looked happy when she smiled.

Kimberly bonded quickly with my twin sister, Yuuki, who was always welcoming and friendly to new people at school, but I hadn’t really gotten the chance to get to know her until we were both in seventh grade. We had bonded over things we both enjoyed, like drawing, ghost stories, writing short stories, and reading. By that time, Kimberly had become one of the most bullied girls in my grade, not-so-affectionately nicknamed "Farmer John," because she had made the "mistake" of wearing bib-overalls to school. But despite all of it, she had trusted me. She told me things that still haunt me, like the way her parents abused and mistreated her, and how they accused her of being insane because she had told them that she thought she saw ghosts in her home. That was another thing. Kimberly was a strong believer in the supernatural, and she believed that she was very capable of seeing the dead. She saw apparitions in her home, and even claimed to see them at school, in the middle school bathrooms. (For the record, those bathrooms were definitely haunted.) She also shared something with me that I regret keeping a secret: her depression. Though she retorted vicious comments back at her bullies fearlessly, every word still hurt her. She had admitted to cutting. I remember the day she had told me about it. We had been in one of those bathrooms, the one where people hummed that weren’t actually there, the air was always cold and shadows hid in bathroom stalls. Kimberly had thought it was a girl who haunted the room. She had been so positive that it scared me.

While we were in there talking, she had admitted to cutting. There really was something strange about that bathroom, because all of her secrets seemed to come out while we were in there.

"What do you do it with?" I had asked curiously. The subject of cutting had recently been introduced into my life, probably when we had discussed depression in health class, and I had never expected to become affiliated with someone who was actually depressed.

If only I had been able to see my future, I would’ve been even more surprised by how many of my other friends admitted to their depression. And how it easy it was to fall into that pit myself.

Anyway, that is when Kimberly pulled something from her pocket. It was the end of a pencil, the metal part that holds the eraser. But the eraser wasn’t in it, and the open hole had been pressed closed, making the end straight and sharp. My eyes had widened at the sight, and widened even further when I had caught sight of the proof that she wasn’t lying to me.

An angry looking cut on the inside of her tiny wrist.

I didn’t try to stop her. I knew and kept it a secret. What would happen to her if someone else knew?

I had tried hard not to think she was crazy. Even when she talked about the girl that haunted the third floor bathroom. Even when she said that she "kind of liked the taste of blood," her eyes wild and her face smiling. Even when I saw the cut on her wrist that she had stopped from healing many times. The secrets she had told me remained secret, and to the rest of the world she was just an annoying, bad-tempered, defenseless little girl. But to me, she was a walking disaster, the first one I had encountered, but definitely not the last.

And one day, Kimberly was gone.

Some people said that she was dead. Some people said that she had moved to a different school to run from her bullies. Some said she had gone insane and was getting mental help. Some said she had tried to hang herself with a belt.

I’ve considered asking her older sister, who still attends my high school, about her. But asking a girl who I’ve never talked to about such a touchy subject just didn’t seem right.

Only a few weeks ago, I had been at CVS with Yuuki and my mother, and I had caught sight of Kimberly’s sister’s wavy blonde hair and long brown roots, almost like mine had looked before I had dyed my hair back to its natural color. She was with a heavy, dark-haired woman who wore a t-shirt and shorts, and had a stretchy black supporting band around her knee. The woman had said hello to my mother, and as we stood behind them in the pharmacy line, I had thought about Kimberly again. This was her mother, the woman who had accused her of being insane, who had apparently abused her. And her she was, in a pharmacy, picking up a prescription. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was picking up anti-depressants for Kimberly.

If I saw Kimberly tomorrow, would I even recognize her? Would she recognize me? Would she say anything? Will she think of my sister and I on May ninth, me and Yuuki’s birthday, like I thought of her on April twenty-fourth?

I haven’t seen Kimberly in almost four years, and she was almost too easy to forget.

Fifteen Days

Absence really does make the heart grow fonder, doesn't it?

Random medical issues and long spring breaks kept me missing him, and truths that stung like papercuts kept me second-guessing his imperfect perfection, things that made Superman look less and less like a hero.

After a few days of feeling hopelessly stupid, I let it go. Whether they’re true or not, words are simply words. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone is human. No matter what they tell me about him, no matter how much they tell me to run away or be careful or that he’s not worth my time, I’ll let the words go in one ear and straight out the other.

It sounds foolish, I know. But Floyd’s reputation doesn’t scare me.

Fifteen days of being without him, and I went through a period of missing him, a period of not missing him, a period of hating him, a period of loving him again, and a period of my feelings strengthening, not ready to collapse for the sake of others. They may only be trying to protect me, but I think I can protect myself just fine.

On what would've been day sixteen, I saw him walk into the cafeteria from the corner of my eye, and I felt my stomach fill with butterflies. A smile spread across my face without me instructing it to, and I was so excited that I could've burst right there on the spot. I was so happy! Every bad thing that I’d heard about him drained from my brain. I was literally being brainwashed, thrown back into the day-to-day adventures of falling in love with him that I had missed so greatly.

All I had to see was that flash of black leather jacket from the corner of my eye, and I knew that luck would be on my side on Friday the 13th of April.

Why does luck always have to be on my side when it shouldn’t be, and vice versa?

Oh well. I didn’t mind.

My naïve, fast-paced heart was back on track.

Life went back to normal, the normal I had almost forgotten. The normal that I thought would never be the same after I found out those things about him. But we were just us again. I was just comfortable and drunken-happy and he was just oblivious, and I’m wondering if that’s still a good thing.

During the day, I was also thrown back into the constant mood swings of being with Floyd. The pangs of jealousy when he talked to other girls, the bits of anger when he said something rude, the ecstatic smile (Why try to hide it?) when he started conversation, the pinch of depression whenever his secrets pulled at my brain as it tried to make its way up to Cloud Nine with the rest of me.

My doubts follow me everywhere, even up to Cloud Nine. But something still lingers in my brain, no matter what moods I’m swinging between, and that something is hope. When hope is lost, it is always restored.

Maybe telling Floyd how I feel isn’t a good idea.

But.

On this supposedly "unlucky" day, we had been sitting together in French class, when he had turned around to talk to me. Not many words were said, but he kept meeting my gaze. It was quiet and intentional and every time I looked away, I forced myself to look back, and his eyes were there to meet mine every time. There was something unreadable in his eyes, and now I know what it was.

It was the hope.

The thing that makes it all seem less impossible.

Wednesday Has A Mind Of Its Own

I’m on my way to shop class when I feel someone yank on my backpack. For some reason, I’m expecting to see someone else, anyone else, but I turn around to see Jordan walking behind me, grinning.

"Hi," he says softly. I smile back and it isn’t forced because I’m happy to see him. Too happy and it scares me.

I had been thinking about him a lot since the day before.

A Wednesday.

He had brought in one of his own electric guitars for the first time. It was black and shiny, beautiful. And his amp made his fast, quiet plucking suddenly intense and flawless, like an endless guitar solo. I wanted to sit on a desk and play my own guitar, having enough privacy to play whatever I wanted for a change, but the perfection of his music brought me to the desk next to his, where I just watched him and listened. His eyes met mine a few times, and at one point, the Protest The Hero song he had been playing for me stopped abruptly. He laughed a little. "I messed up," he said. I would’ve never been able to tell.

Then, he started playing an empty, sad tune on the higher strings. It was repetitive and haunting. A chill ran up my spine, and I felt that vacant feeling that I get when I look outside the window on a rainy day. "I wrote that for a girl once," he said. I wondered what girl would ever make him write such a sad song. Adorable guys like him with so much talent shouldn’t have to be sad. That’s usually left for awkward, unattractive, unlucky people like me. But maybe Jordan was an awkward, unattractive unlucky guy. And I just happened to be an awkward, unattractive, unlucky girl who was finding herself falling back in—

WAIT. Wednesday, what the hell are you doing to me?

Now it’s Thursday, and we’re both in the wood shop. He works on his guitar stand/stool while I cover a huge piece of cardboard in duct tape, the bottom of the cardboard boat that me and another girl are building. For a moment, an image flashes through my mind. Floyd and me’s bridge collapsing dramatically, broken apart by only sixty pounds of bricks. It had brought us together, and I hated to see it destroyed. The teacher had asked us how well we worked together, and Floyd had answered. "Great. She did everything I told her to." And as he said it, he met my gaze and smiled. Ah, Floyd. Like a breath of fresh air in the stench of confusion, that horrible place between love and hate, that fine line that I’m walking like a tightrope for Jordan.

And then I look at Jordan again, hammering a nail into his project, looking at it over his glasses. A skinny girl with straight, dark brown hair stands behind him, brushing dirt off of his shirt. Her name is Emma, and I can’t help but feel bad for her. Another girl drawn in by his adorable-ness (Is that even a word?) and amazing talent, and now at the dead end that is his dullness and closed personality. Another girl stuck trying to figure out a guy who seems like he doesn’t want anyone to know him.

Sadly, I might be one of them too.

Jordan twists around, saying, "Do you have to feel me up every time you do that?" with a laugh and a hint of annoyance that maybe only I pick up on. Emma simply laughs and doesn’t answer him. I continue taping the huge piece of cardboard, but my mind isn’t there. I barely react to the wood glue I had splattered on my sister's skull-print hoodie, and I barely notice Jordan doing Michael Jackson impersonations.

My mind is settling down on Tuesday, a time before my tightrope walking, when Floyd and I were both leaning on one of the wooden tables, and I was helping him do his Chemistry homework, a crossword puzzle that I hadn’t even taken time out of my three day weekend to do for myself. He had called my name, and I had turned around. "Can you help me with my Chem?" he cooed, his voice pleading but sugarcoated. I gave him some of the answers, completely sure of myself despite the fact that I was so incredibly close to him. I hated and loved the way I did anything he wanted me to, and I absolutely adored the way he did the same for me. Now, it’s Thursday again, and he isn’t here, probably at home sick, or possibly just ditching class for a day. He isn’t around to be the coffee I wake up and smell, the splash of water in my face, the hard slap back into reality.

And I miss him. I don’t like the way I’m looking at Jordan, and feeling butterflies fluttering around in my stomach, butterflies I had put under the wrath of bug spray and pride long ago.

Is it so terrible to still like Jordan? Because it feels like I’m breaking a deal with myself, like I’m letting myself down. Am I?

Big Apples: The New Cure For Writer's Block

I’ve always loved spring, but there’s something about it that always throws me into writer’s block. Which is strange, considering that the beautiful weather and the world coming alive around me should be enough inspiration, but for some reason, it never is. The weather gets warmer and I grow colder, so to speak. My inspiration freezes over like a lake in January, and while the blue skies have made me happier on many occasions, I seem to be frozen in a confused, miserable state.

I always feel like no one understands me, but in a way, I don’t even understand myself. I understand what I want to be, but I just don’t want to understand what I am. Obviously, no one else does either. From what I've gathered, I understand that I’ll never be good enough for anyone. Every time I yank out my headphones, I hear people talking about their lives, lives so much more interesting than mine, And it’s so shallow, but it hurts.

My writer’s block just got worse, to the point where I was used to it. Well, until I came across something to write about.

Have you ever been to New York City?

I mean, we all see the city in movies, portrayed as some magical kingdom of urban fairytales. But many people live their whole lives without having the opportunity to drop in for a visit, just to see if it’s just like the movies.

Well, today, I woke up at approximately four-thirty in the morning to spend the day in that kingdom. And let me tell you, to an average person, New York is a dirty, overcrowded, smelly town with a few pretty buildings. But to me, New York really is a kingdom, if you choose to love the things that most people overlook or hate.

I said to a friend of mine once, "I think that if you're a logical person, New York is a crime-infested garbage can of a city. But if you're a dreamer, it's a wonderland."

I love the crowds. I love the abundance of taxis. I love the beautiful buildings, old-fashioned and modern ones alike. I love the way the buildings are so close together. I love the pigeons that hop around and fight over food scraps. I love the inspiring signs that the homeless people hold. I love the street performers. I love the colorful graffiti. It’s all strangely beautiful to me, peaceful in the weirdest way. It’s because it’s all like a big routine. It’s a habit that you get into so quickly, just to let it go almost instantly. Waiting for the sign to change from the orange hand to the white walking person. Moving with and against the flow, always beside someone you’ll never know. The noise becomes a dull roar, the smell becomes familiar, you even stop constantly looking up. City life becomes at least a little bit familiar.

I spent my afternoon with Yuuki and David, roaming Times Square. No supervision, no worries, no annoyances. Just three teenagers roaming around New York, pretending that they weren't wonderstruck.

We stopped at many places, like the huge Toys ‘R Us with the Ferris wheel inside, and the Hard Rock Café, but we didn’t buy much. Just scoffed at high prices and talked about random things all day. We ate in the middle of Times Square, still trying to comprehend the fact that we had spent fifteen dollars each on food that wasn’t even that great.

While in New York, I made the decision that I wanted to go there more often, maybe even go to college there. I wanted to look and be comfortable there. I wanted to sit down at one of the tiny red tables in Times Square and just write, inspired by the peaceful multitude that surrounded me.

Throughout the day, I couldn’t help but think, I wish Floyd were here. I wish I was in this city with him, holding his hand on a crowded street, tossing food at pigeons and laughing.

But there was another thought that seemed to cross my mind, one that I’d rather not think.

I wonder where Jordan is. Where did he go? What is he doing?

Jordan was somewhere in that city with me, with people a lot more interesting than me. But why did I care? Why did I care?
This is the part of the story when all of you will sigh solemnly and think about how stupid I am.

I don’t know what to think anymore. I like Floyd, more than I’d ever admit to anyone. But I like Jordan too, more than I’d ever admit to myself. It seemed so easy to let him go, but as my faith in Floyd fades, I fall back to him. He’s like my safety net. He’s adorable, kind of cute in his dullness and awkwardness. He would be easy to go out with. I wouldn’t be afraid of him leaving me too soon. If I were the perfect girl, his heart would be so easy to capture. But I’m not perfect, so I’ll have to try, and I don’t want to try. He can keep being stupid, and I’ll keep acting like that’s all I think of him.

Jordan has become quite the challenge over the months. It’s almost like he’s afraid of getting close to me, and it confuses me. And it confuses me that I fall back to him so easily, when I let him go so fast. I don’t like challenges.

But there is one challenge that I’m finding hard to resist, and that challenge is Floyd. I’m below the surface, and I don’t want to stop now. But where exactly am I going?

Because it feels like I’m on a one-way trip to nowhere with him.

To Doubt.

Just hold on loosely, but don’t let go. If you cling too tightly, you’re gonna lose control.

"Anyone know who sings that?" my Shop teacher asks. It’s Friday, when he has his guess-the-artist game at the beginning of the period. I’m staring off into space because I’m thinking about when Floyd and I were listening to that same song yesterday, both singing along.

If he were here, he would probably know who sang the song. But as for me, I’m staring off into space and thinking about yesterday.

Our bridge is weak and popsicle sticks snap off as I inspect it. I glue them back on, then put it away. Floyd could deal with it on Monday. Or maybe I could fix it myself.

I go to lunch later and Michelle tells me that she is moving away from our lunch table, because she’s sick of putting up with Floyd. I pretend to be upset, but inside I am glad to be rid of the annoying amount of tension at our table these days.

We sit down to eat. I look at my cup of peaches and say, "I wish Floyd were here so he could give me peaches."

Elaine, who is one of his many ex-girlfriends, looks up at David and I and says, "Oh! He told me he wants to go out with me again." I blink. David starts to ask what she said, but she cuts him off. "I said no. I just…I don’t like him like that."

You see, I don’t care if Elaine likes Floyd. She could be obsessed with him for all I care.

It’s just the fact that he likes her.

In the car on the way home, I blurt it out to my mom, even though I told myself I wouldn’t tell anyone I was upset. Mom ignores me and tells me that she doesn’t want to hear my "whiner stories." I bite down on my lip and hold back tears. She starts a random conversation about how a fellow lunch lady she knew was working at my school, and she asked me if I saw her. She went on to describe her and everything and I seriously don’t know anything about the high school lunch ladies, except that they don’t give us enough food.

"How do you not notice anything? Are you that shallow?" Mom snaps.

"No, it’s just…let me think of a way to put this…" I trail off. "There was a moment when everyone else in the room disappeared," I say, and my voice cracks as I say it, tears threatening to make me sound like a blubbering idiot.

She goes on talking, punctuating my statement with a "Whatever", and I realize she has no idea what I mean and I don’t tell her.

I was so stupid, actually getting my hopes up. I always knew he still liked her, and just because my predictable life likes to torment me, here she is, telling us all about it.

I think about the bridge, and the way it’s falling apart on me now. I think about how that was our bridge, the one we were building to get to the other side holding hands. And now it’s falling apart. How fitting.

I don’t want to give up on him.

My pessimist side tells me I have to. My optimist side tells me to keep holding on. What should I do?

I asked myself a few days ago, "To doubt, or not to doubt?"

I think I will hold on... loosely. But I won't let go. But I won't hold on too tightly, because I will lose control.

I will drive myself crazy. I think I'm going to believe in this, but I will not rely on this.

And...

I will doubt.

To Doubt Or Not To Doubt?

"Did you know that only two percent of the population have green eyes?" Floyd asks.

"Oh. Wow," I say in response, and I look back down at my lunch, catching sight of the two cups of frozen peaches stacked on top of each other. I grin a little and then I realize he’s still looking at me.

"You have green eyes," I say, and it comes out half like a question and half matter-of-factly. I look up and look right into those eyes.

"Yeah," he says and we both don’t look away. "Well, they change color."

"They look kind of…grayish green," I reply. And I look away because if I look for too long, my brain will drain out until it’s empty. But I don’t look away in time because I turn into an idiot in five seconds flat. I mentally kick myself because something stupid fell out of my mouth instead of something clever, but he still laughs anyway.

Random things flash through my memory. (Why must I think so much?) The bridge. The day we talked aimlessly about so many different things. The peaches he just gave me a few minutes before. The exchanged glances. The proud feeling I get when I make him laugh. The way he never lets out his vicious side to attack me. The way I take his side and he takes mine. He is my Superman, and I am the damsel in distress. And here I am, patiently waiting for him to sweep my off of my feet and fly away.

The girl he was dating broke up with him on Saturday. Saturday…when I had that dream…Anyway, he told me this on Monday, and the whole thing didn’t even seem to affect him, which wasn’t surprising. What can I say? He’s Floyd. If his heart were broken, he would have a hard time showing it. I wish I were more like him sometimes.

It’s only Wednesday, but I’m just dying for him to sweep me off my feet already. We could be a silhouette in the sky. The stereotypical-nonstereotypical (if that makes sense?) happy couple, with a red cape trailing behind them as they fly higher and higher, up to where heartbreak and loneliness aren’t even an afterthought.

But for some reason, I doubt that he will.

To doubt or not to doubt?

That is the question...

Dancing In Her Sleep

Last night, I had a dream. Not the usual sort of nonsense that escapes my brain upon waking, and floats aimlessly around my brain, the ghost of a thought. No. It felt real. And it was perfect.

I was in a large dark room with flashing lights. I think there was music. It was a dance of some sort. (Alright, I know, this is already sounding awfully "middle school" already, but bear with me) It was in the high school cafeteria, not the usual gym. I liked this touch, even though it was strange. I have so many good and bad memories in that cafeteria; lunches, breakfasts. Time spent with Floyd, time spent with Jordan. Food and conversation, feelings and inspiration. Songs, poems, posts were inspired here. The gym can only produce sad poetry about tragic school dances. But the cafeteria? This is where good dreams belonged.

I remember spending a lot of the evening talking to Floyd, the same kind of haphazard conversation that flits around quickly, landing on a subject for a few moments before taking off again, touching down on the random and the complex with seamless grace.

There were still a few cafeteria tables scattered on one side of the room. I was sitting at one when it happened. A slow song had started, and that was why I had found a seat, a place to look away from the happy couples dancing that I hated to see. But (brace yourself for the cheese) ...

There is Floyd, and he is walking my way. He stops in front of me and extends one of his hands toward me. He smiles.

"May I have this dance?" he asks. For a moment, I just stare at him in surprise. "Not too close, if you that’s what you want."

That last part is kind of weird and it doesn't make sense now that I'm awake. In the dream, I didn’t ask what he meant, but now I’m really wondering. I guess he figured I thought of him as a friend, but I really do want to hold him close and I was going to let him know that.

I smile back at him and I take his hand. And then suddenly, I am outside of myself, and I am watching us dance. We don’t cling to each other for dear life like any other couple, a tangled mess of arms and kisses that it pains me to watch, half out of envy, half out of disgust. But Floyd and I waltz around the floor slowly like a prince and a princess at a royal ball. Even though I am watching all of this happen instead of living inside of myself, I feel his fingers between mine, warm. After the song ends, we buy ourselves some food, because how could either of us live without our usual abundances of food? We sit down and eat together just like at lunch, and I remember thinking that in school on Monday, I was going to ask him if he just danced with me because he felt bad for me. But as I think it, he reaches over and puts his fingers between mine again, and this time I am living in the moment when I look into his eyes, and I know that I didn't need anyone's pity tonight.

It was a dream come true.

I open my eyes and see light shining through the curtains over my window.

Oh, wait. Not a dream come true. Just a dream.

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to go back again, but I can’t.

That world seemed so far away this morning, when I was trying so hard to go to sleep and find it again. But the truth is, that world follows me everywhere. I can visit it any time, but it only feels real when I sleep. But what if the real world and that world were the same thing?

Does Floyd ever dream about me? Does Floyd ever really think of me at all?

If there is a world where I get to hold Floyd without sleeping to find it, I would love to be a part of it.

Only One Reason

I sit down beside Floyd at our lunch table. David isn’t at school and he’s actually sick (!), which is a first. One of the hyper, preppy girls at the table next to us has confiscated a few chairs (what a shame), so here I sit in the seat beside his. I tear into my lunch ravenously, picking up a small bag of onion rings and pulling it open.

"And I’d bet this is going to be half empty…" I mumble. "Yep. Just as I—" I start, peering into the bag, until Floyd cuts me off.

"Hey!" he says, mock scolding in his voice and an exaggerated scowl on his face. "Half full."

I smile, despite the eye roll I send his way pointedly. (Optimism? I just want onion rings.)

But let him play the optimist. (Who knew he had it in him?) It's one of the reasons I love him.

It Happens More Than I'd Like To Admit

"Wait—what the hell is that?" he says, an incredulous laugh in his voice.

"It’s a pedal tone chord. It’s like a Cadd9, but you put your…" I trail off. "You know a G, right?" He nods and places his fingers in a G formation. I pull one of his long, pale fingers off of the bottom string and move it down a string. "Now, put your pinky on the last string." He strums the G. "It kind of adds something, doesn’t it?" I ask, and I look up at the wrong time because I’m looking right into his eyes. Look away. He switches back and forth from a G to a Cadd9 and then his fingers start flying up and down the fret board. Those fingers just can’t be trained, confined to simplicity. I smile at the intricate noise and watch his hands. It's like a whole other language, that his hands whisper to my strings, one that my hands don't quite know how to translate yet. My strings seem to like it, because they respond beautifully. They learn quickly, much faster than I. When I look up, our eyes meet again. He asks me something but I don’t even hear it. I blink.

"Do you want your guitar?" he says again.

"No, you can keep playing… Just give it to me when you’re done." He hands it to me immediately and I am honestly a little disappointed.

We’re talking and it’s not as meaningless as I expect and something is happening in me that shouldn’t be happening.

I start playing "Kryptonite" by 3 Doors Down because that song makes me think about Floyd. Floyd. Yeah, him. Damn you Floyd, for getting sick, and leaving me to watch Jordan and realize just how--

What am I thinking?

Logic has failed me and my brain is turning against me.

I spend time with Jordan and it feels like the first day that I met him, which is not good. Something is new and something is different about us today, maybe the fact that I’m "over" him and he’s looking at me and talking to me and I’m trying very, very, very hard to ignore those eyes and that smile and that music and those hands and everything that I fell in love with on the very first day.

"I kind of want to get the other guitar from the band room. Will you come down with me?" he asks and I can’t say no and that bugs me. We go downstairs, and we’re laughing, having some sort of bizarre conversation, the kind I'm only in the mood for when I'm happy. And I am. Why? I laugh harder when I hear him laughing, because his laugh is so amusing. We walk side by side, laid back and comfortable like friends should be and I want to catch one of his hands with one of my swinging arms and hold it. When I realize this, I want to slam my head against the wall repetitively until I realize how incredibly stupid I am being.

I spend the rest of the morning thinking and mentally slapping myself across the face. Snap out of it. I keep shoving Jordan out of my mind until sometime around second period, I let him in. He curls up with my reluctant affection. I let myself want to love him. I let myself want to make him happy.

And you know why I let that happen?

Because "I may be dumb, but I’m not a dweeb, just a sucker with no self-esteem."

Who said anything about a weak point? I am strong enough to want to hold Jordan’s hand without wanting to hold it forever. I'd say that's more of a strong point than a weak point.

Maybe this is just how I get myself through Wednesdays that otherwise suck. May as well make them worth glorifying, right?

And then it is Thursday and I am back to random but meaningful conversation and smiling and laughing with Floyd. I always feel a warm, proud feeling when I make Floyd laugh. Our popsicle stick bridge is actually starting to look like a bridge and we are gluing and clamping and taping and it is all very frustrating but we are talking and standing very close which makes it all better.

"Michelle was thrilled that you weren’t here yesterday," I say. "She was like, "Guess what! Floyd isn’t here! This is great!" and I was like, "Yes, I know."

"'And that makes me very sad,'" Floyd says to finish off my thoughts exactly with a grin on his face. No comment. He totally knows. Or maybe I’m just overreacting. Love, or like, or attraction, or obsession or whatever this is should not be a frustrating guessing game. I’m not chasing him down, I’m simply just walking. I don’t follow him. He doesn’t follow me. We just walk side by side and ponder if we should be holding hands. At least I do.

And Jordan still wanders around in the very back of my mind, but I am focusing all of my daydreamer dreams on the boy who hasn’t let me down yet.

I hate to think about it and say this, but if Floyd was ever to let me down…for some reason…

I know exactly where I would go next.

And that bugs me.

When I get on the bus after school, a song is playing. I hear only a few of the words before it ends. I'm not over you. Even the radio hates me. "Hey," Yuuki says to get my attention. I turn my head toward where she sits across the aisle. "This music sucks." I nod. Yes Yuuki, it does.

Oh well. I guess all good chefs have to pay attention to the things they put on the back burner every once in a while. Right?

Building Bridges

When you find yourself rapidly falling for someone, nothing else matters. Seriously! I could bomb a Geometry quiz, gain five pounds, get into disputes with my friends, and have a pounding headache all in one day, but as long as I get to spend time with him, who cares?

Everything is still a big question, an empty space that I can easily fill up with dreams and possibilities. He hasn't crushed my dreams yet. I know it's probably inevitable, but I guess it's fine to just keep smiling. Maybe when he breaks my heart, I'll be able to remember being happy like this, and be able to look back on it and know that he didn't always make me miserable. But who says he has to break my heart anyway? (Fate, possibly)

I never, ever would have suspected falling for Floyd. But it’s funny how things just…happen. I have faith in this. I don't know why, but I do. I get my hopes up very high, and today, it feels like nothing can crush them.  

Is Floyd the perfect solution to a problem I've been trying to solve for far too long? It's like I've been doing all of this difficult algebra, head in my hand, tears clouding my vision, eraser worn down. But it turns out that it was a multiple choice question all along! All I had to do was plug in the different choices, and see which one works. I'm not settling for "C" because that's what everyone says you should do, I'm confidently circling the answer that I know is right. But what if this backfires? What if I fail the test?

Gazes meet like two links on a chain, gripping onto each other for only a few seconds before they break again. His eyes are like windows to the inside of his brain, and every once in a while, I catch a glimpse of thoughts floating around aimlessly, just behind my own thoughts, glistening softly there. A reflection, because I see myself in him.

Slowly, I memorize him. I memorize every expression on his face. I memorize the way his voice sounds depending on his mood. I memorize the way his hands feel when they brush up against mine. I memorize the way he smells. He has a nice smell, a sort of rugged mix of cologne, sweat and wintergreen tobacco. Is it weird to say that the way someone smells can soothe you? Just breathing him in, knowing he's close enough to smell, is enough to put me at ease. I am comfortable by his side. Whenever I walk next to him, I picture us holding hands. I picture the way peoples' eyes would fall on our linked fingers, I picture the way their eyebrows would raise or their grins would widen. He’d be a great boyfriend. No, I take that back. He would be perfect for me. I would be the sweet, pushover girl that would soften his sharp tongue and tough exterior, and he would be the sarcastic, fearless, witty guy that would toughen me up and push me to say what I really mean to people who deserve it. He would make me fearless. So what if everyone would hate me the way they hate him? At least I'd still have one person on my side. And that's all I need.

I love listening to him talk to people, the way he always makes them laugh without even trying. I love how we spend forty-five minutes of every day together, just building our bridge. It’s a corny metaphor (my forte), but while we build that bridge, we also build another bridge, one that is invisible, but still very real. We’re slowly, carefully building a bridge that goes from friends to good friends and maybe (hopefully) beyond. He doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. He just does it subconsciously, carefully attaching the little bits and pieces that I give him. I’m the one with the blueprint, the one who is strategically planning it all out, and he’s just winging it, oblivious to my plans, and we’re both just letting it all fall into place, a bridge strong enough to get us to the other side. Hopefully, by the time we get to the other side, we’ll be holding hands.

One Of Those Days

 "It's just one of those days."

Don't you just hate those days? Those days you refer to when you say "those days"?

Valentine’s Day is just one of those days. Certainly not a holiday.

Actually, it is one of the days with the highest suicide rates. (Gee, I wonder why)

Valentine’s Day was made for the single people to feel insanely jealous of what they’re missing out on and the couples to show off the happiness that they have found in this awful, shallow generation. But doesn't that happen every day, anyway?

But before I go on, I must clarify that there are two types of single people. The first type is the people who haven’t been in a relationship for a few weeks, maybe months, possibly a year. I guess you could call them "dormant."

Then, there are the hopeless ones. These are the people who seem to have absolutely nothing figured out when it comes to romance and happiness going hand in hand. They’re incredibly behind in a world where everyone is racing ahead, and they can’t help but feel down about it. Not very often do I come across another single person like this in a world of couples and "dormant" single people. But when I do, I can’t help but feel my heart ache for them, because I know exactly how they feel. Trust me, I’m the one bringing the balloons and goodie bags to the pity party here. I’m not just taking pity on those poor, loveless schmucks. I am one of those poor loveless schmucks. I’m crying on their shoulders and they are crying on mine. But there seems to be a bit of a problem here...

There are no shoulders to cry on. I am alone here in the land of hopeless single people. Everywhere I turn, I see hands linked, lips locked, changed relationship statuses, big smiles. And I can’t help but be insanely, incredibly, painfully, horribly, pathetically, pitifully jealous. I am a pathetic fool who complains and complains about the happiness of others. And you know why?

Because I am awkward, naïve, unattractive. I have too much personality to go around, but no one cares about what’s below the surface anymore. It’s all tiny waistlines, Barbie-doll tits, long hair, pretty faces, and in most cases, a lack of brain cells. That is the ideal girlfriend of my generation. Kind of sick, isn't it? I have none of those qualities. Why am I punished for that, again? 

I can’t help that I am a fifteen-year-old girl in a world like this. I want so badly to skip this part of my life, the part when I’ll just never, ever be good enough for any guy. I want to wake up one morning and be done with this crap. I want to get to the good part of my life, if it even exists. But wait—shouldn’t this be the good part of my life? It seems to be that way for everyone else. I’ve always heard it said that your high school and college years are the best years of your life. But since I turned thirteen and started high school, I have been nothing but miserable ever since.

And the damn country I live in has a day to celebrate the reason I am miserable.

What is love, anyway? Do any of those happy couples that I envy so greatly actually share love? If not, what is it, anyway? Whatever it is, I want to get in on it. I mean, yes, there are different types of love. I love my parents a different way than I love my sister, I love my sister a different way than I love my friends, I love my friends a different way than I love my grandmothers. I love my grandmothers a different way than I love guys. (I should hope so) But from what I gather from any type of love, love is being comfortable with someone. Love is knowing that someone is there for you. Love is not looking past the bad things, just loving everything instead. Love is complex, and everyone loves differently.

I love my family in a love/hate sort of way. I love my friends in a strong, protective way. I love each guy I fall for in a different way, but usually, every time is fueled by the dreams of a dreamer, the quest for my first love.

Grey. I loved him in a he’s-so-amazing-and-talented-and-beautiful sort of way. I practically idolized him. I felt that nothing in the entire world even came close to the flawless aura of his existence. Light, I loved in a he’s-really-cute-and-he-seems-nice sort of way. But what started out as a tiny, meaningless crush exploded into a mess of Oh-my-God-I-need-you for no particular, logical, earthly reason. I loved Jordan in a way that was kind of new to me, because I actually knew him and talked to him. I fell in love with his outer appearance, and fell in love with his personality, but only the good parts. But then, I started seeing the bad things about him. Like how he is incredibly dull and I never had an intellectual conversation with him. Like how he dedicated so much time to hating everything. Like music, which was a ridiculous, waste of time sort of thing to do, plus the bands were all bands that I liked. And like how he said either "fuck" or "shit" in practically every sentence that came out of his mouth. Like how he gets drunk and smokes weed. And none of the good parts of his personality made up for any of the bad. He honestly is a  bit of a loser. A cute loser, but a loser nonetheless. I loved him and thought that the love was real, when it was all just physical attraction.

And then there was Floyd.

I don’t even know if I love him, honestly. I became attracted to his personality months before I made the decision to let myself have feelings for him. I loved how we had so much in common, how he always said things to make me laugh. Somewhere deep in my mind, like 20,000 leagues under the sea, far away from the ears and minds of anyone else, I confirmed it. I was indeed falling for him. After I was completely hooked on that loud, fearless, quirky personality, he became undoubtedly handsome. He did not magically become the most gorgeous guy in the world, but he may as well have. He’s attractive in his own way. He slowly became the only person I see in a crowded room. He became the latest victim of my wishful thinking and hopeless heart.

I’m not moonstruck. I'm not crazy. I'm not obsessed. (Yet) No, this feeling is something I feel almost sure of. But that alone scares the shit out of me. I want him to reciprocate my feelings. I want that a lot. I stopped denying my attraction and simply let myself dream. I’m starting to wonder if that was a mistake. Love leads to ruin.

Oops. I kind of ran away with my words a little there. (I do that) What was I talking about?

Oh, yeah. Valentine’s Day.

Eh. Never mind. Screw Valentine’s Day. I think I’m too content right now to let the happiness of others ruin my day. I’m not ignoring the fact that it’s Valentine’s Day. (How could I?) I’m just treating it like another day, another day to love, another day to laugh, another day to be frustrated, and another day that I will never get to live again. Might as well not spend it sulking.

Every time someone tells me to let love find me, the first word to pass my lips is usually "That," shortly followed by "is total bullshit." But maybe those words actually do mean something. I refuse to be the one chasing this time. I will patiently wait for him to notice that what he’s looking for is right in front of him. I will patiently wait for Superman to save the day.

Once upon a time, I asked David what he thought I was doing wrong, why I’ve never had a boyfriend. I’ll never forget what he said.

"Show off your boobs more."

What boobs?

I was thoroughly disgusted by his answer, but laughed anyway, even though he wasn’t joking.

If being a slut is what it takes to be happy, I would rather be miserable.

I think I’d rather take the advice that Floyd gave Michelle, on that day when she had been interrogating him in the same way. It was the most civil thing he had said to her that day, and it really stuck with me.

"Watch as many sappy chick flicks as possible. Then, do the exact opposite of what they do."

I’m not going to watch any movies, because I hate sappy romance movies. I’m just not going to come on strongly. I’m not going to try persistently to win his heart. I’m not going to hope for something cliché, because Floyd just isn’t a cliché type of guy.

Hopefully, he’ll realize who is perfect for him in time.

Until then, be happy on Valentine’s Day. If I can do it, you can too.

With Every Move I Die

The gymnasium is dark, save for the flashing green and white lights that leave the walls decorated with stars, hearts, and disco-esque spots. The room is emptier than I expected, but still peppered with small clumps of people, some dancing and some standing still.

Alexandria decides not to attend the evening's festivities. I could really use her warm heart, upbeat aura, and sound, to-the-point advice on a night like tonight. But instead, I’m surrounded by people who could care less about what I am feeling.

I am still in my awkward stage of not dancing when I see them. She looks pretty, polished, in a gray and black dress, her golden blonde hair straight and perfect. And there is Floyd holding her. I avert my eyes quickly, like I just saw a glimpse of a person covered in blood, or I just saw someone I barely know bawling their eyes out, or I just saw two girls making out, or I just saw someone get hit by a car or have their head chopped off. But all of those things would be undoubtedly better than seeing this. I dared to look again and saw their heads very close. They were seconds away from a kiss. Just in time, I turned my head quickly once more and didn’t make the mistake of looking again. Yuuki tells me that he looks my way a few times, but I don't dare to look at him, not even for a friendly wave or a small smile.

I hope that when he's holding her and seeing me, he takes a moment to think about me. About singing "Away From The Sun" with me or standing so close to me in shop class. About playing cards with David and I at lunch, about talking and talking about all of those little things we have in common, about throwing a frisbee around with me in my backyard when we were young, about how he chose me to work with him on our bridge, Giles Corey: The Bridge Of The Rising Sun, in shop class, about the cookies I buy him and the peaches he gives me at lunch, about the exchanged glances and times we laughed, about our friends that say we'd be cute together. But I know he doesn't. I am the last thing on his mind tonight.

For the rest of the evening, I kept catching glimpses of them. Him holding her while they danced to "Here (In Your Arms)" by Hellogoodbye, a song I’ve always loved. (Not anymore) Her walking as he trailed behind, their hands linked. Him whispering something in her ear and her laughing in response. Slow songs play and I refuse to look at them. I watch Cassidy and her gorgeous boyfriend dance instead, and feel a pang of envy. He's a pretty cool guy. I wish I could find a nice guy that I could show off at school dances like this, a guy that would hold me and push my hair back and kiss me the way he does to her. They make it look so easy. All of those sweet moments. I’ve never even kissed anyone. I'm so fucking lame. Why do I even breathe? I look up at the red numbers on the clock and find myself wishing I were at home watching Juno.

The evening creeps by slowly, and Floyd and his girlfriend eventually leave. I find myself wondering where they went. Maybe to his house. I'd bet they had a jolly-good time, too. Minutes pass slowly, and I become more relaxed about my dancing and simply move. My mind is a million miles away. I stare off into space, eyes and brain unfocused, and move to the beat of the music. Cassidy’s boyfriend reaches out his hand and messes up my hair a little, and the playful gesture yanks me out of my thoughts and I reach up and do the same to him. I can’t help but want to be the girl kissing him instead of Cassidy. Am I thinking like this out of loneliness? Because I'm not even attracted to the guy. But there he was, like some emo Prince Charming, and I’m suddenly, stupidly wishing he came to this dance with me, so I could hold him close and hope that Floyd would see me with this gorgeous guy when he’s not gorgeous and his date isn’t really that pretty either.

And yet I feel something for Floyd that’s beyond thinking he’s gorgeous. We’re like the missing pieces of each other’s jigsaw puzzles. I’m the sweet, quiet part that he lacks, and he is the impulsive, honest, loud, badass part that I lack. We’d be the perfect counterparts for each other.

But he’ll never know that, and I’ll never tell him.

I left the dance a little happier than I had been earlier. Or maybe I was just numb. As I danced, the loud music filling the silence I was locking myself inside of, everything slowly started to fade away. The people around me became just faces, the music became just noise, and my body rocked to the sound, like I was a child being lulled to sleep, or I was rocking back and forth while I cried, because for some reason, that’s usually strangely comforting. Everything was a blur. My eyes that had been wet with tears were dry once more and a little out of focus. At one point, I remember pondering if I was going to pass out, because I felt so detached from the moment. I slowly woke up from my strange slumber, induced by the lullaby of thumping pop music and bumping, spinning, and swaying bodies that crashed like waves. Being at that dance was like sleeping on the beach. After Floyd was gone, the one person that existed in a crowded room had disappeared, leaving everyone else still invisible to me.

On the way out, Cassidy’s boyfriend told me it was nice meeting me and pulled me into a hug. I wrapped my arms around him tightly because I really needed a hug and it felt nice to hold a boy for a change, even if it was my friend’s crazy cross-dresser boyfriend. I told him it was nice meeting him too, even though we had already met twice. But I’d bet he didn’t even remember. I’m not exactly an unforgettable kind of girl. Then, everyone leaves and I'm in my mom's car on my way home to pretending I'm not miserable.

Right now, it’s very, very early Sunday morning, and I’m a little tired. When I got home, I talked to Jordan on Facebook out of boredom and remembered why I didn't like him anymore. A little birdie told me he was single again, and a little part of me cared. But a bigger part of me didn’t. I could say that I hope the girl broke his heart, but I honestly don’t even care. He’s a dolt. I’m glad I forgot about him, but I’ve hit rock bottom once more. And it hurts.

I sit at the kitchen table with my dad. He eats ice cream and Puffin' Corn and works on a crossword puzzle in the newspaper. I’m clicking away at my laptop keys when he says, "I don’t know this one, but I should. ‘A heavy metal band.’ And it has ‘A’, blank, ‘D’, blank." I let a piece of cheesy Puffin Corn melt in my mouth and stop typing. "AC/DC," I say in response. I don’t even like AC/DC too much, but it was the first thing that came to mind. Something hurts inside because it reminds me of Floyd. (What doesn't anymore?) AC/DC is his favorite band.

I start listening to "Away From The Sun" and suddenly I am in the wood shop, touching his hands and singing the song with him. I close my eyes and let myself live in that moment, because I’d rather not be in this one.

I spent the rest of my Sunday sleeping, eating sugary cinnamon pretzels, listening to sad music and writing. I wrote a poem, but it's not any good. But something stood out to me about the poem. Four years ago, on the same night as the dance, February 11, 2008, my heart was broken for the very first time. I was at a middle school Valentine's Day dance, and I had asked the boy I liked to dance with me. He hated me because I chased him like my life depended on it. Even at eleven years old, I was on the never-ending quest for the sweet happiness that usually comes with romance. He had said no to me, and had danced with another girl instead. As soon as I got in the car and we were a block or two from the school, I was bawling like a baby. It continued for hours after. I remember looking down at my Tin Roof Sundae ice cream at home and still crying. It just never stopped.

And it still hasn't. The heartache changes, the reasons for the pain change, but it's always that same pain. I always find myself in the same rut that I was in that night in middle school, when the feeling was still new to me. Now, I'm so used to it, it's scary. It's the one feeling I can never detach from. It's the one that hits me so hard that I just fall down, helpless, and I'm back to being that naïve little girl at the kitchen table with her ice cream. The same one who picked up a pencil and paper and wrote her first poem and hasn't stopped writing since.

I'll always be that girl.

No if only I can be proven wrong.

On My Side

A few days ago, I had been talking to Floyd in French class about how Symphony seems to enjoy treating me like nothing, and still expects me to act like nothing is wrong. Today, she had been flitting around in her usual fashion, following around our young, good-looking history teacher. (Every girl's dream, except when he sings Lady Antebellum in class and burps in your face while checking your work) After his class, I had been leaving with Floyd and David as she had been entering, for whatever reason. She had said hello to me, and I greeted her in return, but all I could think of is how she had ignored me the night before when I had tried to talk about something other than her for a change. I waved and smiled anyway and heard Floyd mumble something behind me. I slowed down and fell into step beside him.

"What was that?" I asked, smirking. I was greeted with that mischievous look he wore so well.

"I said, ‘get the fuck out.’ You know, not to Symphony or anything…" I grinned a little.

"...my thoughts exactly."

"That’s what I do. I say the things that no one else does." We smile at each other. He's right. Always right. He’s like the missing piece of me, the part of me that never has the guts to come out. He’s the edgy, harsh, rude, I-don’t-have-time-for-your-bullshit side of me that I’m too yellow-bellied to reveal.

Then at lunch, he lets another impudent comment about Symphony slip as she leaves for the classroom of the man of her dreams. Brooke and Elaine grumble something about how rude he is, with matching eye rolls. He gestures my way with his eyes and says,

"She doesn’t like her. Therefore, I don’t like her." I look down at my lunch tray to hide the pride showing in my grin.

I take your side and you take mine? Sounds likes a plan.

And now again I’ve found myself so far down, away from the sun that shines into the darkest place, I’m so far down…

We both sing under our breaths as the shop teacher blasts music for us as we work out in the shop, building our Popsicle stick bridge. The teacher has a great taste in music, always playing things Floyd and I find ourselves singing along to. And as "Away From The Sun" plays for us, I glue and tape and measure Popsicle sticks absentmindedly, thinking about how close we’re standing. I hold a stack of sticks together for him to tape, and as he does, his hands are touching mine. Not just a brush here and there. I can feel how warm his hands are, and I wonder if he’s thinking about holding my hands like I’m thinking about never letting go of his.

When I was younger, when we would toss a Frisbee around in my backyard sometimes, passing the time as our dads and moms talked, I would’ve never suspected I would end up wanting to be his girlfriend when I was fifteen.

Life is full of surprises.