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?

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?

How To Fall Out Of Love

I never would have thought it would be so easy to let go of Jordan. It’s almost unbelievable!

Today is a Wednesday. Wednesdays are lovely. But this one wasn't perfect.

I had a weak point this morning.

I was playing my guitar when I saw him looking at me. I looked away quickly, bit down on my bottom lip, and my mind began to race. Please don’t look at me. Please don’t make this hard.

I started singing a song under my breath, "Harder Than You Know" by Escape The Fate.

Baby, don’t talk to me, I’m trying to let you go. Not loving you is harder than you know.

I looked up a guitar tab for it, and gave up before trying. Too difficult for a scrambled brain to figure out. Maybe I just wasn’t meant to play it at that moment. I slid my capo into place and started playing a song called "How To Fall Out Of Love." It was a song I wrote only a few days earlier.

It was about letting him go.

He stood beside me and listened to me sing and play. My voice trailed off and got quieter. Cassidy told me to sing louder, but how could I? I didn’t want him to hear it! I was faced with a decision: listen to myself or listen to Cassidy?

I chose the latter and kept playing.

I’ll never know what he thought. Probably nothing. I overanalyze everything.

Throughout the day, we talked like friends. Maybe that’s what we’ve been doing for months, but I chose not to notice. But one thing that happened really stood out to me. Kind of seems unimportant, but for some reason, it doesn't feel that way.

I touched him.

I always avoided physical contact with him. Always. Today I played with the hood on his sweatshirt, touched his hair, touched his arm when I talked to him, all things I never would’ve done before. Weird. Aren’t those the things that most girls do when they like someone? I guess it’s the other way around for me.

As I put my guitar away, he handed me the light purple pick I had let him use. Our fingers touched. Electricity. I cringed. No. Go away, stupid sparks that aren’t actually flying.

So, I had a weak point. But I strengthened throughout the day. I moved him back onto the back burner and kept living my life.

Life Is Sweet (Sometimes)

Happy Wednesday, everyone!

I was sitting in the back seat of my mom’s car, scrolling through the songs on my iPod, trying to decide on what to listen to this morning on the way to school. I settled on a sad song and thought abruptly, Wait! What the hell am I doing? It’s Wednesday! I promptly turned on a happy, upbeat song instead. I was still instinctively expecting a bad day in the back of mind. (Who could blame me?) But I told myself that if life wanted to throw more bullshit at me, put up more brick walls for me to run into, today I would have a shield and a bulldozer. Also known as hope and a smile.

On the way to school, I realized that I should’ve been following my weird theory all week, because for some reason, it seems to work a little. But it’s not too late yet. We’re only halfway through this week!

I was sitting in the cafeteria like I do every morning, eating my cinnamon roll and expecting his arrival. I heard his voice behind me and nonchalantly swiveled around my seat, acting like my stomach didn’t just do a little flip-flop and my heart wasn’t fluttering around like a butterfly, eager to break lose and join the others just below. Wouldn’t that kill me? Then could I honestly say I died trying to win this boy’s heart?

"Wait, isn’t today Wednesday?" he asked. I gazed up at him and thought to myself, You tell me. Is it?

"Yeah. But we don’t have Guitar Club," I answered. The short half-hour before class every Wednesday when clubs have their meetings had been cancelled. Jordan was obviously disappointed. (Does it sound sick that I found that oddly pleasing?)

I talked to him the way the way the magazines and shit say I should, jokingly insulting him, stealing glances and looking away, even playing with my hair, my voice almost as sugary sweet as the cinnamon roll I was eating. I was on the brink of miserable, but everything seems a little sweeter when Jordan is around.

Watching him, I remembered why I had started falling the second I saw him. He's perfect in his imperfections. Perfect because he isn't. I love the way he shakes his head back and forth quickly like a dog shaking it’s wet fur, which leaves his hair a long, feathery mess. I love his eyes, big and hazel, so full of something I can't put a label on. I love the soft curve of his half smile, the little silver ring wrapped around his bottom lip, the way I sometimes watch him talk and want to kiss him. I love that baggy sweatshirt he wears with the skulls on it, the one I just want to wrap myself up in. I love his voice, his sense of humor, his talent, his idiosyncrasies, his hands, his tall, skinny body, his black plastic rim glasses, his everything.

I keep giving up, backing away when I see that someone else has his attention instead. I need to stay true to my intentions. How could I lose this time? After a while, life should kind of owe me. I have never, ever wanted to go out with a guy so much in my life. It’s not like Light. It’s not like Grey. It’s not far away, unattainable. It’s just out of my reach at the end of the branch, and I just haven’t gone far enough out on the limb yet. I’ve waited long enough. I need to make him mine before someone else does.

In other news, my Wednesday was just a typical Wednesday.

I got to play in the school pool with my friends in gym class, throwing around a football and acting like thrilled little kids on the playground at recess.

I downloaded one of those adorable sixties songs, "Wonderful World" by Sam Cooke. I just love old music like that. It just makes you want to twirl around with the boy of your dreams in a circle skirt. (Or perhaps that's just me?)

I was walking down an empty hallway with my eyes on the floor tiles when my Geometry teacher was coming the other way. She simply said, "Smile." I thought to myself, Why not?

I won a bingo game in my History class and got an almond granola bar. Um, if you think that's not important, just refer to my use of the word "almond" and think again.

Floyd gave me his strawberries at lunch. (Who is Floyd? Maybe I'll mention him another time)

I drank sour lemon stuff that was half slushy, half punch in my Child Care class that I spiked with way too much sugar.

It was all sweet things today, wasn’t it? Sweet songs, sweetened punch, sweet strawberries, sweet moments with the adorable boy, sweet almond granola bar things, sweet suggestions from my Geometry teacher, that sweet feeling of jumping into warm water off of a diving board.

Enjoy your Wednesday. Let’s hope that you will tomorrow, too, because tomorrow is Wednesday, is it not?

I just read over this post and realized how weird all of this sounds. I sound crazy, don't I?

But hey. I haven’t gone off the deep end. I dove right in.