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?
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